RWBY Reviews: Volume 2 (Story Part 2)

So, in my last post I brought up something that I hadn’t really planned on going into during these reviews, but since it’s now been brought up I might as well talk about it before moving on to something else.

When I talked about the bad clothing decisions in the dance arc, it was mostly to point out how lazy and uncreative or just plain incompetent they were. And it’s surprising that they were so bad, because the alternate outfits they designed for the investigation episodes looked great.

Look at how nice these outfits are! Why couldn’t more effort be put into their gowns for the dance?

Ultimately, the bad dress designs don’t really matter. They’re lazy, but it doesn’t effect much, right? What about Cinder’s sexy catsuit, though?

There have been complaints about how the female characters in this show dress and how it’s obviously designed more for looks than functionality. To be fair, most of the male characters dress more for style than functionality too, but at least with them functionality does come into the equation. With the female characters, it’s all based on looks, no functionality.

You know how video games and comic books always have ridiculously sexualized designs for their female characters? Yeah. Whenever criticisms about this come up, one of the arguments I always hear in return is, “But you feminists always say ‘her body her choice’, and now you’re complaining about what these female characters are wearing?”

Here’s why that argument doesn’t work.

Yes, we do say “her body her choice” when it comes to real women making choices about their body in the real world. That doesn’t work when the woman in question is fictional. Fictional characters can’t make their own choices because they’re not real. All of their choices are made for them by the people, usually men, who are creating, writing and animating them, and that’s what we need to be critical of. When you see a female character in an overtly sexy outfit, chances are she’s not dressed that way because it makes sense or because it’s a choice that character would actually make, it’s because her creators thought it would look hot and sex sells. It’s like, yes, in theory Sonya Blade can wear whatever she wants, but we need to ask why her creators decided to put her in high-heeled boots, skin-tight leather pants, and a crop top vest that her breasts are nearly popping out of. It’s not practical, it doesn’t make sense for the character, and frankly it looks ridiculous.

That isn’t to say female characters can’t be sexy or dress sexy, they can, but only when and where it makes sense, and that shouldn’t be the main priority when designing the character. Plus, female characters can look sexy while still wearing something practical, and sexy doesn’t always have to mean showing skin.

Now let’s apply this to RWBY. First, I want to say that I actually love the character designs, including outfits. They all look really nice and cute and like things I would actually love to wear, and if I had the means of making these costumes I would cosplay as any of the female characters in this show in a heartbeat. But whether or not I personally like them isn’t really the point. Do they make sense in the context of the show?

Yang gets the most criticism for her outfit and you can tell why, her outfit it revealing. I don’t mind Yang’s outfit so much, I think it suits her. We know that she’s extremely confident and her trailer was obviously going for a “sexually liberated” thing where Yang is very open and expressive in her sexuality without ever making it about anyone but herself. Of course there are also criticisms about the Yellow trailer in general and those criticisms are valid, but for what they were trying to accomplish with the trailer, I think Yang’s outfit is fine and I think it suits her personality fine. I can see why Yang would like wearing that outfit. I don’t have a problem with it, or at least the problem I do have with it (it’s impracticality) is something I have with almost every other female character as well so I’m not going to target Yang. What I do have more of a problem with is the way the opening shots of her trailer included deliberate and lingering shots of her cleavage and her butt (if you’re not sure why there’s something wrong with this, here’s a very well-written Tumblr post about it that you can check out). RT has said that part of their idea for the main characters was making them seem like stereotypes at first and then showing that there’s more to them than that, and obviously Yang’s stereotype is the “hot party girl” or something similar. I get what they were trying to do with the trailer, they were trying to show us Yang is more than just eye-candy, but there are better ways of doing that without outright objectifying her at the beginning of the trailer and then being like SIKE SHE’S ACTUALLY A BAD ASS.

A bit of fantasy in character design is fine, but we do need to be critical of why it’s mostly applied to female characters, and how far can we let fantasy for fantasy’ sake go? Why does Pyrrha only have armor on her legs when every other armor-wearing character has it full-body, or at least in more useful places? Why do Glynda and Nora’s outfits include boob windows? Why do most of them wear heels? Why are none of them given any muscle definition?

Goodness, I did not mean to write that much about this, but it is important to think about. Anyway, back to what this post was actually supposed to be about!

Last time I stopped at the point wear Cinder is seen infiltrating the communication by Ruby, who goes to confront her.

Obvious fanservice aside, Cinder’s not a force to be messed with, and God I love her weapon. Nice try, Ruby, but maybe next time you should take off the heels.

Well, next episode begins in Ozpin’s office, which, by the way, is amazing. His office is a clock tower and it’s pretty much the coolest thing ever even though the ticking would probably get annoying? Anyway, Ironwood and Glynda are there and Ironwood is angry because THEY WERE HERE. Ruby shows up and they ask her what she knows about the intruder she saw last night. Ruby tells them that she couldn’t see the intruders face and that she never said anything to her. Then she tells them that the intruder said something about a hideout in the southeast, which is a lie, of course, but RWBY found out about the hideout during their investigation and if Ironwood, Ozpin and Glynda are going to take action they should know where to look. Ruby then leaves after being told to keep quiet about the matter. After she’s gone, the three adults have another conversation about what they should do. Ironwood again wants to attack head-on and Ozpin wants to wait until they have more information.

Back in the dorm, Ruby and Yang have some mail.

ZWEI = BEST CHARACTER

Anyway, it’s time for first-year teams to sign up for their missions, where they’ll be shadowing a Hunter to learn more about the line of work. They want to use this as an excuse to continue their investigation, so they choose a mission that’s in the southeast. When that mission turns out to be unavailable to first-year students, Ozpin decides to bend the rules  for them because… favoritism? I don’t know. The Huntsmen that Team Rwby will be shadowing turns out to be Dr. Oobleck, the coffee-addicted, hyperactive history professor. He insists on being called doctor and not professor because “he didn’t earn his PHD for nothing”, which is silly because doctor and professor are both titles that require PHD’s.

The group heads to Mountain Glenn, a failed expansion of Vale that was overrun by Grimm and cut off from the rest of the kingdom. Their job is to clear the place of Grimm as much as possible. So they do, while also keeping an eye out for possible hideouts. Dr. Oobleck asks Weiss, Blake and Yang about why they wanted to be Huntresses and they all give fairly standard answers. Yang is a thrill-seeker who wants to have as many adventures as she can, Weiss sees it as her duty to uphold the family honor, Blake wants to fight against all of the injustice and corruption in the world. Dr. Oobleck isn’t impressed with any of their answers.

Later that night, while Ruby is keeping watch and the rest of the group is supposed to be sleeping, Weiss, Blake and Yang have a talk about why Dr. Oobleck had been questioning them, and about how the answers they gave him were half-truths. Weiss says that when she talked about honoring her family name, it wasn’t really in the way people would think. She’s aware of the corrupt turn the Schnee Dust Company has taken since her father started leading the company and becoming a Huntress is her way of making things right again. “My father was not the start of our name and I refuse to let him be the end of it.” That’s a much more interesting reason than the one she gave Oobleck. Blake talks about how she’s always fought for what she thought was right, and then talks about her old partner in the White Fang, Adam. He’s the guy who was fighting with her in her trailer (and yes he is named after Disney’s Beast), and Blake had been drawing pictures of him in her notebook earlier in the season so I guess he’s still on her mind a lot. After leaving the White Fang, Blake decided to become a Huntress because she knew Hunters were regarded as the most noble warriors, but she never thought too far beyond that, and is now wondering how she will undo so many years of hate in the White Fang. Yang is just kind of confused about what’s driving her. She wants adventure and she wants to live every day not knowing what tomorrow would bring. She’s never thought about anything else, but now she’s unsure of how long her “go with the flow” attitude will work for her. All of this brings the girls to the conclusion that they’re growing up and being a Hunter is a job despite whatever romanticized visions they had of it. What they want comes second to what the job is about, which is protecting the people.

Well, that’s about the most development we’ve gotten on any of the main characters so far.

Later, after Ruby’s turn to take watch is over, Zwei (who Ruby snuck with them) runs away and Ruby chases after him without telling anyone where she’s going. Zwei was only going outside to pee, but when Ruby finds him they also run into some White Fang members who are just finishing a patrol. They follow the White Fang members to their hideout and then try to go back for the rest of the team, but Ruby falls into a hole. Yeah. The hideout is underground and Ruby falls right into it. She’s promptly knocked out by some White Fang members. I find it strange that Ruby would be so useless in a fight without her weapon (it didn’t fall in with her, unfortunately), but okay then.

Zwei goes back to the rest of the team and when they realize Ruby is missing, they follow Zwei back to where Ruby fell. Oobleck realizes that their enemies were using the underground subway system as their hideout and the group heads into the hole to look for Ruby.

Ruby has been brought to Roman Torchwich, but when the rest of the team shows up to rescue her Roman tells the White Fang members it’s time to start the train despite their preparations not being done. The tracks apparently lead to a dead end but Roman has other plans for the train. The train cars are filled with bombs and when one of the cars detaches it explodes, which creates openings for Grimm to get in and the train is heading into Vale so… you get the idea. There had to be better ways of pulling off this plan. The team splits up to stop the train, Ruby, Oobleck and Zwei stay on top of the train while Weiss, Blake and Yang drop inside. Weiss gives Blake some Dust to help her out and then the three are met by Neo, the woman who had helped Roman escape that night on the freeway.

!!!!! Yang, you are clearly outclassed. God, I just love Neo! She walks in fully confident in her ability to take down all three girls, she didn’t plan for Yang to fight alone, and she probably would have demolished all three of them. She was obviously toying with Yang the entire time, Yang stood no chance whatsoever. Neo is beauty, she’s grace, she’ll punch kick you in the face. Also love her weapon, the sword hidden in her parasol. That’s a favorite of mine. If it hadn’t been for the deus ex machina samurai showing up, Yang would be dead.

NEO = BEST CHARACTER

But you know what’s interesting about Yang’s fight with Neo, Weiss’ with the White Fang leader, and Blake’s with Roman? All of them had chosen the worst opponents for themselves. Weiss fights best when she has lots of space, making it a bad choice for her to be in the train to begin with. She would have done best on top of the train with Oobleck. Yang was the worst person to fight Neo. Yang uses mainly punches due to her weapon and is all force when she fights, an opponent like Neo, who mainly uses kicks and is extremely light on her feet and graceful, is a terrible match-up for Yang. Neo can dodge Yang’s attacks easily and completely throw off her momentum. Ruby or Blake would have been best to fight Neo, as Neo would have a harder time dodging Ruby’s scythe and Blake could keep up with her speed and confuse her with shadow clones. Blake fighting Roman isn’t a bad match-up as far as fighting goes, but Blake is too easily manipulated by Roman. Yang would have been a better person to take on Roman. She’s not as easily swayed and Roman’s cane can’t block a gauntlet to the face. Just terrible choices all around.

