#expanding the world of RWBY
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Team RWBY had arrived in a village where there were several creatures made of crystal that resembled a star shape.
Ruby: What are those things
???: We are Genial Gems
One of these crystal series appeared next to the girls.
Weiss: What is it called and where are we?
Ren: My name is Ren and this is the Gems village
The girls looked at each other.
Until the girls' bellies started growling.
They were all ashamed.
Ren: I see you are hungry, come with me
Weiss: Thank you very much
Ren: No problem
Team RWBY started following the Ren gem, as they walked through the village they noticed something peculiar.
A statue made of stone of a knight riding Jackalope, with the sword in his left, an expression of pure HATE on your face.
Blake: Jaune?
The girls looked at the statue and were surprised to see that it was Jaune but older.
Weiss was impressed, as well as the statue being very well made, full of details. Jaune's face showed "new things" the first was that he had a cut on his right cheek, he had a goatee and his hair had grown past his neck.
Weiss: Wait.... JAUNE IS THE RUSTED KNIGHT!!!
Ruby: Ren, Can you tell where Jaune is?
Ruby completely ignored Weiss.
Ren: The knight left these lands a long time ago. He and his wife left a long time ago
The girls looked at the Ren gem.
RWBY: Wife?
Ren: Yes. A woman with pink, white and brown hair
Pink
White
Brown
There was only one person with these hair colors.
Neo
In Remmant
In a city that was growing quickly, this city was very close to become a kingdom, this city was in Vale but this city was east of the city of Vale but far east between the city of Vale there was a mountain that awaited the two cities.
Both cities were on the coast, but there is a stark difference, this city called Orleans and was located in the Meuse valley region.
Orleans was founded by Agravein Arc known as Black Knight ( Particular the knight of misogyny ) before the great war.
After the monarchy ended, he came to this place that used to be just a farm but it became a refuge for those who didn't believe Councilmen would be of any use because there would be a lot of corruption.
Over time more and more people came to this place that strangely didn't attract so many Grimms.
After the destruction of Vale ( Now this shit is official hahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahauayayahahhahahahahahahahayayayayayahahahahahahahauuahahuahuahahhauahahauahauauauau)
Many people came here, this only happens because Michelangelo Arc, Jaune Arc's father went to the rescue of the population after learning that Councilmen ran away.
Michelangelo, as soon as he heard that Vale was attacked, was the first to leave the village and go to the aid of the people of Vale.
It was difficult to convince people to move even though Vale was destroyed, it was still their home.
But thanks to teacher Peter Port, Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck and Headmistress Glynda Goodwitch. He managed to get people to move to Orleans.
But now Orleans could already be considered a kingdom but the situation in the world doesn't "allow it" because everything is in chaos .
But........ Always a but not everything is black and white, there are shades of gray.
With the return of "communications" and after Ruby Rose's disastrous warning, Orleans was preparing for the worst faster than ever.
But (again ) a light appeared amidst the chaos.
Jaune Arc and Neo Arc
The family reunion was beautiful, there was a slap in the face, swearing for everyone, father vs son, mother vs son.
After all that, let's get to what really matters.
House of Arc
Jaune was sitting in an armchair and his wife was sitting on his lap.
His parents and sisters were on the sofa to the left of the armchair.
" So.... " Michelangelo Arc was sitting on the couch looking at his son, beside him was his wife Angelica Arc and behind the sofa were his daughters
" How they both met " Angelica Arc has already cut her husband out of the conversation.
" She tried to kill me " Jaune said with the greatest calm in the world.
The whole family was silent.
" This is a family thing " When Michelangelo said this his wife's face turned red and she slapped his arm.
" Why? " Jaune asked.
" Your mother and I were on the same team, I was a leader even though I didn't want to be but she wanted to be the leader and she tried to kill me to steal my position as leader " Michelangelo told, while Angelica was embarrassed by her past.
" My old interesting loving also wanted to be the leader of your team and she couldn't either, but she and I are not on the same team " Jaune said remembering Weiss in their first year at Beacon Academy.
" She won't say anything " Angelica asked looking at Neo.
" She is mute mother " Jaune said looking at his wife.
Neo smiled.
Letters appeared in front of both of them as if it were a caption.
It's true, I was speechless after trying to swallow the colossus he has between
Jaune and his family's eyes widened.
" NEO! " Jaune screamed in anger.
After this scene where Neo was laughing, the Arc couple's daughters noticed that the atmosphere changed.
" Jaune— " Before Michelangelo could have his question.
" Vale was completely destroyed, we already know we came from there. We took advantage of the fact that we went and picked up some things from Vale and then we went to Vacuo and picked up something very special "
Around Neo's head reality shattered like glass, revealing a golden crown with a peculiar form.
Crocea Mors the family heirloom began to disappear like smoke. Then, next to the armchair, the air began to rotate, revealing a large sword that was being hidden.
The Arc family stayed because that sword looked a lot like Crocea Mors but only bigger and the scabbard that could become a shield looked very different looked more like a blade than a sheath.
" Dad, we have a lot to talk about. I have revelations about our family "
#rwby#ruby rose#blake belladonna#weiss schnee#yang xiao long#Vale was destroyed off screen hahahajajajjaja#expanding the world of RWBY#Agravein Arc#Michelangelo Arc#Peter Port#Bartholomew Oobleck#Glynda Goodwitch#Angelica Arc#Jaune's sisters
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Prior to V3C11: Heroes and Monsters, are there any signs that Blake was abused? How well do you think her abuse arc as a whole is handled?
