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RWBY Thread III: Time To Say Goodbye

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Stop: So gotta few things that need to be said real quick.
  • Staff Post
    • so gotta few things that need to be said real quick.
    We get a lot of reports from this thread. A lot of it is just a series of people yelling at each other over arguments that have been rehashed hundreds of times since the end of the recent Volume. And I get that the last Volume - and RWBY in general, really - has some controversial moments that people will want to discuss, argue about, debate, etc.

    That's fine. We're not going to stop people from doing that, because that's literally what the point of the thread is. However, there's just a point where it gets to be a bit too much, and arguments about whether or not Ironwood was morally justified in his actions in the recent Volume, or if RWBY and her team were in the right for withholding information from Ironwood out of distrust, or whatever flavor of argument of the day descend into insulting other posters, expressing a demeaning attitude towards other's opinions, and just being overall unpleasant. That tends to happen a lot in this thread. We want it to stop happening in this thread.

    So! As of now the thread is in a higher state of moderation. What that means is that any future infractions will result in a weeklong boot from the thread, and repeated offenders will likely be permanently removed. So please, everyone endeavor to actually respect the other's arguments, and even if you strongly disagree with them please stay civil and mindful when it comes to responding to others.

    In addition, users should refrain from talking about off-site users in the thread. Bear in mind that this does not mean that you cannot continue to post tumblr posts, for example, that add onto the discussion in the thread, with the caveat that it's related to RWBY of course. But any objections to offsite users in the thread should be handled via PM, or they'll be treated as thread violations and infracted as such.
     
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  • Staff Post
    • Zam said:
    "Potential"

    View: https://sir-adamus.tumblr.com/post/673101999721562112/sir-adamus-i-think-im-gonna-ban-people-from-the
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    "God, Professor Peach didn't get an in depth character arc, such wasted potential."

    This is why I think a lot of criticism towards RWBY comes from a place of bad faith. Or just from people who, if they were in charge, would bloat the script to such insane depths that Volume 9 would just be getting around to the fall of Beacon.
     
    excalibur2008 said:
    Funny most of the criticism I see looks like it would start SLASHING the cast down since the biggest one is how bloated the cast is.
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    Slashing down the cast they don't like and bloating up the ones they do, let's be honest. Because for all the talk they have of cast bloat, the most common phrase out of them is "wasted potential, wasted potential." Adam had wasted potential, Sienna, Roman, and Junior had wasted potential. The only way to fix that is give them more screen time, which leads to bloat.
     
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    erttheking said:
    Slashing down the cast they don't like and bloating up the ones they do, let's be honest. Because for all the talk they have of cast bloat, the most common phrase out of them is "wasted potential, wasted potential." Adam had wasted potential, Sienna, Roman, and Junior had wasted potential. The only way to fix that is give them more screen time, which leads to bloat.
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    RWBY be like:

    "We have like... four characters that people liked. But instead of giving them screen time and using them for future events, how about instead we just spend our limited time and resources making 25 bit role characters who will most likely just have one or two scenes at most?"
     
    erttheking said:
    "God, Professor Peach didn't get an in depth character arc, such wasted potential."

    This is why I think a lot of criticism towards RWBY comes from a place of bad faith. Or just from people who, if they were in charge, would bloat the script to such insane depths that Volume 9 would just be getting around to the fall of Beacon.
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    People looking for fanfic about bit characters doesn't mean they seriously want or expect those characters to be a big part of the show. People are allowed to gush about their favorite side character without it being an attack on the show. People in the fandom are getting super hostile to fanfiction, seeing any changes as an attack, and its a bit petty.
     
    mr_stibbons said:
    People looking for fanfic about bit characters doesn't mean they seriously want or expect those characters to be a big part of the show. People are allowed to gush about their favorite side character without it being an attack on the show. People in the fandom are getting super hostile to fanfiction, seeing any changes as an attack, and its a bit petty.
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    No one is giving the dude crap for looking for a Junior fanfic. They're giving him crap for saying the guy who was in two scenes and had a bit role in the opening credits had "wasted potential." Particularly when the one scene where he had the most development had him nearly kissing an underage girl. He's welcome to read any fanfics about the guy that he wants, but I'm rolling my eyes if he says the character was wasted in the show.
     
