The worst part about looking through anything I wrote for Blake is the sheer amount of depression it causes to realize how easy it is to trivialize hatred and discrimination and how close that hits home to the world we live in.

It's so easy to feel helpless about the world around you, seeing the people care more about "burning and looting" than about actual injustices surrounding them.

By all means Blake should be compelling character and the star of the show - especially if we going down the route on "judging" humanity's worth. Who better to emphasize those ideas than a character that gets to suffer the worst the world has to offer merely because of who she is?

The fact that the show chose to instead trivialize discrimination itself by leaning into model-minority nonsense just makes my head hurt.

I wish Yang had taken Ruby to a cookie cafe rather than the boba shop.

It would be cute to see what cookies Ruby and Yang buy. Ruby buys gooey chocolate chip cookies and Yang buys snickerdoodles or something she would like.

Also, as I remember Ruby likes milk, this cookie cafe can sell glass bottles of flavored milk, as well as coffee and tea. Ruby could buy strawberry-flavored milk and Yang could get a bottle of almond milk or perhaps a cup of coffee.

Idk, I'm trying to be creative with the small shops that could've been cool to see the sisters visit. Boba is a cute idea, but it also felt bland at the same time. Milk and cookies give them a funny characterization of what type of cookie they like to eat.

The way the show handles Yang is poor, especially when there is a glaring topic that should be addressed about her character.

Yang feels like a character who experienced 'parentification' as a child. She had to grow up fast in order to maintain the family and take care of Ruby. Really though, parentification is a form of emotional abuse and Taiyang and her two moms put that on her.

Taiyang doesn't seem like someone who was mature enough to raise kids, or have them yet. He has an easier time now because the kids are older and can do everything on their own, but as toddlers, he wasn't having an easy time and preferred to let Qrow take over.

I think Yang was almost touching on the topic in V5, but the writing keeping pointing her in three different directions to not address anything fully. She needs to be sad about Blake for some reason. Being angry at Blake for leaving is valid, but to be sad and accept her as soon as she returns is nonsensical.

At some point, I think the writers didn't know what to do with Yang because she's being pulled in every direction until she's thrown at Blake.

The way the show handles Yang is poor, especially when there is a glaring topic that should be addressed about her character.

Yang feels like a character who experienced 'parentification' as a child. She had to grow up fast in order to maintain the family and take care of Ruby. Really though, parentification is a form of emotional abuse and Taiyang and her two moms put that on her.

Taiyang doesn't seem like someone who was mature enough to raise kids, or have them yet. He has an easier time now because the kids are older and can do everything on their own, but as toddlers, he wasn't having an easy time and preferred to let Qrow take over.

I think Yang was almost touching on the topic in V5, but the writing keeping pointing her in three different directions to not address anything fully. She needs to be sad about Blake for some reason. Being angry at Blake for leaving is valid, but to be sad and accept her as soon as she returns is nonsensical.

At some point, I think the writers didn't know what to do with Yang because she's being pulled in every direction until she's thrown at Blake.

[ I had to adjust the speed because V5 moves so slow. ]

This would be a way stronger scene if Blake wasn't brought up. Why? Because Yang's problems go deeper than how angry she is with Blake. This is her past projecting onto somebody else and it's become an unhealthy way of coping.

Yang needed to talk about her problems with her parents and childhood, not worry about Blake.

The beginning of this scene was good. Weiss and Yang were talking about their family problems to help relate to each other. I like Weiss saying, "you're right, I don't know loneliness like you do. I have my own version."

Yang doesn't need a girlfriend to fix her problems. She needs to work on her problems before beginning a serious relationship. She needs time to sort out if she wants to romantically commit or if she needs more time to mend her past.

Gonna do a quick headcount of things that SHOULD happen before the end of RWBY. No I will not be leaving out things that would be consequences for stuff from seasons ago, just because it'd feel awkward and clunky at this point doesn't mean it still isn't important because it never WAS addressed. And also note that some of these are obviously more important than others, but they all still should happen.

Ruby and Blake should have preferably more than one moment focused on building their friendship.

Members of RWBYJNROQ who don't have established dynamics need at least small relationship building such as Qrow and Blake, Ren and Weiss, Weiss and Oscar, etcetera.

What happened with Pietro and Maria in V8 needs addressed.

Someone needs to talk to Pietro about Penny.

Blake and Yang need to have a conversation where Blake opens up about her past, they address what happened when Blake left, and they talk about Yang's hesitancy to be apart.

