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[marcmight]

I'd also like a link to this post please!

One of my favorite Batfam headcanons I have is that, while the majority of the family has like alternate timelines where they go villain, Cass and Jason just don't.

Like, Bruce has the Batman who laughs, Dick has Ravager or Talon or Vampire King, Tim has gun batman, and I've seen fanfic evil versions of all the rest, but for Jason and Cass, that's just as bad as they get.

Like Cass killed a person one time and that was her low point.

And Jason kills a lot of people but except for when he was insane and occasionally went after heroes, he's very careful to never kill anyone who hasn't killed/raped/trafficked other people first.

And honestly? I can't imagine either of them doing anything worse than that. Like there's probably better versions, where neither ever had to fight or kill, but I doubt there are worse versions in the multiverse.

So what I'm saying is some magic annoying thing summons evil alternates of the batfamily, and it works for everyone but Cass and Jason, because they are already as bad as it gets for them (not very for Cass, murderous anti-villain for Jason).

I feel like this would piss everyone else off so badly.

[marcmight]

reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something

[marcmight]

9000 notes left to go!

glad that im not popular enough to have an evil shadow version of my blog that exists just to make contradictions on my posts

[marcmight]

So. There’s this show I really hate.

I didn’t even want to watch it, but I was forced to sit through literally all of it because my parents liked it for some reason that completely eludes me. Not only is the plot catastrophically bad and the characters inconsistent — it’s also very, very misogynistic in essence. Just thinking about it now makes me want to chew on the writing team’s bones.

I genuinely have nothing good to say about this show.

So. Do you know how many posts I uploaded to the corresponding tags?

ZERO (0)

Because there’s no point in spending energy on a thing I hate so passionately, and even less in ruining it for other people.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s OK to point out irregularities in writing, and to talk about specific aspects of a story that upset you. But uploading dozens of posts about how you Hate The Thing, Analysing The Thing Is Pointless, Everyone Who Worked On The Thing Is Stupid, and Everyone Who Loves The Thing Is Delusional, is maybe not the genius take you think it is.

It doesn’t make you smarter than everyone else. It just makes you boring.

[marcmight]

WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT

[marcmight]

If you fall for a social media prank, do you reblog/pass it on to your followers?

[marcmight]

gonna be a big one under the cut

[marcmight]

The reading comprehension and overall common sense on this website is piss poor.

[marcmight]

nowhere else

[marcmight]

[marcmight]

What a year this week has been.

[marcmight]

yeah the anime is great you just need to ignore the giant floppy cock and pussy that shows up every five minutes. It has rich lore.

[marcmight]

Honestly most shows with vitriolic fandoms would be all the better if the people who actively hate the way a show is going... just stopped watching the show. If you wanted fries but got a burger, then left the restaurant because of it, that's perfectly fine. But if you complained that you wanted fries, keep on eating the burger, say that you hate the burger, then keep on complaining that you want fries instead of leaving the restaurant and get fries somewhere else, then you're just annoying everyone and keeping them from enjoying their burgers.

I've had this thought swirling in the back of my head for a while, but it's finally congealed enough that I think I can make a coherent pitch, which is: I think RWBY's problems with the more vitriolic part of its fanbase partially stems from the fact that RWBY is a deconstruction that doesn't advertise it's a deconstruction.

RWBY's status as a deconstruction is pretty textbook. It takes apart standard fantasy, shounen, and anime tropes in order to analyze them and their deeper meaning and then reassembles them in new and interesting ways for the plot/characters/series. Thing is, it never says that outright in promotional material, which can lead to later outrage in fans.

See, unless their way of discovering new shows is to close their eyes and stab their finger at random, most people tend to choose series to watch/read based on expectations. Maybe a friend said they'll like it because it has [insert thing], maybe they read the summary and were intrigued, maybe they thought the poster/cover art was cool, whatever. These small pieces of information are generally enough for people to make a snap-judgment of the style and genre of the series, which they can then gauge against their personal tastes and decide whether or not they want to try.