Anyway, the train crashes and next thing we know we’re in Vale, and the city is overrun by Grimm.

This brings us to our very lackluster finale, where most of the cast takes part in the fight against the Grimm and yeah it’s not that great. It feels really disjointed? It’s more like small individual fights than a battle like what was intended, and it’s just not very interesting. And Jaune somehow manages to kill an Ursa on his own by slashing wildly at it with his eyes closed which is bullshit. There’s one good thing about the episode and it’s definitely fanservice, but I don’t care because HOW COOL IS TEAM CFVY?!

COCO = BEST CHARACTER

When the Grimm are gone, Ozpin is told by the council that governs Vale that Ironwood has been appointed head of security for the Vytal Festival and upcoming tournament, and that when the tournament is over Ozpin’s position at Beacon may be in danger due to some of the reports they’ve gotten from Ironwood. I think we’re supposed to feel bad for Ozpin here but… well, he failed. He didn’t want to act and the city ended up in danger. I can understand why the council might be hesitant to have him in charge of a school. I guess what’s significant here is that Ironwood sort of betrayed him. They were friends and Ironwood went to the council behind Ozpin’s back, but again I can understand why Ironwood would do that? Ironwood was right, they should have acted sooner. Maybe not quite in the way he wanted to, but they should have done something.

As for our villains, Roman is in Ironwood’s custody and refusing to tell him who the mastermind behind all of this is. I get the feeling Roman isn’t at all unhappy at being caught. Cinder, Mercury and Emerald are wondering whether the White Fang will still listen to them since a lot of Faunus didn’t make it out of the tunnel, when Adam shows up and says that the White Fang will still listen to him and we end on a cliffhanger. I was wondering when they’d bring Adam back in.

The last little scene we get for Volume 2 is Yang finding the samurai woman who helped her in the train. The woman removes her mask and… she’s a recolor of Yang. No, literally. She looks exactly like Yang but with dark hair and red eyes. LAZY. I mean we all guessed that the samurai was her mother but you couldn’t even come up with an original design for her? Unless this isn’t Yang’s mother and there’s some other crap going on?

Well, what did we learn in Volume 2?

????

Supposedly this volume was about the loss of innocence and childhood for Team RWBY, at least that’s what the opening theme would have us believe, but it doesn’t feel like that happened? Aside from one or two scenes that theme wasn’t really focused on that much. Maybe the reason I feel this way is because I don’t actually know RWBY that well because they haven’t really been that developed yet, so how am I supposed to know if they’re “growing up”?

So what did happen in Volume 2? Well, RWBY took the initiative to find out what they could about their enemies, and that was pretty cool. The investigation episodes are my favorite episodes. Then there was filler with the dance episodes and I wasn’t so fond of those, and then we were sort of back to RWBY looking for answers and fighting enemies and that was okay. So this volume had more of a plot than the first, but I still feel like we haven’t gotten anywhere by the end of it.

I’m kind of okay with not knowing Cinder’s plan yet. It’s actually pretty well-written so far, with just a few hints being dropped here and there and hopefully everything will come together when the time is right, and not knowing her plan does make it more suspenseful. But if we’re not allowed to know the plot yet, we should have something else to keep us interested in the meantime. Like character development. For our main characters, I mean. I really think it would be best if this show just devoted an entire season to letting us get to know our main characters more, because right now we know them well enough to like them but not well enough to really care about them, and yes there is a difference.

RWBY Reviews: Volume 2 (Story Part 1)

RWBY is a show that is almost entirely plot-driven. The problem with that is no one is sure what the plot is.

Every character in this show is based on someone/something from a fairy tale or a legend or a myth, some more obvious than others. Even Grimm are obviously named for the Grim fairy tales. Ruby is Red Riding Hood, Weiss is Snow White, Blake is Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and Yang is Goldilocks. Team JNPR is based on characters or people who dressed as the opposite gender at some point in their story. Jaune is Joan of Arc, Pyrrha is Achilles, Nora is Thor, and Ren is Mulan. I’ve heard that some people take issue with this, particularly with Jaune being based on Joan of Arc. Apparently it’s pretty gross that he’s based on her but to be honest I’m not sure why. I’m not very familiar with Joan of Arc’s story and I don’t know why Jaune being based on her would be an issue, but if anyone is able to explain to me I invite them to do so.

Anyway, I don’t know if the inspirations for these characters will have any effect on what happens to them in the show. So far it seems to mostly effect their designs and occasionally their weapons or one or two quirks/traits. Penny is Pinocchio and so far she seems the most like her inspiration, but we’ll get into that in another post. Most other characters haven’t shown that much in common with their inspirations so it seems like the fairy tale roots are for style more than anything.

I think those of us who watched the trailers leading up to RWBY’s premiere were surprised at what the show ended up actually being like. I think we all expected something darker and, well, more interesting. We also expected it to be about RWBY. To be honest sometimes I’ll rewatch the trailers and think about everything I wanted this show to be and it makes me feel really sad.

Not to say I don’t like how RWBY turned out, obviously there’s something to like about the show if I enjoy watching it as much as I do, but as I’ve said I think a lot of it comes from the show’s set-up and potential rather than the show itself.

Volume 1, at first, seemed to be following a simple enough story. The first half was about initiation at Beacon and forming teams and Yang wanting Ruby to break out of her shell, and that was fine. Once the teams were formed, we had some conflict between Ruby and Weiss and that was also fine. Then we had four episodes about Jaune “Manpain” Arc and that was not so fine. And then we had two episodes about how Blake is a minority and Weiss is a racist and Sun was literally just a plot device and Penny came out of nowhere and they fought Roman and the White Fang but we don’t know why and then Weiss became less racist I guess. Um… yeah that’s basically it?

Point is, Volume 1 was all over the place. Volume 2 is slightly less all over the place. Slightly.

Volume 2 has a new opening song, to go better with what happens in the season and the story it’s telling. Volume 1’s opening song was all “your dreams are coming true show ’em what you’re made of but be careful the world might not be as safe as you think”, but Volume 2’s is more like “your childhood is dead say good bye to peace and innocence fucker”. I’m oversimplifying but you get the idea. The new opening for Volume 2 is trying to tell us that Team RWBY is going to have to grow up and face the harsh reality of the world they live in and it seems as though this would be a major theme for Volume 2. It kind of isn’t, though. Like, it gets hinter at here and there but it’s really not as present as the opening theme makes it sound. Plus, I feel like Weiss, Yang and especially Blake are already at least partially aware of how harsh their world is. I guess they still have a bit of innocence and childishness to them but they’re nowhere near as naive as Ruby, who by the end of the season hasn’t done that much growing up at all. So I’m not sure what the opening song is supposed to accomplish.

The first episode of Volume 2 opens with an introduction to Emerald and Mercury, who are working with Cinder to do something or other. They’re described as thieves as “street rats” (the latter by Roman) and how they came to be working for Cinder is still a mystery, though Emerald appears to greatly admire Cinder. All that is established about Cinder’s plans in this episode is that it involves stealing and hoarding massive amounts of Dust. Not even Roman knows what she’s up to.

Meanwhile at Beacon Academy, where it’s the last day before the beginning of their second semester for Team RWBY. And they and Team JNPR have what is probably the most epic food fight ever.

I have to question why they have entire watermelons and turkeys and baguettes and leeks being served for lunch at Beacon, as well as whether the food is even edible because Jesus Christ how hard is that stuff?! Still, this is probably my favorite fight scene so far. It’s a lot of fun and the fight scenes have been surprisingly few and lackluster so far anyway.

The next episode introduces us to General Ironwood, an old friend of Ozpin’s who is now a military leader in Atlas. He’s visiting for the Vytal Festival and has brought lots of security. Ozpin isn’t pleased about this because while Ironwood thinks they need to be ready for the possibility of war and danger, Ozpin thinks they shouldn’t rock the boat. They’re in a time of piece and displays of power like this will only frighten people. This scene exists to establish conflict between Ironwood and Ozpin and also for foreshadowing.

Oh yes, and Cinder, Emerald and Mercury are posing as visiting students. How old is Cinder exactly?

The next couple of episodes are about Team RWBY doing some investigating on Roman and the White Fang and their plans. Blake is extremely concerned about everything that’s happening and wants to find out more, and though Weiss thinks that they may be in over their heads, the team agrees that they need to know what’s going on. Sun and Neptune join them because, um, why not? They split up. Weiss and Ruby go to a communication tower so they can contact the Schnee Dust Company and find out about any robberies of Dust (they can actually make calls from the library at Beacon, but Ruby is apparently very interested in seeing the tower and it’s also better for plot reasons). Blake and Sun sneak into a White Fang meeting, pretending to be new recruits. Yang and Sun head over to the seedy night club that Yang visited in her trailer (if you’ve seen the Yellow trailer you’ll understand why Yang isn’t exactly welcomed warmly at the club) to speak with Junior, whose men were hired by Roman in the past and who supposedly knows everything about what goes on in Vale.

On their way to the tower, Weiss and Ruby run into Penny, who disappeared after their fight at the shipyard in Volume 1. Penny isn’t eager to talk to Ruby and Weiss about what happened to her that night, so Ruby lets Weiss enter the tower alone while Ruby tries to find out what’s going on with Penny. Weiss gets the list and there are some good, subtle character moments for her (more on that in another post) but aside from that her trip is uneventful. The communication tower is pretty cool though and provides some nice world-building and set-up.

Ruby and Penny witness Ironwood, or a holograph of him anyway, introducing to a crowd some of Atlas’ new innovations in robotic soldiers built to protect the kingdoms. They’re spotted by two guards, from whom Penny flees. Ruby helps her escape the guards but ends up in the middle of the road about to be hit by a truck. Penny pushes her out of the way and effortlessly stops the truck with her bare hands. This draws a crowd, everyone is amazed at what Penny just pulled off. I’m not sure why they should be. This is a world where people have control over polarity, super speed, and all kinds of abilities. Is stopping a truck with your hands really that shocking? Wouldn’t everyone just figure that Penny’s Semblance is strength or something? Anyway, Penny flees again when she realizes that everyone is staring at her. When Ruby asks for an explanation, Penny tells her: Penny isn’t a real girl. Then she shows Ruby her hands, which were scratched when she stopped the truck, and we see that under her skin (which isn’t really skin), she’s made of metal. There’s nothing shocking about this reveal since we all saw Penny’s back open up and shoot out swords in Volume 1, but apparently Ruby is surprised.

