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RWBY BOOK REVIEW 1 RWBY: The Session

I've decided to finally get around to reading the RWBY novels and Reviewing them as I go. RWBY the session is such a outlier when it comes to RWBY as a franchise because apart from a couple awkward moments here and there, it's just straight good which isn't that surprising since RWBY is basically a light novel anime without the stuff you have to hold your nose for. Characterisation is either equal to (Ruby, Nora, Ren, Pyrrha and Blake) or outright surpasses it's surrounding volumes. Jaune's courting of Weiss feels way less obnoxious and in this story he feels actually somewhat part of the plot even if he's relegated to mostly the emotional core of the story. Yang has characterization pre-fight with Mercury and while it isn't the greatest characterization ever, Lazy Yang who doesn't really care to think about the deeper issues and thinks she's strong enough to take anything works as a balance to the more intense WB. Weiss being a Schnee Industries nerd actually works really well as a point to show that she isn't as different from RWBY as she want's to pretend and her interactions in the training room show a genuine ability to change her mind about people without removing her frostier elements. The biggest thing I like the session for is that it never really drops characterization like a lot of Volumes do. Sure, I think that most volumes have better character writing for one or two characters at a time but they generally struggle with keeping everyone at a baseline good and that's what I really appreciate here. The Session also actually unifies the Science and Fantasy elements very well. Using Animal Robots to pretend to be Grimm is by far the most interesting plan a character has in the entire series and Starhead industries Resort is such a cool setting compared to so many boring areas. The problem here is that despite all the good elements around it, it's just a quite well written LN. If the entirety of RWBY was like the Session and didn't have it's weirdness and faults, I wouldn't really be interested in talking about it. I'd appreciate it as a series I wouldn't have to grimace through the more 'Anime' parts but that's about it.

Number score is probably around a 7.9/8.1? What is your take on the book, considering that a free translation of the novel is on FFN?

I'll be reading AFTER THE FALL tonight and writing a more comprehensive review taking notes and such, posted tomorrow. I will probably like it.

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The Monty Hall Problem: Why I feel so much of RWBY criticism misses the mark

Today I will criticise the critics /j I'm only half joking here. As always no disrespect intended to any creator or video maker directly and I think RWBY is a good show. Unlike some people I don't think that every single critical video about RWBY misses the mark but a lot of the biggest ones do. Despite being a fan for a very long time and thinking the video itself is quite entertaining, I don't think there's a better example of this problem than Mr. Bomberguy's video themselves. (IF THAT IS THIER REAL NAME!!!) I want to say 'I don't know why this point isn't common.' but I know why.

I've thought long and hard about this point, dreamed about making a video about this but I feel that someone at some point has to say this. Monty Oum was responsible for both RWBY's successes and failures and that the attempts to remove any influence he had on the fundamental construction of the series as a whole, to try to confine his influence to just the fight scenes and to pin the blame for everything bad on Miles and Kerry makes so much of the criticism of the series fundamentally wrong in not it's 'what' are the problems of the series but 'why's'.

To say that it wasn't Monty's fault for the worldbuilding not being thought out is I feel outright cope from people who don't want to actually critically evaluate RWBY but want an excuse for their idol. RWBY's problem was not that the EVIL MILES AND KERRY besmirched the pure goodness of Monty's vision like is often portrayed. Monty made the very human mistake of underestimating how difficult something was, not really understanding the sheer unmitigated difficulty of working as a creative director. Instead of using the time after RWBY was picked up to do the real preproduction process, refining every idea and getting a proper detailed outline for the next 4 volumes and making sure that the creation process and tools were ready and the team was fully trained ... He went off to make the colour trailers. I mean, I think the colour trailers are cool and all but it's honestly IMO what set RWBY on the weird path it did.

RWBY from then on is basically always on the backfoot, always crunching to get things 90% done. There's no resources for an expensive fight scene? Move the Jaune bully Arc up so we don't have to animate one because we don't have to do a fight. I don't care that it doesn't make sense from a characterisation perspective to have this plotline NOW, we need it finished.

What does the white fang believe???? uh fuck, I've just gone from recording a podcast to doing VA work, FUCK FUCK! WE HAVENT COME UP WITH THAT YET?? It's clear that honestly, finishing a single volume of RWBY was a miracle. The conditions seem honestly nightmarish. The problem here is the assumption that it HAD to be like that. That Monty couldn't of at any time found someone to be a creative director and delegated himself to fight scene chorographer/ Lead animator. But he didn't want to give up that creative control.