Blake and Sun need to have a conversation (if only in passing) about her being with Yang and establishing that they're still friends.

Nora and Ren need time apart and then need to figure out where their relationship is going.

Nora needs a strong character arc outside of Ren.

Emerald needs more work done in her redemption and needs to face some of what she's done and the people she should logically be emotional about leaving behind.

We need to establish the fallout of Atlas going down and the logically-must-be-there distrust that would sprout up around Hunters, the Military, etcetera.

We need to know what will happen to the Schnees and how they're adjusting to things.

Consequences of revealing the Maidens and magic to the general public.

Someone outside of Ruby and freaking Jaune should grieve Penny such as Winter and the Ace Ops.

Weiss needs to be concerned with helping and/or connecting with Whitley.

Oscar and Ozpin's merge needs to be addressed and talked about and potentially happen or they need to find a work around.

Team RWBY + J should tell their friends what happened in the Ever After.

We need to address the Ruby stuff in V9, Ruby's recovery cannot be super quick, WBY and Jaune especially should step up and admit their part in it.

We need to address what's been happening in Vale.

We need to find out where the last two Relics are and the group needs to work to protect them from Salem.

We need to get the Relics in Salem's hands out of her hands.

We need to know who the Summer Maiden is.

We need to have the group realize that Raven is the Spring Maiden and address Yang's lie.

God knows I hate when he gets focus, but we need Jaune to deal with what happened to him and specifically give some focus to him reuniting with his team and them reacting to him mentally being like forty.

We need to deal with the whole 'once the Relics are united, the gods will come back and wipe out humanity if it isn’t perfect' thing.

People still need to learn to be sympathetic to Oz and not treat him like an enemy.

We need to learn about and deal with whatever Mercury and Tyrian are doing in Vacuo.

We need to establish what's happening with the Ace Ops and Happy Huntresses.

We need to figure out what's happening with Qrow and deal with how he handled Ruby and Yang supposedly 'dying.'

We need to establish what life is like for the Atlas/Mantle refugees and what Vacuo is doing for them.

We need to establish Theodore as a character and why we the audience should trust or like him.

We still need members of Oz's inner circle to emotionally deal with what happened with Ironwood.

We need characters that should by all rights be a bit more important to get brought back in and be at least a little involved such as Glynda, Taiyang, Ilia, and Sun and Neptune.

We need to know what really happened to Summer and deal with the fallout of whatever it is.

Yang and Ruby need something to heal the rift between them.

We need people to figure out a way to defeat Salem.

We need to have people struggling to get people together to fight Salem and deal with possible conflicts surrounding that (considering the fact that having an army was considered a sign of pure evil when it was Ironwood)

We need to defeat Salem.

If CRWBY intends to bring in the Crown from the ATF/BTD books, they need to be established and dealt with as well.

This is all just off the top of my head! Yes, some of these things seem like they're going to be (badly) addressed in passing from the little promo that was originally supposed to end V9, but we don’t know how much of that will change and I personally am unsatisfied with almost everything in it and still think we need further exploring for all that stuff. (And no, I'm not considering Justice League or RWBY Beyond to be good enough if the main series doesn't make sense or have emotional payoff.)

My point here is... There is so much left to do in RWBY (arguably that should've been done AGES ago,) that I'm having a really hard believing much of it will be done. And I fear that whatever they do try to deal with will just be jam packed into the next season at the speed of light with no real payoff and it'll wind up badly done or unsatisfying because of it. Especially if they try to introduce loads more in V10 the way they did in V9.

RWBY is for sure the show with good concepts, because while I was writing out that list, I was sitting here thinking about how some of it could be pretty good and impactful in the hands of good writers. But it's also the show of no emotional payoff, and I seriously doubt that this next season is gonna deliver.

One of the things that many anti-rwde posters get really worked up about is the complaint that bumblebee is rushed, but at least for my part, I feel like there's a misunderstanding on what the real problem is.

They always say "how can people say that the ship is rushed when there were signs early on?" And I think the real problem isn't that there weren't signs. Tbh I personally don't read Blake as romantically interested in Yang during the first few seasons, her treatment of Yang isn't actually that different from her treatment of her other teammates and whatever closeness they accomplish is usually initiated by Yang, but it's easy to read Yang as having a crush on Blake. It's easy to read a lot of characters as having a crush on other characters, like it's easy to think that Ruby had a crush on Weiss, Blake, Penny, and Emerald during different times in the first three seasons, and like it's easy to think that Yang and Weiss were romantically interested in each other specifically in season five. I wouldn't think any of those ships 'came out of nowhere' or 'didn't have any juice' or so on. My main point here is that Blake and Yang weren't a forgone conclusion, but yes, despite the fact that nothing was clear solid proof of romantic interest OR clear solid proof of early writer intention to actually make them canon, there were hints that Blake and Yang could potentially turn into a real ship and it eventually did when the writers got around to it under criticism of queerbaiting and while running out of money.