Penny explains that she’s the first synthetic person capable of having an Aura. She’s kept locked up most of the time by her creator, who she calls her father (Ironwood helped create her as well). She assures Ruby that her father loves her, but he isn’t sure if Penny’s ready for what she needs to do. She says that one day, it will be her job to “save the world”. Ruby is confused because they’re in a time of peace and the world isn’t in need of saving, but Penny says that’s not what Ironwood said. Penny, like her inspiration Pinocchio, is upset that she isn’t a real person, but Ruby tells her that she is real and that she has a soul unlike the other robots Ironwood made and it’s actually a sweet moment. The guards who were chasing them then show up and Penny makes Ruby hide so she won’t get in trouble, then Penny goes with the guards.

Meanwhile, Blake and Sun are donning White Fang masks. Sun asks why they wear masks that make them look like monsters if they believe that what they’re doing is justified. Blake explains that since Humans thought they were monsters anyway, the White Fang decided to don Grimm masks as some sort of twisted irony. At the meeting, Roman is speaking to the White Fang members about who their targets should be: people in power, meaning the people running the kingdoms, the military and even the people running the academies since they apparently hold a lot of power in Remnant too. Oh, and Roman also has one of those giant robots that Ironwood was showing off. Blake and Sun are spotted and the two make their escape.

Meanwhile… again, Yang and Neptune aren’t having any luck getting information out of Junior. He tells Yang that he has no idea what his men were hired for and none of them ever came back, and eventually Yang has no choice but to accept that they can’t get more out of him than that.

Blake and Sun are being chased by Roman in that giant robotic thing so they call the rest of the crew for back up and a fight on the freeway ensues. Neptune and Sun get taken out fairly quickly (they’re fine) so it’s RWBY against Roman’s robotic suit and we get to see how well they fight as a team. They even have combo moves that have names taken from actual ship names in the fandom… Bumblebee (Blake/Yang)… Freezerburn (Weiss/Yang)… Ladybug (Ruby/Blake)… kind of cruel, honestly.

Anyway, the robot is defeated easily and even though I should be happy about how well RWBY fights as a team I’m not really. This scene shows us how much they must have practiced and learned from each other if all Ruby needs to do is shout “Freezerburn!” and Weiss and Yang immediately know what to do. This should be great, but you know why it’s not? Because we didn’t see any of this development. It all happened off-screen. We saw none of the process, only the end result, and I want to see the process! That was half of this show’s appeal, watching these girls develop and learn about each other and become closer, but we’ve seen none of that! Last volume they were all just starting to get accustomed to each other and being a team, suddenly they have combo moves and fight really well together and are all supposedly really close friends. I feel cheated. I feel like I missed out.

Sigh. So, after this we have the dance plot and I’ve already covered most of that so let’s not get into the dance too much. All you need to know is Weiss and Yang planned it together and Blake is uninterested because she’s so worried about their investigation that she can’t focus on anything. She can’t sleep, she can’t eat, her grades are slipping, and she devotes all of her time to the investigation despite the negative effects it’s having on her. Her teammates want her to take a break and go to the dance, but Blake doesn’t want to slow down. So Yang has a talk with her.

Despite the awkward writing and dialogue, I like this scene. It’s nice and it provides some development and insight on Yang, which is good because she was seriously lacking in that department.

We also have a scene in which we get to see Pyrrha fight Team CRDL during a class. She fights the whole team on her own. And she fucking demolishes them. It’s great to see, not just because it’s a great fight in general but because until now we haven’t gotten to see Pyrrha in action too much. We’ve heard about her incredible skill but here we get to really see it, and she definitely deserves to be world-renowned.

Mercury fights her next (and it’s also a great fight), to figure out what her Semblance is, and he does manage to figure it out. Pyrrha is very clever about how she uses her Semblance. She doesn’t broadcast it to anyone, she uses it subtly, just enough to make herself seem untouchable. That is except during the food fight where she used it in a very obvious way, but to be fair she thought only friends were present and they all know her Semblance. Anyway, Mercury wanted to find it out because Cinder wanted to find it out. Apparently she has a list of people’s Semblances? This is obviously some part of her grand plan that will come back later.

And then there’s the dance, during which Jaune and Neptune are terrible and that doesn’t need to be reiterated, so instead I’ll talk about the awful choice in dresses for the female characters. All of the guys (except Sun) are wearing the same sort of tux and honestly I don’t care about that because let’s face it, men’s fashion isn’t as interesting to begin with. Yeah, some more variation would have been nice but I can kind of understand why they’d get lazy with formal attire for male characters. Background female characters are basically all wearing the same dress as well, which is also lazy but again I can understand why they got lazy here. But with our actual named female characters? Good Lord.

Ruby and Blake look pretty decent, their dresses are cute and fitting, and Nora’s is cute too if simplistic, but Pyrrha. Who thought it would be a good idea to put Pyrrha in a red dress that is the exact same color as her hair?! Red gowns generally don’t look good on redheads. That red buttcape Pyrrha has on her regular outfit works well but only because it’s not the main color of her outfit, just an accent, and it mirrors her hair nicely. The red dress doesn’t work that way. The dress itself is fine, but the color was an awful choice. Yang’s dress is way too simple. She was bragging about how she was going to be turning heads at the dance but her dress is really not notable at all. Yang is supposed to be really good-looking so she could probably turn heads no matter what she was wearing, but from the way she bragged about it you’d think that her dress would be stunning. The problem with Weiss’ dress isn’t exactly the dress itself, it’s the fact that they decided to give her cleavage in that dress. Uh… no? Weiss is not a busty girl, she looks like an A-cup. She would not have cleavage in that dress. She probably wouldn’t want to show off cleavage anyway, she’d probably want a dress that shows off her neck, shoulders, collar or back. That would work better for her body type. Cleavage should not be involved here at all.

Look, I’m not trying to be a fashion snob. Wear whatever you want, I don’t care, more power to you. I’m just talking about aesthetics here, and there are certain styles and colors that are more suited for different people. It doesn’t mean they can’t still wear whatever they want and I certainly wouldn’t judge anyone for doing so, but when it comes to fictional characters, yes I’m going to judge them because these choices were made by people who don’t know what they’re doing. Pyrrha’s not wearing red because she wanted to, she’s wearing red because the people animating this show wanted her to.

Speaking of bad choices about clothing, Cinder is infiltrating the communication tower for unknown reasons and she’s in a catsuit. A skin-tight catsuit with a very low-cut top that looks extremely impractical for what she’s doing. But hey, she looks hot, and clearly that was what mattered.

We’ll stop here for now and pick up where we left off next time.

RWBY Reviews: Volume 2 (World of Remnant)

This post will be going over any kind of world-building that the show has had so far.

During Volume 2, Rooster Teeth released some videos called World of Remnant, which were expository videos about certain things in Remnant that the audience didn’t have a full understanding of, like Dust, the kingdoms, and Grimm. (There’s also one about Aura on the DVD but I don’t own the DVD and therefore haven’t seen it, so let’s leave that one out for now.)

The World of Remnant videos got mixed reactions. Some thought that they were lazy and reeked of bad writing, because this information should be shown to us in the actual show, not in side videos. Others were just grateful to get the exposition at all. I’m in the second group, but I do understand where the first group is coming from.

Exposition is one of the hardest things about writing. You need to explain you world and ideas to people, but your can’t just dump the information at their feet. When writers don’t know how to do it subtly, we get awkward, unnatural explanatory dialogue or long monologues (usually from villains) so that the audience can understand what’s going on. It’s uninteresting and it gets made fun of and called bad writing, and it is bad writing, but at the same time I can’t help having a bit of sympathy for writers who do this, especially when I know that they’re still sort of new at it. Because as an aspiring writer myself, I know how hard it is to write in exposition.

Let’s look at Harry Potter as an example. J. K. Rowling used monologues to explain backstories or plot points way too often. Just about every book ends with Dumbledore sitting Harry down and explaining what has been going on for the last 500 pages, which I appreciated the first time I read the books because the info dump helped me as much as it helped Harry, but on rereads it’s much less welcome. Prisoner of Azkaban has two and a half chapters that are nothing but everyone standing in a room spouting exposition and they’re very boring to read if you already know all of it, but I digress. The actual world-building, however, is done very well for the most part. Since Harry is new to magic at the beginning of the series, we get to learn and experience everything with him. Most of it is done just by having Harry see it with his own eyes, no explanations required, and when he does need something explained to him, it’s usually done in a pretty natural way. Nearly everyone else around Harry has grown up in this world so it’s all common knowledge to them, and they act like it. When Harry has a question, everyone is surprised that he wouldn’t know the answer already, and the answers they do give aren’t always that helpful because they’re dependent on Harry having prior experience with magic.

With RWBY, things have to be done a bit differently. Remnant isn’t some world hidden away within ours, like the wizarding world in Harry Potter. Remnant is the world in this show. All of the characters have grown up in this world so everyone already knows what’s up. There’s very little reason for characters to ask questions about Dust or Grimm, at least not basic ones that we would need, because it should just be common knowledge. Well, fine, there was the scene where Pyrrha explains to Jaune what Aura is, which is just another reason why Jaune clearly should not be at Beacon at all, but in general we don’t get a whole lot of exposition on Remnant because there isn’t a reason for the characters to get it.

It should be noted that Miles is actually infamous for his info dumps, hence the “Miles Luna Info Dump” thing that gets talked about a lot in the fandom. Miles is a good writer, but the MLID is an example of how he’s still quite amateur-ish in a lot of ways. He needs to learn not to rely on info dumps so much, and RWBY might be a good way for him to do that. I mean, there has already been some info dumping about character’s backstories, but it’s relatively better than it was in Red vs Blue. When it comes to world-building, though, there’s no easy way to convey this information to the audience in the show without it being incredibly forced and awkward, so they decided to put it in separate videos. Yeah, it’s a cop-out, but hey, we have a slightly better understanding of the way Remnant works. Plus the videos have a beautiful art style, so you know, at least they’re pretty to look at.