People are weird about Monty Oum and I despise that. The weird honest to god idolatry/fetishization of his work is honestly disgusting to me. Monty Oum's death affected his friends and FUCKING FAMILY. It's not a reason that a stupid fucking cartoon was bad or whatever. His death was a tragedy not because we lost a talented artist but because he was a person that meant unfathomable amounts to people in his real life.

This is the problem that some critics and all of the R/RWBYCRITICS run up against. It's Monty Oum's RWBY after all, so if there's a failure in RWBY it can't be Monty's fault because I LIKE MONTY so it's someone else's. It must be the new direction or the WOKE or Not following his vision or whatever. This is also why I'm so sceptical about RWBY's potential as a narrative. The way that RWBY was created from the start left no room for refinement or polish as there was no breathing space to do those things.

I think that at some point, you have to let Monty go and take RWBY as it is.

Sure, the early fight scenes were good but look around the rest of this website. People fucking love the characters and that's on everybody on the team who created, designed, voiced animated, sketched and the fans who helped bring them to life, not just one man.

To boil down every good part to Monty is to ignore everyone else on the team past present and future who tore their hearts out to work on this, who were willing to put up with disgusting conditions to make art they were proud of?

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Just got my first hate comment! I want to talk about it.

Hi! I write RWBY fanfic, in specific the Embers of Beacon series which states on the tin that My Fanfic is in no way a Rewrite or even intends to follow the plot of the original. So it's really interesting that I got this comment.

Am I upset? a little. More than that though like a lot of what draws me to RWBY isn't the actual text itself but the context surrounding something.

I had not claimed to be better than CRWBY (I don't think I am, I think specifically Miles, Kerry and Monty are both better than I am at equivalent ages, though I think that they never really had a solid drive to keep improving so maybe I'll surpass them sometime in the next ten years, who knows.) I also agree, it is WAY HARDER to make something than criticize it. People like lily orchard and Nostalgia critic and more recently the critical drinker show that it's way harder to make than break something. On the other hand though, evaluation of ones and other's work is an important part of improving past basic competency. My last couple of chapters included a Meta-Textual element that became confusing and one of my readers 'Insulted me' about it and I intend to fix and improve it soon as a good artist should. I'm just curious, very very curious about why this person would comment THESE specific insults when you could have read the first chapter and made way better and more cutting ones that actually would have applied. 'Wow! Opening on the Dust shop robbery, wasn't this supposed to be original????'

'Urgh, more Jaune content, SKIPPED!'

I don't know why this person did this and unlike some people I've seen, I'm not going to call this person Steve fucking bannon because I dont like them. I dunno. I think that alot of RWBY fans are wayyyy to close to the series and need to find something else.

Watch the Owl House. Its good.

I have mid-terms to study for, so my character profiles that I was going to post instead of this will start posting tomorrow.

Have a good day.

EDIT: The more I think about this comment the funnier this is. RWBY the series that uses fairy tale creatures and the OZ series which the last several books of the series are STILL IN COPYRIGHT!

THEY DIDNT EVEN CHANGE HIS NAME, HE'S JUST SUN WUKONG!!!! YANG IS ALMOST AN EXACT COPY OF TIFA IN THE START OF THE SERIES, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!!! NEO IS A FAN DESIGN!!!! RWBY CHIBI DOES A FAN-COMIC ADAPTATION!!!

WHY DONT I HAVE MY OWN WEBSHOW? BECAUSE EVEN IF I HAD THE MONEY OR CONNECTIONS TO DO SO, I WOULDN"T BECAUSE MAKING ANYTHING THAT INVOLVES MORE THAN 2 PEOPLE IS A NIGHTMARE THAT YOU NEED TO PLAN OUT CAREFULLY!

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Writing RWBY fic has made me realise something really important is missing from RWBY.

Where's the goddam fun fantasy characters?

Where is my sentient Pumpkinhead possessing ethically sourced robot-corpses? Where's my incredibly sketchy shop that the team is like 99% sure is run by Grimm? WHERE IS THE EVIL RUBY DOPPLEGANGER WHO IS ALSO A WEAPONS DORK? WHERES MY DEMON-SWORD POSSESING JAUNE LIKE THE VENOM SIMBIOTE AND CALLING HIMSELF GRIMFEILD SLAYER OF MAN AND EVERYONE NEVER LETTING THAT JOKE DIE? YANG TURNING INTO A NORMAL ASS BEAR! GENDER-SWAP EPISODE- actually that one would be too hard on the budget. Fun idea though.

RWBY calls itself Sci-Fantasy but it sucks that it doesn't let itself really go wild with the fun part of fantasy. RWBY's best fantasy character concepts (Ozma/Penny/Cat) come out pretty consistently fantastic. The floating asteroids from volume 4 are sick as hell as well.

