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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
    • Psyga315 said:
    You gotta remember that you're nothing but an insect railing against the heavens.
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    ...How do I respond to a statement like "But remember that this show sucks" without sounding bitter?

    Yes, I'm aware that RT simply isn't talented enough to actually figure out this stuff. But my comment was in response to @StellarSeeker saying "Season 5 didn't have enough room to address this" by saying they had plenty of room if they just condensed everything reasonably.
     
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    I mean, I'd personally like if they pared down the amount of magic thrown into the setting. If they never mention the Silver Eyes again, I'd be okay with that. I'd be down with them tossing the Gods out, never mentioning the relics again, or just letting the whole wizard and maidens thing go to the wayside.
     
    Barnaby said:
    just letting the whole wizard and maidens thing go to the wayside.
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    Honestly... I never liked the Maiden thing at all? I get where they were trying to do with it, sort of, and how it partially laid the groundwork for the tonal shift between 3 and 4... but it still felt kind of awkward and clashed furiously with my imagining of how the RWBY world worked... more or less... it's always been akin to an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle piece. TECHNICALLY it fits in there but it's so obtrusive and you almost feel like maybe the manufacturer botched things and meant to put in a different piece entirely and it'd have worked far better?

    this metaphor sucks I'm sorry everyone
     
    Broken Base said:
    Honestly... I never liked the Maiden thing at all? I get where they were trying to do with it, sort of, and how it partially laid the groundwork for the tonal shift between 3 and 4... but it still felt kind of awkward and in my imagining of how the RWBY world worked... more or less... it's always been akin to an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle piece. TECHNICALLY it fits in there but it's so obtrusive and you almost feel like maybe the manufacturer botched things and meant to put in a different piece entirely and it'd have worked far better?
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    I think a lot of folks like the idea of the maidens, but I get what you're saying. Even if I'd like the Maidens if they fit better into the series, I suspect what probably would have been healthier for the story and the production is if they just never included it in the first place.
     
    I like the maidens more than I do the gods cos they are powerful and cool, but feel like they could conceivably be defeated by someone in universe if they were badass enough or there was enough of them, gods on the other hand... not a fan, hoping Ozpin turns out to be lying or delusional, like he brings it up in some sort of spiritual meeting with Salem and she just rolls her eyes like "Oh gosh, he's still going on about that nonsense."
     
    Barnaby said:
    I think a lot of folks like the idea of the maidens, but I get what you're saying. Even if I'd like the Maidens if they fit better into the series, I suspect what probably would have been healthier for the story and the production is if they just never included it in the first place.
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    I mean... honestly, to try for clarity, I think the issue is that at heart I would have kind of preferred a refined version of Seasons 1 and 2 (and some of 3) for the entirety of the show. Improvements of course- tighter writing, better continuity, some funky characterization reworked/redeveloped, and so on. But I really want a show that... kind of is forthright about what it is. Like, the whole concept of a "paradigm shift" is something I think is a little overdone in modern fiction, to be honest? I want more shows to just be upfront and honest about what they actually are, and be exactly what it says on the tin. This whole "Oh you think you're watching one thing now watch everything change" is trite and overdone and I want something... that doesn't feel the need to take a sharp turn to keep viewers interested and just be happy being what it is.

    And the things I still like about the show aside, the Maidens were a neon sign that I absolutely wasn't getting that, and it was kind of disappointing.
     
    Broken Base said:
    But I really want a show that... kind of is forthright about what it is. Like, the whole concept of a "paradigm shift" is something I think is a little overdone in modern fiction, to be honest? I want more shows to just be upfront and honest about what they actually are, and be exactly what it says on the tin. This whole "Oh you think you're watching one thing now watch everything change" is trite and overdone and I want something... that doesn't feel the need to take a sharp turn to keep viewers interested and just be happy being what it is.
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    Why does it feel like this comment could've come from a 4chan Toonami thread after a HunterxHunter episode?
     