Others criticize WOR for being too vague and not actually being that helpful, but I don’t know, I thought they offered some good insight without being too heavy-handed. Another criticism is that WOR is strangely male-coded, in that the figures in the video all have distinctly male forms and they mostly use male titles in the video, like “man” or “Huntsmen”. Yeah, I think that’s a valid criticism, especially given RWBY’s… history. There’s this idea that male pronouns and titles are gender neutral and universal whereas female pronouns and titles only apply to women and are always “othered”, and RT just fell into this with WOR. I don’t think it was conscious, these things rarely are, but it is worth pointing out all the same (and more often than not the fact that it isn’t conscious is the problem). What I found especially jarring in the WOR videos was the constant use of “Huntsmen”. In the show, “Huntsmen” is the male title while “Huntress” is the female title, and my understanding was that “Hunters” was gender neutral and the general, non-specific title for that line of work, so constantly hearing only “Huntsmen” and never “Huntress” or “Hunters” was weird to me.

Now, let’s get to the actual content of the WOR videos.

The one about Dust is the most vague one, which might be because Dust is a mysterious substance even to the characters in the show or it might be because the writers don’t totally understand it themselves. But basically, what we learn about Dust is this:

• It’s a natural substance, seemingly some form of elemental magic.
• It comes in four different forms and each has unique properties.
• They can be combined to form different, stronger types, also with unique properties.
• It can be wielded in its raw form, but this takes a great deal of discipline and skill as it can be dangerous.
• It can be made into ammunition, so fighters can insert different cartridges in their weapons to achieve the effects desired. This is the most common and efficient way of using Dust.
• There are other more “archaic” methods of using Dust, one of which is weaving it into clothing.
• Another method is fusing it with their own bodies, and the ominous tone of the music while this was said makes me think that this is a really dangerous and “dark” way of using Dust.
• No one knows where Dust comes from.
• Dust is going to fuck Remnant up.

So, okay, now we know some basic information about Dust, the rest can be shown to us in the show itself. And it has been already. We’ve seen Cinder sew Dust into her clothes to great effect, and we’ve seen how Dust can be combined with people’s Semblances. That’s a pretty good start. Weiss uses Dust when she fights and she’s also heiress to the biggest producers of Dust in Remnant so we could probably find out a lot about it from her. We’ll see.

What we learn about the kingdoms is much simpler. We know that there are four of them: Vale (the primary setting of the show), Vacuo, Minstral, and Atlas. There are other smaller cities outside the kingdoms and some people in Remnant live a nomadic life, but it’s safest to be in the kingdoms. Interestingly, three of the four kingdoms seem to be along the equator. The exception is Atlas, which is in the far north. We know that Atlas has a huge military, which implies that life in Atlas in more dangerous. This makes sense, Atlas is the only kingdom in the north and maybe we can assume that Grimm are more dangerous in the north, or that there are more of them. Maybe living along the equator, for whatever reason, is safer. That’s a possibility, right? And that’s something we can learn in the show, maybe during one of their classes at Beacon or something, since something like that might not be immediately obvious to everyone living in Remnant.

During Volume 2, students from other kingdoms started arriving in Vale for the upcoming tournament, which could be a good excuse to get some exposition on other kingdoms if RWBY interacts with students from outside of Vale, and since characters may not know a lot about kingdoms they don’t live in it would be okay for them to ask questions for our benefit. Really, exposition about kingdoms (assuming that any other than Vale will become important) should be pretty easy to get.

Finally, we have the video on Grimm. We already know a bit about Grimm from the show. They’re vicious creatures bent on destruction that don’t have a soul and they inhabit various parts of Remnant. From the video we learn that no one is sure exactly where Grimm came from. Some believe that they’re the spirits of once tortured animals, or that they’re animals possessed by evil spirits, but no one is sure. Doing research on Grimm is difficult because they tend to die in captivity or kill their captors. They don’t seem to require feeding but they do eat humans if they can get their hands on them. They rarely attack animals except in territorial disputes, but they will attack humans on sight. They’re drawn to negative emotions like fear, anger, hatred, sadness, envy, and so on, sort of like Dementors, I guess.

Basically the video on Grimm made them sound much more terrifying than they were ever shown to be in the show.

Grimm haven’t had much presence in the show so far, strangely. There was that big fight with the Nevermore and the Deathstalker in Volume 1, and then two short fights (Weiss’ in class and Jaune’s with the Ursa). Volume 2 ends with a Grimm invasion in Vale that gets taken care of relatively quickly in a very lackluster finale, and there are Grimm that RWBY needs to fight during their shadowing trip but they’re small ones that are also taken care of easily. That’s pretty much it. Considering that the Red trailer, which was the very first trailer, featured Grimm throughout most of it and the fact that RWBY is training to fight them, I kind of thought Grimm would be more important or at least have more presence. Mind you, the Red trailer doesn’t seem to have much to do with anything as far as I can tell so… yeah.

Okay, wait, there was another significant scene with Grimm in Volume 2. Ruby and Dr. Oobleck see these things from a distance during their mission in Mountain Glenn.

They’re elephants! I love elephants!

Okay, not elephants. They’re “Goliaths”, or so the Wiki tells me. But they look like elephants and that’s what matters. Dr. Oobleck says that these Grimm couldn’t be fought by him and RWBY alone. They’re too tough, for one thing, and also too smart. These Grimm have evolved enough to know not to attack people head-on. They’ve learned to bide their time and strike when the moment is right. Intelligent Grimm. That’s scary.

Whether Grimm will actually have some importance in the story of if they’re just plot-devices and time-fillers and cannon-fodder remains to be seen, but they do seem to be setting up something with all of this information about how older Grimm are smarter and more dangerous.

Then we have Aura and Semblances. Aura only got a WOR video on the DVD and Semblance hasn’t gotten one yet, but I’m guessing we’ll get one soon. I haven’t seen the video on Aura and the explanation of it in Volume 1 was sort of vague. From what I understand, it’s this ability Humans and Faunus have that can protect and even heal them, but Grimm don’t have it because they don’t have a soul. I’m hoping Aura is expanded on more in WOR? I’ll have to see about that.

Semblance is pretty easy to understand. It’s something all Human and Faunus have, and it’s basically just some kind of power/ability that varies from person to person. Some of the ones we know so far are Blake’s ability to make shadow copies of herself (similar to CT’s armor enhancement in Red vs Blue), Ruby’s super speed, Pyrrha’s magnetism powers, and how Yang gets stronger the more she gets hit.

Weiss’ Semblance is a topic of debate in the FNDM. Weiss is more of a mage than her teammates, and she often fights using glyphs that have poorly defined properties. She also uses Dust more than her teammates do, and that’s where things get confusing. What’s her Semblance and what is just the result of Dust? From what we’ve seen, she’s able to use the glyphs to propel herself and jump off of and she uses them very well when she fights, but we’ve also seen her use ice against her opponents a lot, and fans are confused as to whether the glyphs are her Semblance and the ice is just Dust, or if it’s the other way around. We’ve seen Glynda use glyphs too, but we’re all pretty sure Glynda’s Semblance is telekinesis. Weiss’ Semblance is just confusing.

Anyway, as mentioned before, Semblance’s can be combined with Dust and the effects are interesting. Blake’s fight with Roman at the end of Volume 2 shows it off quite well.

How did Weiss survive the chainsaw attack?! I mean I’m glad she’s not dead but… how? Whatever, the thing I wanted pointed out was how Blake used Dust to enhance her Semblance. Her shadow copies can be turned into stone or to ice, be made explosive, and she could probably do all kinds of thing that we didn’t get to see because Roman’s really not as much of a bad ass as he thinks he is and he was defeated in like thirty seconds. How cool is it that Blake can do these things with Dust, though? I wonder how other Semblances can be combined with Dust.

Remnant is still a confusing place, but it’s less confusing than it was. They need to work on being able to present this information to us in the show, but until then I’m okay with it coming in separate videos. I just want to get the information somehow.

RWBY Reviews: Volume 2 (Faunus and Metaphorical Racism)

Faunus in Remnant are a marginalized and oppressed group of people identified by their animal characteristics, like Blake’s cat ears, Sun’s monkey tail, Velvet’s rabbit ears, etc. Clearly, the Faunus are a metaphor for discrimination and bigotry, particularly racism but it could probably stretch to fit just about any type of bigotry. It’s similar to how Muggles and Muggle-borns were used in Harry Potter, or what the mutants represent in X-Men.

Sometimes I feel like this whole “metaphorical bigotry” thing is a bit of an excuse for writers to act like they’re progressive without having to actually be progressive, you know what I mean? It’s like, instead of having actual poc or queer characters or whatever, we’ll just have characters of some made-up race or background to stand in as a metaphor for marginalized people, but these characters will still be white, straight, cis,  and able-bodied. Do people just think it will be easier for us to understand/sympathize if we’re not actually seeing a marginalized person up there? That’s pretty gross. I don’t think that metaphorical bigotry is a bad thing per se, but I think we do need to be critical of the way it’s done sometimes.

With RWBY in particular, I have to admit I do find the inclusion of the Faunus hypocritical considering how RT has treated certain marginalized groups in the past. I just don’t think they have enough of an understanding of these issues to really pull this off. But okay, let’s put that aside for a minute and just talk about the Faunus in the context of the show.

We still don’t know much about the Faunus. We know that they have better vision at night than Humans, and they’ve been shown to have traits and habits based on whatever animal they get their Faunus characteristic from, like how Blake apparently has a liking for tuna and a fear of dogs, or Sun has a liking for bananas and a habit of hanging from his tail. And then there’s this scene.

So, this whole scene is played as a joke, like “haha Blake is a cat”, but some fans (myself included) have thought that what Yang did here was pretty bad. I mean, to us it’s just a funny joke, because there’s no real-world implications or equivalent to this. In the context of the show though, with the Faunus representing an oppressed group? Yang pulling that trick with the laser pointer is really rude and gross and stuff like this is probably just another reason that Blake wears the bow.

Anyway, let’s go back to the end of Volume 1, where we find out about Blake’s involvement in the White Fang and the argument that happened between her and Weiss.

The White Fang are an organization of Faunus extremists. It began as an organization fighting for equality but they have since become more like a terrorist group. Blake was a part of them but left when she found their methods too violent, but she still cares deeply about Faunus activism. Well, good for her. (I realize that sounds sarcastic but I actually do mean that. Blake is awesome.)

