#and then people on the comments going 'i like rwby BUT it's such a bad show'

[min3nc]

"i like rwby but..." shut up. leave it there. this show is raised to stupidly high standards. it has a DEDICATED fucking hatedom. this show doesn't need half-assed positivity with people who pretty much get off on fucking bashing it for things that would fly under the radar on your average cishet white dudebro protagonist tv show/anime.

practice saying it. RWBY is a good show, and i love it. that's it, no additions unless they are positive.

[sytokun]

A lengthy thought wall about the recent RT shutdown and DillonGoo Studios' interest in acquiring RWBY - I speculate and entertain some hopium about the pros that could come with it and why all in all, impossible it may be, it's probably the best shot we have for RWBY.

Some rwde cause it mentions Shane's letter and nobody likes that.

I've been reading a lot, a lot of the various discussions around RWBY's fate and Dillon Goo Studio's (henceforth shortened to DGS) interest in acquiring it. Here's my overall evaluation everything so far:

This goes without saying but this is obviously an optimistic take on the matter, I wanna talk moreso about the pros rather than the logistics of whether DGS can afford it, whether you think it's just clout-chasing, etc.

Dillon's a former RWBY animator and a fan of Monty's work. No matter what you think of Monty's style of action, in the greater public sphere, RWBY is known and liked precisely for that and largely that alone, period. Only RWBY fans who are already invested in the show will mention story or characters - for the majority of people, i.e. future RWBY fans, the action is the main selling point, and DGS clearly can deliver on this.

Dillon himself is at least amicable with most of CRWBY and likely open to negotiate with them given prior work history. For any other media corporation, consulting the old IP holders of a defunct company is a minor formality at best or even a laughable waste of time. And if you want to bring up a certain almost 10-year-old letter and the person working with Dillon who wrote it, there are plenty in the comments section who would agree with me that it's not as big a dealbreaker as one might think, given the company the letter largely condemned is well dead and buried. I won't go further into that matter.

DGS is very community-oriented - they're very intimately familiar with 3D animation and produces creator-friendly content like the Goo Engine which helps future animators inspired by RWBY to make similar anime-style 3D content. Every single RWBY fan animator whose work we enjoyed benefits from this acquisition - all of whom can grow into future animators for the series, intimately familiar with its trademark action style.

DGS is probably the only genuine fan of RWBY that has a remote chance of acquiring the IP with the express motivation of using the IP creatively. This can be clearly seen in the steady improvement of their animation content over the years and desire to push the medium. All other candidates are corporations whose motivations with RWBY are, more likely than not, going to be entirely financial (not necessarily a bad or unhealthy thing, but it's a factor).

If RWBY stays under WB or given off to Crunchyroll? They have no stake in RWBY beyond pure business. They have no interest in what's best for RWBY or its growth, only how it will be most profitable or recoup the losses from RT. The only companies I can see being more creatively invested in RWBY are ArcSystem Works who implemented RWBY in Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, or Shaft that animated Ice Queendom, but those are both Japanese companies unlikely to go all-in on a foreign IP - especially given that these studios usually adapt other IPs, not buy them outright.

DGS is invested in RWBY. Their entire studio's style is built on RWBY-esque action animation. Acquiring RWBY more or less guarantees it'll become their main flagship series and their main investment, whereas with WB, Crunchyroll or other big platform, RWBY is nowhere near prolific enough to be much more than another shelf-filler in their library. At worst, Warner archives RWBY for eternity and at best, they only bring RWBY out for tie-ins and crossovers to prop up their larger DC properties. Why give RWBY the spotlight when they own the likes of Justice League and Looney Tunes?

DGS may not be the most plausible choice, but it's clear that unless some big company like ArcSystem Works or something throws their hat in the RWBY ring, DGS is far and away the people's favourite, even gaining approval from JJ Grelle (Tyrian's VA), who quite notably refused to reprise their role for Rooster Teeth.

DGS is still very much an indie studio which IMO RWBY has flourished the most under, the time period where it retained a certain unpolished energy that made you invested in watching it improve and grow. I don't want to watch a RWBY that uses its precious time under a new studio to just go by the numbers and coast by on its existing fanbase. I want to watch a RWBY that grows, innovates and takes risks, that impresses and draws new and old fans in the way it does for every single person that has watched the Red Trailer for the first time.

I think a lot of folks have a preconceived notion that RWBY has to continue on the exact same production value as V9 left off, but that never had to be the case. I think a return to a much more subdued production with smaller teams focusing on strong individual episodes over large overarching narratives will be healthy for RWBY and more easily invite new fans, which it sorely needs if it wants to stay afloat this time around.

Whether this means a continuation to V10 or a reboot I don't know, but I know I'd rather take a RWBY that a new studio respects and will produce in a way that fits their strengths and limits, over trying and overreaching themselves to make something work that even Rooster Teeth failed to, or over no RWBY at all.

That's the crux of it: the worse alternative is no RWBY at all. CRWBY and especially us as a fandom are in no position to be picky when that's the alternative. There's no such thing as a perfect deal, but this is about as sweet as they come. If the only hurdle is WB's refusal to sell, then that's on Warner. If the only hurdle is affording the IP, I, many others and no doubt other associates Dillon Goo Studios knows are likely to help them meet that price.

I do wanna stress, despite my optimism, I'm not asking to stake all our hopes on DGS as the saviour of RWBY, god no - the last thing I want is a weirdo Monty 2.0 cult and I doubt Dillon would want that either. I'm not saying the RWBY they'd make will be perfect or be equitable for everyone either - some compromises must be made and professionally speaking, whoever owns RWBY next has no legal obligation to make V10 or bring back anyone from CRWBY. Any such action is solely on the graces of the new IP holder and at the end of the day, I think whatever creates a healthier, longer-lasting future for RWBY should take priority over our sentiment or attachment.

But as things stand right now, if DGS isn't just farming Twitter likes and is honest-to-god serious about acquiring RWBY, and no better candidate presents themselves, this is about the best option we have right now, and I myself will be ready to help and contribute in whatever little way I can. Because I know the very real alternative is either a complete gamble on yet another faceless media subsidiary, or watching RWBY rot behind a vault for the next decade or more.

[epic-arc]

Last Survivor Au

Well, I came here to comment on more headcanons about the ''sole survivor'' au and that I can help @howlingday with the plot or ideas, I hope you like it guys. I'm going to start with history and events for characters and to finish psychologically, so look at the sky and welcome to this infinite tsukuyomi

History and Events:

Well for the death of the rwby and (j)npr teams and I believe that cardin's team died, that would count as 11 deaths in something that was just to present the school and test the qualities of the students. With this death count, Beacon and Ozpin would gain a bad reputation from other kingdoms and give themselves to the people of Vale, thereby potentially accelerating certain events that take place in volumes 1 to 3.

With Blake's death in this universe, many events that happen with White Fang that are explored in this volume and in the 4th would be faster, but in a bad sense, with Blake's death, Adam could use her as an example to gain more trust between the faunus.

