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ch00beh ??? from Who Knows Where Since: Jul, 2010
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#45251: Feb 13th 2017 at 5:06:54 PM

counterpoint to plot being the primary driver of story: almost every problem in Game Of Thrones is caused by characters being awful human beings, not by extraordinary external circumstances.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter
VeryMelon Since: Jul, 2011 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#45252: Feb 13th 2017 at 5:11:08 PM

There's no hard rule about what drives the story, nor should there be.

But for Season 4? Nothing from Yang and Weiss' plotlines justified waiting 8 months for them to start, to me. A better alternative would be to see them over the course of 8 months, everything they did would still be shown onscreen but we'd get periodic updates on how much time passed. Then we'd see them leave for Mistral on the 8th month. These aren't flashbacks, but showing time from their perspectives.

Blake's almost got the same issue, mainly that the boatride is only there to bring Sun into her plotline. Since not everyone here liked Sun this season I feel its fair to point that out as criticism. Thankfully the boatride is rather short and the meat of Blake's plotline is able to proceed with the justified timeskip.

That leave Ruby's end. I feel like either the Tyrion fight or the Nuck-ever fight needs to be their climatic battle, but both can't be in the same season. One gets more build-up than the other, and both are made out to be significant threats that would divide focus if you made both fight at the same time.

edited 13th Feb '17 5:23:12 PM by VeryMelon

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#45253: Feb 13th 2017 at 5:47:26 PM

[up] The issue is, they were both things that really needed to happen; Ren and Nora were the least developed members of the two "A Teams" by far, and keeping our heroes totally ignorant about the central plot for a whole 'nother volume would probably make things far more convoluted later down the road.

Nuckles definitely should've been built up from the start as a major threat though, and an early confrontation in which team RNJR is routed would defintely help; presumably it would show up at the tail end of the Tyrian Qrow fight.

EpicBleye drunk bunny from her bed being very eepy Since: Sep, 2014 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
drunk bunny
#45254: Feb 13th 2017 at 5:51:25 PM

[up][up]I can agree with the first half; there really was no reason for there to be that six month gap. but i don't really think it took so much away from the volume anyway.

I'm fine with both Tyrian and the Nuckeleave in the same volume.

edited 13th Feb '17 5:52:11 PM by EpicBleye

"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#45255: Feb 13th 2017 at 5:58:06 PM

There was no "waiting" for Yang. She had to get out of bed, she had to get used to doing things without her arm, she had to get into a new "normal". Having the arm just immediately come and her immediately be okay with that would have been terrible. If for no other reason, Yang's story line justifies a bit of timeskip.

Weiss, I think had the weakest story line, but at the same time, I think it was good we saw something like we did, I just think it could have been conveyed...more effectively. Use Whitley better; for one. Don't just say he was manipulating her, actually show it. And maybe have her confrontation with her father be in the second time we see her.

And Ren and Nora's stuff is really just no winning. I'm sure there would be a lot more pissed off about summing up their backstory a conversation than what we actually saw.

The Blake stuff is touchy for reasons we've been over a million times already and I really don't want to start up again.

edited 13th Feb '17 5:59:00 PM by LSBK

Prime_of_Perfection Where force fails, cunning prevails Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Where force fails, cunning prevails
#45256: Feb 13th 2017 at 6:01:42 PM

I never said plot is the primary driver of story. I said characters aren't plot. There's a difference. Character is super important, but it's not the end all, be all. Character provides the internal meaning to the story and fuels it, plot gives the story structure to present that internal journey.

Improving as an author, one video at a time.
VeryMelon Since: Jul, 2011 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#45257: Feb 13th 2017 at 6:04:21 PM

[up][up]For us the audience, Yang and Weiss' stories didn't start until eight months later. My problem is nothing we saw of them couldn't have been done over the eight months instead. I didn't even propose cutting them, just change their storyline so they occur over eight months.

fillerdude Since: Jul, 2010
#45258: Feb 13th 2017 at 6:05:30 PM

A slower, more character focused season that nevertheless still drops hints of later plot developments and setup seems pretty standard

This is fine. The devil is in the execution.

My take on things:

