RWBY General Discussion

Speaking as someone who was initially quite sceptical, I definitely think they've helped bring the setting alive and allowed us to capture insights into the world that we wouldn't otherwise have had.

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

Miles Luna announced that he left Rooster Teeth back in March, so that he can expand the projects he works on. He clarified that he's continuing to work as a Freelancer on RWBY, so there are no changes concerning his work as a writer or voicing Jaune.

A Freelancer? Does that mean Jaune gets to use Oobleck as target practice?

Edited by TwinBird on Sep 22nd 2020 at 7:38:51 AM

My posts make considerably more sense read in the voice of John Ratzenberger.

For me, the novels have been hit or miss. The setting aspects have been largely successful attempts at world building, namely the way Vacuo is fleshed out and the history given by the Crown, but there are some incongruencies. I've already said them enough that I'm a Broken Record, so I'll spare everyone and not repeat myself. Overall, while Before the Dawn does more worldbuilding, I think After the Fall is both better at it and the better book overall. If more of the books were like After the Fall, I'd be open to more novels. If they were more like Before the Dawn however... ﺧ益ﺨ

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

...It would be very beneficial?^note Kanji 益 means "benefit; gain; profit; advantage" and such.

I assure you, I'm a completely trustworthy person.

It was the closest I could find for the Excalibur Face.

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

Well, I was talking about world-building rather than plot.

That said, I don't really understand the vitriol that's been thrown at Before the Dawn. I wouldn't exactly nominate either novel for a Booker prize, but I just don't see the quality difference between the two novels that others complain about.

I suspect this is because, while I was pleasantly surprised by the first novel, I certainly didn't think it was worth raving about to the degree the part of the fandom seemed to want to do, which is the same part that's ranting about the second novel. My personal opinion is that it has a lot to do with that particular section of the fandom's love of Team CFVY, a sentiment I don't share. I've been experiencing déjà vu from their backlash because it has a lot in common with the backlash the main show experienced when Volume 1 first started airing.

& Oh... so that's what that 'icon' means. I've seen it floating around and didn't have a clue what it referred to.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Sep 23rd 2020 at 7:25:08 PM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

For me, it's largely the characterization. I've gone in depth about how I feel about how Sun is characterized there, but it's not just him. For a book promoted as being about both SSSN and CFVY, SSN and CF are just an Advertised Extra and its more about Sun and VY. Neptune's hydrophobia is explored but still treated shitty thanks to the infamous scene with Fox and Yatsu. Scarlet has one, maybe two, character traits in the entire book. Sage gets nothing. Coco and Fox needlessly turned into assholes to give a reason for friction between the teams, whether it be Coco's elitism being turned Up To Eleven, or Fox sending Neptune into a panic attack while interrogating him and not showing any remorse. NDGO are revealed to be a team of assholes, with even the best of them, Octavia, still willing to use kids as Grimm Bait. Instead of just Roy dying, all of Team BRNZ gets offed with the exception of Nolan, and Nolan is a secondary character at best. We get actual scenes for Arslan and Reese, and they just get bare bones characterization. The only characters to fare well in the characterization department are Theo, Yatsu, and Velvet.

It doesn't help that it seems to lack internal consistency in terms of characterization, since After the Fall ended on CFVY and SSSN hanging out together and having fun, including Coco, yet come Before the Dawn suddenly SSN is all pissed at Sun and Coco is acting like an arrogant bitch.

Edited by RebelFalcon on Sep 23rd 2020 at 2:42:29 PM

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

To be fair, CF already had their focus in the previous book. But yeah, the writing really goes out of its way to paint Sun with a scornful brush and says that leaving his team is the worst thing ever when in actuality, it saved a family's life and turned the tide in a battle.

I feel there is a sort of meta comentary there, after all Sun weird habit of leaving is team and being more blake teamate(to the point he interact more with her than yang, he suposed love interest) have always being comentented by the fandom.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Making characters act Out of Character just to write a Fandom-Specific Plot however isn't a good thing. It's borderline Character Derailment if the only way it works is to write a character Out of Character.