    Delphisage said:
    I don't think RT are even mature enough to understand why religion and mythology exists. They just see stories about gods ruling over aspects of human lives and go "that would make a GREAT backstory for our epic anime show!"
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    I don't like making assumptions about the behind the scenes or thought processes of a creators work unless said creator is like, aggressively awful and bigoted or something. Plus in my experience people's opinion on the nature of mythology and why it exists tends to vary.
     
    Delphisage said:
    Why does it feel like this comment could've come from a 4chan Toonami thread after a HunterxHunter episode?
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    I mean I'm not sure what this even means but if you want me to not wax poetic and say it boring and straight I can do that too I guess.

    Like the whole concept I saw, a couple episodes into RWBY, was a concept I more or less liked. It became clear the writing and characterization and such could use touch-ups but that's cool, I could live with that. On some level, I'd have just been satisfied with the kind of story they displayed an interest in telling, and like... that'd have been rad. Because concept-wise I was digging that. I didn't really want it to STOP being that overmuch, because I didn't want it to become just another shounen series rather than just Playing One on TV, as it were. The core conceit of Seasons 1 and 2 (and some of 3) owed quite a bit to the shounen mold, but it didn't quite commit to it so much as "play around with the tropes". It was a show that was shounen, but it wasn't a shounen show, if that makes sense. And you can raise a lot of complaints about 1 and 2 and the parts of 3 I liked, and I'd agree with them, but I was still digging the overarching story. I felt like the simpicity of the narrative was in many ways a benefit of RWBY and strengthened other aspects in it. So when you start throwing things like the Maidens and the similar concepts that came in around that time, you start introducing all these elements to RWBY that both take away a bit of the spark for me... and turn it entirely into a pure shounen show.

    And in a sense I do blame the love a lot of writers have- I tend to see it a lot lately but in fairness it's the least new thing ever- of having twists on their concepts. Sometimes I just see a concept and I dig it and I don't need it to be more complicated. I don't need some kind of stinger.
     
    Zam said:
    I don't like making assumptions about the behind the scenes or thought processes of a creators work unless said creator is like, aggressively awful and bigoted or something. Plus in my experience people's opinion on the nature of mythology and why it exists tends to vary.
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    Broken Base said:
    I too like to made random bizarre accusations about people because they made a cartoon I didn't like
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    Goddammit. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll just delete that post.
    Broken Base said:
    I mean I'm not sure what this even means
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    It's really just a stupid observation. A couple of people on /co/ the other day were complaining about HunterxHunter tending to take swerves away from what the show seems to be leading up to for the sake of making a more chaotic story (or as they seemed to phrase it: "Why the fuck do they want us to care about all these fucking supporting characters and henchmen when we should be focusing on the main protagonists?"), and it ended up making me uncomfortable with my personal tastes. And because I'm incapable of phrasing my questions properly, and because any questions I asked on 4chan would inevitably be met with either silence or the usual "KYS" response, I decided to bring it up here instead.
     
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    Delphisage said:
    Goddammit. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll just delete that post.
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    I mean okay I'll edit the comment out but... no real need to, I think we just thought it was a silly thing to say?

    Delphisage said:
    It's really just a stupid observation. A couple of people on /co/ the other day were complaining about HunterxHunter tending to take swerves away from what the show seems to be leading up to for the sake of making a more chaotic story (or as they seemed to phrase it: "Why the fuck do they want us to care about all these fucking supporting characters and henchmen when we should be focusing on the main protagonists?"), and it ended up making me uncomfortable with my personal tastes.
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    Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation!
     
    Broken Base said:
    I mean okay I'll edit the comment out but... no real need to, I think we just thought it was a silly thing to say?
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    You have no idea how many times I've told myself that when posting a comment I thought was a joke or reasonable contribution and ended up suspended/banned for it. Better safe than sorry.
     
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    Delphisage said:
    Goddammit. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll just delete that post.
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    Sorry I didn't intend to make you feel like you needed to delete it.

