RWBY - Volume 1 Final Thoughts

[surgeworks]

05 - Volume 1 Finale | Table of Contents | Volume 2
____________________

Welcome to the first iteration of Final Thoughts brought to you by yours truly.

In most that I've seen, the Final Thoughts are where it's all wrapped up with a bow on top. All points have been tallied, with everything prior right down to the blurbs contributing. Given the mediums of my ventures so far, though, I'm going to do things a little bit differently--even the Final Thoughts are game for points. This was originally just going to be the case for this one volume of this one spork, given the extreme length of the most recent post in it, and me not being able to say everything I needed morning...but I've decided it actually suits me better to do it across the board. So!

The first thing we need to look at for RWBY Volume One is its...

Story

And by that I mean, there isn't one.

And unlike in most published works where you can say "there isn't a story", RWBY Volume One won't even let you pretend at events being linked together. The entire first half of the volume is dedicated to meeting characters and establishing the setting, which seems extreme until you remember that most of that content is just four-to-five minute episodes in which they also have to attempt some appeal to comedy.

But even then, that just says how utterly unprepared anyone up at house was to take ona  serious, self-contained work: the pacing is horrible, and the show simply isn't charming enough to hook serious interest when it's not distracting you with an admittedly good fight scene. Despite plodding through to about Episode 8 in spirit, our setting is established by Episode 4, by which time we've also met all of the remotely important characters. What follows is a series of mini-plots, which are:

• Complete initiation and form teams (four episodes
  
• Weiss and Ruby experience friction (two episodes)
• Jaune gets past a bullying problem (four episodes)

The latter two double as focus arcs for Weiss/Ruby and then Jaune, respectively. Then, once all of that is said and done, the final two episodes of the volume see fit to finally bring in an overarching plot, while also juggling two brand-new characters. Only in the very last episode of the volume does Roman Torchwick, a figure from the first episode, reappear (and that's faint praise--he originally wasn't going to reappear at all, having been a one-off until it was decided positive audience reaction warranted more). Cinder, the only remaining link to the pilot, who hasn't been seen since then, waits until a post-credits stinger to appear, flanked by two more new characters.

What it reads as altogether is sloppy, fumbling, and tripping over itself. In a politer tone, this show reads as though everyone writing it were way too excited about it to actually sit down and work out the kinks.

You could argue that, hey, this is only one volume of many, and that it's only proper that this one be used to take as much time as possible establishing the setting and merely hint at what's to come.

Well, to that, I raise you that this is an animated show done in-house and released on a weekly basis. When your hiatus lasts, at minimum, six months and often branches into eight or twelve, there is no excuse for a meandering plot with a slow pace. You can't afford it. You're asking your audience to hand you weeks of their time at a time for bits of information about the world and, if they want anything substantial, actual years of their life. That is never going to stop being a problem, and will be a hurdle Rooster Teeth continue to sprawl over at every turn going forward.

And to back up my point about the slow pacing, let's look at what we actually learned about the RWBYverse over these past 16 episodes.

• Trailers: Wolves bad. Big gaudy science fiction weapons. Snow fields, castles, trains, night clubs. Junior is a bad man and Adam is worse.
  
• Episode 1: Huntsmen and Huntresses, dust, schools for training warriors, protesting furries.
• Dust, again.
• Episode 3:
• Episode 4: Teams, I guess.
• Episode 5: Landing strategies.
• Episode 6: The Big Aura Info Dump.
• Episode 7:
• Episode 8:
• Episode 9: Remnant is overrun with Grimm.
• Episode 10:
• Episode 11: Aura meters, a tournament, rocket lockers, faunus bullying.
• Episode 12: The Faunus War + Menagerie, faunus can see well in the dark.
• Episode 13:
• Episode 14: The word "semblance" is finally said.
• Episode 15: The White Fang, the Vytal Festival/Tournament.
• Episode 16: The White Fang in Detail.

