Table of Contents - RWBY

[surgeworks]

Wanna hear a story?

In late 2012, a curious little video was released under the Rooster Teeth channel on Youtube. This wonderfully-animated spectacle, quickly revealed to be the work of Monty Oum (you may know him from works such as “Haloid”), offered first a haunting atmosphere, showing a young girl in a blood red hood turning away from a cliffside gravestone and walking through a snow-covered forest. She emerged in a clearing full of inky black wolves, one of which took a swipe, and so began the slaughter: Little Red Riding Hood leapt skyward, silhouetted against the moon, and began raining wanton dismemberment and disembowelment upon a horde of monsters, using an enormous unfolding weapon that was some unholy yet incredibly badass combination of high-caliber sniper rifle and deadly scythe.

It was beautiful, it was jaw-dropping, it screamed its testaments to a man’s skill, insight, and passion...it was the “Red” Trailer for upcoming Rooster Teeth series “RWBY”, directed, written, and animated by Monty Oum in cooperation with Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross.

So began a legend that soon became a legacy, one that was rotting from within even before the unfortunate passing of its beloved creator.

The “Red” trailer was the first of four teasing a new animated series titled “RWBY” and pronounced “ruby”, the four letters being the initials of the four main characters as well as the starting letters of four colors they’d be heavily identified with. Trailers for “White”, “Black”, and “Yellow” followed, introducing us to Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long, each with their own gorgeously animated fight scenes and heavily loaded theme songs.

This should have been great. For a small studio that had only ever done comedy and never delved into a truly serious self-contained work before, this looked incredibly promising. And in 2013, it was all the internet could talk about. RWBY, Volume 1, would premiere in late summer of that year, unveiling 16 episodes released on a weekly basis. It should have been an unparalleled experience.

But all was not well behind the scenes, and this wouldn’t become apparent until many years later, when things began to look quite bad even from a mile away. RWBY will bring us the most extensive count system I have ever laid out for myself, and net us a couple of guest sporkers, too, and I may be joined by at least one other. Unfortunately, we can’t even start this series off with a recap of the first episode, as the four trailers are part of the story and are necessary to having certain context—and to catching a few early hints of the derailment of a great man’s dream. So, “Post Zero” will be a recap of those four trailers.

Unfortunately, Monty Oum, the series creator, passed away in February of 2015. His work would be continued without him, but in loving memory, or so we’re told. Be warned, all ye who enter here: there’s shady shit going on, and while I won’t pretend I was any fly on the walls, there’s not only very clear signs, but insider testimony. My analysis of this series and the happenings behind it are intended as honest, and as respectful as humanly possible, yet they are unavoidable.

I only have one spork planned outside the context of the show itself, and that is the infamous Shane’s Letter. If you’d like me to recap any specific creator input or commentary, such as RWBY Rewind or Reddit AMAs or the like, you’ll need to send me the link you want sporked and I’ll give it a look. In fact, I encourage it.

For now though, let’s take a gander at this list, and below it, the Table of Contents for RWBY Volume 1. Be aware, this list isn't even complete--I know of at least one I'll be adding.

• Jaune: "Jaune" is not a character: he is a phenomenon. Ordinarily, I can point to a specific problem plaguing a certain character as a writer mishandles them, and I do so often. But as those mishandlings pile up, and vocal criticisms in response pile up as well, they multiply and become exponentially worse. This count is not to describe a mere "why isn't this character better", nonsense. It tallies everything: the initial problems, the attempts to fix them, the doubling down on them. It's really quite fascinating in an appalling sort of way how much goes wrong surrounding a single character as a protective Suethor tries desperately to shape him.
  
• It Was Right There: What a pain! I talk about easy fixes a lot, but this show takes the cake for them. Sometimes the solution to a blunder in this writing could be staring me in the face, and is so painfully obvious I can’t understand how it slipped them by.
• Fauxminism: This show had, from its inception, a reputation as a feminist production considering its cast starred by four action-oriented heroines. I am going to show you that it is one of the most unfeminist things I have ever seen.
• Hypocrisy: The one trait I can’t stand. It shows up, and it does so a lot, never to any character’s benefit, even on those to whom we are ostensibly supposed to dislike.
• Ice Cream Queens: Not a count based on Neo. No, this is about….fridged female characters.
• Reliable Leaders: The people who are in charge, simply put, demonstrate perhaps every reason they should not be. This is mostly about Ozpin and how the story fails to paint him as competent, reliable, or morally ambiguous, but can extend to other leader figures as well.
  • Prowling Wolf Fallacy: Yep, a subcount. RWBY has an odd approach to conflict that basically ensures any conflict it has is incredibly badly done...and I’ll have to tell you more about that when this fallacy comes along, because it's juicy.
• Threatening Enemies: Heroic characters are not the only ones who are pathetic at their jobs. Sometimes, a villain talks the talk and fails to walk the walk, and doesn’t end up looking remotely threatening to audiences. This count will detail those moments and why.
• Love to Be a Part of It Someday: Whenever side characters are ignored, relegated, or killed off when they could’ve been interesting.
• Your Fight Scene Sucks: For an action fantasy series whose fight scenes were easily its biggest hook, this seems to have gone quite down the drain.
  • Evisceration Evasion: Enjoy all the not-gore you won’t not-get. Even in situations where there’s a reasonable expectation that blood fly, don’t worry, your children will get the heavily sanitized version.
• Ill Logic: Let's face it, logic doesn't exist in this series.
  
• Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: A truly good work should not be transparent. This is for every time the purpose of a scene is, from its very construction, quite plain without even having to waste any effort figuring it out and thus dampens the impact.
  • Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: And this is probably not helped by the fact that the writers do a lot in their power, once they actually receive complaints, to draw attention to the "fixes" for those complaints via in-story displays. Often without actually fixing them. This count is for when a plot point happens as a direct response to fan criticism.
  • Band-Aid Brigade: Criticism is something no one can escape. But only rarely does a writer ever actually have to acknowledge it. And when they do, how they go about doing so can be…questionable, at best. I'm going to tally up their best attempts at salvaging the unsalvageable and slapping one-and-done fixes onto very deep problems in their show.
• RSVP: “The Racism Subplot is Very Poor”. There is an extensive subplot here surrounding racism and I’m going to highlight all the ways it fails, is fucked, and should not have been written by white people with no idea of what oppression really is or how it can be fought.
  • It will also go up each time a dark-skinned character is 1) unimportant, 2) a villain, or 3) killed. Yeah, we're going down this sort of road.
    
• Road to Nowhere: Yep. We’re going down that road, too! The maraschino cherry on top of the shit sundae—events laid out in front of you, and then dropped from existence, not resolved at all or even acknowledged.
  

Volume 1 Contents:

• 00 – Red, White, Black, and Yellow Trailers
• 01 – V1E1, “Ruby Rose”
• 02 – V1E2 | E3 | E4 | E5 "The Shining Beacon" & "The First Step"
  
• 03 – V1E6 | E7 | E8 "The Emerald Forest" & "Players and Pieces"
  
• 04 – V1E9 | E10 | E11 | E12 | E13 | E14 "The Badge and the Burden", "Jaunedice" and "Forever Fall"
  
• 05 – Volume 1 Finale, Episodes 15 & 16, "The Stray" & "Black and White"
• Volume 1 Final Thoughts and Hiatus Observations
  

And here are the Table of Contents for the RWBY Volumes:

Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3 | Volume 4 | Volume 5 | Volume 6 | Volume 7 | Volume 8 | Volume 9 | Series-Wide Final Thoughts

Let’s get a move on…