I'm going to have fun reworking this season. It won't be easy, particularly because I feel I need more parts from where the plot is actually going while this season meandered and info dumped. Or maybe info dump isn't best description for it, but when not being vague, I felt it just didn't handle exposition delivery well.
Regardless, this should make for a good mental exercise how to best convey the story without repeating their same mistakes. Right now my leading thought is remove every scene with Salem interacting with her crew. The audience can meet Tyrian at the end of an episode as a cliffhanger and use him as a mysterious hunter. Keep the audience in the dark until he and Qrow reveal more about her. Don't give anything on Cinder's status yet, leave it in the air. I wonder how much time you gain by cutting so many scenes there?
Oh and I say cut them since alternate methods in the story as is to get almost all the same information. And some of it isn't relevant to this volume, like the guy sent to the white fanv meeting, so can still have it happen but can reveal that later, when much bigger impact.
I do realize this cuts off Cinder's stuff, but for now my attitude is eh. It contributed nothing so far and I'm confident I can come up with a way to accomplish the same with less time.
Also, huh, I forgot Ruby and Cinder fought in volume 2.
edited 2nd Feb '17 7:07:05 PM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.The only way the final battle could be satisfying is if the Grimm really was like Hunter Ludwig, and halfway through the battle, this happens.
Suddenly talking like a human, pulling out a Hunter weapon, and then fighting more like a human.
edited 2nd Feb '17 7:12:39 PM by Emperordaein
A corpse should be left well enough alone...Boss Battle can mean anything in a fighting category...
But there will be a fight.
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.The smart ones wait, the new bloods usually march on in and get ganked like beginner mobs often do. Legalization of weed dust in larger, more militarized settlements probably keeps the bigger, badder Grimm like the Nukalevee away as well.
Though it's more likely that this Grimm hadn't been conceptualized yet and we're actually to believe that they're about as common in the wilder parts of Remnant as any Beowolf.
edited 2nd Feb '17 8:37:43 PM by Soble
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!Jaune doing his best alpha male impression. That said, the weather in the screenshot seems clean as opposed to what it was earlier, so this might be post-presumed victory over Nuck the Hero of the South.
Plus, Ruby looks super hesitant for some reason.
Ruby is clearly freaked out by Jaune and worried for his mental health.
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So... Jaune is Valtr?
I mean, RWBY is basically Bloodborne-lite anyway.
edited 3rd Feb '17 9:59:00 AM by FergardStratoavis
That seems unlikely. This is apparently Jaune and Ruby's first encounter with one like this, and it apparently travels all around in search of villages to destroy. Given how strong it's apparently supposed to be and how they were making money, if these things were common they'd probably have run into one by now. Not that I think this is the only one but...
I am a bit hopefully that this one is more intelligent than most, and expresses a special interest in Ren for failing to kill him all those years ago. It apparently collects trophies, after all.
Since the Creatures of Grimm are both Mooks with certain ones (Deathstalker, Nevermore) being Elite Mooks, I'm going to assume ones like the Wyvern and Nuckalevee are along the lines of a Unique Enemy.
Which would make sense.
edited 3rd Feb '17 10:05:13 AM by BlackSunNocturne
In season four, by contrast, very little has actually happened. The plot has gone from "RNJR is heading to Mistral, everyone else is at home" to "everyone is heading to Mistral". The only character development is Blake getting her head together and deciding to take back control of the White Fang — everyone else is in basically the same place they were at the beginning of the season (except Yang, who is back to where she was before the season three finale).
It's hard to say what could be cut to save time this season, because the answer is honestly "most of it". There's just very little actual content in this season. If you timeskipped straight to Yang sparring with Taiyang, Weiss running away from home, Ozcar leaving the farm, RNJR being attacked by Tyrian, and Blake arriving in Menagerie, you really wouldn't miss much — and, except for Blake, that means skipping most of the season.