  • Only Oscar's last scene should be retained, serving as a good stinger and theory fuel. Or alternatively, expand on the Call to Adventure— give us a sense of his thoughts on the task he sets out to undertake, or about the things he will leave behind.
  • Salem and Cinder similarly should be limited to that scene where Salem inquires about Ozpin's death. Will probably work best as the final scene of the theoretical first episode.
  • RNJR had a good old fashioned adventure going, which is nice and easy to make plot threads for. I'd stick with Tyrian's ambush (without us knowing who Tyrian is, exactly) and Qrow's injury, then RNJR would keep on finding ravaged town after ravaged town in search of medical care, and at the midway point they get attacked by the Nuckelavee Grimm, and now have to flee from it. Insert some Ren and Nora backstory whether by flashback, or campfire tale, or heartfelt private conversation. Finale could have them with no way to escape and end up making a "last stand", and have them managing to hold out long enough for the airships to come and help them.
  • For Weiss... oh man, this one's hard. Maybe start with her concert and subsequent "tantrum" at the ball, resulting in the house arrest, and have the rest of the season with her interactions with her father and Whitley, revealing she's been disqualified as heiress, then have her training and planning her escape to Mistral with some help from the her actual father figure, the butler. Not sure where to put in the Knight summong, probably best to cut that out for next season.
  • And as for Blake... not much to change, actually. Some little tweaks here and there, like an improved encounter with the chameleon girl, scenes of Blakedad looking into the White Fang, and some script edits.
  • More screentime for Yang. I'm not expecting full-on exploration of PTSD, but this part needed more meat. It would have been better, I think, if she fitted the arm during the time skip, but with the robotic arm frequently reminding her of the loss of her flesh arm, which can be correlated with her weakness/inability to protect the people she loves. Also needed more conversation with Taiyang about the strength to move on and keep fighting crap, before the actual training.
  • Raven can still pop in, talk with Qrow, and leave because she's good at leaving people hanging.

As an aside, Jaune had the best writing this season. He's still clearly struggling with Pyrrha's death, but has moved on somewhat from it. I bet they're saving his Semblance reveal for an emotionally cathartic moment. Hell, he's more protagonist material than Ruby at this point, barring the super special silver eyes of course.

edited 13th Feb '17 6:07:01 PM by fillerdude

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#45259: Feb 13th 2017 at 6:05:35 PM

I never said characters are plot. I said people care about the plot because of the characters involved in it, which is something I've seen to be generally true. Like I said, hearing about fun characters making an average or below average plot entertaining is nothing new, but I'd wager you're much less likely to hear the reverse.

VeryMelon Since: Jul, 2011 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#45260: Feb 13th 2017 at 6:14:51 PM

The issue is, they were both things that really needed to happen; Ren and Nora were the least developed members of the two "A Teams" by far, and keeping our heroes totally ignorant about the central plot for a whole 'nother volume would probably make things far more convoluted later down the road.

Nuckles definitely should've been built up from the start as a major threat though, and an early confrontation in which team RNJR is routed would defintely help; presumably it would show up at the tail end of the Tyrian Qrow fight.

This isn't a bad idea. I was mostly concerned with keeping the fluff most people liked in Ruby's story intact, but I'm willing to cut whatever in order to fit Tyrion and the Nuckever in.

Soble Since: Dec, 2013
#45261: Feb 13th 2017 at 6:23:49 PM

There's no hard rule about what drives the story, nor should there be.

I sort of agree with this.

I mean, character-driven and plot-driven.

I love Breaking Bad but when you break it down not a whole lot happens. It's very character-driven.

edited 13th Feb '17 6:24:54 PM by Soble

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!
Prime_of_Perfection Where force fails, cunning prevails Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Where force fails, cunning prevails
#45262: Feb 13th 2017 at 6:26:22 PM

[up][up] That part wasn't for you, it's in response to Game of Thrones and such being brought up.

The rest I'm not worrying about because bringing up the virtues of character doesn't address any of my complaints about structure, pacing, or how they choose to implement certain decisions. That and having to multitask, which makes it hard to focus.

Improving as an author, one video at a time.
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#45263: Feb 13th 2017 at 6:41:23 PM

I dont know why people want to reduce oscar to stinger, since it would only leave us with more questions as is arc was pretty much setting up how is soul/aura bending move between both, living him as stinger would be dream-raven level of bad

Now about cutting yang or weiss arc...the problem is writer already set them up, yang suffer from a "now not more angst" which feel dissonance while Weiss arc was cliche and predictable, I need to see more about atlas, but I thing they are keping the city hide in order to blow us away like they did with mistral

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Darthwyn leader of Inherit from The void Since: Feb, 2016 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
leader of Inherit
#45264: Feb 13th 2017 at 6:58:38 PM

I never understood the cut Oscar screen time thing either since his life before ozpin became the voice in his head. We know he does not get instant access to ozpin's resources and ozpin needs Oscar to be willing to leave. Without it it just ends up being the Raven stinger all over again..

edited 13th Feb '17 6:59:38 PM by Darthwyn

"Shall I use you, or make you mine... I'm not so sure what I'll do." - Dorthy
fillerdude Since: Jul, 2010
#45265: Feb 13th 2017 at 7:00:21 PM

[up] Because making more questions would be a good thing in this case. It's not like we know any more about Ozpin's soul surfing now than we did at the start of the season. I also offered an alternative in expanding Oscar's scenes into more than him talking with the voice in his head.