    Delphisage said:
    It's really just a stupid observation. A couple of people on /co/ the other day were complaining about HunterxHunter tending to take swerves away from what the show seems to be leading up to for the sake of making a more chaotic story (or as they seemed to phrase it: "Why the fuck do they want us to care about all these fucking supporting characters and henchmen when we should be focusing on the main protagonists?"), and it ended up making me uncomfortable with my personal tastes. And because I'm incapable of phrasing my questions properly, and because any questions I asked on 4chan would inevitably be met with either silence or the usual "KYS" response, I decided to bring it up here instead.
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    So if I am understanding right your critique is that you liked early RWBY for its short plots, tone ETC and felt like it took unnecessary swerves with the Maidens and larger scope plot and that plot twists/new big time elements are introduced more out of an interest in being shocking or raising the stakes than because they work on a story level?
     
    Delphisage said:
    Well, actually, I liked early RWBY because, to paraphrase the defunct Project AFTER Forums, "Anime girls and anime tropes! I feel safe...". What eventually snapped me out of it eventually was the obnoxious "We'll tackle this later, but not now" nature of its storytelling and overinflation of the cast with zero-dimensional characters that seemed more like fanfic fodder for writefags, especially after I found out that they were literally making characters out of fan-submitted designs. No, I was literally going off-topic with that HunterxHunter reference.

    Here's one of the thread chains that got me asking myself about that kind of stuff:
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    I am incredibly uncomfortable with the use of that slur in your post.

    Besides that, I tend to like shows that do that, though I dislike it more with RWBY cos I don't like most of the side/secondary characters save those like CFVY or certain White Fang members and Penny or Winter, Ren and Nora.

    As tot he tackling it later thing, it bothered me a bit but then V3 happened so I was less concerned.
     
    Hey, I like a good number of the characters myself, mostly Ruby, Weiss and Nora. I just wasn't getting what I wanted from them out of the show.

    Heck, that's probably the summarization of why I fell out with the show: it wasn't giving me what I actually wanted out of it. And that's more my problem than theirs.
    That just leads into my other problem: My standards are too developed to tolerate fanfiction that could theoretically give me what I'm looking for, but just don't manage it because Sturgeon.
     
    Personally, I don't mind if they never mention the Silver Eyes thing again, because I don't think that it was good for the narrative, and the fact that they've had to avoid using it since then to prevent it from trivializing the fight scenes is a good indication of why. There were more sensible ways, I think, of resolving the situation at the end of Volume 3.

    There's also something to be said for limiting the number of magical systems in your story so as not to overtax your audience's suspension of disbelief, rather than making like Marvel Comics and throwing in everything and the kitchen sink: aliens, superscience, magic, mutations, gods. They started with Aura and Dust, and then it was Aura and Dust and Maidens, and now it's Aura and Dust and Maidens and Silver Eyes and Wizards and Gods. So retconning Silver Eyes into being an obscure Maiden power would simplify things greatly.
     
    Admittedly at least about the thing about Ruby's eye color being extremely unusual was mentioned at the very beginning of the show so at least it didn't come out of nowhere, I knew something would come of it otherwise why bother calling attention to it in the beginning of the show.
     
    Alane1 said:
    Admittedly at least about the thing about Ruby's eye color being extremely unusual was mentioned at the very beginning of the show so at least it didn't come out of nowhere, I knew something would come of it otherwise why bother calling attention to it in the beginning of the show.
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    Honestly? I figured she had her mother's eyes, and Ozpin recognized that she was Summer's daughter.
     
    Delphisage said:
    We all did. That's how the trope worked in Harry Potter.
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    It kinda creates a theory.

    Miles and Kerry tried to do that, just have it be a connection to Summer, then Cinder got too OP so they decided to give Ruby the DXM eyes...

    Then realized they need to explain so they have Salem have a throwaway line and hope for the best while they scramble to figure out what it actually does... Only to forget until Volume 5's 11th episode and then they realize "...fuck. We didn't explain shit." and because of their writng style, they can't go back and edit in a scene where Ozpin trains Ruby.
     
    Psyga315 said:
    It kinda creates a theory.

    Miles and Kerry tried to do that, just have it be a connection to Summer, then Cinder got too OP so they decided to give Ruby the DXM eyes...