Ironically, I'd actually say that the Salem plot thread is about the only one that couldn't be easily truncated, since there's only a few scenes there and all of them show us something useful that moves the plot forward. (Salem giving her minions assignments, Salem being displeased with Cinder but still trying to help her recover, Cinder being bad at maiden powers.)
edited 3rd Feb '17 10:07:14 AM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Goddamn mobile lost a lot of what I typed. I'll type it again later, but to shrink, you can't just skip up everything because it removes any character elements and treating them as just plot devices. They do need their character arcs, but I likewise feel that placement of things would help big time. And what's going on.
Like I do wish we got more of White Fang plotline with Schnee side to show that and factor that into Weiss' leaving. Weiss' plot I get what they were doing. You can't just skip to her immediately leaving because it doesn't address why she went back in the first place. It's all a matter of that convo with Winter and about enough change elements piling on to motivate Weiss to leave. It's just so weakly executed combined with juggling multiple plotlines.
Oscar I don't know how to touch at all. It's why I feel I need more of the puzzle there before I can reaarange.
Yang, hell no can you just skip her healing process. I do think you can postpone showing her training or even leaving, though. Like, save the big moment where Yang comes back into the plot with a Big Damn Hero moment then when they ask what happened, fill in what's needed to know then.
Really, I think this season gave them too much down time with their healing instead of keeping the pressure on with immediate threats, not looming problems and purely emotional issues. I don't think removing them is the answer, I just don't think relying primarily on them a wise decision either.
Still collecting all thoughts, but this reminds me very much of this book I have called Character vs Plot. It's all about finding the balance between the two and gave examples in beginning with too plot dominant and too character dominant. I feel this season is too character dominant on their internal stuff combined with the pacing, but just saying remove it all falls to opposite extreme.
Adding this question as I'm curious, why do you feel that everything regarding their mental states can be skipped? For instance, let's use Yang. Why isn't her feelings that things couldn't just go back to being normal valid thing to cover and address? After how she was at the end of volume 3, why wouldn't skipping straight to that be a disservice to that scene? Wouldn't that undermine the idea that Yang went through a period where she wasn't ready for action?
...Now I so wish Tyrian attacked Ruby's home first while looking for her and that's what prompted Yang to put on arm and get back into the game.
edited 3rd Feb '17 12:15:52 PM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.That's why I say I don't get how everything was supposed to be skippable. Like, I understand wanting execute somethings better and at some points I could see that mean trimming it down or spending more time with the villains, but I don't get the progress of chapter 11 being a get starting point.
Like, we've been over stuff with Yang and Blake, but for Weiss, just immediately going to her defeats the entire point of her being sent away, and I also don't think it would be in character.
Building up to this was important, even if it could have been managed better and happened faster. The same goes for Oscar's stuff, though I'm personally fine with the scenes he had.
The point being, treating character moments and set up as separate from the plot makes no sense. If they were just inhuman tools who did things as efficiently as possible no one would be interested in watching. And, yes, I know no one has gone that far, but a few people's complains sounds like less hyperbolic versions of that.
It's all a matter of balance. Now that I'm thinking on it more, this season definitely needed more immediate plot points that are exciting to serve as catalysts. Also, it helps to have a more unifying one.
So, take Tyrian again. Have him searching for the gang (I'd give him some transportation to go faster), can visit Ruby's home during the build up and terrorize there. Not only can that serve as a catalyst that the world isn't on pause for Yang to lick her wounds, it could hype up his skills even more as he pursues Ruby and creates further suspense with what will happen there since we know his skills.
Blake and Weiss I keep thinking White Fang related operations in progress. I still think you can do Whitley as an antagonist (and find ways to actually show it because he did basically nothing but be Obviously Evil but suffers from Informed Attributes since we know almost nothing about him) and Jacques as an Archnemesis Dad, maybe with his Corrupt Corporate Executive side in full show and The White Fang actually being terrorist freedom fighters and Weiss trying to resolve stuff with her father's business practice while protecting their lives and so on, but he refuses to listen and growing wedge since she's acting like a sympathizer and with us or against us or something.