#rwde#doing more research for the essay rn and trying to see any signs in early volumes blake#maybe one of yall see smth im not#im trying to do right on this so i might ask some of yall to look over the script#its gonna be a p big whopper tho. this thing keeps expanding into territories i hadnt thought it would#mostly bc a lot of rwbys problems are incredibly intertwined and exasperate one another#and its difficult to talk abt any one aspect without mentioning how it ripples out to the rest of the story world and characters#like. this was supposed to be only abt why people continue to talk abt adam despite him being a bad character and dead for several years#but you cant talk abt adam wo bringing up blake bc theyre two sides of the activist coin#which means you need to touch on the abuse plot#and you cant talk abt either wo bringing up the white fang. meaning you need to talk abt the racism in Remnant and how its portrayed#and that leads into the writers own views and personal politics and how theyve encouraged the worst of their fans to indulge in aggression#its a never ending rabbit hole#and i am but a little blonde girl drinking potions and eating cake as i explore this strange poorly constructed world
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I wish we knew the actual teams of the Grimm Campaign heroes. And like how would that even work for Pyke how does a transfer work with the team system?
well we see in Before the Dawn with Nolan that he's not put into a new team at Vacuo and is left on his own, and other Beacon teams who lost people are just down numbers, so could be Pyke was just left on his own after the incident he refuses to talk about
it'd be nice to get that backstory but it's the kinda thing that would be more beneficial from a novelisation or comic
#RWBY#The Grimm Campaign#honestly I'd take any Grimm Campaign content that was a really fun time and it sucks they've not been able to do more#especially as it was a way to expand on aspects of the setting we can't in the show which was really cool#i hope one day they're at least able to make like a World of Remnant system with rulebooks that they can put this lore stuff into
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The Little Prince, The Rose, & The Aviator
AKA We just got confirmation that Oscar's main allusion is in fact The Little Prince so I wanted to gather all evidence that supports it in show thus far.
cross-posted from twitter
A brief summary for those who aren't familiar:
The Little Prince is a story about a young boy that travels to many worlds & meets many people. It is told out of chronological order from the perspective of an airplane pilot that the prince meets close to the end of his journey.
It explores themes around childhood and growing up, love, loss, friendship, loneliness, and hope, among other things. All ideas very prevalent in RWBY.
Part 1: The Little Prince
The first theme I want to touch on is that struggle of trying not to lose yourself as you grow up.
"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again."
Oscar is the youngest of the group, and yet he is one of the characters most often shown trying to reason with the adults in the room.
Yes, we've mainly seen it with Hazel, Ironwood, and Oz... but while the rest of RWBYJNR are also 'just kids', he spends so much energy trying to reason with them and mediate conflicts there as well. All while still being the youngest of the bunch.
Another way this shows itself is in Oscar's resistance to merging with Oz. The merge is a very clear metaphor for how the people you meet and the things you experience can often change you. And how, when you're a kid, it all feels like its completely out of your control.
Speaking of the hoverbike scene, I want to shift to a different part of The Little Prince. The infamous moment with the fox and what it is to be 'tamed'. To be tamed is to create ties with others. To become important to them and for them to be important to you.
When Oscar is having a talk with Oz in v8 about how he finally felt like himself, the person he wanted to be, and felt like he was finally "part of the team"... There is a fox plushie lying on the ground as he passes by.
But we see that Oscar was right to feel this way later on.
Because just as he was "only a little boy like a hundred thousand other little boys" when he first met everyone... he had since been tamed, and tamed his friends in turn. And they fought tooth and nail to bring him back when he was captured by Salem.
Part 2: The Aviator & the Rose
In RWBY, most characters have a main allusion that is central to their arc and then secondary allusions for what roles they fill in relation to other characters. (Ex. Yang's main allusion is Goldilocks, but when thrown into the plot, she also becomes the Beauty to Blake's Beast, just as Blake was once the Beauty to Adam's Beast).
If we apply that metric to other characters here, we know that Ozpin's main allusion is The Wizard of Oz and Ruby is Little Red Riding Hood... so when placed within Oscar's story structure of The Little Prince, they become The Aviator and The (Ruby) Rose, respectively.
The aviator is a man that struggles to hold onto his childlike wonder. He tries, but he lives in a world of grown-ups so it becomes difficult with time. The little prince - much like Oscar with Ozpin - helps him remember some of the things that he's forgotten.
When the little prince meets him, the aviator is grumbly after crash landing his plane in the desert & is trying to fix it before he runs out of water.
Funny then, that when Oscar is crash landing a plane it is Oz that instructs him on how to do it.
When the aviator explains his circumstances, the prince laughs and exclaims that he "fell from the sky too". Which is an interesting tie in to the canon RWBY fairytale mentioned in Before the Fall, The Boy Who Fell From The Sky...
...as well as another fairytale we've seen mentioned in the show proper: The Girl Who Fell Through The World. A tale that was first talked about by Oscar, later expanded upon by Ozpin, and finally lived by Ruby Rose herself. (Yes her team also experienced it but it's very strongly emphasized Ruby and Alyx were paralleling each other in ways the others were not).
One thing about the little prince and the aviator is that by the end of their journey when it's time to say farewell, it's quite clear they've tamed each other as well. So much time spent by the pilot wishing to fix his plane and get out of the desert, but when it's finally time to say farewell, he does not want to go.
This is not something we've gotten in show yet, but I'm willing to guess is going to be the basis for when the war is won and Oz is finally set free. Leaving the two of them to finally have to say goodbye.
And I realized I couldn't bear the thought of never hearing that laugh again. For me it was like a spring of resh water in the desert.
"Little fellow, I want to hear you laugh again..."
Moving onto the Rose.
In the story, the little prince is enamored by her as soon as he sees her for the first time. As he gets to know her, she is described as many things. Some that fit Ruby well (miraculous, naïve) and some that she subverts (vain, self-centered).
Ruby might not be caught up on physical appearance, but she is convinced that she's the only one in all the world that can do what she has to do. It's a childish way of looking at things, and to believe you can't accept help from others is - in its own way - selfish.