Ironwood looking at this death count could end up giving Ozpin a slight scolding but it would help him with more protection in the kingdom and speeding up the introduction of penny. Coming back in the white fang trope because of this the introduction of sun would also be faster than in canon.

Characters:

Jaune would probably take practical classes or be forced to spend some time because of his psychology. Maybe he would gain a slight fame among the other students but nothing exaggerated, It's maybe because of the events I mentioned ozpin could try to form a team between Jaune Sun and Penny, Probably at first Jaune might think it's a bad idea but I'll do that leave it with @howlingday .

Characters that appear in future volumes like Oscar I can only see them in the future, because following the canon Oscar wouldn't have a reason to enter Beancon other than Ozpin, but maybe we can change that in this universe like Ozpin launching more opportunities for kingdoms for people who want to be hunters to join beacon.

I commented about Jaune gaining fame, He would have a fan of being the only survivor but it would be something like a curse, Everywhere he goes people recognize him as the only survivor, Newspapers try to interview him to discuss more about the case of the 11 deaths but he always refuses

Psychologically:

We know that Jaune is one of the characters with a bad psychology but there are two characters who butt heads, Winter and Tai. Winter being the older sister who believed that her younger sister was strong for the world to respond with the news of her death, Tai is a former hunter who lost his wife and was abandoned by another, having to take care of his daughters alone with his teammate, He trusted that the two were strong and then heard the tragic news of their death,

Ozpin gained another weight on his back because in his vision because of his trust and irresponsibility he caused the death of potential hunters and one of the people who contained a power that could help in his greatest objective, And perhaps he killed one of the last people who had silver eyes.

Jaune after the incident would get a call from his family and they would talk and probably in free time Jaune would travel to visit them to help with his psychological issue, And I believe that Penny and Sun could be a company that would help Jaune to improve.

[kitkatopinions]

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

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

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

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

[invested-in-your-future]

What are your biggest issues with the first three volumes?

Hmm.

The Vagueness

The show, from the very start, has been way too vague about specific things it shouldn't have been vague about- be it the racism or how ANYTHING works.

Do other countries have military or did all of them randomly dissolve it? If so then why does Atlas still do?

How does anything in the world work? What was the great war beyond few weird snippets?

What can or can't Aura do? What IS Magic?

WoR has some context here and there, but it's also pretty sparse for a lore video. And the show grows sparser and sparser as it goes.

Shaky foundations could be fine if the later Volumes expanded upon the world but...

They really didn't.

The Faunus/WF Subplot.

The milquetoast "violence bad" takes, using WF as generic mooks, the Faunus discrimination overall not being expanded upon, the way team RWBY handles Velvet bullying - it all stinks of ignorance and unwillingness to actually delve into it all at all.

This is basically the depth of RWBY's take on discrimination:

The Faunus are "angry at discrimination" but "being angry and violent is not right, they should protest peacefully and out of sight".

What discrimination? What do we see of that beyond just one school bully instance nobody does anything?

Why do Faunus appear only when the show needs someone to get beat up? What drives them to join WF in such numbers?

HOW do Vale's citizens view Faunus? Is it different from other Kingdoms?

Nothing.

(And yes I know that V2 subplot is just something they lifted straight out of Korra, but Korra had an entire show beforehand showing multiple benders as oppressive and powerful beings that made the world tremble - the idea behind the non-benders being fearful at least makes sense, especially since we DO see benders who exploit others through the Book One)

Heteronormativity

The showrunners, all of them, shouted from the rooftops about how Remnant is an inclusive world and yet in show the LGBTQ+ community existence was reduced to weird gags (sometimes literally going against the "inclusivity" comments like when entire school - all women paired up with men in the background - laughs at Jaune in a dress) or bait (sometimes intentional, like how in V2 commentary Miles talks about how they put in Ruby and Weiss scenes to attract shippers).

And yet the showrunners kept talking about how the gay people totally exist and how the world is inclusive and how they are just planning things and "getting better" at writing while they had no issues throwing in a TON of straight ships into the mix or highlight heteronormative romantic interactions and attractions.

The weird thinly veiled sexism.

Literally most of Jaune subplots pretend to be about how Jaune is in the wrong, and yet it's the women who are in the wrong - "Jaune hit on Weiss and Weiss said no? Oh how evil and selfish of Weiss to not give him a chance!" and all.

Some are okay like the Cardin blackmail idea but the execution just grinds everything to the halt.

Screentime and Focus Disbalance

Jaune gets A LOT of focus, while Ruby gets barely any. Now it would work fine if you assume the show is just building up to her development as she reacts to Fall of Beacon and all that - but the volumes after don't do that and instead keep giving focus to Jaune.

Specific character allusions.

Some character references are...uhhh, yeaaaah.

Like, I love the first three volumes a lot and I love the trailers but there are flaws - I was just more forgiving of them because of the usual growing pains and because there was always that promise of the show doing better going forward which they never fulfilled.

You can like something flawed and derive enjoyment from it. As long as there are things to like and the flaws don't overcome whatever good is left in the story.

[hamliet]

I read some comments criticizing Ruby's arc this volume and saying she did many horrible things and failed to learn from them... I really got super mad at these people! What was she even supposed to do?!

I'm with you. Honestly most of RWBY's vocal critics are like. People who clearly misunderstand the series and hold it to a ridiculous standard that defies not only writing 101 but humanity and common sense 101. If Ruby made no mistakes, she wouldn't be a good character, and then you'd have people calling her Ruby Sue. So, she can't win.

What horrible thing are they talking about? The failure at Atlas? That's my guess, so that's what I'm going off of.

I mean, I hate to tell them but every single hero/heroine fails to save a kingdom in these kinds of stories. It's like a rite of passage.

Leia watched her entire frickin' planet go boom in Star Wars. That gets repeated in the sequel trilogy.

Aang and his Gaang lost in Ba Sing Se, and badly.

Katniss has District 12 get nuked.

Idk y'all it's almost like it's a trope in hero/heroine's journey stories. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, when looking at the specifics of Ruby's situation... like what did you want them to do? There were no good choices. There were no guarantees. In fact, that was explicitly spelled out for us: no matter what they chose, it was a risk. It was a choice between Bad, Worse, and Worst.

Going with Ironwood's plan isn't Big Brain, it's an F in Ethics For Four Year Olds: should you kill all the poor people so the rich can live? I mean... yes it was more complicated but still. If you're ever at a point where you're justifying that, you may want to take a step back and look at your life and look at your choices (cough, a certain american political party).

They failed to save Atlas, yes. But they didn't fail to save all of Atlas. What they did still mattered.

If they're talking about the Relic... I mean, yes, Salem got the Relic, but... that was Penny's choice, not Ruby's? And Penny literally died. Plus, Penny had her entire life been forced to put duty over love for others, so for her as an individual, it was powerful to choose love over duty (the opposite of Pyrrha's choice, and even though both die, both are held up as heroes). There's this weird balance between the individual and the collective good, and no one will ever walk it perfectly.