    Then realized they need to explain so they have Salem have a throwaway line and hope for the best while they scramble to figure out what it actually does... Only to forget until Volume 5's 11th episode and then they realize "...fuck. We didn't explain shit." and because of their writng style, they can't go back and edit in a scene where Ozpin trains Ruby.
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    Yeah, no. It's pretty clear the Silver Eyes have been a planned thing from the start, unlike Monty's 'Suddenly Maidens!' idea. I think it's more likely that whatever the fuck Silver Eyes do isn't really well understood, or handled. Ruby only seems to unleash them involuntarily in moments of extreme emotion, and Qrow's version of the story wasn't 'Your mum could do some crazy stuff like flashfreeze other dragongrimm' but 'Ozpin once said some bullshit and I dunno, it might be true, I guess?'.

    In general, what they do has been pretty clearly indicated on screen - they fuck up things that are Grimm or Grimm connected. The dragon was frozen, Cinder (who got her Maiden powers by stealing them via Grimm) was fucked up), and in V5 Cinder's Grimm arm was hurt by the flash Ruby managed to get off before suddenly Emerald.
     
    The Narrator said:
    Honestly? I figured she had her mother's eyes, and Ozpin recognized that she was Summer's daughter.
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    Really? Because the idea of special eye color being connected to some sort mystical ability is a old folklore and fantasy concept found in a number of fantasy works. Silver/grey eyes were traditionally associated with wisdom, intellegence, the goddess athena, oracles and prophets and later times via superstition with danger as people with that eye color were believed to be extremely competent marksmen therefore dangerous to face on the battlefield.
     
    hellgodsrus said:
    Yeah, no. It's pretty clear the Silver Eyes have been a planned thing from the start, unlike Monty's 'Suddenly Maidens!' idea
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    *citation needed*. When characters usually have powers tied to their eyes, it's built up by having it hinted at beforehand that they are explicitly supernatural phenomena, like Kurta eyes or the Sharingan. Instead, Ozpin just says that Ruby has silver eyes in the first episode, and he and Ruby eventually get to talking about her mother. Yes,it sends a pretty clear message what the narrative purpose of that line is: to hint at her mother being special and Ruby possibly inheriting some power from her. But those are not the tropes you use to hint that she's explicitly gonna have magical eyes.

    Heck, @Alane1 actually gave us an idea of what the reveal could've been: that Ruby would probably be descended from a long line of powerful Hunters, meaning that she'd have shonen-esque "great potential" that outstripped the ordinary person, and probably some family-inherited unfinished business with an antagonist or two. Would've sure made a nice joke nickname for the Ruby/Weiss ship.
     
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    Delphisage said:
    *citation needed*. When characters usually have powers tied to their eyes, it's built up by having it hinted at beforehand that they are explicitly supernatural phenomena, like Kurta eyes or the Sharingan. Instead, Ozpin just says that Ruby has silver eyes in the first episode, and he and Ruby eventually get to talking about her mother. Yes,it sends a pretty clear message what the narrative purpose of that line is: to hint at her mother being special and Ruby possibly inheriting some power from her. But those are not the tropes you use to hint that she's explicitly gonna have magical eyes.

    Heck, @Alane1 actually gave us an idea of what the reveal could've been: that Ruby would probably be descended from a long line of powerful Hunters, meaning that she'd have shonen-esque "great potential" that outstripped the ordinary person, and probably some family-inherited unfinished business with an antagonist or two. Would've sure made a nice joke nickname for the Ruby/Weiss ship.
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    I think the point was merely that having emphasis given to her silver eyes (I didn't think Summer came up much in that talk, just Ruby vaguely mentioning her parents) hinting that they are unique or special in some way and thus will be important down the line.

    Now, why that is was obliviously unclear so people came up with lots of theories and explanation, but the idea of them being important was established.

    Could it have been handled better, like have someone (maybe Blake) mention an old myth about silver eyes, or someone going like "Grimms bane is silver" as a saying though not a statement of fact, (A terrible saying but you get the idea) or even showing her eyes start to spark at some suitably dramatic point before it fades all might have helped.

    But I do think they established 'silver eyes = important' Hence why I wasn't that shocked when it came about, like I had the "Oh snap what the crap!?" vibe but not an "Aaaah, this is an asspull out of nowhere cos they wrote themselves into a corner!" vibe.
     
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