In the book, the rose asks the little prince to tend to her. She's very needy with her demands and while the prince loves her dearly, it is a strained relationship. In RWBY, Oscar sees Ruby wilting very early on and decides to tend to her without waiting for her to ask. Of which we have... SO MANY EXAMPLES AND I DON'T HAVE A HIGH ENOUGH IMAGE LIMIT TO POST THEM ALL SO YOU GET 2.
Not pictured here, but still worthy of note: Oscar mediating when Ruby is being undermined in v8, Oscar talking the responsibility of telling Ironwood the truth in V7, the "food always makes me feel better" / "I made you a casserole because you were sad" scenes. The List Goes On.
Part 3: Other Easter Eggs & Evidence
There are also other fun little pieces that drive home just how much these characters allude to the book as well as the inspiration it's had on the show in general.
The first thing the little prince asks the aviator for is a drawing of a sheep that he can take home with him so that it can eat up the sprouts of baobab trees before they overgrow his entire planet and destroy it (and his rose) in the process...
The tree in the Ever After has maple leaves, but the shape of its trunk is very clearly not a maple. When compared to these illustrations, it seems to have pulled inspiration from baobabs... and what does the tree in the Ever After do?
Its roots consume the rose.
One of the lessons that's brought up repeatedly in the book is that:
"One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”
This is brought up in a few different ways:
The little prince left his rose back home, so when he looks to the night sky, separated from her, he says:
"The stars are beautiful because of a flower you don’t see . . ."
When Ruby is in the Ever After, with no one to tend to her, she is in a town filled with paper stars.
It is brought up again in reference to the desert, which we have a wonderful tie-in now thanks to the animatic shared at RTX recently:
“What makes the desert beautiful,” the little prince said, “is that it hides a well somewhere . . .”
And again by the aviator in reference to the little prince himself.
What makes the little prince special is his loyalty to a flower. Ruby Rose, who inspired Oscar to keep fighting, who reminded him he was brave, and who's mission he has worn on his literal shoulders.
Two other lines in that passage I've highlighted I also want to mention.
"As the little prince was falling asleep, I picked him up in my arms, and started walking again. I was moved. It was as if I was carrying a fragile treasure."
This line about the little prince being a treasure (treasure is an rg song truthers rise up 🙌)
And the emphasis on lamps being symbolic of the Little Prince himself which... we've seen for Oscar A LOT.
"What moves me so deeply about this sleeping little prince is his loyalty to a flower - the image of a rose shining within him like the flame within a lamp, even when he's asleep... (...) Lamps must be protected: A gust of wind can blow them out..."
Also Ruby has been referred to as a "spark" by Oz before and when Oscar is worrying over Ruby at Brunswick farms, Maria tells him to "keep that fire fed" which is exactly what lamp lighters do. Just very deliberate use of that imagery here.
It ALSO ties into earlier in the novel where, among the little prince's many travels meeting plenty of confusing adults he doesn't understand, he encounters a lamplighter. And of all those that confused him, he found he could at least relate to this one and see value in his work.
There is also a matter of how the prince's first appearance is at sunrise:
That he is cited to live on a planet "scarcely bigger than himself" and "being in need of a friend". How we see Oscar very alone on his farm back in Mistral, just like the prince, only tending to his daily chores by himself, we never even see his aunt.
And while there are a few other bits and pieces i'm surely forgetting, the last big one I want to talk about is how both the beginning and end of the book start with a venomous snake.
The aviator shows us a drawing of a boa constrictor eating a wild beast...
...versus Oscar's first appearance coming immediately after he wakes from a nightmare of Tyrian, a venomous scorpion faunus, being sent to capture his rose.
And the story ends with the little prince in a desert getting bit by a venomous snake that sends him back to his rose and away from the aviator... thank goodness RWBY loves to subvert its fairytale origins, amiright?
"(The little prince) fell gently the way a tree falls, there wasn't even a sound..."
tl;dr Oscar is for sure The Little Prince, Ruby has always been his rose, RG canon, Tryian vs. Oscar in the desert real and #GREENLIGHTVOLUME10 SO WE CAN SEE IT HAPPEN ALREADY >:OOOO
Thank you for reading 💕
#might to a lil red riding hood one next tbh#rwby#ruby rose#oscar pine#ozpin#analysis#rwby analysis#chainalysis#long post#the little prince#rosegarden#greenlightvolume10#meta#rwby meta
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Why do you think RWBY v1-3 worked compared to the rest of it?
Hm.
Honestly a lot of the first three volumes doesn't - the pacing can be awful (and grinds to a halt within arcs dealing with Jaune), the writing decisions leave a lot of to be desired(and are beyond offensive at times).
To say what the first three volumes do well is to talk about what the volumes after dont.
The issue with V4 and onward is simple one:
Too many new redundant characters
I have been hammering on this point again and again - in a weird attempt to expand the world, the showrunners ended up filling it with things that overlap win purpose or outright have no purpose.
Generally if you want to have something happen and want to choose between existing character and new character as initiator, nine times out of ten it's better to go with an existing character.
For example, why did we need Salem's evil council of evil? Why did we need a whole team of villains on Salem's side that essentially fulfill same role and purpose as Cinder's group already did? They don't exactly do anything for the lore or the setting and most of their purpose is one-note - Hazel for example exists just to rage about Ozpin in a poorly executed attempt at making his intentions and role more ambiguous - but there are already plenty of characters who can fill that purpose, so why was Hazel, as a character made? Raven exists, Ironwood exists and is clearly having a crisis, even Haven's headmaster exists (let's say he does) - plenty of ways other characters can fulfill the same purpose as Hazel without Hazel existing. Same extends to the rest of Salem's group - Watts exists solely to "explain" the computer virus (why did we need it explained?) and to have a reason to go against Atlas (but Cinder already has a reason thanks to her backstory in-show???) and Tyrian is the same way.