Penny didn't make a wrong choice just because it turned out badly. If she hadn't done what she did, not only would RWBYJ have probably actually died, but Winter would have died, and if you consider collective good, many more innocent civilians would have, too. Penny was the Winter Maiden. She was the only one who stood a chance against Cinder, who was attacking civilians, and she did her duty there, so actually, it's not even so simple as love>duty for Penny's choice.

Idk there's complexity that people don't wanna acknowledge because they hate shows where women are complex.

[kittyprincessofcats]

RWBY Volume 9 Episode 7 - The Perils of Paper Houses

Long story short: I’m so on Ruby’s side here that it’s borderline making me angry. I’m seeing a lot of “Ruby and Jaune are both right/wrong” takes and on this one I have to say no. While I sympathize with his trauma, I still think Jaune was 100% out of line here.

[tw for mentions of suicide]

I really can’t stand how some people are like “Why is Ruby yelling at people uwu?” as if we didn’t all want her to snap? She shoud have yelled more and gotten even angrier, tbh. She’s been suffering the entire volume and the others barely checked up on her. Of course she’s pissed at them for not noticing and just expecting her to pick up Cresent Rose and be fine.

Yes, Yang tried to ask if she was okay a few times throughout the volume, but it was always in a brief “Hey, you okay?” way, but not in a really meaningful “let’s sit down and talk about this, you’re clearly going through a lot” way. When Ruby passes out after hearing about Penny’s death, no one asks if she wants to talk about it. “No time.” (To be clear, I’m not blaming Yang for any this, the “Yang’s a bad sister” people need to shut up. Sometimes we have our own stuff to deal with and don’t notice that someone close to us is hurting. It happens. I’m just saying that from Ruby’s distorted, depressed, grief-ridden point of view, it might feel to her like Yang doesn’t care, even though that’s not true.)

Weiss tried to talk to Ruby about Penny and have that conversation, but after Ruby shut her out, there were several moments were that consideration didn’t come through. When Ruby couldn’t get to nose hairs on time, Weiss was the one to say “Ruby, come on. We got everything else.”

And in this scene Ruby is clearly torn up over Penny’s death, talking about how she was drawn to her sword, and no one talks to her about it or comforts her. Instead Weiss complains about how it’s “raining on just us” and then the team proceeds to talk about how to get back to Remnant while letting Ruby just sit there.

Heck, none of the others even commented on Ruby giving away her emblem!

And really, this might be my Nuts and Dolts shipper googles talking, but I think a lot of Ruby’s anger at her friends boils down to her grief for Penny. Penny was Weiss, Blake and Yang’s friend, too and yet none of them (from Ruby’s point of view) seem to be grieving for her. (Of course Ruby doesn’t know what happened after she passed out in episode one. For all we know WBY could have had a really long and deep conversation about Penny right there that we and Ruby missed.) But what Ruby sees is that they just all lost a mutual friend who meant a lot to Ruby in particular and the others seem to just be fine with it. Weiss is more busy mouring for a piece of land rather than a living person, a friend. Blake and Yang have are happy and sorted out their mutual romantic feelings, which Ruby sees as a betrayal because a) our friend just died, how can you think about romance and happiness right now? and b) she’s jealous that Blake and Yang get to be in love and together while the girl she loves just died. (Yes, that is my shipping googles talking, but it’s what makes the most sense to me.)

And then let’s look at this episode:

Right of the bat, Ruby’s not sleeping. How long has she not been sleeping for? Has anyone noticed that she’s always tired? Has no one noticed that her usual cheerful attitude has been completely gone for the entire volume? (Seriously, just rewatch bits of a older volume and the whiplash will hit you.)

Blake: “Ruby, where’s your weapon?” (translation in Ruby’s mind: You’re supposed to just be fine and fight like everyone else now.)

Ruby: “Oh, sorry, still waking up.”

Weiss: “Hurry! People are counting on us!” (Yeah, really not helping there. None of them noticed that she doesn’t want to pick up Cresent Rose or have the responsibility of protecting people.)

Blake: “He’s obviously been through a lot.”

Yang: “Yeah...”

Blake: “We can be frustrated later. Right now, Jaune needs us.”

Ruby’s thoughts: “Oh great, so when it’s Jaune, you recognize that he’s been through a lot and you think taking the time to be there for him is more important than moving on right away and trying to find a way out of here. But where was that energy for me? When I was suffering alone with Penny’s sword in my hand, you only talked about getting out of here asap and didn’t care to be there for me or take time for me. There was no ‘we can be frustrated about being stuck in a fairytale later, right now Ruby needs us’ for me.”

(And again, only Little notices that Ruby’s not okay.)

Weiss: “Then who does that leave us with? It’s obvious we need someone to guide us or we could end up getting thrown back in time, or killed by the tree or worse.” (Translation in Ruby’s head: “We can’t count on you to lead us.”)

^Everyone’s expression when listening to to purple paper-pleaser. (Ruby’s thoughts: “Oh great, they have compassion for someone they just met but when I’ve been low-key thinking of wanting to ascend and be someone else the entire time, none of them even picked up on it.”)

Jaune: “They don’t know what they want! Afterans are all either too smart, too stupid, or too crazy to trust!”

So Jaune not only doesn’t respect what the paper pleasers actually want, from the way he’s talking about them he doesn’t even seem to genuinely like them. The way he’s frantically trying to keep them from ascending is him coping with his own trauma of not being able to save people, but it’s all about him and how this makes him feel, not about them. Yes, Ruby was out of line calling them Jaune’s “make-believe friends”, but I don’t quite buy people’s “she insulted his family!” takes when Jaune himself doesn’t seem to really respect them.

“Wanting.” ... Yeah, there’s something here that Ruby’s not okay with and not over, I can’t quite put my finger on it.

God, I want to slap Jaune so hard right here. Accusing Ruby of “standing around” and telling her to help her teammates... Dude, first of all, who are you to give Ruby orders and snap at her? Last I checked you weren’t her boss or her team leader. And if you were observant enough to see Ruby not help her teammates, how did you miss the part where she didn’t even defend herself? She’s the one who just almost got eaten by a Jabberwalker becasue she was having panic attack and you’re blaming her? Shut up.

Yang: “Ruby? Are you o...”

And again, Yang tries to ask if Ruby’s okay but gets interrupted.

And this to Ruby must have felt like a betrayal in a way, too. Yang was about to ask her if she’s okay, they were all about to finally listen to her, but instead the village got destroyed and now everyone’s off comforting Jaune instead. (And the problem isn’t that they comfort Jaune, it’s that Ruby didn’t get this sort of comfort over Penny’s death. The paper pleasers aren’t actually dead, they’re getting reborn like they wanted. Penny - as far as we know - is actually dead and Ruby must be thinking “Where were my words of comfort? Where were all of you with your compassion when I needed it?”

