#rwby volume five

[lacependragon]

You know, the longer I think about it, the more I realize that it actually makes perfect sense that an online company so incredibly pro-military and pro-veteran (RoosterTeeth) would write the worst black-and-white, unbelievable, morally bland, and utterly boring and worldbuilding breaking anti-military story I've ever seen.

It's like they thought if they even slightly tried to make it realistic, even slightly tried to make it believable, we'd all realize how similar it was to the US military and go "you hate veterans!"

But instead we got a military that makes no sense. A story that relies on you not paying any attention to the worldbuilding. And a bunch of dead people who didn't mean anything because by the end they were just fucking caricatures. James is the evil general. Clover is the too-loyal right hand. Vine is the self-sacrificial meditative type. And they aren't anything else.

All of Atlas is flat and cardboard and cartoon-y and bad. And I genuinely think so much of it is the inability of these fuckers to stop sucking off the US military long enough to understand something called nuance. Because they fired so completely in the opposite direction to their on-camera shit (we love veterans! we love soldiers! fight the bad guys!) as opposed to RWBY (all military evil there is no nuance no middle ground nope just evil! James is as bad as SALEM!) that they lost every discussion and every interesting detail in the sprint between the two podiums.

This isn't the real world! We can have discussions about stuff we wouldn't approve of in real life but make interesting stories! We can have discussions about redemption and revenge and making choices!

But nah let's just have them all be evil evil people and then save Winter (maiden, sure), and Elm, Harriet, and Marrow (and I'm not going to lie here. I genuinely think the reason Harriet lives instead of Vine is because RT was TERRIFIED of another Sienna Khan backlash.)

Atlas was bad.

It was rushed. It was sloppy. It broke characters. It broke worldbuilding. It broke the internal logic of the universe.

And we still learned fucking nothing about its people, its culture, or its history. Just like in Mistral.

Setpieces. Empty destructible setpieces. Only this time there was nothing else to prop up the building facades.

Truly, the only good thing Atlas gave us was Penny.

And look how that turned out.

[dragynkeep]

y'know it's so interesting that for all the show runners claim bees was planned until the beginning, they consistently pair yang with weiss for all her emotional beats.

weiss could've easily joined ruby when blake ran away in v1 while yang ran after blake herself but instead they get the introspective talk about weiss's ideals & how they contrast yang.

it's weiss & yang that're doing school activities together & having fun during v2, as well as being paired together for the vytal tournament in v3 despite the fact that bees are supposed to be fantastic fighters together? it's yang that weiss heroically saves during the end of the fight & it's them who run to each other during the fall of beacon.

then we have their parallels in v4 where they're trapped in their own traumas & homes in different ways, weiss fighting out of the trauma that kept her trapped there as yang works through the trauma that blake & adam gave her during the fall of beacon. this culminates in not only their renunion during v5 but weiss being the emotional support yang needs when confronting her abusive, neglectful parent because she understands her.

weiss consistently recognizes yang's emotional pain during v5 & allows it to sit comfortably with her, allowing yang that space without feeling guilt or being reprimanded for rightfully being angry at yet another person who abandoned her: weiss allows yang to feel. without guilt, without restraint.

for all these claims of "it was planned since the beginning" & "freezerburn wouldn't work, they would divorce within five minutes" & "weiss isn't yang's type": the show says the exact opposite. what we see on the screen is completely different to whatever lip service is said by the showrunners & fans alike.

at the end of the day, it wasn't blake that did the emotional work with yang & it wasn't blake who yang never even once considered blaming for leaving unlike blake, who came back to her willingly. that was weiss. wouldn't work together my ass.

[short-wooloo]

Blake & Yang vs. Adam | RWBY Volume 6

[wehearthewildernessandithearsus]

Btw I think we should totally make March 25th the OFFICIAL Bumbleby day wherenwe celebrate our ladies cause when I say that I will now be counting days, months and years before and after the Bees Kiss I am not kidding

[almea]

It's nice seeing Yang having fun and goofing around, but I just keep thinking about Ren telling her she doesn't need to hide her fears behind jokes and how she pointedly has not addressed that in any way yet and it's all so 👀👀👀👀

[invested-in-your-future]

I remember posting this meme YEARS ago

Why would I repost it now?

Alas I think its just too boring to answer in the post, so the punchline will sadly be delivered offscreen to make room for all the empty space in the post.

Like this.