That's at least five episodes where we get no new information about our setting at all. And of everything we did learn, you could've hashed almost all of it out in one or two episodes--and as this is a school setting, a method of doing so is readily available! Just have teachers require in-class reports or demonstrations on things like Grimm or dust or world history. Or, since you went that route with aura and a lot of this has to do with combat or survival, layer an audio explanation of what's going on over a fight scene, like with Ren versus the King Taijitu. Hell, if you're going that far, you don't even necessarily have to explain dust and semblances, just have them be shown in-use, in ways where the relevant information is easily inferred. Here, I'll help you--the "initiation" of new Beacon freshmen starts before they're even there--on the airship, which gets "attacked" by enemies, real or perhaps simulated, forcing the students to defend it and keep it in the air while the pilot tries to escape. It's that easy.

It Was Right There: 2

So the story sucks. What about the people in it?

Characters

Main Cast

Ruby Rose

Ruby Rose does not have the fortune to be well-characterized this volume, which is a shame as she's the main character.

We'll leave the discrepancy between Trailer Ruby and Show Ruby where it is,  since by Monty's own admission it was meant more as a display of weapon badassery than anything relating to character. So what do we get of Show Ruby?

We know she's talkative, socially awkward, and enthusiastic but nervous about leading her team. We know it is her dream to be a Huntress, and that she's always been an idealistic kid. We know that she's been moved ahead to enroll in Beacon early due to exemplary skill. We know that she has a serious sweet tooth, and we know she slacks off a bit and has trouble keeping up in class.

...And that's about it. Very nice for starting details, but not very much hook for our heroine.

This is a trend that will continue, unfortunately. Mind you, there are some other things we can infer about Ruby, but we discuss that a bit later down the page. Ruby has so far been lightly characterized as youthful, awkward, and energetic, and not much else.

Weiss Schnee

This one, on the other hand, goes the mile and then some, a trend that will also continue, though not always to her benefit.

Weiss Schnee is supposed to be an ice queen. I have already outlined how Weiss is the opposite of an ice queen, because at every turn, we see that she's irascible, confrontational, rude, belligerent, self-reliant to the exclusion of others, and spoiled. So no, she does not hit the mark she was aiming for because the cannon was pointed in the opposite direction.

However, Weiss does better than Ruby by not just having visible and present flaws, but actually addressing them...sometimes. When push comes to shove, Weiss will put aside her snobbish attitude to help out, and when given the chance to voice her doubts, she usually takes steps to get over whatever is plaguing her. This definitely worked better in her first mini-arc that she shared with Ruby than in her second one that she shared with Blake, for the simple reason that in the first one, she was shown to talk things out and actually go through the motions of progressing as a character.

Weiss along with Blake has given us by far the most personal history--she's not an only child,yet she remains haughty and prideful; her father was most likely abusive, and she carries a lot of baggage from growing up within a company that has been the target of attacks by civil rights protestors (we're not calling them terrorists, we're better than that).

Were it not for the appalling way she's characterized in the final two episodes, via uncomfortably realistic racism and a complete non-attempt to actually resolve that, Weiss would easily be the MVP for 'characterized main character' for Volume One, if only for the fact that she is presented with problems and is allowed to struggle with overcoming them.

Blake Belladonna

This one is actually the gold winner, at least for this volume.

Blake is introduced, contrary to Ruby and Weiss, as pretty much matching her trailer counterpart: quiet, thoughtful, willing to take action, but also somewhat haughty and a bit of a realist as contrasting Ruby's idealism. Right off the bat, we see she's up-front and willing to criticize a large corporation right to its heiress' face, painting her as highly ethical and unafraid to show it. That characterization persists on a low but consistent level throughout the volume, talking down to Cardin and detesting bullying, yet always letting others take the lead. This comes to a head at the end of the volume, where Weiss brings to the fore pretty much everything Blake has struggled against.

It's quite interesting to find that Blake and Weiss don't have trouble until that moment, suggesting that, until Weiss opens her big fat racist mouth, Blake is willing to take a chance on working with the Schnee heiress on the benefit of the doubt that she might not have the same ideals as her family. She is unfortunately wrong, but a two-day split and a fight scene later, they're okay. I will forever resent that Road to Nowhere, but at the very least Blake comes out of it looking better than Weiss.