So yeah, I 100% get Ruby snapping here, it was about time. And to me  “Oh, I’m sorry, should we be mouring Jaune’s make-believe friends?” definitely had the undertone of “I’m still mouring for my very real friend over here, who had her whole life ahead of her and was tragically murdered and who all of you seem to have just forgotten about.” (Of course Jaune did absolutely not forget, but Ruby doesn’t know that.) Also, given her friendship with Little I’d read this less as “they’re make-believe because they’re not real people” and more as “they’re your make-belive friends becasue you weren’t really being a friend to them.”

And also yeah, sorry, I’m not usally a Jaune hater, but he was 100% in the wrong here. I’m seeing some takes that “they both had some valid points” and no, they didn’t. “The walkers came for you because Neo hates you!” How is that Ruby’s fault? How is a crazy criminal being after her Ruby’s fault? “And let’s not forget the reason we’re in the Ever After in the first place: It’s becasue of your plan that didn’t work!” Jaune, did all those years here make you lose your memories or some shit? Because as I recall you all made that plan together. You all sat around that long table at Schnee manor and came up with this plan together. You, Ruby, WBY, Oscar, Ozpin, Penny, Emerald, Ren&Nora, Whitey, etc. But now that it didn’t all work, it’s suddenly just Ruby’s plan? Nah, shut up. And what else would you have suggested, Jaune? What other clever, better plan did you have up your sleeve? Ironwood was going to blow up Mantle if you all didn’t come up with something within an hour and you’re seriously blaming Ruby? Fuck all the way off.

And even in his apology, Jaune makes it all about himself. He doesn’t even really apologize to Ruby, he directs it more at WBY and then starts talking about his own pain, again taking the focus away from Ruby’s feelings. I do sympathize with Jaune, I really do. He had to do something horrible, had to deal the killing blow to a friend at her request and he’ll never be over that. Then he got transported back in time, had to spend all that time alone with his guilt and grief, couldn’t (as far as he knows) save Lewis either. I know he’s been through absolute shit, I’m not trying to not be compassionate here - but none of what he’s been through was Ruby’s fault in any way and blaming her when she’s already in such a fragile mental state was 100% unjustified and uncalled for. So yeah, I’m gonna say it: Shut up Jaune, she should have punched you.

“On that bridge... I was the only one that could do it, I was the only one!”

Yeah, about that... Ruby still doesn’t know what exactly happend with Penny. She and Jaune had their fight and that still didn’t even come up. I saw some people say that we’re supposed to assume Jaune told them off-screen, but I really don’t think so. The writers wouldn’t leave something that big that Ruby should have a huge reaction to for off-screen, imo. And if they did that’s terrible writing. (Still, Blake and Yang look like they know what he’s talking about?? Idk, this left me confused. I really hope we’re still getting our scene about that.)

Their faces when Ruby tells Blake to shut up. I think (or at least I hope) it hit everyone here that Ruby’s really not okay and needs more than just a little pep talk to be okay again. (No amount of trying to stay positive is going to bring Penny back. I know I’m looking at this through a shipper lense, but like...)

[invincibleweasel]

RWBY fans seriously need to unpack their internalised biphobia and why they are so insistent on erasing Yang and Weiss’ CANON attraction to men.

“Yang was just joking!” “She only did it because of comphet!”

Cool. Homophobia doesn’t exist in Remnant though, as confirmed by Kdin Jenzen. Yang has no need to hide her attraction to women, especially in front of her own sister. What makes this claim of comphet even stranger, is that the following scene is literally Blake and Yang’s first meeting - a scene that a lot of Lesbian Yang truthers consider to be rather flirtatious and the beginning of a blooming relationship. What reason would Yang have to hide her attraction to women in one scene but then SO openly flirt with and compliment a woman in the next? It makes no sense.  Weiss on the other hand, is a whole other can of worms. Weiss has exclusively shown attraction to men. She actively chased after Neptune during Volume 2. It was made pretty damn clear that she liked him. And now most recently, Weiss has shown attraction to a rugged and more ‘mature’ Jaune. Regardless of your feelings of the scene itself, it is yet again another example of Weiss liking men. Weiss likes men. End of story. Which! Isn’t! A! Bad! Thing! Shocker but bisexual people exist. You can still have Whiterose or Bumbleby or any other WLW relationship without erasing the girls’ attraction to men. An attraction to men doesn’t take away ANYTHING from Yang’s status as a queer woman. And the same would go for Weiss, were she ever confirmed to like women as well.  Y’all would be absolutely spewing if the scenarios were switched wherein Yang makes an offhand comment about an attractive group of women ‘as a joke’, only to end up with a man and be championed as a straight woman by fans. If that scenario I put in your head just now made you furious. Then good. That was the point.  But where is that same righteous fury when a queer woman’s attraction of men is far too often erased in favour of making her a lesbian.  Explain very carefully WHY you think that is okay. 

[anneapocalypse]

🎇20 Questions for Fic Writers🎇

Tagged by @dreadfutures 💙 Thank you!

Tagging @chocochipbiscuit @farfromdaylight @rakshadow @skyeventide

Blank questions for your convenience! My answers are below the cut.

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

2. what’s your total ao3 word count?

3. what fandoms do you write for?

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

5. do you respond to comments?

6. what’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

8. do you get hate on fics?

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

14. what’s your all-time favorite ship?

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? T

16. what are your writing strengths?

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

19. first fandom you wrote for?

20. favorite fic you’ve ever written?

Answers!

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

If I count everything, 181. If we're not counting meta pieces, 163.

2. what’s your total ao3 word count?

802,674

3. what fandoms do you write for?

I've written for quite a few, but my big ones have been Fallout, Red vs. Blue, and Dragon Age. I've also written for The Penumbra Podcast, RWBY, Mass Effect, Person of Interest, and The 13 Clocks. (And now I'm also writing for Final Fantasy XIV, though I haven't posted anything yet and probably won't until after I'm caught up with MSQ.)

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

Homecoming (Red vs. Blue, Tucker & Junior, rated T)

Juno Steel & the Fox's Teeth (Penumbra Podcast, Juno/Peter, rated E)

Sensibility (Penumbra Podcast, Juno/Peter, rated E)

Respite (Red vs. Blue, North/Wash/York, rated T)

Home Front (Fallout 3, Amata/F!LW, rated T)

I was genuinely surprised and charmed at how well-received "Homecoming" was (and continues to be), as I considered it fairly niche at the time of writing, but then, Tucker is a popular character. The response to my Penumbra fics certainly caught me by surprise, in the manor of, "OH, this is what it's like to write the popular pairing!" "Respite" was one of my very early RvB fics and it's not one I'm particularly happy with now, as I think I would have done certain things differently had I written it later, but nonetheless it was well-received; not a lot of people were actually writing North/Wash/York at the time. "Home Front" is one of my favorite Fallout fics I've written; I'm still proud of it.

5. do you respond to comments?

Yes, I try to! Sometimes I take a bit longer these days, but I do try to reply to every comment, barring the odd rude one which I'll just delete or ignore.

