invested-in-your-future - Tumblr blog

[invested-in-your-future]

Will Volume 5 of your rewrite continue to focus on Yang and Ruby?

Every Volume will have two focus leads - Blake and Weiss are next for V5r. It is even named after one of them - "The Lies of Blake Belladonna".

It will be time to see what makes her tick, where she comes from, and what events have shaped her beliefs, leading to her involvement with White Fang.

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Was that I know I have a plan intentional? Penny said that to Ruby too.

Nice catch, and yes. It's literally word for word the same thing within a similar context.

Ruby had always subconsciously overlapped what happened to Pyrrha and Penny with her memories of losing Summer. Now? There's a nice parallel between Summer and Penny that Ruby never would have realized. Probably makes it sting all the more for her alongside what is known of Summer now.

[invested-in-your-future]

The final (13th) chapter of V4r is up.

A few more answers (but new questions, too) and an overall sign of where things would be going. A bit more world-building and some stuff that has been teased before. Also an ending that strikes me bit ironic right now, considering...

Now off to polish V5r, and with a small break(bit longer than usual but not that much) I'll begin posting that one too. Currently it's mostly done and V7r is in outlining phase.

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Doing some last-minute spellchecking for the final V4r chapter, and I somehow totally had forgotten where it ends and how ironic it now feels in hindsight.

On the bright side, I don't have to worry about accidentally writing something the show already does because it's clear the canon story is absolutely not interested in doing anything with this, lmao.

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counterpoint: It will all still be about Jaune, just the actual interesting things will have happened offscreen.

Salem nuked Vale offscreen because everyone knows Jaune and/or Cinder would have found a way to make it about themselves if it had happened onscreen. Further: PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!

A-fucking-men

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It's fascinating to watch the new xmen show and see a character being allowed to show the full range of human emotions when grieving (yes even negative ones) and make decisions that run counter to their motivations and "alignment" because the ones writing the show seem to understand how grief works.

97 releasing so close to v9 makes volume 9 look all the more awful in terms of how it handled trauma, flaws and emotions (not to mention how rwby as a whole handled the aftermath of a tragic event considering what this show managed to do in three episodes).

97 manages to do more with one of the leads parsing their grief in half an episode than rwby did in entire SIX VOLUMES.

Ruby deserved so much more than character assassination and the outright offensive tree tea subplot.

[invested-in-your-future]

There's more to what Ozpin did than the bird thing?

Well, yes.

It would be REALLY dumb to just repeat what the show did, where everyone gets mad that Ozpin can turn people into birds with no downsides at all, wouldn't it?

Qrow and Raven had agreed to a deal whose consequences they didn't understand, fighting for something the scope of which they didn't quite get yet - turning into birds or the Semblances being supercharged were some of the easier to figure out ones, but it took a while for them to realize what had happened.

And it's not just about how invasive and Faustian the deal itself was - it's also about whether it was worth it.

Qrow had just shrugged and decided there was no other way but to follow Ozpin, but with everything else that had happened, Raven eventually couldn't - she came to believe that the price was in no way justified because the goals she dedicated herself towards were pointless.

Raven views everything she sacrificed, everything she worked for, and everything she had to do as a giant waste of time.- it's not just about what was done to them but also about not wanting to be just another sacrifice in a fight she no longer believed in.

[invested-in-your-future]

Yours isn't the only rewrite or AU I've seen that positions Mistral as the traditional kingdom, the old-fashioned kingdom, the kingdom mired in its own history. What do you think it is about Mistral that makes it seem to fit in that slot?

I think it has to do a lot with what we know about them from the beginning. Which is not much but it paints a pretty clear picture.

It's the place where most of WF's focus is, which means that the place should be pretty racist.

What's more, Cinder is quick to bring up Mistral as an example of "places where things are bad" too, meaning its not just anti-Faunus racism either or she would jump to Atlas.

Raven feels comfortable walking around in what's essentially an expensive samurai cosplay for some reason.

Pretty much ALL characters that we know hail from Mistral (Cinder, Neptune, Pyrrha) are self-conscious of their public image, which indicates a decently serious class divide there - what kind of society would Pyrrha need to live in to develop this complex of being unapproachable where even someone being nice or genuine with her would shock her?