Most of the time, this works just fine. Well-written deconstructions also generally give the viewers some warning/buildup before they take a hard swerve. See Madoka Magica: the magical girl paradigm is shaded by the possibility of death as soon as we're introduced to it, then there's an onscreen death with blood, and then a few episodes later we eventually realize the Faustian bargain of it all. Even innocent viewers who stumbled into watching it, unaware of the show's reputation, would go "Oh, wait, this is not going in the direction magical girl shows usually go" by a third of the way through.

The thing is, with RWBY, this does not happen unless you're paying a lot of attention and/or looking for it. And neither the cover art nor the summary nor, I believe, the fanbase gives a lot of warning about the swerves ahead.

In fact, RWBY initially bills itself as a pretty standard shounen anime. The main protagonist is hinted to have Special Powers and gets into the Magic Monster-Hunting School in the first episode, and the first two-and-a-half seasons are taken up by her and her friends' superhero-esque slice-of-life shenanigans as they thwart robberies and terrorist attacks and gear up for a tournament arc against the looming background of a larger conspiracy.

Then in the last half of the third season the villains' entire Rube Goldberg machine of a scheme snaps into completion and the plot twists so hard the entire genre takes a hard right. If you're used to character analysis and common anime tropes, this is not completely a surprise -up until this point, RWBY's character arcs and plot have been subtly traveling in non-traditional directions that hint of greater flexibility in genre treatment ahead- but if you're not... well.

Thing is, people watching RWBY up until this point have signed up for pretty standard shounen and they've been getting it, but the third season's ending smashes that all to bits. From then on out in RWBY, it's like they ordered fries and suddenly got a hamburger. It might be delicious; but it's not what they asked for, what they wanted, or what they paid for, and they are, justifiably, displeased.

So when the reasonable people either adjusted their expectations or sighed, shook their heads, and clicked back out (perhaps with a grumble and a scowl), the unreasonable people dug their heels in and began insisting that everybody was Getting The Show/Character Wrong and that CRWBY is ruining it, because the fact that RWBY's method of deconstruction is to put standard tropes in a blender and then arrange what's left in deceptive patterns means that said unreasonable viewers can scan the bare surface and argue that all the stereotypical stuff is clearly still under there, somewhere.

So they're continually trying to drag RWBY back to the tracks of a typical shounen anime series (it's closest relative), which creates a dissonance between the show they're watching and the show they think they're watching. They're trying to turn the hamburger back into fries, basically, except that doesn't work and just frustrates everyone involved, because you're trying to make RWBY into something that it's not. Hence, this attitude probably starting/fueling some of the more contentious statements in the fandom, i.e.:

"Ironwood was right the whole time" (in most action movies and shounen anime, allied military leaders are trustworthy beyond reproach)

"Adam's character was wasted" (we all know how much shounen loves their powerful warrior antiheroes)

"Ruby and the others are in the wrong about [insert thing]/or for doing [insert thing], and this is bad writing!" (shounen protagonists don't usually make more than One Very Big Mistake over the course of their entire careers, which is usually fixed/overcome/redeemed via an appropriately rigorous training arc)

And to be clear, there's nothing wrong with shounen tropes or shounen anime. They're wonderful storytelling devices in their own way and their own time: but if you want standard by-the-book shounen without any new and interesting concoctions, then RWBY is definitely not the show for you. And most people don't find that out until it's too late.

[marcmight]

Honestly folks

I’m not going to go down the RWBY is doomed rabbit hole

I absolutely refuse to and you should too

It’s not helpful in any way for anyone or anything

I understand it’s expensive. I understand that there’s a hurdle to making it sustainable.

But just because they haven’t cemented something yet doesn’t mean they won’t, and it doesn’t even mean there haven’t been any options on the table.

We’re working off bits and pieces of information, far too little to confidently state anything about RWBY’s future

If RWBY gets cancelled, I’ll be heartbroken. But that hasn’t happened yet and there’s no reason to go all doomer on it.

They were able to secure the crunchyroll deal for v9 and crunchyroll has shown no signs of wanting to distance themselves from RWBY, even making a collab between their vtuber and the Ruby vtuber. Yes RT is struggling financially that’s clear but there likely negotiations we are not privy to ongoing as well.

CRWBY is scrappy and resilient, they always have been.

Who are we to preemptively claim their luck has run out?