6. what’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

It's maybe cheating to say The Fall, given that it's the second in a trilogy so the story isn't actually over at the end of that fic. But that fic is a downer the whole way and ends with the main character's probable death, so. It's pretty angsty. After that, I'd say "Please (Don't Leave Me)", an RvB South/CT fic where CT doesn't live and South is dealing with the aftermath, poorly.

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I'd say I've written quite a few--I'm a big fan of the hard-won happy ending. I'm going to distinguish happy from fluffy here--I could pick any number of my one-shorts for fluffiest ending--and say The Landing, because relative to what comes before, and also canon, it's an incredibly happy and optimistic ending for Maine.

8. do you get hate on fics?

Rarely. The vast majority of my readers are perfectly sweet and kind. For some reason, my Mainelina fic has drawn the most bad commenters out of any. I wouldn't call those comments hate, but I have gotten a few that were pretty rude and/or backhanded. My guess is that I hit a particular unfulfilled niche with a long Maine-POV fic that happened to appeal to a particular kind of RvB fan, a kind who like Maine and like the fic but also felt the need to like, flex on me about it. Most of them have seemed not overly familiar with fandom etiquette and transformative fandom culture in general. Embarrassing for them tbh. I just ignore or delete them.

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

Whatever kind I feel like! Less in recent years perhaps, but that's less a lack of interest and more that I get bored easily if I feel like I'm writing something repetitive, and writing non-repetitive smut can be genuinely challenging! We only have so many words, descriptors, euphemisms, and slang terms that actually sound appealing when you're trying to write erotica, so I think writing good smut requires no small amount of creativity and resourcefulness, and I always admire those who do it well.

Bondage is a theme I've explored repeatedly. I would say that I enjoy writing established relationship smut the most because it can be assumed that the characters already know each other's likes and dislikes. But first-times can be fun too. I think I most enjoy writing smut between characters who trust each other and have a high level of emotional intimacy, whatever the specific activities involved might be.

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

To be honest I'm just not really a crossover person. I can find the idea of a crossover interesting, but at the end of the day I just don't enjoy transplanting characters out of their home setting as much as I enjoy exploring who they are within that setting and how it's shaped them.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes. I had a kink meme fill straight up plagiarized once, very obviously, such that when I took it to the mods it was an open and shut takedown.

I've also had less cut and dry incidents, and those are much harder to know how to deal with. I have had people basically rewrite a scene that I wrote, using pieces of the same dialogue, almost as if they thought we were both interpreting a scene from canon when we were not, it was something that I had made up. And yet it's not really plagiarism strictly speaking, and it wasn't worth the social fallout of calling them out on it, so I never did more than grumble vaguely about what happened. I've also had things where like... I ran across something pretty distinctly inspired by a fic of mine that I know the author had read, without bothering to give me a shoutout. That's not theft, but it is a bummer.

In every such case if the author had just asked me, "Hey, can I borrow your idea here? Can I post a remix of your fic?" I probably would have said yes without hesitation. Hell, even if they had not asked and simply given me a shoutout in their author's notes, I would have been pleased to have inspired them. But they didn't do that, and there's nothing I can do about it but I am going to be cranky about it.

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

I did have someone ask about translating a fic of mine once, and I gave permission, but I never heard back after that, so I don't know if they ever did. (This is something I have blanket permission for, by the way, so long as you let me know about it!)

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

Sort of? A friend and I did post a polished-up RP as a fic once, though we ended up not keeping it up. In general I think I'm a pretty solitary writer, though I wouldn't rule it out entirely, but I'd have to really feel that both my style and my writing process meshed well with my collaborator.

14. what’s your all-time favorite ship?

I'm too much of a multi-shipper to have a real answer to this.

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

If I want on any level to finish it, then I consider it still on the table. It might take me years to get back to it, but I still mean to. I still want to finish Small Blessings. I still want to finish Radio Silence. I trust that their time will come, even if it's not now.

16. what are your writing strengths?

Character voice, I think. Both dialogue, and getting inside a character's head and writing a plausible inner monologue.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

Combat, always combat and action scenes, though I do think I'm getting better with practice.

Selfishness. As soon as I need to write something as an obligation to someone else, I don't want to do it, which is why I'd make a terrible professional writer, at least one who has to write to order.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Just write it. You don't have to italicize it or put some kind of indicator marks around it. Language is language. I think it's fine to post translations as a footnote but I don't think it's 100% necessary all the time, when it's something the reader can easily look up for themselves. I know I'm willing to do that kind of legwork for a fic I'm enjoying. I suppose it depends on the reader, and what kind of reader you want.

There are also times when it's perfectly fine to just write it in English (or the default language of the piece) while indicating in the narrative that the character is actually speaking in another language, such as ASL. Again I don't think you need to italicize or use some kind of weird formatting. Just write "He signed," and what he said in quotes like you would any other dialogue. If you've firmly established already that a character primarily speaks in ASL, you might not even need that. The reader can keep up.

Things do shift a bit when you're writing in a fictional language, especially one that's very incomplete and not a true conlang. I'll go with the obvious example of Dragon Age's Elvish (and yes, canonically the language is called Elvish or Elven, it's not called Elvhen, that's the people, not the language). Even if I string the appropriate words together, the meaning might not always be strictly clear to the reader out of context because Elvish is a pretty simple cipher. It doesn't have conjugation, for example. Nonetheless, I think often context clues can be enough for an engaged reader, especially if it's a word we encounter a lot in canon. Where it might not be clear, and if it's very important to the story, I will usually simply work some kind of translation into the narrative itself. This can work particularly well when your POV character also has it as a second language. Example from my Briala/f!Tabris draft:

Gheyna and Cammen, having finished tending to the halla, stood aside, hand in hand, and Gheyna waved. "Dareth shiral, Keeper. Talith, Briala, dareth shiral. Sylaise ma ghilana vhenas." Cammen added solemnly, "Dareth shiral, Talith. Elgar'nan ma ghilana, lasa mala enasalin." At that, Talith's expression grew solemn as well. "Ma serannas, lethallen. Dareth shiral." Briala recognized a few words. Dareth shiral, "Safe journey." Vhenas, enasalin. And the names of the elven gods. Gheyna had bid the Hearthkeeper guide them safely home.

I personally prefer to stick to what we have in canon for Elvish (I'm not going to set myself up to be jossed if I don't have to), or if I ever really need an unknown word I'll make something up for myself. While there are some fanmade Elvish dictionaries out there, I'm not comfortable hanging too much of my own work on someone else's fanon, and also I inevitably disagree with some of their decisions on ambiguous canon words. (Ma does not mean "my," it means "you." This is consistent with every canon use of "ma" except one, and that one is in DA2 and is thus really, really likely to have been an oversight due to rushed development; every other instance of "ma" supports it meaning "you." Sorry, that has been eating at me for ages and I needed to get it off my chest. 😅) That said there are multiple fanmade Elvish dictionaries out there at this point, so if you're going to use someone else's, in this case I would strongly recommend supplying the reader with a link, both to credit the author and so the reader knows where to go to look up the words if they choose to. Don't assume that everyone knows you're using so-and-so's Elvish dictionary; I had never even heard of the big popular one until a couple years ago.