[down] It's either the cliffhanger method, or their method but done better. The extent of Oscar's characterization is "boy from farm", that's it. He's not interesting.

edited 13th Feb '17 7:05:23 PM by fillerdude

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#45266: Feb 13th 2017 at 7:00:34 PM

I understand. It's a big wham moment that would let the audience mull over what it means to their hearts contents, reassured that it's definitely going to be answered quickly next volume. It makes a great a hook.

I'm on the fence about if I think doing that would have been better than how they handled it, but I definitely get why some people would have preferred it.

edited 13th Feb '17 7:22:09 PM by LSBK

Ssj3Gojira Arashi Shigehito from The Event Horizon Since: May, 2011 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Arashi Shigehito
#45267: Feb 13th 2017 at 7:08:04 PM

I think it would just be stupid to do that; like, look at it in this way: we had no idea what happened to Ozpin at the end of Season 3, so we had to wait months to possibly gain some semblance of information about what happened to him; then, according to what some people want, the very last scene of Season 4 would have been some farm boy, that we have barely any context about, showing up to ask Qrow for Ozpin's cane back, and Qrow referring to him as Ozpin; rinse and repeat as we spend another few months waiting for Season 5 to come around and answer that. Like, so many people would be infuriated by that, because you're literally answering a mystery with another mystery at that point.

Let's see if you can get past my Beelzemon. Mephiles, WARP SHINKA!
fillerdude Since: Jul, 2010
#45268: Feb 13th 2017 at 7:12:57 PM

[up] It's still a mystery though. All we know is that Ozpin is still alive in some form, which is still communicated perfectly by that stinger alone.

Ssj3Gojira Arashi Shigehito from The Event Horizon Since: May, 2011 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Arashi Shigehito
#45269: Feb 13th 2017 at 7:16:22 PM

It's more of the principle really; at least we found out what happened with Ozpin. Going in that direction, it'd just be like "Oh, you want to know what happened to Ozpin, here's a farm boy being called him; want to know more about the context of what the fuck you're watching right now, too bad, you'll have to wait until Season 5 to find out anything else."

I'm honestly find with what we got in the Oscar department, because at least it wasn't another Raven stinger-esque thing.

Let's see if you can get past my Beelzemon. Mephiles, WARP SHINKA!
fillerdude Since: Jul, 2010
#45270: Feb 13th 2017 at 7:26:43 PM

My issue here is that while we know Ozpin is a voice in someone's head, that's still all we know. Is he actually alive, biding his time in some stasis, or is he just passing on his memories to the person next in line, or is it simply a soul-surfing semblance, or a weird immortality semblance, or what?

Then we get to seeing Oscar without seeing enough of what Oscar's about, which makes it boring. If they weren't going to flesh out Oscar, then use him like the plot device that he is.

edited 13th Feb '17 7:27:16 PM by fillerdude

NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#45271: Feb 13th 2017 at 7:27:39 PM

I also find just talk of "make this shorter" annoying. If you have serious indepth thoughts on it, that's different, but usually when that's brought up (and not just here) people say that as if it is in itself and improvement without thought to what you'd put in its place, or cutting would effect other scenes, or, well, thought to anything else.
And I'm not saying somethings this volume wouldn't have been better shorter; I'm saying I can't take the blanket statement "just make this shorter" seriously if it's obvious no greater thought is being put into it.
That's rather disingenuous, given that we have gone into considerable detail about why we think this season was too long-winded and what we would have liked to see it do instead. I can go back and link you to the posts where that discussion happened, if you want. Or we can have that conversation again, if you'd prefer. But we've certainly put thought into it, and expressed those thoughts here. You're free to disagree with our take on the subject, but to say that we haven't put any thought into it is demonstrably wrong.

I dont know why people want to reduce oscar to stinger, since it would only leave us with more questions as is arc was pretty much setting up how is soul/aura bending move between both, living him as stinger would be dream-raven level of bad
We already knew about aura transfer from Pyrrha and Amber. Literally everything we know about Oscar — that he's a random farmboy who ended up with Ozpin in his head somehow, that he doesn't particularly get along with Ozpin and isn't very enthused about going on adventures, that Ozpin has unspecified plans for him — is covered in the last scene with Crow. If Oscar's last scene was his only scene, then we'd get all the same information and be left going "wow, that was an interesting twist with a lot of implications for the story! I wonder how it's going to affect things going forward?". With the repeated redundant scenes we actually got, the reaction is instead "Where is this farmboy thing going? Okay, he's got Ozpin in his head, but it's still not going anywhere. God, he's finally leaving home, but he still hasn't done anything. Oh, hey, that's Hazel — but nope, still nothing happening. And hey, he made it to Mistral just in time for the season to end — well, that whole plot thread went nowhere."