The maidens and relics tend to have fun uses, even if I think they needed a little bit more ironing of the kinks out.

I get why this exists. CRWBY are majority Sci-Fi fans and that's clear by their fav properties and also how much more world-building Atlas gets than the rest.

This isn't a 'but RWBY's potential!!!!! post.' I just think that they should do more stupid fantasy stuff.

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Why write RWBY? (One writer's analysis of why there's so much RWBY content and why I specifically write for it.)

TLDR: I THINK RWBY IS GOOD OVERALL. My work is Ember's of Beacon, which has been delayed again due to illness (I'm burning up as I write this). Now that's done.

1. Due to RWBY's overall lack of focus and vast spectrum of themes and types of plotlines, a writer can choose what sections and characters they want to focus on and how they connect. Thus like many similar settings such as dragon ball or most gatcha games allow for vast possibility space for any sort of fiction.

2. No one was making the sort of battle academy series I wanted to read that wasn't also something else. The closest was Remnant Light but that wasn't actually RWBY and was also starting to veer into shipping territory early on.

I wanted to write something that was distinctly iterative, not a rewrite or something completely unrelated to RWBY, but building upon the things that both the canon show and the fanbase have created without any sort of prejudice or nostalgia.

Why do other's write for RWBY/ Why some stories make for better Fanfic material than others.

A thing that we have to grapple with is that somethings ability to be converted into high quality fan-content is not directly related to it's actual quality as a show.

Image 1: The classic graph

They key aspects to high quality material as seen by what has disproportionately larger amounts of fan content are what I refer to as stories with large possibility spaces.

A possibility space is the part of a world that the audience knows about but never directly sees, only imagines. Most stories only have medium possibility spaces such as HxH where while the world feels very big, the actual areas you explore are quite small and very in-depth. Possibility space doesn't just apply to worldbuilding elements either, it also applies to characters. in the same way that we could ask what the rest of mantle is like outside of the brief glance we've shown let's say hypothetically what if Jaune was BETRAYED and trapped in the hyperbolic time chamber for 50 years!

oh they did that. Nevermind...

What if Blake and Sun got together? What would happen? Shipping is a big part of exploring possibility space and the show itself also helps here, by effectively showing what a romantic relationship between Blake and sun would be like before showing what a relationship between Yang and Blake.

The more concepts and characters and just in general stuff gets added to a series where it isn't gone in depth to a satisfying amount to the audience, the larger possibility space expands.

A possibility space being large doesn't necessarily impact the quality of storytelling. Having alot of settings and worldbuilding can definitely be a problem when it isn't conveyed well but the actual size of a possibility space doesn't usually lead to weird effects or negatives on the storytelling.

A way too large possibility space can really effect the story however.

Two viewers can have very different head canons about the same thing (such as the white fang) and due to the show not being very clear and not exploring the key elements in depth can paradoxically both believe that (with some amount of evidence) they are right.

Is the story overall weaker for this? Yes. Does this allow for a way greater amount of fan content than if portrayed clearly? Also yes.

When things aren't portrayed clearly, an individual will simply imagine what they wish to be true, creating a possibly worse objective product but a better subjective product.

Like, what sort of life do the teams at beacon lead and what classes do they take? Depending on what part of the show or what fanfic you've read most recently, you're answer will change quite dramatically.

This allows for Beacon to be both abstractly a high-school and University setting at the same time, without being specially AU.

A lot of the problems with interpreting RWBY (especially the earlier volumes) is that while most people know it as an 'American Anime'

RWBY is in the vast majority of ways, an early 2010's light novel adaptation with the perverted/harem stuff removed. (This is why RWBY is broken up into volumes, btw. Like a light novel.)

Of course, I was a child back then so I only really understand that stuff through the sort of retroactive examination of more modern Korean novels that take place within their worlds but this sort of framing make sense why the one of the first people created was a terrorist organisation.

There's also the fact that the literal RWBY light novel wasn't translated until quite recently but the fact that it mostly gets the tone right is emblematic.

With this massive amounts of possibility space that isn't truly explored and RWBY's biggest flaw being generally undercooked and leaving an consumer un-satisfied (Not a bad thing by itself as any sort of modern horror franchise could tell you). It leaves a desire in the audience and creatives to plug the wholes in a piece that they are probably already emotionally invested in.