Too many redundant story beats
The writing attempted to make the setting more complex, but in the end a lot of what's added has no real reason to be there - why do we need Relics when Maidens are already there? Even if we were to go with the same idea of Gods causing doomsday(as dumb as it is) the writing could just as easily have the exact same plotline with collecting Maiden powers, for example. So why have vaults and then relics on top of that?
The Gods are the same way too. Why have Gods at all when you can already comfortably just go with the idea of Salem getting Maidens powers to her side being just as catastrophic? Salem's backstory doesn't even need them - in fact if one were to remove the Gods and keep the backstory the same, the end result would be exact same story. But the show doesn't do that - instead, come V9, it adds ANOTHER layer of gods and magic trees and gives the god brothers a backstory that ALSO wasn't needed and doesn't do ANYTHING in terms of furthering the narrative.
Generally if there's a plot thread you'd want to do the first question to ask would be "Does this change ANYTHING for any of the characters?" - plot is an excuse to get characters through the story beats after all. In the case of God Brothers, the plot thread invents a new problem and then solves it - nothing changes.
Lost Focus
The show is titled RWBY for a reason.
Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang - that's the core of the show.
The show started with the color trailers focusing on them and their journeys. The Volume 3 ended with them each having their own issues to deal with and plot threads tying to those issues.
What do the Volumes that follow do with that set-up? Nothing.
Volume 4 is absolutely pointless in grand scheme of things.
Volume 5 is absolutely pointless in grand scheme of things.
Volume 6 is absolutely pointless in grand scheme of things.
In fact, I wrote about the story structure issues with V4 years ago
The narrative structure, at the basic level, is a game of Connect-the-Dots - you have specific story beats you want to reach that work in accordance with overall story and character outline - it's up for The Plot(tm) to lead the characters from one beat to the other.
The way RWBY works past V3 is by inventing a new problem that didn't and then resolving it, essentially staying in place. I sort of outlined it in the V4 structure chart in my write up in how nothing in that Volume serves any real purpose nor furthers the characters.
What does the mess at Haven Academy contribute to the story story that Beacon already haven't? Does what happen there affect the story going forward? No.
What does team RWBY and the whole absolutely dumb and boring mess with the mech and leviathan do for the story? Are there any lasting consequences from that happening? Nope.
What does the run-in with the Apathy do for the characterization? Are there any lingering psychological effects? Do we learn something new about how Grimm function or how the Eyes work? Are there any lingering implications or any story holes that the encounter slots in into? Absolutely nothing.
That's three big examples in those Volumes where the writing invents a new issue, resolves it and doesn't further characters or narrative by doing so.
In Connect-the-Dots, you don't stop hopping from dot to dot midway-through, you don't hop back and forth between existing dots. Story beats and character beats are beats for a reason - they move things forward, they affect things, they alter things. If you have something that leads the narrative back at the place it was before in then you might as well delete the entire thing.
Now this is not the same as characters being stuck in loops or the idea of repetition as storytelling device - repetition that the narrative is aware of WOULD be a story beat in on itself and this is not that.
In fact even going into Atlas arc - the endgame has almost nothing to do with the build up to it and would happen anyway even if most of the volumes leading to it were removed.
Anticlimactic Payoff
If the narrative is build up to something, the pay off should generally equal to the amount of time and focus spend on the build up (unless it's used as a contrast).
Yet in RWBY a lot of mysteries end up being more of matter-of-fact answers than revelations.
What happened to the moon? Oh something crashed into it.
Why are Ozpin and Salem the way they are? Gods did it.
Why is Raven angry at Ozpin? He...turned her into a bird?
What has been Raven up to? Nothing.
Is Ozpin shady or not? Eh, not really - he's just sort of there.
What's up with the creatures of Grimm? Gods did it.
All of these were teased and built up going forward and the actual revelations never justified the build up or teasing that came before.
None of those revelations did anything to further the narrative or develop characters.
It was as if the writers were going through a checklist of what needs to be revealed.
So, What about the first three Volumes?
Now, flip everything I wrote about V4 and onward upside down.
That's the first three Volumes.
The only characters that exist are the ones that have an use within the narrative.
The plot threads are revealed when they become relevant - Mt.Glenn comes up when it matters, for example. If anything there's not enough reveals.
One can easily trace the plot threads through the story - how Ruby's introduction to Beacon affects her dynamics with Weiss, how Jaune's and Ruby's struggles with unexpected positions of leadership affect the team formation, how the friction within the teams furthers the plot to crash into villains goals. And what's more - each mini-arc ties to the four leads and their characterization. Things don't just happen - each storyline starts with the character and ends with characters growing or their relationships changing.
The Payoff is extremely good - V3 takes every single thing the show did through the three volumes and makes use of it. Everything matters - Mt. Glenn exposition, Roman, WF stuff, Jaune's insecurities, Pyrrha's characterization, Yang's characterization, Blake's conflict, Ruby's growth and position int he story, Weiss growth, etc - everything gets used and everything affects the characters involved.
For all the flaws, for all the absolutely insensitive story decisions and bad jokes - the first three volumes manage to handle those key points well and the end result is far more enjoyable.
The volumes after don't.
While good action sequences helped one of many reasons I hold V1 through V3 dear to my heart is because the show pulled off something that was quite rare back then when those Volumes aired - delivering actual consequences and not being afraid of upsetting the status quo within the story.
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Hi, just joined Tumblr earlier today as part of an unrelated thing, thought I'd check your page out on a friend's rec, and... wow. Just, wow. This is practically the nine-dimensional chess of media literacy. I would have so many question, but everything you discuss is promptly explained in such great detail that I can't even say that. One question remains, though: *how?* Where do you get the absurd amount information and brainpower required to connect the show's many, many dots at this high of a level? It's something I struggle with myself (though that may be due to there being over a year between watching V1-V8 and seriously starting to reflect on the show beyond "well, that was a fun sequence of events"—thank you, newish fanfic writing brain—but that's besides the point), and I was wondering if you had any tips for expanding one's thinking in this direction, as the show still means a *lot* to me—there's a reason, however unexplainable, that I stuck with it so long before the reflections started—and I'd love it if the deepest parts of my brain could reflect it as such.