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

Regarding Sandbox.RWBY Team RWBY, I think Weiss, Blake, and Yang's Volume 4 images look better with the flowers behind them, like so:

Keet cleanup

I don't think all criticism of the book are bad, and I don't like the sidelining of most of Team SSSN, which only makes sense to me if there's going to be another book which brings them to the fore and pushes others to the back.

However, I think Coco's portrayal is a natural extension of the way she was depicted in After the Fall, where warning flags were raised about some of her behaviour and attitudes. I also think Sun is consistently portrayed and many of the complaints I've seen about him are based on a Sun whose flaws in the show were either downplayed or overlooked by the fandom. It's certainly consistent with what the creators have been saying about Sun for years in both interviews and on the DVD commentaries regarding things he was doing in certain scenes and his personality overall.

Regarding the torment of Neptune. That was an extremely uncomfortable scene to read, and I don't think anyone should like what happened during that scene. But here's my observations about the scene in terms of characterisation.

Firstly, Fox. We hadn't been given enough characterisation about Fox in the previous book to safely conclude that he's not the kind of person who would do something like that because the book tells us such things as: he doesn't have a problem with the idea of using people as Grimm bait; he had no problem withholding knowledge from his own team-mates that mole crabs stop attacking if people stop moving because he wanted a challenge; that family is extremely important to Vacuans, and Team CFVY is the only family Fox has left. So, nothing about that scene contradicted the character... although it clearly expanded the known character in a way that exploded a lot of fanon assumptions about him, similar to what happened at the beginning of Volume 1 with Weiss (all the girls, really, but Weiss was the biggest upset).

Secondly, Yatsu. I found that scene very interesting for characterising Yatsu. It, in fact, shows us why he's not really leadership material. His peers matter to him, he'll give people he trusts a lot of rope, even against his better judgement until he finally becomes too uncomfortable and hauls in the slack. That might not be the kind of portrayal fans like to see in their heroes, but it's interesting characterisation because it's realistic.

Ignoring those psychology and sociology experiments on how far even compassionate people will go if they think a person in authority or a person they trust is the one encouraging them to do it, the reason I don't have a problem with Yatsu's characterisation in the scene is because I've seen situations like this in real life. I've even been in Neptune's situation, and seen others in that position. I've seen how normally good people get dragged along a bully's path by someone they trust, not recognising the seriousness of the situation until a pain trigger (in my case) becomes the moment when they realise they've crossed the line into bullying and that something seriously wrong and bad is unfolding.

I've also seen such people not have the strength of personality to step in at that point and put a stop to it. Wring their hands on the sideline, yes. Apologise afterwards for 'not knowing that would happen', yes. Step in and stop it while it's happening, however? No.

Stronger people own their mistake, correct their behaviour and put a stop to the situation. In my experience, that's very rare.

One very big complaint I have, which is directed towards the show rather than the novels and something that I believe the novels therefore got stuck with, is the handling of Team SSSN as a team. We saw almost nothing of Team SSSN's dynamic in the show because two of the characters were almost never seen and the two that were seen were mostly interacting with the main characters, so even their dynamic with each other was barely explored. One of the reasons for that was Sun... he never functioned as a team-player — never mind a team leader — right from the moment he first entered the show, and that made it next to impossible to bring in his team without taking too much time the show clearly didn't have away from the main characters. That Sun's character flaws were known from early on and not something that were made up later on as justification is something we can establish thanks to interviews and DVD Commentaries. However, the reason for the fandom coming up with so much fanon is due to a lack information... so when I talk about fanon assumptions getting smashed, I'm not saying the fandom's wrong to develop fanon assumptions in the first place, I'm just saying that is a big part of the disconnect between the fandom and some of the characterisation in these books.

And this is where my deja vu with the start of Volume 1 comes in, because it's the same issue at play: people took the four trailers, made up their head cannons about the personalities, and how they'd interact with each other and therefore what they're behaviour would be like in various imagined scenarios.... only to discover that they were completely wrong. There was a massive backlash at the time — especially over the portrayal of Weiss.

I've been seeing exactly the same reaction to the second novel's portrayal of Sun, his team dynamic and the portrayal of Fox during the Neptune scene as to Weiss at the beginning of Volume 1. I'm not saying all of it, but a lot of it does come from the same origin: fan assumptions about characters getting shattered rather than the show itself being genuinely inconsistent about a character's portrayal.