That was a lot, but at the end of the day, it's all about making a judgment call on how much you need to hold the reader's hand, as with anything; I personally tend to err on the side of trusting my reader, and if I assumed too much, well, maybe that's my mistake and maybe that reader wasn't my target audience anyway. 🤷🏻‍♀️ You'll figure out what's right for your work.

19. first fandom you wrote for?

The first fandom I wrote for was actually Dragon Age, but that early writing never saw the light of day. First fandom I posted fic for was Fallout.

20. favorite fic you’ve ever written?

OH MAN. That's hard! I referenced The Drop, my Mainelina trilogy for RvB, multiple times in this post so obviously I'm still pretty fond of it. I'll add to that Inroads, my Kimbalina series. For Fallout, I'm real happy with Home Front (Amata/F!LW) and Cast Your Bread Upon the Water (Dr. Li/Star Paladin Cross, past Dr. Li/Catherine/James). And for Dragon Age, my current faves are No Woman Rules Alone (Anora/F!Tabris) and A Pot to Piss In (Sera backstory fic).

[metawatts]

My favourite part of the movie is when they arrive at 'The Docks', and Blake and Weiss comment on how they now understand why Batman is the way he is and why he wanted to get away from Gotham because of how bad it looks. All while their surroundings look as generic and vaguely futuristic as most of RWBY's 'normal' environments. I get that they didn't want to waste budget on making Gotham look like a gothic, depressing cancer of a city; but then maybe don't have characters talk about the environment that clearly isn't there?

No this was so funny/infuriating because the docks of Gotham in this film literally look like downtown Vale just slightly overcast. It reminds me of some of the problems people get when adapting Batman, such as The Dark Knight trilogy basically having Gotham look generally normal, meanwhle the animated series and the recent Battinsom film actually looked like a capitalist ubergoth nightmare neck deep in corruption and lead poisoning built on top of like, a half dozen Miscellaneous Evils with room for sewer cults, a lazarus pit, and probably an emo cthulu somewhere down there. And the worst thing?

Instead we get Blake literally seeing a copy of the city she went to college-school at and going 'oh wow this place is a trashfire'.

And it didn't even look that bad? I mean- it was just your standard warehouse district/docklands, surprisingly underpopulated by workers, but what have you. I guess we can't all grow up in a mansion on a tropical paradise island.

But yeah Blake and her Privileged Bullshittery was unironically the worst part of this movie unquestionably (Yang came in at a close second it's pretty neck and neck). At least Weiss got some sort of cosmic comeuppance for a minute with having to deal with no powers, the most interesting a rwby character's been in yonks. Blake just sucks now.

And another final thing this is the last thing for real: hilarious how they 'don't want to waste budget' but then made models for Joker and Harley, just saying.

[itsclydebitches]

Yeah, the Bees vs Adam fight had a lot of iffy dialogue but nothing quite had my head in my hands as much as, "Did she make that promise to you? Or to the person you were pretending to be?" You mean the guy who runs around in a monster mask explicitly because he wanted humanity to fear the Faunus like they do with the unambiguously-evil Grimm was, actually, not a good or mentally-sound person? Shocker. Like say what you want about Adam, but there is nothing subtle about him. From the moment go, he is 100% transparent in who he is and yet the characters acts like he isn't.

Yeah, I think a lot of fans who get frustrated by critiques forget that the disappointment has never been, "Omg they made Adam a bad guy!" but rather, "It's a problem that the minority representing an oppressed group is depicted as the bad guy and also a lot of people are doubly frustrated that his crimes changed from political extremism to stalking a presumed ex." Because you're right, nothing about Adam is subtle. He's introduced in black, red, a creepy mask, and callously shrugs off the potential death of countless humans. He's preeeeetty straightforward.

However, that line still should have made sense by the time we reached that fight because based on everything else we know, Adam wasn't always like this. Blake grew up in a rich, loving family that was at the heart of peaceful activism. AKA she's well-adjusted and primed to question extremist methods. Given that we've seen no manipulation on Adam's part--again, he's straightforward--that heavily implies that Adam was once a far more empathetic, level-headed activist who could legitimately inspire one of our heroes. Someone like Blake isn't going to just randomly join the guy who's just as happy with humanity's destruction as their change in treatment; she's going to join someone who seeks her own goals and reflects her own morals. Sometime between Blake first joining the White Fang and cutting the train cars, Adam changed. This is supported through, again, what we know of Blake as a person, her early Volume comments that the WF wasn't always like this, how Adam steadily grows more and more unhinged as the series goes on--a spiral that began long before the show started and is continuing until his death. Hell, it's shown through Blake having some sort of ~intimate~ relationship with him (mentor or romantic) and doodling him in her notebook. There's a version of Adam that exists pre-RWBY that's the kind of man Blake would befriend, defend, and possibly fall for. Or, to put it another way, make promises to about loyalty and companionship.

But he exists only in the occasional implication, subtext, and the application of some basic logic. RWBY doesn't actually show us this Adam, let alone allow Blake to work through losing him. By the time Yang says, "Did she make that promise to you? Or to the person you were pretending to be?" the audience should understand that no, Adam was never 'pretending.' That person existed... and then he changed. We should read that scene as Yang being wrong, applying a simplistic and no doubt comforting narrative to her friend/teammate/love interest. Blake didn't once love another faunus who fought for an important cause, only to watch him succumb to a violent ideology, resulting in a complicated, emotional landmine where she might still love the man he once was. That's way too complicated to deal with! And makes the bad guy too compelling to boot. So Adam just lied to her. Tricked! Bamboozled! Deceived! Because RWBY can't keep track of its plot-lines, doesn't investigate its heroes bias' (especially Yang's), won't allow those bad guys to have depth and nuance--Ironwood's turn to cartoon villainy highlights that. Adam isn't a subtle character, but as the primary representative of a racism-coded conflict, he should have been. Worse, what little complexity we got was stripped away by the end. Adam isn't a freedom fighter anymore, he dies a deranged ex stalking Blake. Except no, without confirmation of them being in a former relationship, or Yang and Blake having a relationship now, he's just a pathetic guy freaking out over losing her for... reasons. Adam isn't given that sympathetic past, so this conversation doesn't track with past implications and we're just supposed to take Yang at her word (after a Volume where Yang assumes A Lot). Adam isn't a subtle character, yet he's apparently "pretended" to be something he's not for years, tricking Blake and stealing a promise he never had a right to. Too bad we never got that story and what little we did get actively contradicts that.

I know I've said this before, but I don't even like Adam. I have no emotional stake in this fight, yet RWBY's handling of him was such a mess that, same, head in my hands and all that. I'm the one on the sidelines going, "No, I don't actually care, but it's the principal of the thing!" lol

[dextixer]

Yknow, i just find it funny how my detractors have to just... Create literal fanfictions about me and my writings. On one hand you have Canonseeker, a guy who has claimed that from the shadows i control RWBY youtubers and the moderators of r/RWBY. And has made many other accusations which defy belief. The silliest thing is that people just... Believe him... He provides no prroof and RWBY fans are so averse to criticism that when they are told someone is bad... They will just believe it.