    erttheking said:
    No one is giving the dude crap for looking for a Junior fanfic. They're giving him crap for saying the guy who was in two scenes and had a bit role in the opening credits had "wasted potential." Particularly when the one scene where he had the most development had him nearly kissing an underage girl. He's welcome to read any fanfics about the guy that he wants, but I'm rolling my eyes if he says the character was wasted in the show.
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    Ok, but at the end of the day you're putting on blast some rando on reddit who is looking for fanfic recs, not a fight. Starting two minutes hate brigades about some rando on reddit is a very toxic trend that everyone on the internet would be better off if they stopped participating in.
     
    mr_stibbons said:
    Ok, but at the end of the day you're putting on blast some rando on reddit who is looking for fanfic recs, not a fight. Starting two minutes hate brigades about some rando on reddit is a very toxic trend that everyone on the internet would be better off if they stopped participating in.
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    And even if they're not the one who made that Tumblr post, it's basically pointing to a two-minute hate brigade so that a two-minute hate brigade would start here.
     
    mr_stibbons said:
    Ok, but at the end of the day you're putting on blast some rando on reddit who is looking for fanfic recs, not a fight. Starting two minutes hate brigades about some rando on reddit is a very toxic trend that everyone on the internet would be better off if they stopped participating in.
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    I'm putting the criticism of "wasted potential" on blast. I didn't look at the person's username because I'm not fussed. And I'm doing it because it's a, frankly, lazy criticism that's been hanging over RWBY for years. That is what I am getting irritated with, it's something I've been irritated with for years. It ain't two minutes hate. It's "Oh, this shit again."
     
    Psyga315 said:
    Given how frequent these sorts of things get though (remember how RWBY Noir, Fixing RWBY, and UnicornofWar's rewrite got put through the shitter for several pages), it's hard to find the difference between the two.
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    Can't say I've ever heard of any of those. Whatever the fandom's beef with them is something I don't have a hand in. I just generally find the whole "character X was wasted" to generally be unengaging. That's what I'm getting at. Maybe there was some feud going on before I got here regarding fan works. Maybe. Can't say I know. I can safely say I've got no part in it, nor am I interested in changing that.
     
    Those rewrites got put through the shredder because they were garbage, you can't just swan about insisting you're so much smarter than the writers any by extension every fan of the show with your clever rewrite, while your ideas are stuff like:

    "Roman shares a bath with teenagers, calls Weiss a boy cos of her chest & Ren a girl cos of his hair"
    Or
    "Jac gets a redemption arc and also Nora screams at Ren and tears into him for... Being traumatized and not communicating his emotions well for a bit."
    ETC

    Also that "Potential" person is put on blast, because RWBY critics always use that term with no grasp of what potential even means. A rewrite gave Shay-D-Man a major role as Raven's lover and the father of their awful Vernal. Oh yeah, the guy who hits on teenage girls, acts like a creep and then tries to ambush them totally needed more expansion. Same for Junior, he's a mid level crime boss who got where he is cos of daddy and has a thing for under aged girls. The fact someone looked at that and decided he should have gotten more focus is an indictment of them and their taste.
     
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    Ultimately the problem seems to be that CRWBY keeps coming up with interesting character designs for their minor characters and people latch on to that aesthetic without really realizing that as dapper as Junior might look, he's still not that important.

    There is wasted potential in RWBY, although that's usually more brought about by production issues than anything. Like I'd say that Blakes whole arc in season 4 had more misses then hits in terms of missed story beats. (This is our chance to see Faunus culture as a distinct thing, but we don't really get that because we have to focus on Adam) but that's okay. No story as much as we might want otherwise has infinite run time, and things need to get cut. No one piece of fiction can give us every single thing fleshed out as much as we want.

    To be honest, I blame Star Wars.
    Now hear me out this isn't a 'New trilogy bad' or anything. It's that Lucasfilm made a cottage industry out of it's expanded universe. You can go and read about literally any character in the Original Trilogy, prequel trilogy and I guess sequel trilogy. (Dont know don't read sequel books!) In the endless quest to sell merch they mined the fuck out of the setting. They took characters that fundamentally weren't that important in the setting. (Mon Motha, Ackbaar, Pelleon ex.) and fleshed them out and made them out as major characters with their own stories and histories. And that whole 'wait we can get nerds to pay for telling them about obscure characters' combined with 'holy shit more stuff of the thing I love' combined to create a very toxic mentality that there is no such thing as a minor character in a story. That every character is a potential story that should be told at some point. That we the audience are owed that expansion, the quicker the better.