Except he wasn't out-of-character. The only difference between Sun in the show and Sun in the novel was that the novel let us see inside his head, which we didn't get to see in the show. In terms of calling out his behaviour, the primary difference between the novel and the show is that the show never called him out in-universe ^note There was one throw-away comment from Blake on the ship and Neptune's hostile, but non-verbal, reaction at the end Volume 6's first episode, but that was it but the fandom did, while the novel has the characters in-universe constantly call him out for it.

As for Coco, the first novel warned us that she resented constantly having to prove herself to Shade, that she didn't like having to prove herself all over again with each new mission, that she didn't like the fact Shade didn't permanently think her team was awesome and that she constantly boasts about her team being the best. It therefore already warned us she's got entitlement issues where her image and her team's reputation are concerned (hell, it also establishes that one of the big reasons why Coco trusts Ruby is because she approves of Ruby's dress sense — Coco may be talented and a good leader in general, but she does have a petty side to her personality and narcissistic tendencies). Also, practically the first thing she said to Sun when they ran into each other at the end of the book was to tell him that her team was better than his and perhaps he needed reminding of the fact. The second novel makes it pretty clear that the two main things souring her on Team SSSN was the way Team SSSN stole the limelight upon their return to Shade (which happens between the two books and is something she hugely resents), and that she could see the team clearly had some kind of serious problem with Sun that was making them dysfunctional, and that dysfunction kept affecting her team's mood whenever the two teams were around each other.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Sep 23rd 2020 at 12:32:10 PM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

That's exactly the problem however. Just because that was what the commentaries wanted Sun to look like doesn't mean it's what happened. It's the same complaint many had with the attempts to make Ozpin look shady and duplicitous failing. Just because it's consistent with what the creators intended, it doesn't make it proper characterization anymore since said characterization is now obsolete. It would be like if Ozpin was shown in one of these novels pardoning criminals to use as his agents like he was director of the Suicide Squad or something and proceeding to crack evil smirks when that's not how he's been portrayed in the main series. It's not fanon assumptions however. After the Fall largely focused on Coco and Fox, and gave us enough have a general idea as to what their characters were like. And very little if anything in After the Fall suggested Fox would be okay with torture to get info, especially when even he seemed uncomfortable when CFVY saved Slate and thinks her group practically abandoned her. This isn't a situation like Weiss were there was only a voiceless trailer to go off of and she had no characterization at the time leading into fanon. We were given characterization in After the Fall, and the issue comes from people finding his behavior in Before the Dawn incongruous with said characterization. I didn't have a problem with Yatsu's. I outright said I liked his characterization. That's a failure on the writing of both the show and the book then. If the show failed to make that clear, then the book shouldn't try to course correct to what the original idea was, since that is at such odds with the actual character that it doesn't actually feel like the character we got. It's the same issue with Adam in that regard, since all the Expanded Universe material paints him as a Tragic Monster and such, but the series proper just portrays him as an abusive yandere and a Complete Monster. The show is the primary canon, and to give contradictory characterization in extraverse material doesn't help anything. This is a false dichotomy. It's not the same. The Trailers had very little characterization period, the one with the most being the Yellow Trailer, and people made up characterization for RWBY wholecloth out of fanon, since there was nothing to go on. Sun we spent five volumes with, and Fox has a good chunk of After the Fall establishing his characterization, via interacting with his team, with RWBY, with enemies, and internal monologue. No, he was. We've discussed this at length, and he even has a goddamn Adaptational Jerkass entry for it. He is a lot more self centered and douchy in the book, and constantly either ignores the issues or thinks they should get over them. And don't argue that its consistent with the series because it isn't, it's characterization largely created for this damn book, that at best allows one to retroactively infer that he had said characterization. And not everyone in the FNDM thinks he even deserves a calling out, since a good chunk defend his actions, and constantly have to remind everyone that Volume 6 had him aware of his own damn flaws and deciding he needed to change, which is the entire damn reason they went to Vacuo in the first place.

---

Sorry, but this book's treatment of Sun just gets my blood boiling. I'm not even gonna touch Coco however out of fear I'll lose it though, since while I did like her in After the Fall, Before the Dawn was enough for her to earn my enmity.