But regardless, the funniest thing is the comedy of ready screeds every time i write a thread.

“Ruby has no character arc, she remains the same character all the time and i think its the problem” - What i write.

“THIS SEXIST BELIEVES THAT RUBY SHOULD DIE AND BECOME SUBSERVIENT TO MEN, THAT SHE SHOULD CHANGE TO PLEASE MEN”

- What they write.

Its just... Its funny. It does not matter what i write, somehow it will always result in these people going “YOU ARE SEXIST HMMHSGSAHGSKGSHK”, it is endlessly amusing just how far these people go to say things i have never said, never directly even engaging with what i said. It must be so easy to be so... Devoid of thought as them...

Opposing opinion? Just accuse of sexism. Why think about what is said? That is difficult. Thankfully, i have long stopped believing that people like these are in any way related to progressive causes.

These people are not feminists, they are not anti-racists, they are not pro LGBT+ rights. These people are just hangers on. They only pretend to care about these causes because they can weaponize them.

Being accused of being sexist by these people is like being accused of being a fascist by right-wingers for saying “Hey, i think hatespeech should be banned”. Its meaningless.

It also helps my ego knowing that almost the only engagement some of these people get is due to talking about me, and nothing else. I can write comments/threads about anything and people will listen. These people however are literally dependant on me, like leeches lol.

[juanarc-thethird]

The Sex Games! 

Inside Team RWBY's room.

Ruby: I'm bored

Yang: Me too. Do you want to hit things?

Ruby: No

Weiss: Why don't you review what we saw in class?

Ruby: Ugh, no

Blake: I can lend you one of my books.

Ruby: Do you have comics?

Blake: No

Ruby: Then no. I want to do something fun.

Their door bursts open.

Bleiss: How are you sluts?! You girls want to win a lot of money?!

Weiss: Bleiss, what are you doing?!

Bleiss: Relax sis. I'm only promoting the contest that I create.

Yang: What is the contest about?

Bleiss: Contestants will play multiple party games. One by one they will go out, until only one is left victorious. The winner will receive $100,000 in cash!!!

All the girls in the room, except for Weiss, were shocked to hear that amount.

Yang: $100,00 in cash!! Holy shit!!

Blake: With that money I could eat all the fish I wanted!!

Ruby: I could buy all the accessories for my baby with that money!!

Weiss: You guys get excited for such a small amount of money?

Silence

Ruby: ....Shut the fuck up, Weiss.

Yang: Where can we sign up?

Bleiss: Hold on, there is something else I must mention to you. The losers of each round will have a punishment. The closer to the end they are, the greater the punishment.

Ruby: Are they like dares? What kind of dares?

Bleiss: *Smiles* Something like that and is a surprise. Don't worry, it's not bad. It's pure fun for everyone!

Weiss: I don't trust that smile. What are you up to?

Bleiss: I'm not plotting anything. I just want to give away my money and have some fun. We girls need time to have fun and unwind.

Ruby: "We girls"? Guys don't participate?

Bleiss: Nope, it's for girls only.

Yang: I'm in!

Blake: Me too!

Ruby: Me three!

Weiss: Seriously, you girls want to participate in a contest that my sister created?! The same girl who rented Jaune for…obscene things!

Bleiss: Hey, there are a lot of girls who want a piece of my Jaune, who am I to deny them the sweet fruit of eden. Also two of your teammates, I won't say names, they are still my clients~

Weiss: What?!

She turns to look at her team and none of them look at her face.

Bleiss: So are you going to join them or what?

Ruby: C'mon Weiss, don't be boring!

Yang: Yes Weiss, loosen up a bit!

Blake: Leave her, she's a proper girl, she doesn't know how to have fun.

Weiss: What did you say?!

Blake: You heard me.

Weiss: Fine! I will join your stupid contest.

Bleiss: *with a dangerous smile* Excellent, when everything is ready I will send you the location where the event will take place. I just need to get more contestants. See ya~

Bleiss walks out, leaving the girls alone.

Yang: Did she mention what the contest is called?

Ruby: Nop, but we can ask her later. What would you two do with the money if you won?

Yang: Well...

While the girls talk about what they will do with the money. Weiss feels that something is wrong with this contest.

Weiss: (What are you up to sister?)

----------------------------------

I had this idea for a while after watching a Derpixon video. The idea is almost the same as that video but I plan to do it my way, step by step. Each new part of the story will lose someone and they will receive a punishment. From the name of the title they already know what types of punishments they will receive. If you have suggestions for games for large numbers of people, please share them with me in the comments. I know some but not many, and your ideas would save me time.

[theladydrgn]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @noodlefrog-omens - thank you for thinking of me!

How many works do you have on ao3? 52

What's your total ao3 word count? 1,919,383 - FUCK I'm almost at 2mil

What fandoms do you write for? Pretty much only Good Omens has grabbed me hard enough to want to write fanfiction at the moment, I've also previously written RWBY fic and, when I was a teen, Yu-Gi-Oh fic.

Top five fics by kudos: All but one of these is omegaverse and I don't know if that means we just write omegaverse really well or too much xD

It's a Nautical Feeling (E, 210K, 1522 kudos) - A pirate omegaverse au inwhich Pirate Captain Crowley is given Aziraphale as a prisoner in exchange for not taking raiding the ship Aziraphale is on. Love, sex, and treasure hunting proceeds.

Sunday's Child (E, 140K, 1354 kudos) - A Cinderella-like story based on the novel Friday's Child by Georgette Hayer with an omegaverse twist.

you know i'll never be lonely (you're my only one) (E, 256K, 1094 kudos) - A slice-of-life omegaverse fic in which Warlock's parents die in a tragic accident and he ends up going to live with his British uncle Crowley. The two of them struggle to navigate this new chapter of their lives while also still being good to each other.

Always You (E, 117K, 1070 kudos) - A fic that started from Nautical Feeling A/C joking about what might have happened had they met earlier. Obviously that little joke grew legs and made itself it's own fic!

The Small Ad (E, 32K, 1021 kudos) - It is once again the time of year for Aziraphale's family's reunion and he is still single. After a disastrous conversation with his cousin Gabriel, he lies about having found a partner and must scramble to find someone willing to go along with it. Hilarity (and smut) ensues.

Do you respond to comments? I want to. so bad. Unfortunately I work long hours and usually by the time I'm off I have little to no energy. I try top respond to ones that have questions and from close friends at least

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Well... I don't think there's any fic I've written with that I would consider and 'angsty' ending. I pretty much only do happy endings, really.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Pretty much all of my fics have a happy ending, but the happiest might very well be Sunday's Child. Both Aziraphale and Crowley get exactly what they want, the 'bad guys' are entirely out of their lives, and they're expecting another baby ;^^

Do you get hate on fics? Not very often. There have been a few, very small instances where people left rude or hateful comments but it doesn't happen very often.