Her backstory that she shares with Sun at the tail end of the volume is a fairly succinct depiction of the unfortunate position of civil rights protest, but unfortunately I will have my words about the subplot she is now the lead character of, and why she isn't good for it.

Yang Xiao Long

And here is where we see a problem.

I pointed out that several characters got mini-arcs dedicated to them. Weiss shared one with Ruby, and then another one with Blake, while Jaune got one to himself, or you could generously stretch it to say it was about Pyrrha, too. Not only did Yang not get the same treatment in the debut season of her show, but we find out almost nothing new about her throughout the course of it. We know she's fun-loving, headstrong, and boisterous, but we knew that from her trailer. We know she's a caring sister to Ruby, but we learn that in the first episode and she doesn't display it after a few barbs at Weiss and a measured attempt at interaction with Blake.

Yang has...pretty much nothing in this season, and is coasting by on residual attraction to a cool, thrilling, pretty action girl. She doesn't interact much with Weiss or Blake, her other non-Ruby teammates, and pretty much stops interacting with Ruby on a one-on-one basis a quarter of the way into the volume. She's not even really there after her battle contribution in Episode 8, simply remaining a spectator to the other team members' problems.

Love To Be a Part of It Someday: 1

The same thing is, that count was originally conceived for side characters, not main ones.

You can't leave a character with broad inclusion only, or they become just another part of the audience. The most important thing for Yang going forward is going to be one-on-one interaction with other members of the case and hopefully some personal history.

Jaune Arc

Jaune is a very important character when understanding RWBY and its flaws. Though part of deuteragonist Team JNPR, he has the oh-so-contentious role of audience surrogate, and it is thus important that we be able to relate to him as we experience the world of Remnant with him and through him.

He fails at that. Hard.

It's okay that Jaune isn't cool or a badass right off the bat, as there's nothing wrong with an underdog character and many find them endearing and enjoyable. However, the Jaune Point Fest that occurred in Chapter 13 is proof that this venture almost immediately went sour due to a serious misunderstanding of both audience and the character archetype.

Beyond that, though, Jaune just really isn't even likable, which is important to have on his side as he lacks the attractive badassery that the other characters have to keep audiences paying attention even when nothing much is going on.

Is he nice? Uh, sort of. He's friendly and personable if he doesn't seem to find you hot, in which case he gets incredibly rude. Is he helpful? Uh, no, he actually costs others a fair bit of effort to help along. Is he relatable...?

Definitely not in most cases, and I don't want to think about the ones where he is. I brought up during Jaune's flirtations with Weiss and Pyrrha how audiences really do not like it when male characters are pushy flirts, and I will hazard to say that this is the case broadly, rather than just with female audiences who would be unable to relate to begin with. You see, in most cases where a male audience can perform self-insertion on a male hero, they don't want to pursue women, they want to be pursued by women. That's why the Pervert Character is universally reviled by all but incels.

Now, there's more to Jaune than being a wannabe player, and he's certainly no Sanji, but it is important to examine how he interacts with the female cast. Jaune is the foremost guy in a show headed by women, and this can be observed in how while there are other male characters in the show, he interacts with almost no one but the female ones the entire Volume (well, there's Cardin, but that's...its own issue). This means he is going to be under a lot of scrutiny to see if he's upstaging women, mistreating women, displaying any misogynistic tendencies, etc...

Having an arc to yourself to overcome a bully problem in which you throw all your emotional baggage onto a woman, then rudely push her away when she offers help, all while characters like Yang are just wandering off into the void, and Pyrrha herself has devoted most of her attention to you over her team...well.

Fauxminism: 5

This issue is going to get worse before it gets better.

Pyrrha Nikos

Pyrrha is characterized fairly well, being neither as blank as Ruby and Yang nor maintaining as much spotlight as Weiss and Blake. She is a well-respected combatant and athlete and a good student, though somewhat awkward and stilted when it comes to interacting with others. She is kind and helpful, along with patient and thoughtful.

...Does that sound familiar.