Edited by RebelFalcon on Sep 23rd 2020 at 7:28:44 AM

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

Except that is what happened: he doesn't back off when people want him to; he inserts himself into other people's adventures without permission; he constantly abandons his team; he abandoned Team RWBY in the middle of a fight to go and have noodles; any time he thinks a girl needs help, he forces himself into their life until he decides they don't need his help any more, even if he has to follow them across continents to do it; he doesn't mind spying on friends (in their dorm room!) he's just barely met; when his team-mates were taken out of their tournament fight he showed no concern about them (compare that to Fox and Velvet's concern for Coco and Yatsu or Team RWBY's concern for Weiss); he's blunt, he's over-the-top, he's stubborn, he says things without thinking and which can cause problems as a result; he's not very good at taking advice and, when he does, it takes a while for it to sink in and for him to do something about it; when he decides he's been a bad team leader, he decides what's needed to fix the problem, how it's going to be fixed, and where it's going to be fixed (causing a hostile reaction from Neptune, the reason for which is explored in the novel). And so on.

He's fine with the idea of using people as Grimm bait. He's got no problem withholding useful information from his team during dangerous fights just because he likes a challenge. He is established as regarding Team CFVY as the only family he's got, which he takes very seriously. He also contemplates the irresponsibility of Beacon's initiation allowing a blind boy to be thrown off a cliff as Ozpin's idea of a joke in a way that strongly implies he'd be willing to consider it as a practical joke because he's a prankster himself (his issue was just that it reminded him too much of how Vacuans form tribes and settlements back home, and he doesn't like that kind of randomness). He's willing to be downright nasty if he thinks people need to hear something important (something he does several times, even to a child). He was able to push Yatsu into (reluctantly) using his Semblance to wipe part of Bertilak's memory so that he'd stop being a problem for them.

From the first book, I got the impression that Fox was practical to the point of being ruthless if he felt it was necessary and that this is how many Vacuans are because that's the lifestyle they've had to live. You don't have the luxury of being sentimental. You do what you have to survive. That breeds two types of Vacuan: survival of the individual (the selfish ones) or survival of the group (the community-oriented ones). Fox was established as regarding his 'group' as being Team CFVY.

Yes, it's easy for adults reading these novels to observe that Fox's behaviour towards Neptune is waterboarding, which is a form of torture. It's also a very common bullying tactic used by boys in school — albeit, usually manifesting in the form of shoving the victim's head in the toilet.

Given the age of the characters involved and the fact they're still in school, while I obviously know that it's waterboarding, I also felt that the source of inspiration here is the real-life school waterboarding of shoving a victim's head down the loo.

Now, as I said, I don't like the scene. It makes for very uncomfortable reading, and it's clear that we're not supposed to like the scene or approve of it in any way. But the book as a whole (and that scene included) makes it very clear that no-one has any idea why Neptune is scared of water or how extensive that fear is. Yatsu was shocked when he realised the depth of Neptune's fear. That's what brought him to his senses. And, yes, the scene does also make it clear that Fox wasn't sympathetic even after it became clear.

There are a lot of reasons to dislike the scene, and I really do wish that scene had never been written, but 'out of character' isn't one of the issues I have with it. Nothing has ever established Fox isn't the kind of person who'd do something like that. It never established that he would be either. It's just something that's never cropped up, or that we'd have imagined would ever crop up. But it's very easy for fandoms to assume that the characters we think of as heroes would never do something like that. Well, now the subject has cropped up, and we know for certain now that Fox falls into the 'would be willing' category. But that's our learning curve about a gradually unfolding character. It's not 'out-of-character' because he was never established as not being that kind of character in the first place.

For the record, one of the biggest reasons I don't like the scene is because it's waterboarding. I wasn't expecting to see torture scene unfolding in a RWBY novel and I did WTF at it. So, don't take my posts as condoning it. Like I've said before, I do have issues with the scene and its existence... just not characterisation ones. (Well, no, actually I have issues with Neptune's characterisation, but that's a different discussion.)

I was explaining how I interpret the scene.

It's an established precedent for expanded universe novels to write about characters or situations the main show doesn't explore, especially if it's to explore something a show implies or raises but doesn't pursue. It's one of the biggest reasons for having EU novels at all. Shows have been doing this for decades; even when I was reading them as a kid, shows had already been doing it for decades. I therefore don't understand why this idea seems so weird.