From Pyrrha, we know it's big on warrior tournaments which itself is rooted in tradition and ritual.

The main character and mythology inspirations from that continent in the early seasons seem to be all about ancient Greece and ancient Rome, with japan and china being added latter on.

Out of the "bad sides" of Great War, Atlas/Mantle are the industrial powerhouses and "Kingdoms of Progress", so it doesn't make sense for Mistral to be exact same way either.

Likewise it's the only place that fits - Vale is the centrist expy, Vacuo is anarchy, Atlas is all about progress and technology.

We know there is monarchy there, or at least was a hundred years ago.

We know Faunus fight for their freedom started there.

We know Menagerie was an "insult gift" to the Faunus after the war was over. This indicates that a significant portion of Mistral's ruling body is still salty and stuck in the past.

We know that even now there's an effort to just ship off all Faunus into Menagerie.

The first WoR we have on Mistral also emphasizes the idea of class divide there.

What's more, in terms of narrative it just makes sense to go that way - the first three Volumes create teases of "what came before" and mysteries about things like silver eyes and Ozpin and Raven and Grimm. Logically that means that the place the cast goes next to has to resonate with those ideas as scenery is often molded to be thematically appropriate.

Also, what better way to challenge the main cast about how the world is not like they thought it would be than to show a place so rooted in prejudice, tradition, and class divide that it would make them question Vale too?

And in more practical way - Honestly? It's the Kingdom the show does least with and yet majority of the V3 plot hooks lead there - there's a lot more room to play around and world-build.

[invested-in-your-future]

how long has Raven lived in Argus?

After Summer died, Raven ran from Vale and spent two or three years wandering the world, trying to find herself a new path - something she could believe in. Using the portals, she visited locations from Remnant's mythology, trying to find meaning in the world that she sacrificed so much to protect.

Raven and Qrow were born in Argus before they moved to Vale, where a robbery and a fire left them orphans. Life swept them from one location to another as they struggled to survive. When the duo landed at Vale, even though Raven couldn't escape the past, she couldn't dare to look back at her birthplace even once. Then Ozpin met the twins, and they became enrolled into the Academy, and before Raven knew she was a Huntress and working for Ozpin - locked into a Faustian bargain neither she nor Qrow understood that well when they agreed to it.

She grew interested in Argus when she returned there to bring back Summer when she first disappeared.

With everything that happened after, Raven could no longer view Ozpin the same way. Raven was convinced the path they all walked was wrong.

After she traveled the world and found no answer to her struggle there, she came back there and has lived there for around seven years now, entrenching herself in the city.

Due to specific reasons, she came to believe that Argus was where she could elicit actual change in the world, challenging the structures of power that bound the current order together.

It took her time to build herself up without drawing unwanted attention as she built towards her goals, making friends and enemies, building up capital, and acquiring influence.

Fall of Beacon convinced her that she was right all along - making her double down on her commitment to her goals.

[invested-in-your-future]

What series in your opinion have good queer representation and romance development?

If to go by just animated stuff five stand out as pretty good in terms of LGBTQ+ rep or romance writing.

The Owl House - possibly some of the best LGBTQ+ rep to date as far as animated shows go and even overall shows, live action included.

Nimona - a rare case of positive portrayal of mlm romance in animation. In a bit less than two hours, the movie sells the pairing, the father-child found-family aspect of the two leads, and also condemns christofascism. And hey, how about characters suffering physical trauma and NOT being vilified for that? Not to mention how as far as metaphors go the movie just screams trans-rights.

She Ra and the Princesses of Power - an extremely well-written romance that could have easily been thrown away as bait in any other show. Not in this one - instead, it's the backbone of what makes the show work, and it's never treated as anything but textual.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts

Arcane - some of the smoothest, snappiest, least queerbaity romance establishment and progression I've ever seen that nails the pairing chemistry.

Recently Castlevania Nocturne had some pretty great LGBTQ+ Rep too.

If to talk overall beyond animation

Sense8 - unsurprisingly, a show about finding strength in diversity and empathy also has a diverse, well-written cast.

Our Flag Means Death - some of the best mlm romance writing in recent years - and with believable relationship growth, too!