    But if you're not a major IP then you just don't have the time, money or really ability to actually do that. So you get people used to being catered to that way who go 'but I like this character, why don't I get more of them?' with the answer of 'they're minor character bro, don't stress about it.' not really satisfying them at all. Which I absolutely get, like if I could could get a game about Ren's dad as stealth archer Hanzo that'd be great. But it's not realistic. Like as much as I enjoy the design of Li Ren, Li Ren ain't important to the story RWBY want's to tell. His potential isn't wasted because he'll never be a real character, he's just kind of cool visually.
    Yet, there's a certain level entitlement I suppose, that the characters we latch on to because of aesthetic are important. (Because like it or not CRWBY makes some good character designs) Even if they never will be.

    Thus, the rewrites that focus on the pet characters that the writers like and want to get more screen time and say they have 'wasted potential' although that potential fundamentally never existed. We've been conditioned by corporate mass media to expect that things we like will be fleshed out. Even though if you're not a behemoth like Disney, that's an insane standard.

    So yeah, Star Wars and it's consequences have been a disaster for the media consumption of the human race :V
     
    gman391 said:
    So yeah, Star Wars and it's consequences have been a disaster for the media consumption of the human race :V
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    Oh come on, Star Wars never got carried away in over explaining stuff.

    starwars.fandom.com

    Water

    Water was a liquid consisting of hydrogen and oxygen -hence its chemical name dihydrogen monoxide.[2] It was necessary for most life forms, whether animal or vegetal, sentient or non-sentient. Many planets and moons, such as Kamino,[3] Mon Cala,[4] Scarif, Trask, Nur, and Quila were covered in...
    starwars.fandom.com starwars.fandom.com

    Never. Not once.

    Fucking Christ, it has a Legends/Canon division AND A NON-CANON APPERANCE LIST!.
     
    erttheking said:
    Slashing down the cast they don't like and bloating up the ones they do, let's be honest.
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    This is, to be honest, kind of an inane criticism? Like, yes, the people that think the cast is bloated and that more time should be spent on specific characters will tend to feel like less time should be spent on characters they don't like and think are bad, and more time on characters they think they could like and could be good. I'm not even sure what your point here is.

    erttheking said:
    The only way to fix that is give them more screen time, which leads to bloat.
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    Except the entire point is to reduce bloat by getting rid of elements considered superfluous and focusing on the points that really matter. Like making the Faunus a unique culture with nuance and thorough development instead of being a thinly-veiled racism analogue that gets very little development beyond what is required to establish the analogue, or fleshing out Weiss' character and giving her relationship with the faunus at the beginning more meat and furthering that arc, or putting more emphasis on her childhood and her relationship with her father from the start rather than retroactively stuffing most of that in, or fleshing out Adam's abusive, possessive, and controlling side from the start rather than filling most of that in at the end of Season 3 where there was very little sign of it prior, and putting more emphasis on him from the beginning rather than Torchwick, who served very little narrative purpose at the end of the day and could easily have been cut.
     
    Plus, part of the reason for all the bloat is because of its obsession with the number 4, in which entire characters are made whole cloth to give a character at least three more people to bum around with, resulting in them not really being utilized.
     
    Based Bean said:
    This is, to be honest, kind of an inane criticism? Like, yes, the people that think the cast is bloated and that more time should be spent on specific characters will tend to feel like less time should be spent on characters they don't like and think are bad, and more time on characters they think they could like and could be good. I'm not even sure what your point here is.



    Except the entire point is to reduce bloat by getting rid of elements considered superfluous and focusing on the points that really matter. Like making the Faunus a unique culture with nuance and thorough development instead of being a thinly-veiled racism analogue that gets very little development beyond what is required to establish the analogue, or fleshing out Weiss' character and giving her relationship with the faunus at the beginning more meat and furthering that arc, or putting more emphasis on her childhood and her relationship with her father from the start rather than retroactively stuffing most of that in, or fleshing out Adam's abusive, possessive, and controlling side from the start rather than filling most of that in at the end of Season 3 where there was very little sign of it prior, and putting more emphasis on him from the beginning rather than Torchwick, who served very little narrative purpose at the end of the day and could easily have been cut.
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    The point I believe they were going for was that the 'critics' doing this tend to have always disdained the MCs or ignored them in favor of minor serial mass murderer abusers or weird creepy pedos. Or that their slashing doesn't usually serve to tidy up the plot and put focus where it makes sense, but just bloat the story in different ways (Like beefing up Shay-D Man's role) when said character is functionally a none entity and still leading to the same degree of or usually greater bloat. Thus the initial complaint "RWBY is bloated" is built on false footing, because the "Critics" bloat it just as much if not more, making them hypocrites ad also tend to focus on inane minor characters.