Weiss in Volume 1 was revealed to have a great dislike of the White Fang, which caused her to also have a prejudice against all Faunus. Blake and Weiss had an argument about it and then Weiss revealed why she has such a problem with the White Fang. I’ve heard some fans say that they found this scene uncomfortable because they were afraid that RT was trying to justify Weiss’ racism and do a “there’s two sides to bigotry” thing, I hadn’t really thought of that when I watched that scene but I can see where these people are coming from. Weiss says that her problem with the White Fang is that they’ve been targeting her family for years, many of her family members have been killed by White Fang members and her father often comes home angry because of this, and it’s implied that it made him abusive or at the very least just a terrible father. The thing is, though, Weiss has transferred her anger at the White Fang to all Faunus, and that’s where the problem lies. Hating a group of extremists is one thing, hating an entire marginalized race based on that one group of extremists is different. That’s not at all justifiable. Plus, there’s the fact that the White Fang targets the Schnee family to begin with because of how awful the Schnees are to the Faunus. Weiss’ family benefits directly from their oppression, so of course Weiss would have been taught nothing but bad things about them growing up. Either way, it isn’t justifiable in any way and it’s something Weiss needs to unlearn.

So, does she? Well, at the end of Volume 1, Weiss tells Blake that she doesn’t care about her Faunus heritage or her involvement in the White Fang and that they’re friends no matter, which is a good step forward and I was really glad Weiss said it, but whether or not Weiss is completely past her bigotry remains to be seen. Weiss has been conditioned to distrust the Faunus her whole life, that’s not something that’s easy to erase. She may have accepted Blake, but that doesn’t mean she fully accepts all of them. We haven’t heard her say anything against the Faunus or even the White Fang since the end of Volume 1 and she and Blake are closer now than they were before. She still isn’t very nice to Sun but she isn’t outright hostile to him either, and I don’t know if her attitude toward Sun is due to him being a Faunus or if it’s just a dislike for Sun as a person. I guess we’ll have to wait and see to find out more.

Volume 2 didn’t reveal a lot of new info about the Faunus or the White Fang. From Volume 1 we know that the White Fang are working with Roman Torchwick (who is openly racist toward them) to do… something. We don’t know what. Volume 2 doesn’t elaborate. But it does tell us that White Fang members with glasses have trouble with their masks.

No seriously… what

We did get a nice scene (a flashback) at the beginning of Volume 2 between Blake and Ozpin, where it was revealed that although she was wearing the bow to hide it, Ozpin somehow knew she was a Faunus. She didn’t tell him about being a White Fang member, but she did make it clear that she plans on keeping her identity as a Faunus secret for a while because, well, the alternative is to be bullied and treated like a second-class citizen. When Ozpin says that they’re “taking strides” toward equality, Blake says this: “With all due respect, you need to start taking some larger strides.” She’s right, and that is the frustrating part of any social movement for marginalized groups. No matter how many people like to talk about how accepting they are or how many strides we’re taking, sometimes it feels like we’re not moving at all, and there’s so much injustice and bigotry that goes unchecked. It’s easy for Ozpin to tell Blake not to hide who she is, but if he’d actually lived as a Faunus he might understand more why Blake feels the need to hide.

So, we’ve had some interesting ideas about the Faunus and prejudice introduced to us. Of course all of this is a big part of Blake’s character and it’s the main thing that drives her, but we’ve also seen how growing up in a prejudiced society has conditioned other characters to think. We’ve seen how Ozpin is accepting of the Faunus and wants to get rid the divide between Faunus and Humans, but may not be doing as much for the cause as he hopes. We’ve seen how Weiss has been taught to view the Faunus negatively but seems to be trying to change that at least on some level. We’ve seen how Yang, though not outright malicious or hateful, seems to have internalized some prejudices and bad habits that no one ever told her were wrong because that’s just how their society is, which is a very common and insidious form of bigotry. So much so that I don’t even think the writers intended it.

Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of details about the Faunus or the White Fang and so far a lot of this is used as a plot device… for a plot none of us totally understands yet. We’ll see how all of this plays out and where exactly RT is going with the Faunus and White Fang.

 

RWBY Reviews: Volume 2 (Everything Wrong With Jaune Arc… and Neptune Vasilias)

God damn it, Jaune Arc.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Man, I loved Jaune at the beginning of Volume 1. And I mean like fangirl-level loved him. He was funny, he was cute, he was awkward and dorky. And he was the weak one. He was the one who needed help and saving, not any of the girls. Him. A boy. The one time that he did try to be heroic and save Weiss, he fucked it up and Weiss said “My hero,” in that sarcastic tone of hers and it was played for laughs. It was great! Jaune was great!

Then we find out that Jaune actually might not be the cuddly, lovable idiot we thought he was. He cheated his way into Beacon. I’m not entirely sure how since you also apparently need to pass a rigorous test to get into Beacon to make sure you have the fighting skills necessary for the level of combat taught at Beacon, and Jaune would need to pass this test too. Are the tests supervised by Ozpin or Glynda or any of the teachers at Beacon? Well, anyway, Jaune cheated his way into Beacon somehow. He’s not at all equipped for Beacon’s level of combat and he never even went to a combat school, but he wants to be a hero so made sure to get into Beacon.

The more I think about what Jaune did the more it just doesn’t make sense. Like, at all. Why did Jaune think cheating his way into Beacon was a good idea? Where did he think that would get him exactly? He’s unskilled, he’s lazy, he’s unmotivated, he has none of the experience necessary to attend Beacon. I get that he wants to be a hero because it runs in his family. I get that he wants to prove that he isn’t just some loser. It’s cheesy and stereotypical, but I get it and it’s something a lot of people can sympathize with. But if Jaune wants to do all of those things, why didn’t he ever go to combat school before going to Beacon? Why did he never try to get training or education in the field he wants to go into before jumping right to the hardest level? What was stopping him?

He doesn’t even try that hard when he is at Beacon. He falls asleep in class and is completely unprepared for everything the school throws at him. When Pyrrha offers to help him because she’s a kind and wonderful person who is also an incredibly skilled fighter, he rejects her help for some macho bullshit reasons about wanting to do things on his own. Okay. But you aren’t trying, dude. You don’t want to try but you also don’t want help. Do you see the problem here?

All right, sure, Jaune does become more motivated later and he apologizes to Pyrrha for being a dolt and asks her if she’ll still be willing to help him, which she agrees to do because she’s a kind and wonderful person. So this little story had a nice ending at least, right? Well, it ended up doing more harm than good for Jaune, I think. This adorkable, seemingly innocent guy has a dark side. He’s a cheater and he’s shown that he can be very selfish and he’s putting his entire team in danger by lying. I tried to see it as a good thing because hey, character flaws and making him more complex, but this whole plot line really doesn’t make Jaune look good and it took some of the shine off him. Turns out he’s kind of a dick.

The real problem with the Jaune arc (haha, puns) in Volume 1, however, was this: WHY THE FUCK DID JAUNE GET AN ARC TO BEGIN WITH. Seriously, we barely know a thing about two of our main characters, Blake and Yang, yet we’re devoting four episodes to a side character? Are you kidding me? I’m fine with Jaune or any secondary character getting some development but not if it’s coming at the expense of main characters. This is what I meant when I said they write this show like it was intended to be much longer and then had to be condensed. The Jaune plot was nothing but filler, and this show doesn’t have time for filler! They easily could have saved this for later, after we’d already gotten some development on our main characters, but no, they decided to crowbar it into the middle of Volume 1. Jaune should not be getting this kind of attention over Team RWBY. The show is called RWBY. I came here for RWBY. I did not come here for Jaune.

By the end of Volume 1, I didn’t like Jaune quite as much anymore, but it wasn’t until Volume 2 that I started to dislike him.

When we first met Jaune, I thought he was going to be a cheesy love interest for Ruby, but it quickly became apparent that he and Ruby were not going to have any kind of romance, Pyrrha would be his eventual love interest instead. In the meantime, Jaune had an infatuation with Weiss, which she she did not return.

I liked the Jaune/Weiss interactions at first. I thought they were funny, and I even shipped them a little, even if only as a joke ship.

Then… Volume 2.

Jaune gets another arc to himself in Volume 2, which… ugh. Why? I know why, by the way, that’s rhetorical. Anyway, Jaune gets another arc and this one is all about his love life. He keeps asking out Weiss and she keeps giving a flat-out no. He keeps asking out Weiss and she keeps giving a flat-out no. Weiss said no. He should have taken that as an answer the first time. But no, he doesn’t care how many times she says no, he keeps asking and being creepy, and the entire time he’s presented as the “nice guy”. Poor Jaune wants so badly to go out with Weiss, and she’s just being heartless by rejecting him. Why can’t she just give him a chance? This is why they call her Ice Queen, am I right?

I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.

Look, I understand that rejection hurts, okay? I know it sucks. I’ve been there. But let’s make one thing clear. Girls are never obligated to go out with a guy just because he’s “nice” to her. Girls are never obligated to go out with anyone that they don’t want to go out with. They don’t owe you anything, not even an explanation, and if you can’t take no for an answer then you’re not the “nice guy” you say you are. Jaune’s behavior here is gross and inconsiderate. Weiss told him no and I understand that it hurts, but he needs to respect her wishes and stop pestering her. She’s not interested, end of story.

If the narrative at least framed Jaune as the bad guy here, I wouldn’t be so annoyed, but it doesn’t. It frames him in a positive light, he’s the one we’re supposed to side with and Weiss is the bad one. One time after being rejected yet again, Yang pats him on the head and says “some day”. If I was optimistic, I might have thought that what she meant was “Some day you’ll stop being a tool and realize that harassing girls is gross and that Weiss doesn’t want you”. But it’s clear that what she actually meant was, “Keep trying and you’ll eventually wear her down!”

Yang is saying this. Yang, the girl who, in her trailer, was presented as being extremely confident in her physicality and sexuality and refused to bend it to anyone’s will but her own. She grabbed and squeezed a guy’s balls for calling her sweetheart. And yeah there’s a lot wrong with the Yellow trailer, but the point it was trying to make about Yang’s character was clear: she’s “sexually liberated” and confident and strong-willed, and she will not take any shit from men.