2. RWBY fanfic due to it's fanbase being more cartoon fan than anime fan doesn't really have any sort of long running and well balanced Fanfic that either focuses on the actual main cast or actually takes the setting or genre as it is. (Not that there's anything wrong with any sort of other work or fanfiction. It's just that I didn't come to A03 for the yellow beasts harem extravaganza or read my stat screen for 400k words; sorry no plot only gamer stats, I came for more RWBY).

There are very few fanfic that have the sort of action adventure fantasy mix that RWBY is as the primary goal. I've also found a lot of the under explored elements of RWBY really interesting especially on a thematic level. How does the past effect the future, even if the past itself is forgotten? Can we find new paths for the future or will we eternally repeat the same stories? What do we gain by looking towards the past and what do we gain by looking towards the future?

I don't know if my work is all that great and I certainly haven't been able to write as much as I want but I simply wish to walk this path to the end, wherever it takes me.

Goddam it I'm gonna still be writing this yellow FUCK in 5 years aren't I?

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For all the fault's of RWBY, it's characters are so fun to write.

Ruby being a little ball of scraps and pure nuclear energy.

Weiss 'I would never stoop to your level' covered in slime and gunk in the sewers just to prove how just much better she is than everyone else.

Blake the ideal embodiment of 'Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss.' OPSEC.

Yang constantly attempting to piss of everyone around her, like she's a human Grimm while trying her best to make sure no-ones actually sad.

Jaune flipping between 'The only one here who passed normal highschool' to 'I have truly no context for this so I agree to kill a monstro, sure thing!'

Pyrrha trying to pretend that she doesn't bedrot in her room for 12 days, while opening sports betting on her phone while kicking everyone's ass.

Ren, the Wushu protag who in another life would have become immortal and created the great understanding art at level god king, currently thinking about how he needs more flour for pancakes.

Nora.

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The Golden Knight and Timeless Woods

In a time long forgotten by both gods and the stories they made, there was a forest older than naught but ten things.

Within this forest was a young boy not more than ten years old.

He could not remember how he got there, or why he was there or much of anything at all.

He cried out for his family as he walked through the forest even though the forest was dark and cold and very quite scary for the young boy.

But he was a very, very, brave young boy and ventured till he found the woodland’s edge.

The boy could not see past the edge of the woodland and as he sat in the glade.

A knight walked out of the forest edge.

The rusted knight asked the boy what was wrong. his eyes strikingly golden.

The boy wiped his tears on his onesie and asked.

Knight! The boy asked, Where art we?

The knight looked at the boy and said, the two of them were within the woods of change.

Knight! The boy asked, Where art my family?

The knight sat next to the boy and said, thy family are not here, for they have not been changed.

Knight, please! The boy pleaded, how can I go home?

The knight put his rusted hand on the boy’s head.

The knight said that the boy could not go home for there is already a boy at home, for these woods are the woods of change, were those who have been replaced and forgotten lie.

The boy cried for many nights and many days as he sat with the knight within the never moving forest.

The boy asked the knight, then why are you here?

The knight took off his rusted helmet, and showed that there was nothing under it, just two golden eyes and a blob of deep blackness.

For I am just like you, he said.

The boy asked what he would do now that he could not ever return.

The knight said that he had made an arc for those who were left behind, and that the boy was welcome to come with him.

A silver grin that shone like the crescent moon appeared before the two.

Two silver eyes stared at the boy as he hid behind the knight.

How does it feel, the creature asked, to be forgotten, to be left behind?

The knight eyes seemed sad as he had no mouth to talk with.

How does it feel, the monster asked, to be hated for what someone else said.

The Knight’s greaves shook as he had no hand to hold her with.

How does it feel, the friend pleaded, for the knight to abandon them all.

The knight’s tears fell like golden fruit.

The boy stood in front of the knight.

The boy yelled, that the knight had stayed with him when no-one else could and that he would go with the knight if no-one else could.

The knight grabbed his helmet and smiled with his eyes as he took the boy past the forest edge, to the arc where they can sleep soundly like they did when they were young.

The cold reaper knew it was best for the two of them to leave, for this was the place where wandering souls would wander.

As the boy boarded the arc, he turned to the knight.

Knight… The boy asked, why is it us?

The knight turned to the boy as the rotten planks of the arc groaned under the yellow river.

The knight said as the boy turned into a spark of gold, that the world had no place for them, for these games are not for us to play.

The boy’s golden spark wandered through the ship until it landed onto an almost pure gold music box.

Within the forest another golden boy appeared.

This boy had ill fitting armour and a letter within his hand.

The knight once again parked the arc against the shore.

-----

My short story to take a break from Embers of Beacon.

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Was very curious about how knowledgeable the RWBY fanbase was about the things that inspired it.

Thank you for your time