    ME (looks at how one of the rewrites had Faunus go into heat) You sure this is the hill you want to fight on?
    We've already had the Weiss debate so I won't bother repeating myself. It wasn't retroactive, something not being frontloaded into a character does not mean its retroactive, only even explicitly went on the record and said he hates that modern stories tell you everything about a character right off the bat and that he liked to reveal their layers over time, this is functionally just you not liking long form storytelling, which is fine but its not actually a fault with the show. Also if you really think there was no sign of it prior when people were doing full meta analysis posts on how Blake was an abuse survivor, then again, I think the issue lies in you.
     
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    Based Bean said:
    This is, to be honest, kind of an inane criticism? Like, yes, the people that think the cast is bloated and that more time should be spent on specific characters will tend to feel like less time should be spent on characters they don't like and think are bad, and more time on characters they think they could like and could be good. I'm not even sure what your point here is.



    Except the entire point is to reduce bloat by getting rid of elements considered superfluous and focusing on the points that really matter. Like making the Faunus a unique culture with nuance and thorough development instead of being a thinly-veiled racism analogue that gets very little development beyond what is required to establish the analogue, or fleshing out Weiss' character and giving her relationship with the faunus at the beginning more meat and furthering that arc, or putting more emphasis on her childhood and her relationship with her father from the start rather than retroactively stuffing most of that in, or fleshing out Adam's abusive, possessive, and controlling side from the start rather than filling most of that in at the end of Season 3 where there was very little sign of it prior, and putting more emphasis on him from the beginning rather than Torchwick, who served very little narrative purpose at the end of the day and could easily have been cut.
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    That characters that were supposed to be one or two scene one offs would be getting entire arcs and that would run up bloat far more than anything RT ever did. Particularly if you want all of them getting arcs without the main characters getting shunted.

    Hate to break the bad news to you, but Torchwick falls under the "wasted potential" umbrella. So the people who go on about wasted potential would want him in more with more development, alongside Adam and his "wasted potential" and him needing more time to get fleshed out. And some people apparently also want Junior so we gotta cram him in there too somewhere. Oh and we need Sienna Khan, she was wasted potential, she needs screen time. And for some reason there are people out there who thought Shay D Man needed more screen time

    Do you get where I'm coming from now? Do you see how this is the bloat all over again, just of a different flavor? I'm writing RWBY stuff right now and from where I'm standing this all comes off as stupidly optimistic when I'm doing less expanding and more cutting shit like crazy. Team SSSN? Never mentioned once. Team CFVY? One background cameo. Glynda? No speaking lines. Penny? Vastly reduced role. Nora and Ren? Vastly reduced roles. The most expansion I was able to do was a phone call with Sienna, a talk between Winter and Jacques, and a scene dedicated to Willow. One scene. So wanting that many characters to be expanded just feels logistically impossible to me.
     
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    Zam said:
    Thus the initial complaint "RWBY is bloated" is built on false footing, because the "Critics" bloat it just as much if not more, making them hypocrites ad also tend to focus on inane minor characters.
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    This is objectively untrue. Some critics can be wrong with their proposed fixes while correctly identifying a problem.

    Zam said:
    ME (looks at how one of the rewrites had Faunus go into heat) You sure this is the hill you want to fight on?
    We've already had the Weiss debate so I won't bother repeating myself. It wasn't retroactive, something not being frontloaded into a character does not mean its retroactive, only even explicitly went on the record and said he hates that modern stories tell you everything about a character right off the bat and that he liked to reveal their layers over time, this is functionally just you not liking long form storytelling, which is fine but its not actually a fault with the show. Also if you really think there was no sign of it prior when people were doing full meta analysis posts on how Blake was an abuse survivor, then again, I think the issue lies in you.
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    A. Objectively, Adam was portrayed not positively, for sure, but not as an abusive stalker with an obsession with Blake who didn't care about the Faunus cause at all, prior to the end of Volume 3. That is just a fact of the writing, sadly. We can do this again where I go through every single appearance Adam has prior to that point, and factors such as that Adam let Blake go and as far as we can tell didn't actually pursue her in any way despite the fact that her disguise was a bow and she used the same name, which should make her trivially easy to track down if he wanted to.
    B. If you want to make the case that RWBY actively portrayed Weiss is a victim of an abusive household prior to Season 4, I'd be really interested in seeing it, because it's just not there.
    C. I can believe that some ideas for how to improve the faunus storyline are shit without believing that this means the faunus storyline was well-handled. (This is completely ignoring the morals of the Faunus storyline, because we've indeed had that debate, and you've had that debate with people I concur with, and I know we aren't going to change each other's minds on that.)