[lovingdabeessss]

I love how the natural next step in the bumbleby relationship for Yang is to actually initiate holding hands with Blake consistently because it’s usually Blake but Blake’s is to be like actually hanging off Yang like

Yangs probably still wondering if they’re officially girlfriends or not and Blake’s like deciding which last name they’re keeping at their wedding in 6 days

[isthatawe3d]

I have so many thoughts about jaune arc as a character but I say that as someone who will not say that he’s one of my favorites out loud bc I feel like that comes with like. The “jaune harem” connotation. Jaune has zero game. I love him for that. He and Ruby are two sides of the same coin of their earnestness to help people and that comes with intense focus on their skills and weapons . I’m tired but I have many thoughts on him

[storm-of-feathers]

tbh i kind of love that the whole time all ruby really needed was a chance to vent and a small break

[the-god-of-nihon]

Because it still apparently needs to be said

The Merge isn't a takeover. Oscar doesn't get erased, Ozpin doesn't assimilate Oscar.

The whole point is the two personalities finding balance and influencing each other to grow.

The end goal is an individual, in this case Ozcar, that has the memories, traits and positive qualities of both Oscar and Ozpin. Because balance and unity is kind of the whole point in RWBY.

[animebw]

How the cinnamon toast fuck is that RWBY episode over already

[vaciena]

6. Which yet-to-be-started fic is first on your list?

Assuming my brain doesn't randomly latch onto another fandom instead for a month again, I'm finally going to write a fic that's basically all the letters exchanged between Celebrimbor and Annatar in the years between him leaving and making the One Ring

[hadesisqueer]

I already said this on Twitter, but I'll also say this here, too: people who start watching RWBY need to come with the mindset that it isn't a kids show.

I say this because I'm seeing fans from other cartoons migrating here because of the positives of the show and some similarities between their show and RWBY, and while that is true (RWBY is fun and goofy and colorful and positive), you also have to know, before you start watching, that RWBY also covers some heavy themes.

I know kids shows also handle heavy themes. I watched ATLA and TLOK growing up. I've watched The Owl House. Those three handled some really heavy themes at times, but they were mostly directed to kids. RWBY is a show mainly directed to an older audience, and I can assure you the way they handle the heavy themes is darker than in those previously mentioned shows, specially in the latest volumes, so you gotta come with that mindset. RWBY is not for kids, and definitely do not let little kids watch it.

I say that last thing because I recommended it to one of my friends as she said it looked fun so she'd watch it with her little brothers (they're five years old) and I had to literally tell her “don't you dare let your brothers watch this.”

[sir-adamus]

i've got the blu ray for volume 1 playing and i'm watching the behind the scenes video and Monty explicitly spells out how important collaboration with other creatives was in building RWBY, saying how he wanted to work with Kerry and Miles on it in creating the world and how he mostly gave them broad strokes. and it's mentioned how they all put the show bible together - i'm gonna put the whole transcript for the video under the cut (which i'm having to do myself because no one has uploaded this video anywhere as far as i can tell and there's no fucking subtitles)

Monty Oum [Creator and Director]: It’s the stories I’ve always wanted to tell versus the idea I came up with about, a little over a year ago. And we were talking about doing another show, and I just kind of half-asleep came up with the idea of a color rule for a bunch of characters. The red, white, black and yellow color scheme was something that was very prominent even in my previous work, so I started matching names up, matching ideas up. Also thinking about like, some of the ideas I’d stored up over the years. At some point or another the word ‘RWBY’ came to me.

Monty: Starting the show out originally, I designed the original character, Ruby, as well as going into the other characters. So once I had the first trailer done, and thinking about the rest of the characters for the show, I started bringing in other artists who I had watched for years. People I’d always said “someday I’ll work with them, someday I’ll have them design for me.” And when I was certain about having certain characters, I first contacted an artist I admired and found over DeviantArt. Her name was Ein Lee, she’s actually from Taiwan, and I found her art probably well over five years ago, and just loved her art style, and therefore wanted to incorporate it into my characters. So, I would do rough designs for team RWBY as well as designs for team JNPR, and she would flesh that out to be even further. To the point where eventually I didn’t need to design characters anymore, she started designing a bunch of the rest of the characters down the line.

Monty: The second person I brought on to RWBY was Kerry, because we had just been having conversations about the kind of show we could make. I’d been working with Miles on Season 10. He was writing scenes while I was making scenes, and so the three of us would have a lot of meetings and collaborate on the show to the point where I just started coming up with the broad strokes eventually and they had pretty much written the bulk of the show. Collaboration’s a big deal here, and I tried to include as many people as I can.

Kerry Shawcross [Co-writer]: Right after RvB ended, we wanted to just go straight into RWBY, but that was like right when we were going into commercial season. So we would work our normal hours here. Like 10 to 7-ish, then we would go back to one of our apartments and just start writing.

Miles Luna [Co-writer]: Monty really was enthusiastic about having these characters that may appear really one-dimensional for like the first few scenes that you see them, but the longer you get to know them, you realise “Oh, Yang isn’t just a dumb blonde party girl. She’s a very caring and nurturing girl, that has had to essentially be there for Ruby when she was young.”