Blake, I'd maybe connect into the situation with Weiss and learning of it, heading there to try and help after Sun gets on her for abandoning them and that this isn't going to help fix it, or something. The travel times are the biggest problem for me. Still, ways to take their current character arcs, still have them, and speed them up.
Actually, one thing I could do to help travel, if some white fang pursuers or whatever with Blake or something stumbles on. If through them learn of a call for reinforcements in- shit, the tower is down, communication is shot. Wait, is it still? Yang can watch TV, after all. Assuming it's not, call for reinforcements north and Blake and Sun either blend with them or stowaway. Could use Blake's knowledge of them for hiding amongst them, if not found a way to move up plan to takeover The White Fang.
Well, I'm having fun with this at the very least! Finding ways to merge plotlines is definitely one of things I can think to do to improve pacing.
edited 3rd Feb '17 12:48:04 PM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.i think it's disingenuous to say there's been little content. it's definitely meandering, but things happen.
episode 1: introduce council of evil's members, establish team RNJR has been moving and fighting for a while, show jaune honoring pyrrha, establish oscar's normal life
episode 2: establish atlas moving toward isolationism, introduce jacques proper and establish conflict between him and ironwood, establish general hopeless mood with shion, show that ren and nora have shared history with hoofprint as well as foreshadow final boss, show how jaune and ruby have been coping with the pyrrha thing
episode 3: show what blake's been doing and throw sun in there, introduces concept of "relic"
episode 4: oscar receiving The Call, show how yang's recovering and that she is getting an arm, show the teachers being bros, show raven being a character, introduce qrow/raven backstory and foreshadow appearance of raven's tribe
episode 5: menagerie infodump, blake backstory, ghira and kali intro, establish white fang subplot
episode 6: more ren backstory, illustrate what happens outside the kingdoms, establish atlas civilian complacency, show weiss lashing out aggressively rather than passive aggressively
episode 7: oscar resists the call, reveal ozpin's soul secret, weiss losing inheritance, weiss starting summoning practice, qrow gets poisoned, tyrian gets unpoisoned
episode 8: infodump to finally get the heroes on the same page as the audience, clarification of relics, blake hugging out her guilt, escalation of white fang plot, escalation of poison plot
episode 9: show yang's progress, call out yang's problem, filling in more of raven, weiss summons knight, escalation of weiss rebellion plot, escalation of hoofprint plot, ren character development
episode 10: oscar answers the call, establish that hazel is hoog, ruby coming to terms with the call's consequences, show ren and nora backstory and relationship, escalation of hoofprint plot
episode 11: reinforce tyran/salem personalities, cinder progress, establish raven's location is known to yang, escalation on rebellion plot, escalation of white fang subplot, blake maybe getting over her running away thing, cliffhanger on hoofprint plot
I know "breather season" is a bad word, but I see this season as more akin to the second book in a trilogy. Book 1 usually is able to stand alone as it resolves most plot threads and then escalates, book 2 sets up threads for the mega climax with worldbuilding and backstory so that things in book 3 don't seem like an ass pull, and book 3 is the mega climax. No one ever likes the second book in a trilogy, but you usually can't do without it.
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." TwitterAs far as why she went home in the first place, I thought that was pretty obvious. She had no choice. Daddy showed up to take her home, and after everything that had just happened, she didn't have it in her to say no. Besides, where else would she have gone? Beacon was infested with grimm. Blake was AWOL, Yang was down a limb and mid-BSOD, and Ruby was unconscious. Plus, Weiss had already been cut off from Daddy's money earlier in the season. So she went home to rest and recover, much like Blake did.
That said, most of the screentime spent on Weiss was wasted time. The whole charity concert/party thing was pointless. Skip the parts where Weiss tries to make nice with her dad and start with her already confined to the manor grounds because how-dare-you-defy-me, so she spends her time training on own. Introduce Whitley and Klein, but be up front about Whitley being an antagonist. Have Weiss overhear her dad and Ironwood arguing the same way as actually happens, so she hears the border's going to be closed and decides to make a break for it while she can. Same basic stuff, half the screentime spent on it.