Good Omens.

That's just off the top of my head - I am SURE I am forgetting something.

[invested-in-your-future]

As I rewatch bits of the first three Volumes (due to reasons), the more I think about Blake, her motivations, etc, the less I understand why they thought it was a good idea to give her two functioning, alive, good-natured, influential/royalty parents.

Like, I REALLY doubt they had wanted Blake to be some rich faux-activist girl whose whole worldview gets disproven and whose most notable dialogue lines end up retroactively sounding outright nonsensical.

Like, what was the train of thought on flipping her entire character upside down like this beyond "Oh, all other RWBY members have messed up parent issues, so let's give her happy, healthy parents"? Was there even a train of thought?

Or did they just invent her parents on the spot because they had no idea where Blake would have gone after V3 ended and had to make up an entire unimportant-side-journey she could be stashed away in for a while (and also wanted to throw her into a subplot with Sun to counter-balance all the Yang stuff because the show was still hellbent on queerbaiting so they had to find a way to place Sun into a situation where he gets hurt for Blake so it's not just Yang as her motivation)?

[invested-in-your-future]

So there is a way to suppress aura?

Apprehending criminals would be nigh impossible if there wasn't.

Most Kingdoms have something to dampen the effects of Semblances or Dust - Ozpin couldn't break out from his restraints for example. Not on the scale of what Mistral can achieve though.

Through the chapters released I laid out an idea that there was a way to affect Dust, Grimm and Aura - like how Dust weaponry would suddenly stop working in certain locations or how Grimm would find it hard to enter some places.

As I am treating Dust based technology and even Aura as something that runs on science and logic, there's a progression from where it started to where it is now. Which means there would obviously be attempts to counteract it - both within modern Kingdoms (because, logically, wars happen and people would think of things like how to incapacitate their enemy tech) and in the past (because it had to start somehow).

And a lot of that knowledge has been lost - people no longer remember how Dust came to be(one of the first wor segments in the canon show has Salem mention that) and now view concepts like Semblance as something that always has been there. Which makes sense considering the scope of destruction Remnant underwent - for example if Nemea hadn't survived to this day and the myth behind Huntsman weaponry was forgotten, people would not know how the tradition had started at all either.

But there's logic behind it all and an origin point from which all of these things would develop and grow and why. The only thing that runs counter to logic or science is Magic and this isn't Magic.

There would have been ways to counteract Aura/Semblance, there would have been ideas of how to handle Grimm and there would be research into affecting dust considering literally everything works on it and even our world has stuff like EMP for electronics.

Showcasing that ties into bigger focus on where all those aspects within the setting come from, how they started and how they work.

It also ties into the idea that some knowledge could be dangerous in the right (or wrong) hands.

The Department of Harmony forces have been shown to have access to top of the line technology before so it's no surprise they have something like this. Now how that could have been created is another question entirely but it's also pretty easy to extrapolate at this point considering Glynda's comments about Resonators, what Midhart had access to and so on.

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It might be a good thing we are not getting volume 10. Rwby always struggled with tone but after volume 8 it got worse and beyond episode 1 doesn't give me faith that the writers will improve come volume 10.

I am, like, 99% sure they intended to go back to goofy funny tone now that "character issues are solved"(LOL) and everyone is heroic and hopeful and they would 100% try to paint Team RWBY return as this moment where the tide shifts away from hopeless and into "we can win"(lol).

Even though by all accounts there's zero logical reason they would be able to make ANY sort of difference there. Remember - show is acting on faulty logic that team RWBY were somehow crucial force of net good on each arc somehow rather than someone who literally would do random things rolling the dice during morality choices (the show are already attempted to do with ruby's message acting like it's some world-changing inspirational speech).

So v10 would likely have everyone regress even further and clash with the setting even harder than Sun and Neptune do now.

Yang would get some throw away line of how she's fine with Raven now, Ruby would start throwing jokes to show that "she got fixed", Weiss would get propped up as the Good Rich Person and so on. Bonus points if Blake tells a bunch of Faunus to not be mean to the poor poor rich atlas people.

[invested-in-your-future]

Which is your favourite Kingdom in your AU, including Menagerie if you wish? Favourite for any reason you like.