...Unless that's too much to ask, in which case, whoops! Either way, thank you.
really fundamentally the most effective thing you can do to practice is make a deliberate effort to cultivate a sense of curiosity toward the text. and what i mean by that is, get in the habit of asking yourself questions as if you’re in a high school english lit class: what happened in this scene? why did this character say or do that? does this conversation remind you of anything that happened in an earlier scene, and if so, what’s similar? what’s different? what did you learn about the characters from this scene? what did you learn about the world they live in? why do you think this scene was important enough to be in the story? what changed in this scene (something will always have changed)?
it may feel a bit patronizing at first BUT over time if you’re consistent about it, doing this will train you to approach reading or watching as an active participant. analytical interpretation is a skill and like any skill it takes sustained effort and practice.
after that it’s sort of just pattern recognition. this is true of all stories but it’s especially true of theme-driven stories like rwby because they tend to be very deliberate about repeating and refracting their ideas and often develop rich symbolic vocabularies. so you identify a pattern and then examine the text until you can develop a compelling argument for what it means.
one thing to keep in mind if you’re generally familiar with fandom is that fandom encourages a lot of practices that are cool and fun in fannish contexts but will poison analysis because they are (by nature of being transformative) untethered from the text. headcanon, for example, is things held to be true irrespective of the text—one could have as a headcanon that ruby is allergic to bee stings or that qrow is her father or whatever and it doesn’t matter that there’s no textual evidence or that the text says otherwise because the text is not relevant—but analytically, you must be able to back every part of your argument with textual evidence. so it is useful to practice compartmentalizing to keep headcanon strictly separated from the text in your mind.
(that’s also a practice i recommend in general because being able to say “i like this idea and i have it in mind when i create fanworks, but it isn’t canonical” is healthy)
a good habit to get into is arguing against yourself and holding yourself to a high standard of proof. the reason my argumentation tends to be so thorough is that i try to be as skeptical of my own theories as i am of other people’s. if i have an idea that seems right but doesn’t withstand textual scrutiny, i discard it. (or i might toss it into the headcanon/au idea pile, if i’m very fond of it.) i will often develop more than one argument about a given subject and then lay them all against the text before i commit to one. being skeptical will push you to pay closer attention.
cultivate curiosity about your own emotional reactions, too. what did this scene make you feel? why? how do you feel about this or that character? what draws you to your favorite characters? what distances you from the characters you don’t like? what ideas come to mind when you think about the story and what it means to you? if you have a strong reaction to something—good or bad—try to trace that feeling to its root. what sparked it and why?
once you start digging into that you’ll find that your intuitive reactions to the story are non-arbitrary—you’re subconsciously picking up on certain patterns or themes that resonate with you. so paying attention to what the story makes you feel and asking how and why it incites those feelings will guide you to conscious discovery of things you’ve already noticed without noticing.
and another good point of entry is to look for recurring symbols / imagery—for example, silver-eyes get associated with death and reincarnation through a combination of harvest/reaper imagery (scythe, sickle, ‘the grimm reaper’) and butterflies (ruby’s first glare resembles wings, butterflies everywhere when she and maria discuss her eyes, butterflies symbolizing ascension in the ever after). adding this pattern together with the white light in the liminal void between realms (the threshold of life and death!), the implication that silver-eyes came from ozma (who dies and reincarnates cyclically), the stated purpose of the glare (to preserve and protect life), ruby hearing pyrrha’s final words in her dreams (which she didn’t hear in reality), and the glare having destroyed the hand cinder used to kill pyrrha, is how i got to “silver-eyes are psychopomps,” because both the symbolism and the narrative facts about the power line up in that direction.
the one thing to be careful with in relation to symbolism is not to treat it like a secret code! symbolic meaning isn’t universal so you should always consider symbolism in context with the narrative. the first question should always be “what idea does this image appear in connection to, when it appears?” i.e. the burning rose in rwby symbolizes mourning. think of symbols as more like trail markers that the narrative has placed to help you understand the story by connecting dots. we see the burning rose on summer’s grave and then we see it on ruby; she carries her mother’s absence with her. she gives the brooch away in the ever after right after the blacksmith shows her a glimpse of summer, and then in the storm her reflection is summer but ruby doesn’t look, doesn’t see: she’s avoiding her grief, trying to pretend it isn’t there. and then the brooch returns to her once she faces what the blacksmith wanted to show her about her mom: now it’s a symbol for acceptance of loss.
and with a story like rwby that uses allusion to develop its thematic narrative it’s really helpful to read the texts it alludes to! the core narrative allusions are the marvelous land of oz, maiden in tower fairytales (petrosinella, persinette, rapunzel), cinderella, and the little prince, plus alice’s adventures in wonderland & through the looking glass for the ever after. and then every major character has a specific character allusion. both kinds of allusion are symbolic/thematic (you can’t use allusions to predict specific plot events but they help tie together emotional arcs and character relationships cohesively, and the narrative allusions are pretty good weather vanes for very broad-strokes things like ozma’s symbolic blindness being ‘healed’ in the end).
rewatching the show a couple of times will also help, especially if you take notes. i’m not sure how many times i’ve rewatched v1-8 but it’s a lot and i’ve watched v9 in full twice, plus rewatching a lot of specific episodes or scenes for reference. rewatching will help you spot patterns that you missed before and increase your familiarity with the text in general, both of which help tremendously.
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Spoiler for my next RWBY fanfic project:
(We all know it's going to be Jaune so don't ask who's it supposed to be.)