Yes, a lot of Pyrrha's characterization is a more muted version of Ruby's, albeit more committed to the 'uncomfortable spotlight' angle, and she doesn't much change from it. Unlike with Ruby, I can believe at a glance that there is more to Pyrrha than meets the eye, especially as there's a hint near the end of Jaune's arc that she's keeping some things secret. She's also proactive, taking steps to solve problems in efficient ways, which bounces better than Ruby's self-esteem problems that show up whenever Weiss is feeling bitchy.

There's still some things left to be desired, mind you--but we can feel more intrigued by Pyrrha than some of our other options, and she along with Weiss and Blake are the most well-characterized of the female leads.

Side Cast

Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie

While these two are technically part of deuteragonist Team JNPR, calling them main characters would be generous to the point of dishonesty. We find out everything we need to know about Nora in the first twenty seconds of meeting her--bubbly and hyperactive, childhood friends with Ren, crushing on him but totally not crushing on him, short attention span, etc. Lie Ren is similarly quieter than Blake and yet more serious, and is childhood friends with Nora, and is generally short on energy. Ren can cook and Nora has a sweet tooth to the point of eating tree sap. That's all we get.

This would be where someone else would make criticisms for these characters being static, but unlke some literature analysts, I don't believe being static is an automatic detriment to the character if that character's traits are enjoyable, and Ren's and Nora's are. It's just that being a static character is never going to be as interesting as being a developing character. Unfortunately, there are still issues--Nora being attached at the hip to Ren will look very suspect if she never has any one-on-one interaction with anyone else, so...will she? Is she going to have ideas or goals beyond 'kee[ Ren safe' that matter to her instead of just being shared with the group at large? And for that matter, let's ask that question of Ren, too. After all, characters being static is one thing, but characters being satellites is quite another. It's not just about feminism, either--existing only for the sake of another character doesn't look good on anyone.

But again, this is the first volume. There's more waiting in the future, I suppose.

Ozpin and Glynda Goodwitch

...are not much to talk about this volume. They have eyes everywhere, Glynda is strict and direct, Ozpin is cryptic and apparently benevolent. Much like Yang, we have some initial traits to get us started and then we don't have much else. Although they are technically still side cast, they exist mostly in the background, which for now is not to their detriment as they don't have much to contribute right now anyway--they're here because they're faculty.

Cardin Winchester

...has just had a minor taste of being ensemble, and is now gone. I think I went over this already, didn't I? One-dimensional bully and that's it. He wouldn't even be in this post if he hadn't played a significant role in Jaune's mini-arc as his antagonist. Fade into the background now.

Sun Wukong

Oh, good, someone I can actually talk about.

Sun is going to be one of our foremost non-Beacon cast along with Penny, if you couldn't tell. And I have to say, he made quite the first impression.

I kind of wish he and Jaune had had a chance to interact, because he's everythingJaune's not: a successful flirt, thoughtful and patient, listens to others and, although he's a criminal, it's a charming rogue angle rather than something that has serious consequences for both himself and others. And, ya know, hot.

Sun is introduced interacting with Blake, with whom he forms a delightful contrast, and then plays a little game of bait and switch. Since he's introduced taunting others and evading the police, you're free to think his flirting wink is just a sign he'll be another playboy to be annoyed by, but instead he's laid back and chill, more concerned with looking after this girl who's obviously distressed than with taking advantage of the situation to get some.Since he's introduced doing nothing more than running from police and drinking tea, you might be fooled into thinking he's a citizen-level person who doesn't go around saving the day, and then bam! He whips out a bo staff and starts beating the shit out of the villains.

I have to admit, I'm very charmed by this character. However, I do have some things to say about him regarding his place in the story.

As a new friend and possible love interest to Blake, and more importantly as the only member of the ensemble to be a faunus, Sun is introduced right at the exact same time as the racism subplot with the White Fang is introduced. As such, he is used as another faunus point of view for Blake's passionate civil rights ideals to bounce off of.

I'm gonna say it: that much is a mistake.