Honestly I don't think there's a specific favourite. I'll always be partial to Vale because it's where the story started and all but I feel like there's a charm that can be found in each of them:

There's a certain pull to Vale and I think it's fascinating to have a kingdom that's so enamored with the status quo, they are willing to ignore ALL the red flags. There's a ton of history(and guilt) on why they ended up this way which is fun to consider. It's a place where the sense of stability and peace is something people desperately long for. So what happens when that's taken away and half its main city is lost to the Grimm?

Mistral on the other hand is fun for the opposite reason for me - in that they didn't really seem to have learned much from the Great War. It's a maelstrom of pettiness, classism, racism and pride. There's a thousand years of customs, traditions and superstition. Lots of people at the top seem to value the country over its people too. There's also a bit of two-facedness to the place and the experience there can differ a lot depending on whether one is a human or a faunus. It's a nation that stands on the precipice of change - for better or for worse.

Atlas on the other hand is an interesting contrast in that the consequences of the Great War have shaped every aspect of their society. Rules, bureaucracy, order intermingle with scientific progress skirting boundaries of morality. It's the place that touts itself as a meritocracy yet the rich are more than willing to use their money to bend the restrictions and shape the Kingdom to their liking. The Kingdom's impressive facade is also built off exploitation of the working class, slavery and leaving Mantle in the cold, while more than willing to use its resources and population. More integrated military as well as scientific progress also mean significantly different social life, hobbies and activities people would engage in when compared to other kingdoms too. I think it's fascinating to think about the place so tangled in its own rules that any sort of change is a severe struggle that's near impossible to overcome without breaking the said laws. It's also fun to think of how a place like that could probably break under more stressful circumstances and power plays.

Vacuo on the other hand is littered with landmarks of past tragedies and conflicts. Ancient temples and monuments litter the desert. The scars from the Great War also run deep both in the landscape and the people. It's a chaotic place with a shifting power structure where myth and reality intermingles and where a lot of Journey to the West influences take place.

Menagerie is fun because it's an enigma. Not only sea travel is dangerous but the place also doesn't have its own tower so even before the fall of beacon it was cut off from the rest of the world. It's also a place shaped by multiple interests of other Kingdoms where the line between foreign and local interests blur - it was originally Mistral's mining colony with multiple noble families having interest in it. And then suddenly with the end of the Great War it was decided that it should be given away to the Faunus. How does that work? How does the place function? Also none of the main cast have ever been there and very few characters know how life is there beyond hearsay. There's allure to a whole country being a mystery box which works well with the ideas like Mistral wanting to forcibly relocate all Faunus to there and stuff.

I also think it's fun to imagine how many Kingdoms didn't make it to the present day and why and how that impacts those that did.

Overall I guess I usually alternate between them when working on lore depending on the mood.

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I still can't get it out of my head that after SIX VOLUMES WHERE:

Beacon fell

Sun ditched his team and ran off to another continent because Blake needed a comic relief (and showrunners were still queerbaiting).

Mistral had it's huntsmen wiped and academy attacked

Atlas and Mantle literally got destroyed

Vale got offscrened

WF tore itself apart

Team RWBY went "missing"

There's a world destroying immortal satan with god mcguffins.

All that the showrunners can think of when it comes to writing Sun and Neptune(who is from Mistral btw) is STILL just "ayyy Volume 2 comedy clown segment"...

If there was a moment to showcase just how RWBY writers are completely unable to progress characters in any way or have them react to story beats, this would be it.

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Yeah to remind of the situation Korra as a show was

The day the showrunners presented the premise to Nick executives the production got halted and the executives tried to convince them that the "better idea" would be to have Mako as the avatar and Korra as "his girlfriend or something ". They had to fight tooth and nail to have the premise of show survive let alone anything last that.

To this day people speculated that Mako/Korra stuff was executive mandated thing to appease them.

And then the show was saddled with multiple rules(like not being allowed to use word death or defining how close characters can stand to each other) and literally sent to web app and then killed the moment they found out about korrasami.

If this was Miles Luna he'd go "I get to make Jaune the protagonist?! yay"

But Miles Luna wasn't that guy when it came to RWBY and what it can or can't do - he was one of the guys in charge, the ones deciding what can or can't be done. He was the executive dude with bad ideas.