I should point out that I'm operating under the assumption that if you skip all this wasted time, then you can have the gang meet up in Mistral and actually do plot things this season. Most of season four was a waste of time, so I'm not saying "skip those parts and find something else to make season four about", I'm saying essentially "skip most of season four and roll it into the plot of season five (whatever that is)".
It's not character focus that I object to, it's time-wasting rehashing that doesn't make for new character development or plot advancement.
The whole point of a timeskip is that things change without the audience watching. A timeskip where everything is the same before and after the skip is pointless. So if you're going to skip forward six months or so, then one would expect six months-ish worth of situation change to occur. The problem with volume four is that none of that happened. At the opening of volume four, Weiss, Yang and Ruby are all still in the same state as they were during season three's denouncement. (Blake is paranoid and jumpy instead, which is a legitimately different state of mind even if it only lasts for about five minutes.)
Regarding Yang specifically, she's basically PTSDing really hard. (Blake is too, but Blake is at least wise enough to go home to her family where she knows she'll find the support she needs.) Depictions of that sort of trauma are really hard to get right. You don't want to portray it as no big deal or make it seem like the character just needs to tough it out and get over it, but you also don't want to make it seem like some indelible burden on your soul that's impossible to overcome. What it needs is a lot of time, a lot of support from loved ones, and a lot of patience and understanding on both sides. A professional therapist would be a big help too, but those don't exist.
This doesn't make for particularly interesting viewing, at least not for an audience like RWBY's. I don't mean that as a dig, it's just the fact that RWBY is at heart and action series — you could spend an entire series on someone's slow, steady recovery from PTSD, and it would make for a fascinating and emotionally powerful show. But that's not what RWBY's about. So basically, you need either a timeskip or a montage. And since we're already doing a timeskip for everyone else...
Ultimately, my problem with the way Yang's recovery was depicted was that they never really decided what was bothering her or how she got over it. By "what was bothering her", I don't mean the trivial "her arm got cut off, stupid" answer. That's obviously the source of the problem, but I'm talking about what form it took. Was she afraid? She had some nightmares, but she wasn't showing any fear or paranoia like Blake was. So was she ashamed instead? Beating herself up because she wasn't good enough to save Blake, to protect herself even? There was no hint of that. Was she angry? Pissed off that something so unfair happened to her, who did nothing to deserve it? That would be a very Yang-like response, but there's no real suggestion of that, either. Was she hopeless? She gave it her absolute best and that wasn't anywhere near good enough, so fuck it it's not even worth trying? I have no idea. We're given zero clue to Yang's mental state. All we know is that she was mopey for a while, then less mopey for a while longer, then one day she was training with Taiyang and more or less back to her old self. No introspection. No peering into her psyche. Just "bad", then "less bad" then "okay I guess".
It would have been great if, six months after season three, Yang was recovered to the point of wearing her new arm and training with Taiyang, but still suffering from [insert Yang's particular manifestation of PTSD here] occasionally. Then we could see the rest of her recovery on-screen. Instead, what we get is her apparently become completely cured by... watching TV and hanging out with her dad's friends, I guess?
edited 3rd Feb '17 2:02:30 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Instead of picking apart the entire wall of text for things I agree or disagree with I think it'll be easy to just comment on this statement, because it likely applies to all of it.
To me, what you've described would be terrible writing. You don't introduce a plot point/character like Oscar and go "I'm just a vehicle for another character, don't care about me at all, or anything about why I agreed to do this or my feelings." I can understand a discussion how to introduce him better or use his time more wisely, which might mean skimming it a bit, but what you put would have just been cheap and lazy. It's that simple.
And if you think that would have been appropriate, for the Oscar situation and a lot of other things I've gleamed, our definitions of sufficient and decent writing must be so different there really is no point for any of us doing point by point breakdowns like you keep doing, and others (including myself) have done.
edited 3rd Feb '17 2:09:55 PM by LSBK

The only thing I expect from the finale is a cool fight. Anything else is just pure gravy and would be expecting too much from this show.
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