Kathleen Zuelch [Producer]: When Monty and Miles and Kerry came to me, and really took me through the story. I started becoming a huge believer, because I’m a big fan of old school, traditional fairy tales, I love the Brothers Grimm, I love all the Snow White, and I love Little Red Riding Hood. I grew up with all of those stories, and the way that they were very clever in creating this whole world that’s kind of making homage to all of these amazing stories really inspired me to get more on board with what they wanted to do with this whole anime show.

Taylor McNee (née Pelto) [Art Director]: The world of RWBY, it looks very familiar. We wanted a blend of very classic looking architecture and clothing and cars, but we’re also mixing in this really kind of futuristic feel, like these little touches of some really futuristic stuff like holograms and things that you wouldn’t find in a classic [inaudible]. And that’s how we’re making this world unique. Our assets have to go through this pipeline of concept, modelling, texturing, and then finally being able to be put into the 3D program. So we start out with the concept and we usually bring that image into Maya, which is the main 3D software that we use. We have to make a 3D model that looks exactly like the concept that we were given, and it’s quite a process. Basically, we’re pushing polys and extruding stuff until we make the perfect shape, then afterwards we have to UV unwrap it, and then lay everything out on a texture sheet and then paint it, and that will put the image on the model. After that we’re basically done with the model and texture, and then we have to give it to the animators. So then we will set it up in Poser so the animators can grab it and use it for their characters.

Gray Haddock [Lead Editor]: There’s a lot of people working on this show, and there’s a lot of different elements in the pipeline. Editorial kinda serves as a hub between all the different departments, so we help all the communication and coordination between all the different pieces of the show, depending on what part of development that they’re in. Editorial’s getting involved way early in the process, we work alongside the director and the writers and the storyboard artists, and we use the scripts to help develop the storyboards and the camera angles for all those boards. So editorial is responsible for building up the moments of any given scene in terms of the timing and what you wanna look at, at any given moment. So we take the script and we help develop the camera angles and how long you wanna linger in a particular camera angle, look at one character or another or the scene as a whole, and the rhythm of the scene in terms of how long is it gonna take to spend on a particular line or when you want the music to come in, things like that. So we build up a set of animatics with the storyboards, and the first pass of all the audio. This is what then is handed off to the animators, so they can know exactly what is in what shot and how long do they have to animate it in a given shot. And once they’re done animating and their shot’s been approved, then their shot goes to the render farm, we get the rendered shot back and we drop it into the timeline for our episode and finesse the cut a little bit if we have to. But for the most part, we’ve done our job right and everything should pretty much be locked in for the most part by the time we’re getting animation.

Kerry: What’s kinda interesting as we’re creating the characters is, we kinda knew what kind of character they’d be. We knew Ruby would act a certain way, we knew Weiss would act a certain way, but we didn’t really know much about them. So we would get to the point where we’d be figuring out plotlines or figuring out dialogue and we’d be like “What would Weiss say here? What would Nora say here?” And then it turned into “Oh well now we know.”

Miles: Obviously we put a lot of thought into Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang before we started writing the dialogue. I remember sitting upstairs and we made a show bible, and we’re starting- we talked about likes, dislikes, personality traits. One of the first things I remember making was “Weiss drinks coffee. Blake drinks tea.”

Kerry: It’s important. It sounds not important at all, but it’s very important. It says so much about them

Miles: But it’s so important. So much about them, also it says nothing about them. It was just like- that’s just what it is.

Monty: I want the show to have resonance with people who are growing up. Cos everyone’s story is the story of kind of becoming who they are. Especially these days when the path of becoming who you are tends to be marginalised with reality. Having done what I’ve done, where I’ve essentially dropped out of high school, started learning this stuff on my own, and therefore land in a position where I get to take the things I was dreaming about when I was growing up and make it real. I tend to get a lot of response from people who are also not sure what they’re meant to become, a lot of them also have the same bright imaginations and with the way the world is, the hardships of what it means to grow up tends to marginalise who you are, and I would hate that to happen to anyone because the future is in creativity and that’s not something you can just manufacture. I actually would like this show to grow up with the people, so unlike most shows where they tend to be ageless or age very slowly, I’d like our fifteen-year-old fans watching fifteen-year-old Ruby, when they’re twenty-five, to be watching twenty-five-year-old Ruby, and to actually have some resonance with the character. Probably one of my favourite types of feedback is to say “I know this person” or “this person is just like me,” and that’s probably one of the best things about coming up with these characters.

[zexapher]

A Fond Farewell

With Rooster Teeth beginning its draw down, an era has truly passed. The company has lasted more than two decades. 18 (soon 19) seasons, five mini-series, and cameos and references in Halo itself for Red vs Blue. 9 volumes alongside two movies, a chibi series, Ice Queendom, and its own games for RWBY. And so much more beyond that, RT Shorts, podcasts, Achievement Hunter, The Slow Mo Guys, and on and on. That’s a lot, especially for a little startup launching off a web series. I was listening to “This Isn’t Goodbye, It’s See You Later” by Richie Branson while I was making this little memorial post. It’s a song made for another Rooster Teeth show, Camp Camp, and I have to say it’s some very appropriate music for this moment.