Yang basically told Jaune to keep pestering Weiss despite Weiss having said no numerous times already. Apparently she doesn’t give a fuck about Weiss’ wishes. Nope, Jaune should just keep trying, she’ll eventually say yes! Even worse, she later tells Weiss (after she rejects Jaune yet again) “this is why they call you Ice Queen.” Yang is implicitly agreeing with the people who think Weiss is a bitch for rejecting a guy she has no interest in. Stuff like this is why it’s excruciatingly obvious that this “girl power” show is written by men who only have a very basic, 101-level understanding of feminism (and women in general, probably). Girls would not throw their friend under the bus like that in a situation like this. Girls would tell the guy pestering her friend to get lost and stop being a creep, she certainly wouldn’t encourage him. And if she did, then she’s a terrible friend and is probably brimming with internalized misogyny. I don’t think that’s what they were going for, especially not for the ~sexually empowered doesn’t-take-shit-from-men~ Yang.

The only person who’s also unhappy with Jaune pursuing Weiss is Pyrrha, only it’s not because Jaune is being a creep, it’s because Pyrrha has feelings for Jaune. Pyrrha, honey, you can do much better.

Anyway, Jaune is completely oblivious to Pyrrha’s affections. He talks to her about the upcoming dance and how he should go about asking Weiss. Here’s an idea, Jaune: DON’T. She already told you no many times. She already turned you down for the dance specifically. Leave her alone and move on. If you really want someone to go to the dance with, maybe try asking out the kind and wonderful Pyrrha, who is also very pretty and miles out of your league in every way, but who for some reason likes you and has a close bond with you.

But no, Jaune is insistent on taking Weiss, so Pyrrha tells him to just be honest with her. No tricks, no pick up lines, just tell Weiss how he honestly feels about her. That’s good advice. Or it would be if Weiss hadn’t said no many times already. Have I mentioned that Weiss has said no many times already? She’s said no. Many times. Already. Sigh. Jaune takes Pyrrha’s advice and goes to tell Weiss how he feels, but he doesn’t get a chance to because when he finds her she’s talking to Neptune and asking him to the dance. Jaune assumes that Neptune would say yes and walks away and I guess it’s supposed to be dramatic and heartbreaking but all I can think is, “GOOD. Maybe now he’ll give up on her and we can end this bullshit.”

Nope.

At the dance, Jaune learns that Weiss came alone. Neptune turned her down and now she’s sad but her teammates either don’t notice or don’t care. Jaune sees this as another chance to charm Weiss, but Pyrrha catches his eye. She’s seemingly alone and not looking too happy.

Jaune asks Pyrrha where her date is, and she tells him she doesn’t have one. No one asked her. Jaune is shocked to learn that no one would ask Pyrrha to the dance, as he assumed that guys would line up to have a chance to take her. She explains to him why that isn’t exactly the case.

Pyrrha is basically a celebrity in Remnant. She’s untouchable on the battlefield, has won numerous tournaments, is widely regarded as one of the best fighters around and is on cereal boxes. Everyone loves and praises and admires her (except Team CRDL), but they also put her on a pedestal. It’s impossible for her to make any close friendships with anyone because they’re not interested in her as a person and don’t think of her as on the same level as them, despite the fact that if they actually spoke to her they’d realize that Pyrrha’s actually extremely modest and nice. Apparently, the only person who didn’t treat Pyrrha this way is Jaune. He didn’t recognize her at first and so he treated her just like he would anyone else, and because of him she was able to make friendships that will last a lifetime. Hence why she likes Jaune.

Yeah, I have a few problem with all of this.

For one thing, what Pyrrha says about everyone putting her on a pedestal… we haven’t seen this? Everyone seemed to treat her normally from what I could tell. Sure, Weiss tried to team up with her early on only because of Pyrrha’s strength as a fighter, but aside from Weiss everyone else seemed to treat Pyrrha like a normal person. Is Jaune really the first one to have done this? Also, I’m pretty annoyed that when Pyrrha finally does get some development, its only real purpose is to give Jaune even more development. In case I haven’t made it obvious, I freaking love Pyrrha, she’s one of my favorite characters along with Weiss and Glynda, she deserves so much better than this.

Oh, and also, Jaune was being all “Omg but you’re THE Pyrrha Nikos!! How could no guy want to ask out THE Pyrrha Nikos?” Kind of sounds like he does put her on a pedestal?

After Pyrrha leaves Jaune, Neptune shows up. Neptune mentions that there are a lot of cute girls at the dance and Jaune snaps at him about how inconsiderate and selfish he is for never thinking about the feelings of the girls he’s hitting on.

Jaune. You’re a fucking hypocrite.

Wouldn’t it have been great if Neptune pointed out what a damn hypocrite Jaune is being here? Wouldn’t it be great if he said something like, “Excuse me, Jaune, but weren’t you the one pestering Weiss for weeks while she continually gave you a flat-out no? Were you considering her feelings? She’s not into you, dude. Respect that and back off. I might flirt with a lot of different girls but at least I don’t harass anyone after they’ve already told me no because I have this weird sense of entitlement over them. Unlike you, I know how to take no for an answer, you useless paperclip.”

It would have been so great if Neptune had said something like that. I would have forgiven everything if Neptune had called Jaune out on his crap in this moment. Too bad he didn’t.

Jaune hypocrisy only gets worse, when he starts asking Neptune how he could possibly turn down Weiss Schnee. Remember how Pyrrha said she liked Jaune because he treated her like an equal and didn’t put her up on a pedestal? Well, he’s certainly putting Weiss on a pedestal! “How dare you turn down Weiss Schnee, THE Weiss Schnee! Such a goddess graces you with a request to accompany her and you reject her? How very dare you!” Right. Okay, Jaune.

And then Neptune confesses: he turned down Weiss because he can’t dance and was embarrassed. That’s a stupid reason. You could still go with her but not actually dance, couldn’t you? Or just not go to the dance at all. But anyway, then Neptune tells Jaune that if he wants Weiss, “she’s all [his]”.

HEY. HEY NEPTUNE. WEISS ISN’T YOURS TO GIVE.

What the fuck, Neptune? I wanted to like you. You had a trident. You could pull off having blue hair and a name like “Neptune”. I was hoping you would turn out decent. I feel so stupid now.

Seriously, who does Neptune think he is, telling Jaune that Weiss is all his, like she’s an object or a prize that he’s graciously unloading onto Jaune? And do you need a reminder that Weiss already turned Jaune down a hundred times? Who Weiss goes out with, if she goes out with anyone, is her decision. It is not for two guys to decide between themselves who gets to “have her”.

God damn it, Neptune Vasalias.

You know what would have been great? If Weiss showed up, having heard everything that Neptune and Jaune had been saying about her, and gave these dudes the verbal ass-kicking they very much deserved for stripping her of her agency, not considering her feelings, and treating her like an object to be attained. Then informed them that neither of them gets to go out with her because why should she waste her time on guys who don’t respect her? And then she leaves them both alone and goes off to dance with her friends because you don’t need a date to have fun at a dance. It also would have been great if Pyrrha had heard how they were talking as well and realized that hey, this is fucked up and maybe I should reevaluate whether Jaune is really boyfriend material.

That would have been so great if all that had happened. I would have forgiven everything if all that had happened. Too bad it didn’t.

Instead, Jaune advises Neptune to talk to Weiss because it will “make her night” and Neptune agrees and they fist-bump because I guess they’re bros now or something. Jaune goes to put on a dress for Pyrrha and I think they officially get together? They spend the night dancing together, anyway. Then when Neptune tells Weiss about how Jaune convinced him to go talk to her and how she has good people looking out for her Weiss looks at Jaune all sad and guilty because of course the narrative is still trying to make her seem like she was the one in the wrong when really Jaune and Neptune are the assholes in this whole subplot.

Fuck this whole subplot. It’s gross and creepy and sexist.

And again, if you’re thinking that I’m overreacting or that Jaune and Neptune did nothing wrong here, you don’t know what you’re talking about. What Jaune does to Weiss is incredibly gross and uncomfortable. I don’t care how inexperienced he is, I don’t care how innocent it looks, I don’t care if it’s “realistic” for boys to act this way (WHY ARE WE ENCOURAGING THIS?), I don’t care if Weiss is more annoyed/bored than scared by it or if she could kick his ass easily if she wanted to. What Jaune does to her is harassment. She said no and he didn’t stop. That is harassment and that isn’t up for debate. The fact that the show itself and some people in the FNDM actually defend Jaune’s behavior is seriously so terrifying. I’ve been in Weiss’ shoes before, okay? It’s scary. Guys who can’t take no for an answer are scary, because I never know what they’re going to do and if I may just end up as another statistic.

The “you can have her” mentality is disgusting too. It’s objectifying and completely disregards the feelings of the person in question. I don’t care if they didn’t mean for it to be objectifying, intent isn’t what matters. Just because you don’t intend to be sexist doesn’t mean that you aren’t. The way Jaune and Neptune talked about Weiss is objectifying and sexist. Again, I have been in Weiss’ shoes before. I have had people talk about me behind my back like I’m an object, people have had discussions about “who can have me” while I wasn’t around. When I found out about it, I honestly felt sick. It was inconsiderate and dehumanizing and scary.

“But Jaune is just a dunce! He didn’t know any better!” Yeah, no, that doesn’t work. The problem here isn’t how Jaune thinks or feels, Jaune is a fictional character. Everything he does is a decision that the writers made, he is under their control at all times. The real problem here is that the writers wrote Jaune and Neptune this way and didn’t see a problem with it. They thought it was totally fine and they don’t show it to be a bad thing in the narrative. It’s all framed positively and Jaune is ultimately the hero for making Pyrrha’s night as well as Weiss’. This is not good.

I think it’s also a good time to mention that Jaune and Neptune are voiced by Miles and Kerry respectively. Miles has mentioned more than once that he relates a lot to Jaune and absolutely loves him. There’s nothing wrong with the writer having a favorite character, but it is a problem if they let that bias show. Miles loves Jaune and voices him, so he sticks him into the show as much as he can whether it’s good for the show or not. He favors Jaune over everyone else in the show, including Team RWBY. The show really suffers for it.

I’ve heard people try to justify the attention Jaune gets by saying JNPR are meant to be main characters too, but if that were the case, why isn’t this show named after them too? The show is called RWBY, not RWBY and JNPR. Plus, Jaune is the only one getting this attention. Pyrrha mostly serves to further Jaune’s development and Ren and Nora and mostly left on the side. The rest of the team is not getting the same treatment as Jaune (even though Pyrrha, Ren and Nora are far more likable than Jaune is).

(I don’t know that much about Kerry so I don’t know if he has this same bias toward his own character, Neptune. He doesn’t get as much screentime as Jaune, anyway, but you do sort of get the sense that they’re trying to cram Neptune in as much as possible and he brings nothing to the table plot-wise. He’s pretty superfluous.)