Like, so many people would be infuriated by that, because you're literally answering a mystery with another mystery at that point.
That's still true. We don't know a damn thing about Ozpin's true nature, or how his body surfing works, or if he's done this before, or the consequences of sharing a body (can Ozpin and Oscar coexist, or will one inevitably overwhelm the other, or will they fuze into a single combined personality?), or what Ozpin intends to do now that he's hooked up with RNJR and Crow, or what the deal with the cane is, or literally anything that wasn't part of that last scene.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Shaoken (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Dating Catwoman
#45272: Feb 13th 2017 at 9:47:34 PM

@ fillerdude

Then we get to seeing Oscar without seeing enough of what Oscar's about, which makes it boring. If they weren't going to flesh out Oscar, then use him like the plot device that he is.

We saw what his life was like before, we saw what he was leaving behind, we got enough characterisation with him talking with his aunt and Ozpin to get a grasp of his personality. We have more of an idea about Oscar's character than we do Hazel or Watts at this point.

I'm sorry, but I can't see your idea as anything but terrible writing. The idea that the solution to "not enough characterisation" is "remove all characterisation" just boggles my mind.

@ Native Jovian

We already knew about aura transfer from Pyrrha and Amber. Literally everything we know about Oscar — that he's a random farmboy who ended up with Ozpin in his head somehow, that he doesn't particularly get along with Ozpin and isn't very enthused about going on adventures, that Ozpin has unspecified plans for him — is covered in the last scene with Crow. If Oscar's last scene was his only scene, then we'd get all the same information and be left going "wow, that was an interesting twist with a lot of implications for the story! I wonder how it's going to affect things going forward?".

We only knew about the aura transfer in the context of it being artificially induced via a large machine, we had no idea that it was something that could happen in any other circumstance. And we don't get any of that stuff with the scene with Qrow (nitpicking time, it bugs me every time you spell it as "Crow"). If you took that scene in isolation from the rest of his scenes all you'd be left with is some random boy who walks up to Qrow in a bar, talks to the air and asks for Ozpin's cane and then Qrow calls him Ozpin. People already complain about Ruby's silver eyes wasn't foreshadowed at all (to anyone looking to restart that debate; it was the first thing Ozpin said in the series, hence foreshadowing. You can make the argument that it wasn't enough foreshadowing - and you'd be right - but it was foreshadowed), this would just be that times ten. Nobody would be saying what you said, they'd all be going "bullshit!"

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#45273: Feb 13th 2017 at 9:55:34 PM

I'm fairly certain there would be a lot of people who'd be reacting like Jovian said, but, I'm also pretty sure more people would react the way Gojira described. So it would just be one more issue with this show to be hotly debated.

Like I said, I'm on the fence about this thinking about it, but I'm leaning towards Oscar's scenes actually adding something that makes waiting to find out more about this situation more interesting and tolerable.

edited 13th Feb '17 10:00:32 PM by LSBK

fillerdude Since: Jul, 2010
#45274: Feb 13th 2017 at 10:05:47 PM

[up][up] Except I also offered another solution just a few posts above, which is to expand on Oscar's characterization, because what we got is a little more than a token effort to tell the watchers that "this is what Ozpin's been up to."

And saying he has more characterization than Salem's lackeys is damning it with faint praise. We don't get to pick his brains about what he thinks of his journey outside of "this is crazy!", then wistfully looking back.

As for the cliffhanger being terrible writing... it isn't? I mean, it would be if that was the end of the series, but the scene would have been an pbvious cliffhanger for the next season.

[up] This unfortunately is something I have to agree with. People want answers. I'm just of the opinion that the answer given is inadequate, and the way it is given is merely serviceable.

Let me put it this way: no one cares about Oscar except for Ozpin in his head.

edited 13th Feb '17 10:07:21 PM by fillerdude

Shaoken (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Dating Catwoman
#45275: Feb 13th 2017 at 10:12:15 PM

In my opinion if you took all of Oscar's scenes in the volume you could get away with cutting maybe a minute of it before it starts to have a negative effect on the story. What we got was enough to establish who he is (a farm boy on his aunt's farm in Mistral), what his connection to the plot is (Ozpin has wound up in his head, this is something that had also happened to Ozpin himself, the two are linked enough to be sharing memories), and that he wants to be more than a farmboy. That's more characterisation than Roman, team CFVY, Cinder, Raven, or Salem got in their first volumes.

EDIT: [up]Did not expect you to post so fast, which also ties into me not reading this thread enough to catch that the first time, my apologises for misrepresenting your full position.

I challenge the notion that nobody cares about Oscar outside of Ozpin in his head. I would love if he got more characterisation outside of Ozpin being in his head, which I feel would be lost completely if his introduction was solely as stinger. Probably because I do wish the series would have another everyman character seeing as our previous one graduated into being a badass huntsmen whose girlfriend dumped him into a locker right after their first kiss.

edited 13th Feb '17 10:16:04 PM by Shaoken


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