Sorry if it seems long because I have to do some little world building (I lied. I have to create RWBY from scratch because the lore are non-sensical & made no sense.) Because I want to provide my reader better quality story telling.
Some changes I made is as follows:
- Grimm are stronger now. The heroes will have to work harder to even beat a beowulf. With a few special one able to gain self awareness and have some "slight" reality altering power. Think the witches from Madoka magica franchise.
- Of course with the Grimm getting stronger. So does the Huntsman. With someone like Qrow or pretty much any Huntsman older than the main cast no longer be a pushover.
- Rank System for the Huntsman.
- More (named) students at Beacon.
- Huntsman are treated like a Rock stars.
- There will not just be four relics but hundreds of them. Each with varying degrees of power. And most are monopolized by the state.
- Don't know what to do with the maidens though. Any suggestions?
- Grimm no longer feed on negative human emotion. Biggest reason for the removal is that it contradict the Faunus Racism subplot. And I don't know about you but I think racism is one heck of a negative emotion. (They still want people dead though)
- Faunus Racism subplot will be handled much better.
- Salem still can't be killed but she can be sealed. With her needing to be sealed every few decades or so.
- Grimm will appear less frequently and only starts appearing more and more when the seal around Salem starts to weaken.
- There will be a cult dedicated to bring back Salem and serves as the primary antagonist.
- Of course everybody favorite part of prequel trilogy. Politics. But it mostly be in the background until it isn't & the heroes are then forced to make a choice.
- There are other group beside the Huntsman fighting Grimms and they hate their guts.
- The event of Ice Queendom is mostly canon and even part of the Grimm Eclipse. Because I needed something to pad out the world building.
& there's more but I would like to keep some a secret for now.
And yes many character's story will be expanded or in a few case rewritten. Adam especially will be rewritten to better reflect the freedom fighter he supposed to represent. He's angry at the world but not an a-hole.
And that's about it I'm already halfway in and I will post the 5k fanfic soon as a form of early preview.
#rwby#jaune arc#jaune big dick adventure#10k words#rwby fanfiction#fanfiction#writing tips#spoiler#upcoming projects#ruby rose#moby dick#shion zaiden#ice queendom#rwby ice queendom sequel#rwby ice queendom#grimm eclipse#rwby: grimm eclipse#rwby au#rwby rewrite#adam taurus
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AHEM
Are you tired of watching TV shows with wlw romances on Netflix and Amazon Prime and Disney Plus and so on that just keep getting canceled? Even if they did well statistically?
Did you love Warrior Nun? Willow? Paper Girls? The Wilds? The Owl House? First Kill? Etc?
Have you repeatedly had your heart broken by these massive, homophobic companies that are ruining TV?
Do you want to see a slow burn wlw relationship that was planned FROM THE BEGINNING finally culminate into something beautiful? Something earned? In a show that isn’t going to just be canceled? In a show that has more story to tell? Where we will get to see their relationship develop even further as they deal with trying to save the world together?
Then you should watch RWBY.
There are a multitude of reasons why you should watch RWBY that I’ve mentioned in other posts like this and this. But, at this particular moment with the cancel your gays trend still going strong, RWBY is a pretty safe show to gravitate toward. (I say pretty because, I mean, obvs shit can happen. But at the moment I'm confident the show is here to stay for quite some time because it's the biggest show of its production company and it's currently expanding quite a lot with other media.) It’s a bit of a haven, if you will. A balm for many of us.
Bumbleby (Blake and Yang/Black and Yellow) is THE MAIN SHIP of the show, between two of the titular ladies. Not just some side story. TWO OF THE MAIN PROTAGONISTS.
AND IT IS CANON!
A blonde and a dark haired lady! A cat girl and her useless lesbian girlfriend! The sunny golden retriever and her brooding cat girlfriend! They are literally coded (including COLOR CODED) to be together!
And there will be MORE!
Bumbleby has meant A LOT to many of us in the fandom. And it has definitely been a long time coming. Many of us weren’t sure it would ever happen. But it HAS. It was planned from the beginning and it was done BEAUTIFULLY.
(For those of you who don’t know, the picture is a tweet posted by the creator of RWBY, presumably about Bumbleby, given it was posted a few days after a very poignant interaction between Blake and Yang first aired back in the early days)
In short, WATCH RWBY IF YOU’RE ALSO FUCKING TIRED OF CANCEL YOUR GAYS! BUMBLEBY IS WORTH IT!
#rwby#rwby v9#rwby v9 spoilers#Bumbleby#BEES#Blake Belladonna#Yang Xiao Long#bumblebee#bmblb#yin yang of nevermore#avatrice#Warrior Nun#The Owl House#lumity#tanthamore#Willow#First Kill#Calliete#The Wilds#Shoni
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I should be sleeping rn but I am thinking about rwby's worldbuilding. Of course.
It seems to me that the writers do understand the very, very basic concepts of worldbuilding... They try to make each kingdom different from one another somehow, give each of them a very, very basic idea of a culture and a history, there is dust and the SDC, Grimm and the hunters, but they don't expand on any of this enough. The world just doesn't seem... Alive?
We know that in Remnant people live among Grimm, use dust and auras/semblances. Okay. But what else? How those things affect the day to day life of an average Remnant citizen? How do people live with the fact that there are man-eating monsters ready that will hunt them if they just show an ounce of negative emotion? MAYBE, just maybe, a lot of things would be very different from our world. Maybe kingdoms would at least try to avoid grimm attacks by investing in a good quality of life for the citizens with entertainment, and/or good healthcare? Maybe the Grimm affect people like the faunus or the poor the most if they are ignored and don't have a good quality of life like everyone else.