I will hammer this in repeatedly as we go on--Blake should not be the focal character for the civil rights allegory moving forward: Sun should.

This is a little bit spoiler-y, but a few volumes down, Rooster Teeth will approach the topic of faunus passing for human...which I should note Blake already does. She does! Yeah, a lot of the audience guessed early on that she was a faunus because they had her bow twitch one too many times, but in-universe, Blake passes perfectly. All she needs is a bow and any trace of her faunus heritage vanishes, and any racism she would otherwise experience with it. Her teammates had absolutely no idea she was a catgirl until she made a grave error in an argument with Weiss.

*points* Sun can't pass for human. He has a three-foot-long tail that is going to be impossible to hide without a full-body cloak, and probably has to cut holes in any pants and underwear he buys. He is introduced getting to Vale by stowing away on a ship, which you could easily spin as being because faunus were barred from that ship, or because he was prevented from getting a passport due to restrictions. He evades police and continues to break the law by stealing food at least once, which lends itself to the implication that Sun is poor. This character is perfectly set up to experience the full effects of anti-faunus racism, and to that end should be the one campaigning for an end to it. Instead, we get...

"[The White Fang are] stupid holier-than-thou creeps who use force to get whatever they want."

Because surely, if even the black faunus character over here thinks that the [insert overly-scrutinized civil rights protestors] are bad, they've gotta be, right?

Compounding this issue is that he doesn't get to acknowledge or respond to Weiss' racism--of which he is a target for some time in his debut episode--at all. It would kind of shoot down the idea that Weiss doesn't need to apologize for anything if he were allowed to hear about and take issue with it, I suppose.

Penny Polendina

Hmm. Spoilers, I guess. It's not like they tried very hard to hide it.

You know, I should really hate this character by default.

I have had, and had already had by 2013, just about enough of juvenile plots asking the question of "can a robot experience humanity?" the answer is no, guys, I don't know why authors find this to be so fucking emotional and poignant a venture. I've just never understood it. Terminator 2 came closest and was the only one I liked, and that's all I'll concede.

And any patience I ever had with plots like that vanishes when the robot in question looks like an attractive human girl for...no reason, *cough*horny*cough*, I suppose. Those of you paying attention to my Persona 3 recap will understand, then why I was predisposed to dislike a certain character in it.

And yet, I don't dislike Penny Polendina. In fact, I actually like her a lot.

Maybe it's the absence of sexualization in her design, the absence of perversion evident in girls who are emotionless and naive by the designs of an author who clearly likes women that way (though will still find a way to write in the male hero being oh-so-important to them). TVTropes has spent more words than I ever could highlighting what a trend it is and how it often has an illogical element of sex to it that I, personally, find incredibly annoying.

Maybe it's the fact that she is allowed to interact with a primarily female cast, or that she apparently quite values friendship above asking ridiculous questions about love. Maybe it's the fact that instead of being played emotionlessly, she's very cheerful and emotive, and it's the mechanical nature of her interactions with the world that makes her appear odd. Maybe it's the fact that she clearly understands humanity or some elements of it, but is concerned about her distance from it right off the bat rather than getting all philosophical about it.

I'm sure there's examples of the Robot Girl that are more in line with Penny than Aigis, but I'm tired enough of the latter to find the former very refreshing.

I like Penny. I want her to have plenty of friends and I hope good things happen to her.

Villains

Roman Torchwick and Cinder Fall are our only named villains at this point, though the latter hasn't even been named in-story. They have not actually threatened anything our heroes appreciate so far, and would be completely invisible to them had Ruby not gotten her place at Beacon by beating up Torchwick's goons, and had Weiss not enraged Blake into trying to prove a point. It's now personal for the latter, who obviously is taking issue with a repugnant human criminal ordering around members of the organization that used to be her peers.

Roman's pretty adept with a cane, and Cinder is obviously a powerful mage, though that people were actually surprised Cinder was in charge as opposed to hired muscle is laughable to me.