When I say that I think the ship was rushed, I don't mean that there was never an indication that Blake and Yang might be romantic before they got together or even before their first big significant 'shipping moment' at the end of V6. When I say that I think the ship was rushed, I mean that the writers bypassed growth and working through conflict that I think was necessary for Blake and Yang's dynamic. When I say that I think the ship was rushed, I mean that they invented conflicts just to throw them out one after another without ever addressing it on screen. I mean that there are things very important specifically to the character of Blake like her time in the White Fang, her family, Ilia, and Adam that Yang hasn't talked to her about on screen (except Adam but it was not in any detail.) This isn't even bringing up the fact that they were forced into confessing their feelings for each other and when that happened, Yang didn't say anything about Blake that was true past her being a Faunus. Which makes it seem like the writers don't care to put in effort with the ship but that's just my opinion.

The ship between Blake and Yang wasn't rushed because 'there were never any signs' that it might happen, it was rushed because the writers didn't actually put in the work to deal with the conflicts they themselves wrote for the ship and just bypassed them instead. It was rushed because they went from 'Blake has spent seemingly a year apart from her team while Yang was angry at her the whole time and now the two are awkward with each other' straight to 'they barely leave each other's side, Yang gets angry at the thought of even doing a mission apart, they're in love, they caress each other's faces' without the writers really addressing that quick change.

It's got nothing to do with whether or not I think Yang's 'save me a dance' could be an indicator of real romantic feelings that would get developed later. The writers just fumbled the bag on execution, per the norm.

the only RWBY beyond I bothered watching was the Ruby & Yang one (I don't particularly like Sun or Neptune, I am a member of Jaune haters club, and Somewhat exists I guess)

it's was too late but I'm glad they Ruby and Yang talk about Ruby's issues, even if felt a little scripted (I don't mean that in way whole the show is), like I've heard what Yang says compared to a youtuber apology, I wouldn't be that harsh but I get where they're coming from. I wish it was a bit more especially given how badly Ruby hit rock bottom.

I also think the boba tea place would've work better if it was pre-established but I get you can't just... do that. also I think choosing a tea place after what tea was the thing Ruby tried to commit reincarnation suicide with was kinda weird, I get hot tea and boba are about as similar to each other as a pug is to a german shepherd but still.

(If your wondering what I think Tai is doing, ehh someone's mom probably)

This is a friendly reminder that RWBY Beyond is extended universe and not part of the main series and so the writers' choice to put important things - like Yang and Ruby addressing what happened in V9 - is quite a bold move. Like, I'm still expecting everything that happened in V9 to NOT get glossed over in V10, because I don't want to have to do homework and get subscriptions and watch YouTube videos in order for the main show to be even sort of close to good.

And before anyone comes in talking about 'they have no time anymore' and 'they need to use V10 to tie off all these important threads' etcetera, they made their own bed. Like maybe RWBY Beyond wouldn’t have to include conversations that should be in the main show if the writers hadn't wasted their time on things like Jaune angst 2.0 or Little/Somewhat or getting their stuff back from a raccoon or unnecessary exposition on where the gods came from. The writers have NEVER been good at managing their time, and it results in things like them trying to do damage control in the silly extended content shorts because they forgot to write Yang to be a caring sister in the main show.

And then fans turn around and are like 'I can't believe that people are complaining that Yang comes across as a bad sister in the main show, didn't they see how she cringed when Ruby was in danger in the second Batman crossover side movie? Didn't they see the follow-up short to Sun and Neptune's mustache adventures?"

Say it with me; the main show ought to be able to stand on its own as a good piece of media without expecting fans to do homework.

We're RWBY fans. Of course we respond to criticisms to our favorite character by drawing them reacting violently to them.

I really liked this post, so I'm sharing it here.