Do you write smut? When do I not?

Craziest crossover: I don't have any written yet, but one day when I have the time I desperately want to write a Good Omens/Dresden Files crossover

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of, no.

Have you ever had a fic translated? A few times! It always fills me with joy when someone want's to translate one of my fics

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Hehe, Co-written fic is almost all I do at the moment

All time favorite ship? Aziraphale/Crowley has grabbed my brain and I don't see them letting go any time soon

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I have an Aziraphale/Crowley through-the-ages fic that I started right after I saw season 1. It was a huge project, I have SO many notes on historical and biblical events that I wanted to do but... The atmosphere in the fandom around the HC that Crowley was Raphael before he fell (an important part of the fic) was very hostile and I lost all will to keep working on it

What are your writing strengths? I'm great at dialogue and long plots.

What are your writing weaknesses? Descriptions. Do not ask me to describe anything in great detail, I will probably disappoint you.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language? I came from anime/manga fandoms where sprinkling Japanese in your fic was kind of like a flex so it's not something that bothers me even if I don't do it

First fandom you wrote in? A long long time ago when I was a wee bab I wrote very cringe Yu-Gi-Oh fic on ffnet. You can still find it if you search hard enough but I'd rather it be lost to the void of the internet lol

Favorite fic you've written? That's really tough because I love everything I've posted on AO3. If I absolutely had to choose I think I would pick Greater Than Our Suffering, a vampire au based off the first few minutes of Netflix's Castlevania. I'm also extremely happy with the fic Syl and I are currently writing because I've always wanted to write a high-fantasy royalty au and it's finally happening. That one will begin posting when Sugar and Spice is done!

Brain is empty rn so tagging: LITERALLY ANYONE WHO WANTS TO!!!! Yes, do feel free to tag me if you do it I promise I won't mind even if we barely know each other!

[nerdlydelicious]

apologies for all the asks!!! I don’t have many folks I chat RWBY with so I turn to the folks who’s opinions I’ve come to respect on tumblr!

Anyways - with the final episode of Volume 9 rapidly approaching, what do you think needs to happen in the finale for it to be concluded in a satisfying way?

cheers!

You’re fine, I like answering questions!

As for what needs to happen, in my personal opinion, the things that I think need to happen are as follows, but not strictly in this order:

1. Ruby has a talk with her mother, at least in some fashion, which helps her realize that she doesn’t need to be a completely different person to be the hero she needs to be, which helps her complete her ascension.

2. We also go through Jaune’s ascension and he is changed into a younger version of himself, but specifically not reverted back to his Volume 8 form as that would be literal character regression. Also, he keeps the warrior’s wolf tail.

3. Both Ruby and Jaune retain all their memories after ascension, and get new looks, and either upgraded or new weapons.

4. Ascended Ruby and Jaune tag team Neko Neo and kick his ass.

5. Neko Neo dies/gets taken by the tree to ascend. Don’t give either of them a second chance or a redemption arc.

6. Everyone has a tearful reunion with Ruby, apologizing that they weren’t there for her when she needed them and she forgives them.

7. Team RWBY and Jaune walk through the door into Remnant, and either the episode ends there to leave us on a cliff hanger for V10, or they walk out into Vacuo to throw us right into the action at the start of V10. Bonus points if Juniper goes with them.

8. We see Little again at some point. Maybe they help fight the cat in their new ascended form. And we get a heartfelt moment between them and Ruby.

As a bonus these are things that I don’t think have to happen for the finals to be satisfactory, but I’ll be very happy if they do:

1: when Jaune returns Weiss hugs him or in some way shows relief that he’s okay. Bonus points if she comments positively about his new look. It shouldn’t be a moment that overshadows the big reunion with Ruby (though I’m sure some people will gripe about it regardless), just a nice little touching scene between them.

2. Ruby lands the fight ending blow on the cat with her Silver Eyes powers. I don’t know why her powers would affect the cat, but it would be bad ass.

3. Ruby says something positive about Blake and Yang’s relationship. Mainly to piss off everyone making ‘Ruby is homophobic’ memes.

4. We get Yang and/or Blake teasing Weiss about Jaune, maybe one of them asking her if he’s still ‘mature’ enough for her, and Weiss being flustered and embarrassed.

5. As team RWBY and Jaune leave, we get scenes of the Afterans going about their lives. The Genial Gems building a new home, the market place being repaired, Jinxy peddling more items, the Hunter mice catching a snake, that kind of thing.

6. Red Like Roses part 3 for Ruby’s epic arrival at the climax of the fight vs the cat.

That’s everything I can think of, at least for now. I’m sure five minutes after I post this I’ll have four more things to add to the list XD

[mediacrushin]

One more for now promise.

"What if you could leave Ruby Rose behind? Shed like an old coat. What will happen if you don't?"

Kinda get the feeling we're meant to take this line wrong out of context. It could just be a trailer line that never comes up, meant to throw us off or just posit a theme of the volume to us. But if it does get used, and they put it in the trailer, maybe it's not going to come in the way we think.

It can be tough to tell with people from the Ever After sometimes, but the Blacksmith seems very gentle and non-pressuring. She recognizes Ruby's struggle when Ruby meets her, she recognized Little's goal, but for both she never tells Ruby she has to pick a new weapon, nor does she comment on how bad a job Little has been doing as a guide when they themselves admit they don't know what they're doing.

She points out the burden Ruby carrys and offers her the chance to lay it down and pick up a different weapon instead, any one she would like.

Maybe the Blacksmith will be straightforward and think the best answer for Ruby's burden is to offer again for her to lay it down and choose something else. But maybe the "what will happen if you don't?" line comes at the end of the ascension process, after Ruby has reflected on all of her "faults" but remembers the good things "Ruby Rose" has done and could still do? I can't really fathom how Ruby's rise could go, but she's the last member of team RWBY to be brought to her lowest point, and if it goes like it did for them she'll come back changed, but even stronger. So maybe, having the question of "what if you could throw away everything you've been up to this point? But then what if you didn't?" might have more to it than the face value of "if you don't throw this burden down it might crush you"... instead it might be more "if you don't change, you can never grow past this burden and you are so much more than this static one thing you think you are".

Maybe Ruby being unable to answer anyone asking who she is with certainty through the volume will come back around to her recognizing that she isn't just one thing, she has the potential to be much more. But I do hope that that realization comes with the caveat that she doesn't have to be everything by herself. Because seeing how her fall went, I think her feeling like she has to be literally everything for everyone around her is the type of thinking that got her to this point in the first place. I am glad that Weiss pointed out the way they tried to encourage her came from a well intended place, but wasn't what she needed. Didn't come across as encouragement, but pressure.

I want WBY to be able to give Ruby the actual encouragement she needs, and for them to come back together... not sure how after chapter 8, but I hope it happens. This sort of thing does feel like the type of down beat they've been ending their seasons on, but we've got two more episodes instead.