There is a lot that can be done with those concepts, but the worldbuilding in rwby doesn't have enough depth. It might look wide and vast from the surface, but it is as deep as a kiddie pool. Instead of thinking about how life in Remnant might be different, the writers just decide that Remnant is mostly like our world, with the minor inconvenience of spooky monsters and people with magical superpowers roaming around.
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youtube
Yeahhhh I’m about to get extremely negative and rant on this one.
Fuck this show
End it, cancel it, don’t let it get past one season
Are we really going the “HEAVEN IS ACTUALLY EVILLLLLL” route? BORING!
“What if Sinners in Hell could be redeemed” is infinitely more interesting.
And what happened to the whole thing with Hell being overpopulated and that being the reason for the yearly exterminations? Now it’s to crush potential rebellions? But if Heaven isn’t making an effort for redemption, then more Sinners will constantly be streaming into Hell which would most certainly fuel more chance of Hell’s forces being able to fight against Heaven????
Viv please for goodness sakes, the story was already laid out for you in a thousands of years old book along with millennium of Theology and expanded mythology and stories stemming from the Bible (you know, like the Divine Comedy, where the rings of Hell thing comes from?)
The world building is broken, the characters are just so eh, and the plot is so boring now. I used to be so hyped for this show, like isn’t it amazing how an indie animation is getting it’s own proper show on Amazon Plus?!
God I should have seen the warning signs, once more Rooster Teeth are the shining example of why you don’t let bad people who are incompetent writers get corporate funding. You get a mess and a mockery of the original idea and heart behind the concept.
It took a decade for RWBY to die out, hopefully this goes faster.
Why do I even bother getting invested in anything anymore?
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When I think about it, the Red Prince could've been a better Big Bad for RWBY Volume 9, if the writers writing these characters were more self-aware of HOW AND WHY Team RWBY were in the wrong and so unsympathetic in the last several volumes.
The Red Prince is bratty, entitled, immature, narcissistic, and he lashes out in destructive ways to harm those around him if he can't get what he wants under his own terms. He was expected to grow into something less vulnerable when he ascended in the face of personal trauma, but instead his trauma and lack of sufficient guidance have made him regress more than he's grown, into an even more flawed person than the one he started off as. His underlings are basically sycophants who kiss up to him and sing his praises instead of telling him what he needs to hear, making him think the whole world should bow to his word and accept that he knows better than everyone else. And like any bratty child, he always thinks he's in the right and refuses to hear otherwise.
All these things IMO makes the Red Prince a really good mirror image of how the main heroes have been acting and behaving as the show has declined up to the latest volume. The Red Prince in an alternate Volume 9 rewrite/fix fic could be a primary volume-long foil representing what Team RWBY have been up until their fall into the Ever After and what Team RWBY have to move past before they can leave.
Maybe the Red Prince could ally with Neo in a Big Bad Duumvirate, providing her his kingdom's resources and massively expanding her influence in the Ever After in her pursuit of Ruby. As for where the Curious Cat would fit into this change in the Big Bad Ensemble... either they're a more grey character or antihero in this AU, OR the reveal of the Cat's true colours is reserved for a later volume after they've successfully accompanied RWBY/J to Remnant in their quest for answers.
@dragynkeep @mylittlerwde @insaneoddball @doomalade @lucy-dont-give-a-fuck @i-hear-a-sound
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i absolutely adore your fanfic and the way you write 🫶 was wondering if you had any authors you look up to as inspiration or helped you find your writing style?
oh for sure, i mean tbh they're all fanfic writers cause that's pretty much all i read - but yeah for sure i've had a ton
i had a brief time in the harry potter fandom forever ago that really opened me up to pacing and how you need to let certain things breathe and not try to fit every single bit of plot into each chapter
i've taken things from every fandom i've been in honestly, i learned a lot about characterization in the korra fandom and i wrote my first au in the rwby fandom - i think some of my best character work was in the catradora fandom because i just wanted to take adora and expand her story so much in alternate worlds
then the clexa fandom gave me a lot of freedom to start exploring writing smut and using it as a way to build more of a foundation in the relationship
avatrice was really where it all came together, i found so much confidence in this fandom and connected with so many talented writers and artists, many of them i consider some of my best friends even outside of the fandom. i still take from the things i read, even after all this time - like with mom!ava and trying out the style of jumping around to a lot of difference perspectives like do a flip did so masterfully
the thing about fanfiction is that you can do whatever you want with it, there's no limit or boundaries - no glass ceilings. so long as you're having fun and exploring the plots and styles and scenarios you want, then you're doing it right
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semblances are fun and all, like i could spend eons writing essays about raven's and qrow's semblances don't tempt me and as such there's definitely plenty of opportunities to use them for character study and so on BUT
it's becoming incredibly more frustrating trying to slot them into rwby's "power system" in a way that makes sense (to me).
like. first there was a humanity created by the gods and magic. then they got dusted -> "man born from dust" uses remnants of magic to light the way and fight the creatures of darkness, and aptly call this power 'dust'. aura is little less obvious, but ozpin / oscar uses magic shield of some kind, so there's room to explore (and expand with different aura techniques). maidens are obviously elemental magic without the limitations of dust (no need for aura to activate). silver eyes are from the god of light and the gods shapeshift, so there's a connection there too to the "old world".
semblances... don't really have that "connection". sure, you can say "well it's magic, duh" and be done with it, but everything else is so clear cut that i personally just find it an unsatisfying answer.
plus, at times semblances go far beyond what we've seen magic do, but sometimes they also feel... redundant; sure, glynda's telekinesis is cool and all, but surely mastery over gravity dust could serve the same purpose? (and then something like pyrrha's polarity is basically just a extremely limited version of that.)
so, as far as the "power system" goes, everything is either straight up magic / sourced from the gods or remnants of magic from the world that once was... except semblances, and while it would be nice to say they're a completely separate thing, humanity 2.0 special etc, they're. they're still connected to aura, requiring it just as dust does to actually use........... which is A Problem. to me.