This Jaune/Neptune/Weiss subplot is all the proof you need to know that Remnant is definitely not a sexism-free place. Clearly it’s just as sexist as the real world is and I don’t think Miles and Kerry or anyone working on this show even realizes it. It doesn’t matter if the female characters are physically strong or if girls and women are allowed to fight in Remnant. That does not make this show “feminist” and it certainly doesn’t excuse the blatant sexism in the writing.

The question is, how do we fix it, assuming Rooster Teeth would even be interested in fixing it (they’ve made it clear they don’t care but let’s talk hypothetically)? There’s no subtle way to fix it. Jaune and Neptune just need to be called out on it. They need to be told directly, preferably by Weiss but any female character would do, that what they did was wrong, and they need to accept that they were wrong and apologize for it.

I don’t expect anything like that to happen. I don’t expect the show to acknowledge any of this ever again because RT clearly doesn’t see the problem.

All I can hope for is that we won’t see anything like this again.

And that we can stop paying attention to Jaune.

RWBY Reviews: Volume 2 (Representation)

Yep, we’re talking about representation today… and probably most other days until the RWBY reviews for Volume 2 are done.

The thing about Rooster Teeth is that they’re very much a “dudebro” company. They’re mostly white cis straight men who aren’t exactly concerned with being politically correct or progressive (to put it lightly), and they mostly make content for white cis straight men who aren’t exactly concerned with being politically correct or progressive. And yes I know that there are poc and queer people and women in the company as well as in their audience (queer woman right here and I’ve been a fan for years), I’m just saying the majority isn’t.

When they created RWBY, they were hoping to bring in more of a certain audience, namely women. And it worked. Lots of women, and lots of feminists, took an interest in the show and they make up a large part of its audience. Unfortunately, Rooster Teeth doesn’t know how to please their new audience now that they’ve got it. They’re not just serving dudebros anymore and they haven’t evolved with their audience. Which has lead to a lot of criticisms from their new fans, and some of their old ones (hello again!) who are not happy with the representation, or lack there of, in their content and particularly in RWBY.

Rooster Teeth doesn’t have a good history of responding to criticisms. Their usual response is to either ignore it or make fun of the people criticizing them, and this is especially harmful when it comes to topics of feminism and social justice. They laugh at certain Tumblr sites that critique their content from a feminist perspective. They mock the popular femslash ships in the RWBY fandom (or FNDM, as we sometimes call it). They ridicule any attempts from fans to politely point out bigoted behaviors or uses of slurs. Stuff like this happens all the time. They don’t care who they offend, they don’t take us seriously. I love Rooster Teeth, I’ve loved them for years and Red vs Blue is probably my favorite show aside from Avatar, but I hate that the company I love doesn’t care that some of their fans don’t even feel safe within their fandom. It’s an awful feeling.

When they stopped laughing at us they did agree to try harder with representation though, particularly with poc and queer, trans or nonbinary character.

Representation of women is something that I’ve talked about a bit already and will talk about even more in other posts, so for now we’ll focus on the other stuff.

First, let’s talk about race in Remnant. Nearly every character we have been introduced to so far is white, and there are some people who would try to argue that it’s anime so every character is actually Asian but I don’t really buy that in RWBY’s case. So nearly every character is white. But then you’ve got Yang and Ren, both of whom have Asian names but I think only one of them is Asian? I don’t know, I mean, Yang’s full name is Yang Xiao Long, but if it were really Asian then Yang would be her last name, not her first, and that’s not the case. (By the way, please do call me out and correct me if I’m wrong about any of this stuff. I’m very white and my chances of saying something stupid/incorrect are probably very high.) Ren’s full name is Lie Ren and his name is written in the correct order, plus his design is Oriental-looking and the story character he’s based on is Mulan, so Ren is definitely Asian. Yang, I’m not sure. Maybe she’s part Asian? Sun Wukong is in the same boat too because like Ren he’s based on a Chinese character, but like Yang his Asian name isn’t written in the right order. And there isn’t even as Asia in Remnant so this is all kind of confusing. This had a point I swear.

Okay, what I was trying to say was that out of eight prominent characters (Team RWBY and Team JNPR), only one of them, Ren, is definitely not white. Yang and possibly Ruby are unclear. Blake is a Faunus (I’ll talk about the Faunus more in another post) but she’s also white. The others are white. So what about other characters? Monty did refer to Cinder as Asian once, so I guess that gives us another poc. Sun is unclear. Pretty much everyone else we meet in Volume 1 appears to be white, though. We should definitely have some more poc in there.

Volume 2 did bring in a few more. Not many of them have speaking roles, but still. There are some poc background characters (oh yeah, Volume 2 no longer has their background people as silhouettes), some poc characters from Team SSSN and Team CFVY that are named but haven’t spoken yet. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head with speaking roles are Emerald and possibly Neptune (he’s more tan than other characters and I assumed he was Hispanic).

I like Emerald.

She has a nice design (even though that top looks extremely impractical) and a fun dynamic with her partner, Mercury. I’m also interested in her relationship with Cinder. And of course she’s a complete bad ass, but so is everyone in this show.

Then there’s Neptune.

Well. I like his weapon. I couldn’t find a good gif of it unfortunately, but it’s a trident. Tridents are cool. He’s also pretty good-looking but again so is everyone in this show. Those are the only good things I have to say about Neptune. We’ll get to him in more detail later.

So right now I guess Emerald, Neptune, Ren, Cinder and a handful of background characters and people who haven’t spoken yet are what we have for poc representation. It’s a start? There’s still a long way to go. Let’s see more of those non-speaking characters, a lot of them actually look pretty cool (I already love Fox).

Now let’s get to the issue of queer characters, which is where things get messy. Messier, I mean.

Monty has said that they do plan on having some queer characters and that some of them might already be there. We sure haven’t seen any of them in Volume 2, and we’re impatient, but okay. At least they’re coming. Except Monty has managed to piss off his queer fans (or even just fans who want queer representation regardless of their sexuality) when he said that queer characters “need to be earned”.

So we all thought, “What the fuck does that mean?” Queer characters need to be earned? We need to earn the right to exist?! What is he talking about?

Then Monty backtracked and said that “all romances need to be earned”.

Oh really? All romances need to be earned, queer or otherwise? Do they really? Do they? First of all, this isn’t even about wanting queer romances, it’s about wanting queer characters. Not necessarily the same thing. Second of all, there’s hetero romance all over the place in this show and how exactly was any of it “earned”?

This is why when people try to argue that RWBY doesn’t have queer romance because romance was never meant to be part of show, I have to call bullshit. There is romance in the show. Pyrrha likes Jaune. Jaune likes Weiss. Weiss likes Neptune. Neptune likes pretty much any girl he meets but particularly Weiss. Nora likes Ren. Sun likes Blake. Don’t try to tell me that romance isn’t in this show when it clearly is. It’s not well-written romance, but it’s romance. And it’s all hetero.

Even when it’s not necessarily romance, this show doesn’t waste any time presenting heterosexual attraction. The Pyrrha/Jaune ship was set up very early on, as were Ren/Nora. Within five seconds of meeting Weiss, Neptune is flirting and calling her “snow angel” while Weiss gets all blushy and flustered in a rather out-of-character way. The Sun/Blake ship took about as long as the others to be set up. Upon meeting Ironwood, one of the first things we see him do is make a pass at Glynda. Yang hasn’t expressed interest in anyone in particularly, but she has made it clear that she likes boys. How was any of this stuff “earned”?

We’ve been told (not shown) that Remnant doesn’t have any sexism, queerphobia or transphobia. There are no gender roles and every one is totally fine with any kind of sexuality and any kind of gender identity. The part about no sexism… HA. Right. The part about no queerphobia… we haven’t seen anything to contradict that, as far as I can remember, but we also haven’t seen anything that supports it. The part about transphobia has been contradicted already. Remember what they said about no sexism/queerphobia/transphobia in Remnant, it will be important in later reviews.

Monty has also said that the reason they don’t have queer characters yet is because a lot of these characters are still quite young and they’re still “figuring themselves out”. I kind of get what he’s saying here, but there are some problems with it.

Yes, it’s true that some people take a long time to figure out their sexualities. I’m twenty years old and I only realized a few months ago that I’m bisexual. But this isn’t the case with everyone. Some people realize it in their teens. Some people realize it when they’re still children. Not everyone needs time to “figure themselves out”. Some people know from a young age. Can we not have any characters like this? Are all of them really still trying to figure things out? There’s no one who knows they’re queer already, not even just a side or background character? And if queerphobia isn’t a thing in Remnant anyway would “figuring it out” even matter? Would heteronormativity really be the default until they realize different? Can they not experiment or something, or show some curiosity?

Look, we’re not asking for much here. We’re not asking for our queer ships to become canon. We certainly don’t want some big, angst-ridden coming out story where the character worries about whether their sexuality is wrong. We could do with less of those, honestly, and something like that wouldn’t make sense if Remnant really is discrimination-free when it comes to sexuality. We don’t want a big deal to be made of us, we just want acknowledgment. We want it to be recognized that yes, we exist, and our sexuality isn’t weird or “special”. We want to be normalized.

It’s really not that hard to have queer representation. Just have queer characters. Just acknowledge that different sexualities exist. It’s easy. Have Neptune hit on boys the same way he hits on girls. Have Yang point out girls she thinks are good-looking like she would do for boys. Have same-sex couples in the background, even! Of course I would like to have actual established queer characters, but background representation is important too. It really makes it feel normalized when you can have same-sex couples in the background without comment, and it would support the no-queerphobia-in-Remnant thing. Dance Dance Infiltration would have been a great time for them to have background queer representation and they didn’t take it. Because they don’t really care.

As for trans/nonbinary characters, I don’t have a lot to say aside from yes, it would be great to have some. It’s another one of those things where they say “the characters are young and still figuring themselves out” and I’m not sure I buy that. I’m cis and everyone I know personally is cis so I can’t speak on this from experience (and again please do call me out if I say something wrong), but I don’t think everyone necessarily takes a while to figure this out? I think it would be like sexuality, where some people know almost right away and other people don’t realize it for a while? Anyway, there are some adult characters. Why can’t any of them be trans/nonbinary/queer?

There are rumors of a trans character already having been introduced but I’m not sure if that’s true or not. A lot of people are theorizing that Scarlet, one of the characters on Sun’s team, is trans and I would love for that to be true, but it’s not yet confirmed and Scarlet hasn’t spoken or even appeared in an actual episode yet.