I never found Roman that interesting, to be honest, and I will continue to hold to that opinion. Yes, he's very stylish and charismatic, and is present on the badassery scale somewhere, but much like Ezio Auditore, if that's all you've got going for you, I probably won't get very attached to you. In fact, the Ezio comparison is dishonest--Ezio had a Tragic Backstory^TM and a revenge plot. Roman so far just seems to be a criminal who wants a lot of dust. Sorry guys, it's not my thing.

Music

Music is something you have to talk about in any visual media. It's far more important than most people realize.

Be it animation, live action, visual novels, or video games, music is the thread by which the ultimate reputation of it hangs. A bad soundtrack can drag down a good game or show, and a good soundtrack can likewise boost it to the heights of praise. Likewise again, a genuinely good soundtrack can be the saving grace of an otherwise bad game or show.

Not only is this the case for RWBY, whose music by Jeff Williams is probably its biggest draw aside from its fight scenes, but the case for RWBY is rather special, since it involves lyrical content.That is to say, the lyrics of the chosen soundtracks are directly related to the material in the show.

(There are people who will profess this to be untrue, and I suspect that's because they swallowed what Jeff Williams said when this fact came back to bite him and Rooster Teeth on the ass.)

The music for this show is lovingly crafted to color the sketch drawn by the characters and situations. Look at the Volume One Soundtrack with me now.

1. This Will Be The Day
   
2. Red Like Roses Part 1
3. Mirror Mirror
4. From Shadows
5. I Burn (Trailer Version)
6. Gold
7. I Burn (Full Version)
8. I May Fall
9. Red Like Roses Part 2
10. Wings

From the four trailer themes used to give character to the four girls they featured, to the climactic rock song "Red Like Roses Part II", almost all of these are meant to give in-story context or information outright. "Mirror Mirror" characterizes Weiss as solitary, cold, and lonely, and "From Shadows" is a full-length electronic song about fighting bigotry and subjugation, characterized as a duet between Adam and Blake. "This Will Be The Day" is just about the only song on here that does not make clear references to what happens in the show as it's the opening track, and even among opening tracks it will be the last of its kind in this regard. These lyrics and the compositions they are sung for are painstakingly crafted to sync up with the show, so don't you buy any nonsense about them not really meaning anything. Songwriters have to get paid, and they're not going to go out of their way to wrap their songs around in-story material unless someone is murmuring the details their ear. Jeff Williams didn't pull cool songs like these out of thin air just from watching the show himself.

"Red Like Roses Part II", which is what I was talking about earlier in Ruby's character section, is not only the ultimate proof of this, but an example of a promise that will be slowly broken later.

The song is a rock-and-roll duet from the viewpoints of, respectively, a girl who has lost someone close to her and now feels her world shattering around her, and that someone as the girl's protectorate who desperately wants to apologize for having to make tough decisions that brought her loved one torment. The song directly compares the red of roses to that of blood, and paints the girl, analagous to Ruby, as very traumatized and broken, which is quite a different characterization from what we've gotten of her so far. Not only did Casey Lee Williams sing that role, but they also brought in her very own mother, Sandy Lee Casey, to do the other half of the duet, so you know they were dead serious about this song.

Naturally, this brought a lot of fans' attention onto Ruby when it otherwise would've wandered due to her being so very vanilla character-wise. It's intriguing, isn't it? The show displays a cheerful, carefree girl who is more worried about being perceived as a bad leader than anything, and then the soundtrack goes and hints at major trauma regarding her parents. "Summer Rose" the name on the gravestone in the Red Trailer, was already confirmed to be Ruby's dead (?) mother, and it was later confirmed that she and Ruby were being depicted by Red Like Roses Part II.

Spoiler alert: Stop getting excited.

But yes, the soundtrack is fantastic and headbang-worthy and addictive, and its characterizations beyond that are usually spot-on.

Hiatus Observations

(warning for subjective opinion matter from here forth)

So, with all of that discussed, what was it like to experience RWBY's first hiatus, at least for me?

Said hiatus spanned eight months, with Volume One ending November 7th, 2013, and Volume Two beginning July 24th, 2014, almost exactly a year after the original pilot aired. I joined in the latter half of that, so I was experiencing Volume One on a binge readily available on YouTube and then swan-diving into the fandom immediately after.