#legitimately shaking semblances to fit in#for my own sanity's sake!!!#also might as well tag this#au stuff#since this whole spiel is derived from au thoughts
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in terms of like, visual story-telling, the characters in RWBY all having unique weapons is great short-hand for telling you about them
Ruby’s scythe - it’s big, over-the-top, loud, it showcases her exuberance and imaginative thinking because she has to accommodate for its size and difficulty to use, which is why she’s a good leader because she’s already good at thinking around problems and using what she has available to her advantage
or Jaune’s sword and shield - it starts fairly basic and he’s not good at using them because they’re not his yet, Jaune doesn’t know who he is, so his weapon is straightforward and generic. as he progresses and upgrades his equipment, the weapon changes to reflect him - the Mistral upgrades when he’s on a self-destructive spiral focusing more on brute force that ultimately proves to not be particularly effective, especially contrasting his Atlas upgrades, which allow him to finally address his lack of a landing strategy and expand the shield, showing him more comfortable in his role as support and protector. and then the Ever After degradation, showing how he’s stagnated because he’s not been able to move forward
and on the flip-side of that, the weapons that aren’t terribly unique also tell you a lot about the characters
Cardin has a mace. that’s it. it’s blunt, brute force and aggressive but it’s also boring as hell. he’s a one-note bully with nothing much to him once you get past the bravado
similarly, James Ironwood has a gun. and that’s it. his upgrades involve: more gun. and then bigger gun. brute force trading out for even bruter forceness. it demonstrates his complete lack of imagination and how he focuses solely on direct action (which is reflected in how every strategy of his is ‘swing my dick giant army at it’, and we see in volume 8 how being the leader of the world’s only standing military means jack shit when you’ve never had to fight a war, and for all he brags about how advanced Atlas is - because that’s all he cares about - he’s never thought to update their strategy for the new equipment. using formations meant for horses and muskets isn’t gonna do you much good with giant robots and laser guns my guy)
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fuck it. say nice things about rwby
as much as i'm a capital Hater for rwby, i also do have a lot of love for a lot of aspects of it. there are genuinely nice things i can say about a lot of pieces of it, though often with a caveat of some kind. so like, obviously i could start on "well the show had a lot of heart and passion, even if it fell short in some areas!", or "the music has been consistently really good!", but i wanna home in on something i really like about the show that i don't think i see a lot of people talk about?
i'm a huge fan of the overall premise and vibes of the setting. (i'm fighting the urge to include caveats here, but people (myself included) have already discussed the major flaws with the worldbuilding so i'm not gonna bother.) so by this, i mean the specific mix of fantasy, modern, and sci-fi elements that give it a unique (or at least, relatively rare) vibe and setting.
there's a reason why the initial trailers captured people - the contrast between the misty monster-filled woods with ruby's high-tech near-future weapon is part of the red trailer's charm. bring in the other trailers, and you have a picture of a world where dense urban streets, high society functions, fantasy forests filled with monsters, and sci-fi trains guarded by robots alll mix together somehow. and it works!! it's really compelling, because no matter the flaws in some of it's writing it's just genuinely Cool!
the setting as a whole exists to justify characters in modern street fashion (mixed with fantastical elements!) fighting big fantasy monsters while living in dense urban environments with holographic tech and airships flying overhead. and thats great!! that's super cool!!! 'cause at the end of the day, people love swords and spears and historical/fantastical weaponry in modern/sci-fi settings. just look at the staying power of star wars or final fantasy.
and part of why RWBY's take in particular works for me is because it's not "modern urban setting with fantasy elements", nor is it "sci-fi setting with magic and monsters", and nor is it "modern urban with sci-fi tech", it's more like... "a fantasy setting that has developed to the point of something resembling our modernity, but with tech that has advanced further in areas ours hasn't due to the core fantastical elements of the setting". and i'm a huge sucker for that!! off the top of my head i only know that type of setting appearing in some of the final fantasy entries, or in fuckin Arknights
to leave off with a particular specific note - i'm a big fan of Mountain Glenn, Kuroyuri, and Brunswick Farms. any time the narrative goes into how actually dangerous it is to try and expand human living space (justifying the density of urban space in the cities that do exist!!) i get excited. i love hearing about the various ways people have attempted to combat the threat of the grimm and failed. delicious
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okay looks like the ask was too big to be sent earlier so I'm going to break it up into two halves and see if that works
idea for rwby
the soul needs training and refinement just as the body does. most of the time this is done simply by overcoming great trials naturally increasing the depths of ones soul. however some small groups on remnant have special techniques and philosophies to increase the power or growth of the soul.
sacrifice: by understanding and incorporating the concept of sacrifice into their world view and philosophy a aura user can give something up to gain something later of equal value, can take power from those they have defeated or killed for themselves, or offer themselves up in exchange for greater power in the moment. this soul refinement is typically done by silver eyed warriors. though it's also the most common form of soul refinement out there being known by most aura users that actually research such techniques. there is no meditation method associated with this soul refining. meaning it's users tend to be …. a little eccentric as their souls grow quickly beyond the boundaries their minds can place.
supplication: by supplicating yourself to the god of light or god of darkness (or the rusted knight though he's known to be a distant god sometimes and much more picky about giving power to mortals) you can use their power to deepen your own soul or expand it. this is rare but you'll more often than not get 3 or four of these in a generation popping up to try and win glory for their god in exchange for greater power or living as particularly strong priests keeping the grimm away. this is also where magic comes from and why the war with the gods went south so fast. prayer acts as the meditation method for this method, leading to users acting more like their favored god as time goes on, this is a problem because the gods are petty children or slowly going insane from loneliness. still if you need power in less than a decade this is probably your best option the others tend to be slower unless you're a natural talent/genius
Posting to spread the word. These are all really well thought out.
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