I am new to rwde stuff, and I'm wondering why Miles is so often singled out in criticism? Like, with self-insert stuff that makes sense, but I also see people criticize the relics/gods worldbuilding as a Miles thing, without mention of Kerry. Same for similar criticisms like the plot driving them into a corner in v10, or the mishandling of the WF plot line. Is there a reason for that, or is it holdover from not liking him for the self-insert? Is he the one who talks about it the most, or has he specifically claimed responsibility for that, or he writes more than Kerry, or something? Is it because he just seems to be the more public of the two of them, doing things like his cameos? Is he simply the more unlikable one? Thank you in advance, if you answer this question.

I think it is that, yeah - Miles is the one most often putting his foot in his mouth with weird hot takes that come back to bite him.

Him being tasked by Monty to watch a bunch of anime to see what NOT to do and ending up gushing about sword art online and loving the one soul eater character he was supposed to understand about being crass?

Him going on an off-tangent rant about how Korra world building is bad only to then rip off parts of that lore and it all end up a mess.

Him ranting how on how LGBTQ+ rep in Korra has absolutely no build up only for BB ending up getting ZERO PROPER DEVELOPMENT that it SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN FOR VOLUMES (because the show was too busy queerbaiting) and only getting a desperate kiss to attempt to get the views back up... (Mind you Korra was under a LOT of network restrictions and actually doing what the show did took actual guts while the only excuse RT has for dancing around the topic is "we don't wanna")

Him watching Land of Lustrous (a show about an immortal being experiencing trauma and PTSD and dealing with grief and existential crisis) and going "I don't get it" and then delivering the absolute messy v9 nonsense that literally vilifies trauma and goes against basic mental wellness concepts.

There's a trail of Miles stepping on the same rake over and over again going back years so he kind of became the face of all the wrong decisions taken in the show.

Plus, you know, yeah, Jaune is his baby and he somehow ends up being the faux protagonist of the show leeching off the screen time of actual protagonists and getting more development and focus than actual protagonists. And him being the guy to whom "the idea of brother gods came to in a dream" and it's easy to see why he kind of became the poster child for everything bad in the show.

However, Kerry is just as guilty for a lot of aspects of the writing but people are bit more lenient because again two worst parts of the show - Jaune and brother gods both come from Miles.

RWBY having borderline nonsensical setting and offensive problematic writing is a group effort though because RT as a whole never grew out of the "edgy homophobic jokes machinima youtuber" phase - not even after becoming a company that owns million dollar franchises.

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Not even talking about supposed tonal mess, I think the fact that Neptune and Sun being treated like it's volume 2 even when it makes zero tonal sense speaks volumes about the show's inability to progress characters at all or making them react or be impacted by the events in the setting.

Most of Mistral's huntsmen got murdered and academy assaulted (reminder Neptune is from there), Atlas crashed, Fall of Beacon happened, WF fell apart, there's literal immortal satan with god-made weapons on the loose and all their friends are dead and yet the writing can't make these characters act anyway other than the one template they used before.

The show narrative is unable to account for anything that happened in it.

I haven't seen the new RWBY Beyond thing yet, but between the screenshots of it and V9, I just gotta say... Do the writers want us to treat their show with the slightest bit of seriousness?

They always have big important supposed-to-be-emotional scenes, things like people mourning the loss of Team RWBY who people think are dead, and then they're like "here's Sun and Neptune in a glorified chibi sketch! Look at their mustaches!" We're supposed to think people think that Team RWBY might be dead, right?

Like this was a small jump of a shark in the Office.

Are we supposed to treat Beyond with as little real weight as RWBY Chibi? Or do they just not know how to do any better?

And then V9, they're like "Ruby is grieving Penny, holding onto her sword, clearly falling deeper and deeper into despair - LOOK, Weiss got clonked on the head with a rock! it's the funny block guards! They're here to tell funny jokes!"

I understand that RWBY as a show needs to have some room to make comedic jokes, but they do not do that in a good well done way. It's like they're not even treating this show seriously themselves at all, so how can I? Like for once could they try to not diminish and undercut anything serious that happens in the show?