Mostly, it was a nice place. Pretty much everyone among the four leading girls was much-beloved, and ships reigned. People were already vocalizing their dislike of Jaune, but even he had a fairly decent-sized fandom. Gijinkas were popular, and people were already latching onto characters with only trailer presence like Junior and the Malachite twins and Adam, and clamoring to see more. People were heavily invested in Summer Rose and what she might've been like.

In the main, I was syncing up well with this fandom, although there were some discrepancies. One of them was Torchwick. Man, people were all fuckin' over Torchwick, and that took many a volume to cool down--it was popular to portray him as this criminal mastermind who ruled the streets and talked down to lesser thugs, as well as a sex god able to charm the panties off of any woman he glanced at. I didn't get it myself, personally--year, Torchwick was cool, and fairly fun to watch in action, but I wasn't that drawn to him, and I quickly found myself a little annoyed by it all.

(It was also popular to ship him with Sun, and to that I'd like to say, why? Gross.)

Speaking of, that was probably the biggest one: Sun. Having read this far, you'll know I was already very into Sun when the Volume finished. He was presenting well early on, and then the nunchuck shotgun thing happened, and I never looked back. So, it really shocked me when I did that swan dive and fell face-first into a concrete wall of, well, hatred.

People were not quiet in their dislike of Sun, calling him a creepy stalker and an unnecessary, forced love interest, among other things. I didn't see any of that, and I still don't; I've already made the case for Sun being a polite and helpful dude who is probably (and totally understandably) attracted to Blake and not really making any moves on that yet. It took me a while to figure out why. I knew it couldn't be ust because he was a man, because Ren and Torchwick were also men, and people loved them. Could it be the experience with Jaune's pushy flirting with women, rubbing off on Sun? But that didn't seem likely either, as their presentations were so wildly different. Eventually though, I unearthed the cause. And that's all I will say until otherwise prompted.

So yeah, some bumps, but overall it was good. The fandom back in that day was a broiling mass of potential energy, much like its source material, and enthusiasm was running high. But mind you, by the time of present day, RWBY has a notoriously...well, obnoxious fandom, and while every fandom that gets even remotely big can lay claim to that, you can't lay the blame entirely on them. Rooster Teeth can be blamed for letting them in. That is to say, the wisest way to react to fans being very vocal about something trivial is not to feed them, and Rooster Teeth are a company known for gaming and a very close relationship with their fans. And few wise men among them.

*looking at certain counts, murmuring ominously*

Oh, yeah, that's about it. Turns out I wasn't going to have to break this up into several segments after all, not after those novella-length recap posts from before. That's good, I guess.

When I next post an update, we'll be heading into Volume 2. Beware.

Counts:

• Jaune: 6
  
• It Was Right There: 2
  
• Fauxminism: 5
  
• Hypocrisy: 1
  
• Ice Cream Queens: 0
  
• Reliable Leaders: 3
  
  • Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 0
    
• Threatening Enemies: 1
  
• Love To Be a Part of It Some Day: 1
  
• Your Fight Scene Sucks: 4 + 2
  
  • Evisceration Evasion: 2
    
• Ill Logic: 7
  
• Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 3
  
  • Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 0
    
  • Band-Aid Brigade: 0
    
• RSVP: 18
  
• Road to Nowhere: 1
  
• Y.A.S. Queen: 3
  
  

____________________



05 - Volume 1 Finale | Table of Contents | Volume 2

Comments

[rc88]

So is it worse to do things like RWBY and try to frantically patch up fan objections, or like Homestuck and include things directly contradicting popular fanon out of sheer pettiness?

[surgeworks]

Neither. Spite and pettiness will ruin any series beyond repair. RWBY and the MK approach of frantically patching up fan objections, on the other hand, might've actually extended the life of the series had they ever learned what fans actually like and want, rather than basically being token acknowledgements. The relationship between creator and fan is an important one, and there has to be a barrier in place, but drive too many of them away, and you'll sink the whole tanker.