Yang will never beat the bad sister allegations. 🤭

Ozpin is straight up the funniest character in rwby I don't care what ANYONE says

Dude delivers a heartfelt graduation speech and is immediately like "now get out of here"

Not to mention all the Other Shit. Like immediately embarrassing Oscar, giving Ironwood hot chocolate from a tea kettle (and not blinking when Ironwood spikes it), his stupid chair, his dumb ass glasses, the fact that he's dressed for winter in the summer, the fact he throws his students off of cliffs, the sass

Like sir. Who are you

Literally no one talks about how fucking funny Ozpin is and it's so sad

I've always loved this shot of Ruby walking through the woods. This is likely the closest thing that felt fairytale-like, and very Little Red Riding Hood-esque. The way this forest looks overall is beautiful. I loved the small torchbugs and the moonlight breaking through the tree branches. The usage of greens and blues is gorgeous as well.

I also loved how the colors emphasized Jaune's eye color. They look like they have a subtle glow to them.

V4 isn't the best volume but it does have small nuggets of gold that I can't help but personally enjoy when I see them.

This is the nitpickiest nitpick to ever nitpick, but why are the refugees living in poorly made encampments while Ms. Avatar, who can conjure earth with a snap of her fingers, flies overhead?

invested in your future made a really good point about the crw writing themselves into a corner and honestly it be fascinating as fuck if salem's plan was to really narrow down all of humanity into a single spot in vacuo then wait them out, war of attrition style

or make a bomb to just drop on all of them lol

obviously that isnt her goal and i doubt that's what the crw wanted to do because thats not as combat-focused entertaining but a man can dream

@kitestarry Thought I'd answer this comment in its own post. :)

Ghira and Kali are very much so stereotypical "Mom and Dad" characters imo, where Kali is kind of nosy and she's comforting and she's given that "no she can hit people with pans too" thing that people give Supermoms since like 2000 so they can say they're strong women without having to do any work, and Ghira is like overprotective and tells Blake she isn't wearing enough clothes and hates Sun because he's a boy who's interested in his daughter. And I don't like the stereotypical "Mom and Dad" characterization in any setting really, but since they're only featured in two seasons and are honestly not even sort of the focus of Blake's 4-5 arc (which is much more about her, Sun, and Ilia,) they're very paper thin characters I feel like. So there isn't much else to them. But on top of that, the RWBY writers do this thing where they'll make the teenage characters do dangerous stuff but do not care to write the "caring" parental figures in their life to actually do anything about it. Like, with Willow you can at least be like "well she's an alcoholic who had an abusive husband" which doesn't mean that her complete lack of presence until V7 and her lack of action in protecting her children is fine, but it makes more sense. And when then sixteen year old Ruby left home to go after Cinder and supposedly like a year later Tai still is completely not around, we could at least say "well, he knows she's with Qrow and he might not have known how serious everything was" which isn't a good excuse, but it's at least something. But, I believe Blake ran away from home five years before the start of the show, which means she was like twelve! And she ran away to be part of a group Ghira thought was dangerous and morally wrong (which is why he left in the first place.) Like, we don't know if Blake had a good place to stay for that whole time, if she ever went hungry, and the show fully tells us she was in a bad and unsafe relationship for part of it. And where were her parents? And then the Fall of Beacon happens after Blake is on TV during the Vytal Festival, and the whole thing just makes them feel like very uncaring bad parents. There's also Ghira's whole peaceful protest 'be nice to your oppressors and they might like you' 'we need to stop faunus violence' thing. Like many Faunus characters, Ghira's a mouthpiece for the severely badly handled fantasy racism plot. It's bad on Blake, but since she has a lot more character and role outside of that, it's easy enough to just clip it out for her for me. But because Ghira has been such a small role, it's a lot harder to dismiss for him. Like if you removed that sort of thing from Ghira's character, all that you'd have left is 'over-protective dad who doesn't care about finding his twelve year old runaway but will comment on her belly shirt when she comes home."

But also, I don't write for them to be honest. Writing for characters oftentimes makes me like them more because it helps me dive into the character concept more than the oftentimes lackluster execution. There are a lot of characters I didn't like that much, but then when I write for them, I find myself really enjoying them. But my sister and I first started writing for RWBY after volume six with a fanfiction that was an AU branch off starting at the end of V5. And the only fanfictions I've written either are branches off of that branch off or are Team STRQ era fics. So... Ghira and Kali aren't really part of things in my fics ever.

So yeah, it's a combination of them being thin stereotypical parents with very little interest to them, their apparent lack of care when their twelve year old ran away, and just never writing for them so they don't get the same treatment of me fleshing them out myself that other characters who are just as thin in canon might get that make me like them more.