It's completely different. Adam's past and personality were plot points that fed into the main plot (for good or ill), which is why not exploring them has been such a problem for the show. Team SSSN's internal issues with Sun's lack of team spirit and wanderlust has no plot relevance even when Sun himself got involved with main plot points, which is precisely why it can be spun off to a side story to explore and resolve in its own time.

It's not a false dichotomy. You're mistaking what I'm comparing. I'm not comparing it to Sun or Fox. I'm comparing it to Team SSSN's dynamic as a full team which, like the trailers, has no on-screen characterisation and therefore is left entirely to the fandom's imagination.

I'm well aware of the entry, obviously. And, as I said, there is a difference in Sun's portrayal between the book and the show — it's that we get to see inside his mind, the way he thinks, the way he sees the world, the reason he's so prone to abandoning people. That is a form of Adaptational Jerkass precisely because this isn't information we get in the show (primarily because his internal team dynamic — which is the frame against which Sun's personality and mindset is set — was never explored on-screen).

Tropes aren't supposed to be regarded as automatically a bad thing when they occur. The novel basically tells us why Sun was behaving the way he did in the show. I completely understand why a lot of people don't like how Sun is portrayed in the novel, but I'm not discussing whether it's likeable or not. I'm discussing whether it's consistent or not. And I think it is.

On the subject of likeability, however, here's a plot twist for you: I don't like it either.

Since you don't want me to argue a point I believe, I suggest we end this conversation now. You are free to respond to anything I've said in this post. I don't want to be seen as trying to get the last word by making this statement, I'm just observing that if you don't want me to continue on in this vein then the only thing I can do is stop completely and change the subject.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Sep 23rd 2020 at 2:33:55 PM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

Coming into things after much wall text, but my thoughts probably align more with Wyld's in this case. (Including re-watching V4 recently because idk?)

I think Sun is someone with a good heart and the best of intentions, but kind of a dumbass and a jerk to people at times. He's flighty and always on the move, he doesn't stop to consider how his actions will feel to other people, and he's outright oblivious to Human-Faunus issues even though he was going to school at Haven. My take on the book was that it largely involves Sun having to actually work through those things, and reach a point where he's able to start truly empathizing with others. It's mostly represented in the conflict within his team, as well as him trying to articulate to the transfer students by the Beacon Brigade bothers the Vacuan students. He's going to go from being a fairly oblivious, good-hearted dude to someone that has to figure out how to balance the perspectives of people and start finding solutions.

In terms of the Waterboarding scene, I do think it's a mixture of people not realizing how serious Neptune's phobia is and further establishing potential issues between Vacuan folks and outsiders. Until that scene, Neptune's fear is treated like a joke both narratively and by the other characters. It's something people laugh about and tease him over, that becomes something that shocks Yatsuhashi and makes him feel deeply uncomfortable with his own actions. (Which is then further expanded at the finale, when he mindwipes Jax.) I feel like we're getting seeds for future events, in terms of illustrating that even the "Good" Vacuan folks like Fox can be ruthless and even cruel, when they feel it's necessary.

No. It isn't what happened. Ignore for a second whatever stupid reasons the book invented for him and focus instead on just what the series proper established.