[marcmight]

What’s an interesting way you could make Jaune a “villain” or take a dark turn while staying true to his character flaws?

Well generally the easiest way to turn a character into a villain is to take their virtues and exaggerate them until they become flaws, and take their already existing flaws and strengthen them even further

So for Jaune I’d take his anger issues and blow them up ten fold, especially his tendency to speak without thinking. This takes him from mean to needlessly cruel, from snappy to cutting down people with words as sharp as razors. Plus he’s already a big guy, so if he actually USED that size while he was angry he’d actually be really scary

His speaking without thinking could also be twisted to cruelty even when he’s not angry. Casually cutting people down with brutal honesty, backhanded compliments, the whole nine yards

As for the virtues to flaws, the most obvious one is his loyal and protective nature. But when exaggerated, loyalty becomes obsession, protective becomes possessive

But another one that could easily become sinister is Jaune’s tactical mind. Jaune’s tactics tend to take the simplest and often shortest route between problem and solution. So with a twisted moral compass leading him, it wouldn’t take much for his tactics to become “The ends justify the means,” usually enacted with brutal efficiency

So now we’ve got a guy who can go from smiling to raging at the flip of a switch, who is violently obsessed and possessive of the people he deems as “his” all while verbally cutting down THEM and everyone around him, who is also a tactical genius willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve his goals

How’s that for a villain?

[marcmight]

RWBY and Trauma

So, i want to talk a little bit about RWBY. Specifically, with regards to its thematic storytelling. I think I made a post about this a few days ago but im gonna make a longer one here.

RWBY tackles a lot of themes in its storytelling. Death, grief, fear, trust, etc. to name a few.

One of the bigger themes is "keep moving forward", which was also Monty's motto. It is exemplified through the characters, both heroes and villains, and how they handle trauma and suffering.

The villains have pretty much all suffered. Salem, Cinder, Hazel, Mercury, Emerald, Roman, Neo, even Watts, all suffered. They experienced trauma, and hardship, and it shaped them.

The big difference between them and team RWBY is that they cannot move forward. Where team RWBY learn to grow and change. Salem couldn't accept loss, and grief, and instead turned those emotions to anger, same with Hazel, Adam, Neo, they all refused to move beyond their trauma. Yang put it pretty well in V8 - all this death and destruction because something bad happened to you once upon a time?

Trauma is inevitable. But the difference between the heroes and the villains is how their trauma impacts them going forward. And not just in a "the villains react negatively and the heroes don't" because Ruby reacted poorly, as did Blake, and Weiss in the early volumes. Qrow drinks to deal with it, and Ozpin let the betrayal he experienced define him.

The difference here is that the heroes try to grow and stop making their suffering everyone else's problem. You cannot use your trauma to justify lashing out at the world and other people. I think Kratos in God of War put it quite well - "Do not be sorry. Be better." You can't hurt people because you are traumatised, because all that does is traumatise everyone else. It isn't a justification for lashing out. Salem was traumatised, and she murdered so many people, and traumatised a bunch of other people, who will only continue that cycle.

It is worth noting that some of the antagonists do grow and change and become better. Ilia, Emerald, Hazel, and Neo are the big examples. They were all hurt by the world, and they turned to anger and violence. But Ilia is convinced by Blake that it isn't what she wants, and Blake is right. So Ilia turns away from that path. Hazel and Emerald both change and grow, and whilst Hazel gets the noble sacrifice, Emerald has to make amends for hurting people by being and doing better, and trying to make a positive impact on the world. And Neo had an entire arc culminating in her seeking revenge, and getting it, and realising that it was a hollow victory that left her with nothing but directionless grief and anger. When she had nothing to pursue, she was forced to confront the fact that she was just running from her actual feelings and lashing out. In the end, she chooses to go to the tree willingly, which is essentially willingly giving in to change and growth, because that's what the tree does.

The central conflict of the show is essentially that everyone has suffered, and experienced trauma. But it is the hero's ability and desire to grow beyond it and be better, so that they stop hurting the people around them, that sets them apart from the villains, who refuse to keep moving forward and instead just let their suffering infect everyone else, perpetuating an endless cycle of violence and conflict.

[marcmight]