The day the news dropped, I wrote up a little comment in response to Rooster Teeth beginning its closing down, and I thought I’d share some of it here. I grew up with Rooster Teeth, a bit of a cheesy line I know, but it’s true for a lot of us. I was just a little kid way back in the early 2000’s, a kid that liked Halo (a game I didn’t even own for a long time, but played at a friend’s house), and was just getting curious about what I could find about it on YouTube. And that brought me into the world of music videos and skits and montages made for that little game I liked.

From there, I discovered a small web series called Red vs. Blue. I’d sneak onto my folk’s computer to watch it since they didn’t appreciate the language, and in doing so I dipped my toes into the wide world of the internet for the first time. As I got older, I eventually hopped onto Reddit for its discussion threads of Rooster Teeth’s latest show, RWBY. I began my first in-depth fandom interactions, speculating about the show, enjoying the flood of fanart, even got into fanfics about RWBY (those fics have had their own amazing evolution alongside the show) and to this day it’s the fandom I’ve followed and bookmarked the most fics from. All the while I was making friends and bonding with people through the community this company and its shows have created.

Watching the shows and people grow over time was, looking back on it, just like watching myself grow. I was never really a social media/internet kind of guy, until it came to Rooster Teeth. The shows, shorts, podcasts, it all opened up a whole new world for me. It’s sad to see it coming to a close, and I hope it gets picked up in the future. But I’m happy, too, that it’s left so much behind, and had such an impact on me. It’s left me with so many good memories. Rooster Teeth, its shows, those that created and worked on it, and above all the community around it will always have a special place in my heart.

So, I bid a fond farewell to Rooster Teeth and its crew, and anyone who may drift away from the fandom in time. I wish you all the best.

[anthurak]

So I’ve been theorizing about Rosebird Parents, aka; ‘Raven is Ruby’s real dad’ for close to five years now, and it’s funny how in that time I haven’t actually touched on what feels like somehow both the most obvious AND most innocuous bit of potential foreshadowing to this theory.

I am of course speaking of Saphron, Terra and Adrian Cotta-Arc, aka; the wlw couple raising a child together.

Now on the one hand, yeah it is really easy to read this as a potential subtle hint towards Summer and Raven being Ruby’s parents; a case of the show ‘planting a seed’ in the audience’s head of the image of two women in a relationship raising a child together. Particularly as there is no mention an ex-husband/boyfriend or other kind of ‘sperm-donor’, leaving open the possibility that Saphron and Terra may have conceived Adrian themselves.

On the other hand… yeah it’s also possible to read a bit too much into this. It’s entirely possible that if Saphron and Terra are meant to hint towards anything, they could just as easily be meant as a hint towards Bumbleby, given their shared hair-colors and the fact that Volume 6 is so pivotal towards the development of Blake’s and Yang’s relationship.

And appearance-wise, while Adrian certainly looks a lot like Terra, his design doesn’t exactly have any stand-out elements that point to him also being Saphron’s biological kid.

At least not in the same obvious way as Raven being easily mistaken for Ruby’s mom.

So when it comes to ‘the Cotta-Arcs are foreshadowing Rosebird Parents’, my honest take is pretty much: ‘They might be, and they might not be.’

That. Being. Said.

If it IS ever mentioned, especially in-show, that Saphron and Terra really did conceive Adrian together…

Then I would consider that to be THE, smoking-gun evidence that Rosebird Parents is ABSOLUTELY a thing that is HAPPENING.

Because when you really get down to it, the prospect of ��two woman normally can’t make a kid together’ is really the biggest ‘barrier’ to Rosebird Parents. It’s just one of those things that is generally a given in most stories. Something that the audience just assumes to be true.

But, if RWBY happens to put ‘two women can make a baby’ on the table as a thing that CAN and does happen in its setting?

Then that means EVERYING myself and others have been saying is now ALSO on the table.

Ruby looks nothing like Tai but enough like Raven that Raven can be confused for Ruby’s mother?

Summer and Raven seem to have been quite close with strong hints that at least Raven was in love with Summer?

Raven has all the classic traits we so often see in “I am your father” characters?

The creators have disproven Qrow being Ruby’s dad by saying she and Yang are half-sisters which is a relationship which would be unchanged by Raven being Ruby’s other parent?

ALL of that and MORE starts being a LOT more relevant.

It effectively takes a statement that ‘if Raven were a dude, we would ALL be expecting them to be Ruby’s real dad’ and says “Yeah, for all intents and purposes, she basically IS now.”