• "he doesn't back off when people want him to" The one time he did this in the series proper was with Blake, and it was when she was being extremely self destructive and backing off would have a bad idea.
• "he inserts himself into other people's adventures without permission" Again, no he doesn't. He just showed up because he was already involved in the hunt for Roman and thought he was going too. And RWBY doesn't object to him coming overall, since they initially wanted to keep it in the team, but he reiterated what he always does: "friends look out for each other" and they took him and Neptune along.
  Ruby: Sorry, Sun. We don't want to get friends involved if we don't have to.
  Sun: Psh! That's dumb! We should always get friends involved!
• "he constantly abandons his team" Show, Don't Tell. He abandons them twice, if you can even say it's that. It's never established in the series proper if his team had a problem with him doing so, and his own word was that they were fine with it. If the intent was to suggest they had an issue, actually show this. And in both cases, there's one major reason why he didn't take them. Neptune's hydrophobia. First time, he went to Vale ahead of them by stowing away on a boat, and when he meets up with Neptune in Volume 2, Neptune shows no issue with this. Second time, he went after Blake thinking she was going on a suicide mission against the White Fang after she just flat out bolted during the Fall of Beacon, and went on the boat she took to keep an eye on her, and when we see Neptune in Volume 6, the only time Neptune expresses flat out frustration with him is telling him to hurry up.
• "he abandoned Team RWBY in the middle of a fight to go and have noodles" No, he and Neptune got thrown off the highway by Roman and the two of them had no way to find where they went. Getting Noodles was a bit jerkish, but Neptune did it too, and based on their dialogue, neither were that concerned for the team, thinking they could handle themselves.
  Neptune: They're probably fine, right?
  Sun: Probably.
• "any time he thinks a girl needs help, he forces himself into their life until he decides they don't need his help any more" One time does not a habit make. And it was, again, with Blake, and he made clear the reason he followed after her was because she didn't seem to have anyone else, but by that point, she had others, she had her team, and they were better for her than he was. And that even if he was leaving now, she'd always see him again.
  Sun: Look... despite the drama and the fighting and the numerous attempts on my life, I had a lot of fun! But you're with who you're supposed to be now.
• "he doesn't mind spying on friends he's just barely met" He wasn't spying on them. He was meeting up with them to talk about Roman. If he was just spying, why did he force Neptune to stand on the ledge outside the window only to shortly after make himself known.
• "he's blunt, he's over-the-top, he's stubborn, he says things without thinking and which can cause problems as a result" Blunt, yes; over-the-top, he's hardly the only one; he's not stubborn, if anything he's the opposite considering how easy it is to get him to come around like with Ilia who he wanted to "get even with" but settled for just pinching her after her Heel–Face Turn; and the last part is just a trait of being impulsive.
• "he's not very good at taking advice and, when he does, it takes a while for it to sink in and for him to do something about it" The only time he's been given advice and not be the one giving advice is in the book, so ignoring this.
• "when he decides he's been a bad team leader, he decides what's needed to fix the problem, how it's going to be fixed, and where it's going to be fixed (causing a hostile reaction from Neptune, the reason for which is explored in the novel)." That's an interpretation, and not one the show supports. Neptune is the one telling him to hurry up, even though the book tries to claim none of SSN wanted to go to Vacuo, and Neptune only makes a face after Sun says he needs to get them "ready for the wasteland", which can just as easily be interpreted as him not liking the prospect of the wasteland.

Except one of the biggest flaws of EU novels is when they contradict the main source of media. Just ask anyone who read a Star Wars novel, or the people subjecting the Bleach novels to Fanon Discontinuity. Expanded Universe material will always be secondary to the primary media source. And this shouldn't be a surprise since we've already had an issue with this in RWBY: The 2019 Comics. That series has a lot of Series Continuity Error in it, ranging from characterization to plot lines. Not what I'm talking about. I wasn't referring to team dynamics, I was referring to just general characterization being at odds between the show and the Expanded Universe, which is why I used Adam as an example. More like you and I are having two different conversations. If you don't like it, why are you playing devils advocate for the books rather crappy treatment of Sun?

---

And if anyone is wondering why I'm so wound up about this? Let me put it this way: Sun is one of my favorite characters. I enjoyed everything about him. He was this well meaning doofus with issues in regards to impulse control but a massively good heart, and was even self-aware about his own flaws, and willing to put whatever feelings he had aside if it meant just stopping Blake from destroying herself. He was a good friend, a highlight of the Menagerie arc, and a breath of fresh air with how earnest he was even as the story was getting more serious.

So to see the books have nearly everyone sans Velvet treat him like shit, to ignore the context behind his actions, to treat it like he's this jackass that needs to learn a lesson, it's fucking annoying. Maybe the reason I don't really care about what he did to SSN is because I don't care about them. Neptune is probably the only one I care about in regards to them, but if the three of them were to die at any point, I think I'd only care in regards to how their deaths affect Sun, and maybe a little sadness over Neptune dying. I have been given no reason to care about the other two though, especially when Sage is a statue and Scarlet is a Flat Character.