    erttheking said:
    Hate to break the bad news to you, but Torchwick falls under the "wasted potential" umbrella. So the people who go on about wasted potential would want him in more with more development, alongside Adam and his "wasted potential" and him needing more time to get fleshed out. And some people apparently also want Junior so we gotta cram him in there too somewhere. Oh and we need Sienna Khan, she was wasted potential, she needs screen time. And for some reason there are people out there who thought Shay D Man needed more screen time

    Do you get where I'm coming from now? Do you see how this is the bloat all over again, just of a different flavor?
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    So? RWBY can both be bloated and suggestions can be wrong. Actually improving a story is often objectively harder than noticing the flaws s in a story, because writing stories is often hard and everybody is going to have different preferences for what they feel deserves more screentime and what characters have the most potential. I can disagree that Torchwick serves much use to the narrative, at lesat as much as making Adam the main antagonist of Volumes 1-3 would, while still agreeing that a problem with RWBY is cast bloat and just too much extraneous stuff in the narrative. And at times things being placed places they shouldn't be- the stuff with Penny in the first Weiss-Blake episode totally fucks with the flow and disrupts where the focus should be, on Weiss and Blake's conflict, ferrex
     
    Based Bean said:
    This is objectively untrue. Some critics can be wrong with their proposed fixes while correctly identifying a problem.


    A. Objectively, Adam was portrayed not positively, for sure, but not as an abusive stalker with an obsession with Blake who didn't care about the Faunus cause at all, prior to the end of Volume 3. That is just a fact of the writing, sadly. We can do this again where I go through every single appearance Adam has prior to that point, and factors such as that Adam let Blake go and as far as we can tell didn't actually pursue her in any way despite the fact that her disguise was a bow and she used the same name, which should make her trivially easy to track down if he wanted to.
    B. If you want to make the case that RWBY actively portrayed Weiss is a victim of an abusive household prior to Season 4, I'd be really interested in seeing it, because it's just not there.
    C. I can believe that some ideas for how to improve the faunus storyline are shit without believing that this means the faunus storyline was well-handled. (This is completely ignoring the morals of the Faunus storyline, because we've indeed had that debate, and you've had that debate with people I concur with, and I know we aren't going to change each other's minds on that.)


    So? RWBY can both be bloated and suggestions can be wrong. Actually improving a story is often objectively harder than noticing the flaws s in a story, because writing stories is often hard and everybody is going to have different preferences for what they feel deserves more screentime and what characters have the most potential. I can disagree that Torchwick serves much use to the narrative, at lesat as much as making Adam the main antagonist of Volumes 1-3 would, while still agreeing that a problem with RWBY is cast bloat and just too much extraneous stuff in the narrative. And at times things being placed places they shouldn't be- the stuff with Penny in the first Weiss-Blake episode totally fucks with the flow and disrupts where the focus should be, on Weiss and Blake's conflict, ferrex
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    Except we are talking about said "fixes" so I don't see how I am wrong.

    A: As noted, there was already meta floating around about him being an abuser and also generally shit before V3, they just got ignored y the fandom at large because, ooh edgy sword boy. Also objectively, Adam was barely a presence in the story, so the fact you reached a bunch of baseless headcanons about his character isn't the writers fault.
    B: You stating your opinion as objective fact is both equal parts annoying and frankly rude and also, as I highlighted, in V1 we explicitly have Weiss referencing her fathers anger and we focus n on her literal facial scar.
    C: You do grasp we are talking about these rewrites right, not anything else?

    Again, people failing to grasp what a minor character is, or getting attached to creepy perverts and wanting them to get fleshed out arcs is just gonna be labelled as garbage by me, you aren't gonna change my mind on this. You do know Penny & Sun were Monty's idea write and it explicitly went against the original plan to have Weiss & Yang involved right?
     
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