Just imagine if you had to read your favorite character be so viciously deconstructed where pretty much everyone is out to get them, to the point the narrative itself is hating on them, and turned everything you loved about them in the series proper into something to be used against them, that every good character trait was suddenly made into a flaw.

Bottom line, were Sun to run off again to help Blake, I would cheer, cause I find his interactions with the rest of the main cast way more interesting than that with his own team, to the point the main cast feels more like his actual team, and would praise Sun's doing so since it would be a sign of his loyalty to Blake, who quite frankly, he's known longer than his own team at this point considering how short his time with his team was before the Fall of Beacon, and how much longer he's been with Blake instead. It's one of the reasons I was hoping he would go with the others to Atlas and just disband his team, cause he is way more interesting with the main characters than being weighed down by Sage and Scarlet.

And if they had to address his character flaws, do it in the series proper, and do with characters that actually matter, and not the extras made just to serve as team fodder.

Edited by RebelFalcon on Sep 23rd 2020 at 10:50:17 AM

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

So....uh.....new topic? I suggest one or both of the following:

• If they made more Character Shorts, who would you want them to spotlight?

• So The Grimm Child is established as the scary story, inspiring movies and video games and comics. Does that mean The Chill is like their version of the stock movie Vampire? Do they go through the same cycles of Scary Vampire -> Sexy Vampire -> Feral Vampire -> Moody Vampire -> ect?

.....is there a Grimm version of something like Twilight?

Pfffft-hahahaha. Ahaha. It is somewhat difficult following or getting involved in this thread these days. But this is a discussion forum so I can't exactly complain about that.

Character shorts

• Qrow and Raven, since a spin-off isn't happening and I don't want it shoved into a novel or a comic book
• Ozpin, during one of his many lives

I just can't get interested in any of the supplemental RWBY material outside of the shorts/World of Remnant.

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).

Hey, um... as somewhat of a new meat or outsider how would you say general opinion of the series is among the larger public? for or against?

I would argue that many have heard of it but typically when it is brought up, only the first 3 volumes will be discussed

The Final Name

thank you.

Volume 5's dismal performance is brought up here on semi-regular basis, so I don't know about that.

My opinion: the series is getting better. After hitting a snag around Vol 3 and going to the absolute lowest during Vol 5, it's been slowly putting itself together into a show that might not be as deep as it thinks it is, but has gotten better at delivering its messages still.

How do lizards fly?

Well, the fanbase who dislikes the show is a Vocal Minority. The larger public as a whole are either apathetic to RWBY or really like it.

Looking at it as a whole, Volume 3 was the highest it got in terms of popularity and while it seemingly has lower and lower spikes as the years goes on, this is by no means the end of RWBY. It is a juggernaut still, just that it lost a lot of steam thanks to bad resource management and dirty backdoor dealings.

I don't miss the character shorts, so I'll be fine if they continue not doing any more, especially if that means they're not using any of the volume's budget on them.

The only character who might need one is Oscar, but I'd rather we learned his back story in the show itself. All we really know about him is that he was being raised by an aunt on a farm and apparently was independent-minded enough to prefer living in the barn to living in the house itself. We really don't know anything else about his past beyond that.

That's par for the course with Team JNR/O, however. We only have Ren's back story. We have bits about Jaune and Nora, but we still don't know how Nora ended up orphaned in Kuroyuri or where she's from, and we also don't know where Jaune's from, how he got those transcripts in the first place or why he was apparently considered a write-off from the outset for following in his family's legacy. We're supposedly expected to conclude that his family thought he had no talent (or, at least, he believes his parents had no faith in him) but given the speed at which he's developed his combat abilities, he's developed even faster than Ruby: the only character who's developing faster than Jaune is Oscar. I'm therefore not inclined to believe that his interpretation of his parents' motives are correct... given that he clearly does have both talent and power.

Here's a question I have about Jaune: we know he told Pyrrha, and we know Cardin overheard, but we don't know if Ren, Nora and Team RWBY know how he got into Beacon. And we still don't know if Ozpin knew and just turned a blind eye (which I still believe is the case).

I'd be surprised if most people have ever heard of RWBY, to be honest. My guess is that RWBY would be considered a bit niche, and I'm not sure most people would bother with the show at all upon seeing how bad the animation is at the beginning.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Sep 24th 2020 at 5:52:21 PM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.