There was a transphobic joke made in Dance Dance Infiltration. Jaune had jokingly told Pyrrha that if she didn’t get a date for the dance he would wear a dress, and she didn’t get a date so he kept his promise. The joke here is that Jaune wore a dress. It’s supposed to be funny because a guy is wearing a dress, and that sort of joke has a history of being harmful to dmab people who like to wear dresses whether they’re trans or not. See, I didn’t even know this sort of joke was harmful or transphobic until it was pointed out and explained to me, which just goes to show how much internalized crap I still need to unlearn. But yeah, it’s a gross joke to make and it definitely goes against what they said about Remnant not being sexist or transphobic. If it really was that way, why would a guy wearing a dress be a cause for laughter? And yes I a going to point out every inconsistency and contradiction of the “no sexism/queerphobia/transphobia” thing no matter how small it may seem, because if you’re going to make claims like that you better make sure they are 100% backed up.

If you’re wondering why all of this is such a big deal or think I’m overreacting, it’s probably because you’re quite privileged and have never realized the importance of representation because you’ve never been excluded from it. I’m not saying that means you’re a bad person or that you should feel guilty, I’m just saying that you probably don’t know what it’s like for those of us who can’t turn anywhere to find representation. And representation is important. If we can’t expect equality and acceptance in the media we consume, how the hell can we expect it in real life?

Imagine how you would feel if you were a poc RWBY fan, and nearly all you see in this show that uses racial discrimination as a plot device and constantly talks up diversity is white people. Imagine being a female RWBY fan, and seeing a female character being harassed by a male character we’re supposed to think is a “nice guy” and later being talked about like she’s an object. Imagine being a queer, trans or nonbinary RWBY fan, and being told that you need to wait for your representation, but then seeing cisnormativity and heteronormativity left, right, and center. Imagine that RWBY isn’t even the biggest problem, imagine that this kind of thing happens in almost all media, and all the time in your real life, and when you try to discuss it with people you just get mocked and belittled and silenced, because omg who cares? Why does it matter? Why do you need to be offended by every little thing?

You would feel dehumanized. You would feel excluded. You would feel small and scared and angry and sad and helpless and unimportant. It’s not about being “offended”. It’s about being oppressed.

The people at Rooster Teeth don’t care if they’re being oppressive and if they’re not being inclusive. They don’t care if the things they say or their content makes some of their fans feel uncomfortable and unsafe. They’ll just mock us or tell us that we’re overreacting, and then tell us they’ll do better but then not actually do anything different.

You could ask me why I bother watching their content if all it’s going to do is make me feel like crap, and honestly I’ve asked myself that a few times. Why do I bother with these people? Why do I still watch Red vs Blue and RWBY and some of their other videos? The answer is simple. I still like their content. I still think their content is funny and enjoyable. I still think Red vs Blue is hilarious and engaging and has wonderful characters. I still think RWBY is interesting and fun and has potential. I enjoy Rooster Teeth’s content, but enjoying something doesn’t mean I can turn a blind eye to the problematic elements of it.

I will never ignore the problematic shit in the things I love. I will never take the “who cares?” route. It’s important to see these things, it’s important to discuss these things. How else will we learn and improve? Liking something problematic is okay, but we need to be aware that they are problematic, and talk about ways that it could be made better.

I want to think Rooster Teeth can do better, I really do, but they’re constantly proving me wrong and it’s very discouraging, to say the least. Especially since Rooster Teeth has a unique opportunity. They don’t have a network to answer to or anyone to tell them what they can and can’t put in their content, so the only thing stopping them from being inclusive is themselves.

RWBY was supposed to be all about female empowerment and it isn’t. It talks about diversity a lot but most of the faces we see in the show are white. We were promised representation for queer, trans and nonbinary people and we haven’t gotten it because they’re too busy with  the same old cisnormativity and heteronormativity we see everywhere and have more than enough of. RWBY uses the Faunus as a metaphor for discrimination, but has proven itself to be hypocritical.

We’re not impressed and we want better. We deserve better.

RWBY Reviews: Volume 2

I was sort of unsure how to go about reviewing RWBY again because reviewing it episode by episode didn’t work too well for me when I did it for Volume 1. Even though episodes in Volume 2 are longer I still wasn’t sure if going episode by episode was a good idea because RWBY episodes are usually difficult to talk about individually, except maybe a few of them. So, these reviews are going to be a bit different. Instead of going episode by episode, I’m going to talk about a different problem or a different aspect of this show in each post, but I may have the occasional post dedicated to a single episode if I think I have enough material in that one alone (I suspect Dance Dance Infiltration will need to have a post of its own).

Since it’s been over a year since I’ve talked about this show, this post is going to be an introductory post of sorts. I’m just going to talk about RWBY in general, what works about it and what doesn’t in the show as a whole. A lot of this stuff will be talked about in more detail later but this will be a good way to set up what these reviews will be about.

So, RWBY. This show… it’s… it’s, um…

I’ll just say it. This show is a fucking trainwreck.

Don’t get me wrong, I love RWBY. No really, I do! I swear I do! But… God, it’s a tranwreck.

RWBY is one those shows where it’s really hard for me to justify even to myself why I like it as much as I do, because I can’t think of any thing about it that I like unconditionally and consistently.

I like the main characters, but I hate what little focus they get considering that they are supposed to be the main characters. Ruby and Weiss have gotten a decent amount of focus but Blake was mostly ignored until the end of Volume 1 and Yang was mostly ignored until Volume 2. That’s not right.

I like Remnant, but there’s a lot about the world that doesn’t add up.

I like most of the side characters, but there are way more than this show even knows what to do with. They make the show feel overcrowded. And aren’t you supposed to establish and develop your main characters before throwing a bunch of side characters in?

I like the animation when it comes to background and scenery, it’s kind of artsy looking, but the animation on the characters (outside of fight scenes because Monty Oum) is stiff and awkward and there are a ton of basic animation errors.

I… think I like the story? I’m usually interested in the more plot-driven parts of the show but I’m also not sure what’s going on sometimes. We don’t even know what the villain’s plan is, but apparently this is going to be explained later and we’ve been told that Cinder is going to blow our minds with how deceitful and bad ass and evil she is once we find out. Kay then.

I think I like RWBY more for what I keep hoping it will be rather than for what it is. See, this show was marketed as a story about four kick-ass girls going to a magic school where they learn to fight monsters and become friends in the process. It was marketed as being very female character-driven and having a very “girl-power” feel and I was all for that.

But it turns out this “girl-power” show has a lot of manpain in it. The character who has gotten the most development, the most screen-time, and the most speaking lines so far in this supposedly female character-driven show is not one of the main girls or even a girl at all. It’s a male character. It’s Jaune Arc.

Do you see why I was disappointed? I wanted a female character-driven show because we so rarely get them, but instead the majority of the focus is going to a male character (and there are a lot of problems with Jaune but we’ll get to that in another post). This is not the show I was promised and it’s really disheartening.

When the show does focus on its female characters, I think they’re… well, maybe not good, but I do like them. Let’s just say you can definitely tell this show is written by men. I think they could really benefit from having a female writer join them or at the very least have a woman look over their scripts.

The thing is, I do think RWBY’s female characters could be great, because Rooster Teeth has made some great female characters before. Red vs Blue has few female characters in it but the ones it does have are generally pretty awesome. I mean, there are certainly problematic elements to them, but for the most part I think they’re good characters and I really like them. Funny that the show that Miles himself described as a sausage fest has better female characters than the show that’s actually meant to be all about female characters.

I’m not saying they should cut male characters out of the show entirely, but Team RWBY should not be taking a backseat to a secondary male character. They are the main characters, not Jaune. Plus, if you’re going to try to make a show that’s marketed as being focused on women, you might want to, you know, actually focus on the women.

This show has other issues with representation that goes beyond gender but I’m saving most of that for another post.

Another problem with the show, and probably the biggest one, is simply the writing. It’s all over the place. Miles and Kerry are good writers and I’m sure they’ll get better over time like Burnie did, but right now they’re making a lot of amateur-ish mistakes. They’re trying to do way too many things at once and it just doesn’t work. They need to pace themselves. This wasn’t a problem with their writing for Red vs Blue because they had a foundation to build on already, but RWBY is something entirely new and instead of taking their time like they should, they rush through everything. They write this show like it was meant to be much longer but then had to be condensed, and they didn’t want to cut anything out so they tried to include all of it. The result is a cluttered, underdeveloped, sometimes nonsensical mess.

Volume 2 was better than Volume 1 in some ways, but it’s definitely still wonky and it really starts to lose its way during the second half. There was a lot that I liked about Volume 2 and a lot that made me want to tear my hair out and scream in frustration.

So… these RWBY posts are going to filled with a lot of negativity. Which is I want to emphasize now that I do like this show. But I want it to be much better, because I think it can be much better.

Adventure Time Reviews: Season 4 Overview

Season 3 was when the show started to get really good. It set a course for where this show was going to go in terms of tone, character development and story. Season 4 continued on this course and is easily the best season so far. Everything that I liked about Season 3 is here and better. There honestly isn’t much more to say than that. Season 4 is just a really good season.

I think Season 4 demonstrates a lot of growth from the characters. Again, Season 3 paved the way for a lot of development but Season 4 drove it home. We’ve seen Finn get over his infatuation with Bubblegum and move on with someone else. We’ve seen Bubblegum become a lot more active since her first encounter with the Lich. We’ve seen Ice King… well, Ice King technically hasn’t changed that much but our perception of him has, since we have a much better understanding of who he is now. Marceline has become slightly friendlier and slightly more open, which for her is a big deal, and her relationship with her dad has improved. Even Jake seems like he’s gotten more responsible, at least where Finn is concerned. It’s nice to see that these characters actually grow and change with their experiences.

I think we can expect Finn to change even more in the next season since Season 4 has given him a lot of new stuff to deal with. Poor kid can’t catch a break. The Lich has come back, the hero he idolized is dead, his girlfriend is possibly dangerous. And Jake is going to be a dad, I guess. Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be that much of a game-changer but still. It might force Jake to mature some more and that could be kind of interesting.

Princess Bubblegum is my number one reason for watching this show. Well, okay, technically my number one reason for watching this show is that I committed to reviewing it, but aside from that Bubblegum is my number one reason for watching it. You may have noticed that episodes in which she plays a big role tend to be the episodes I like best. Honestly, I wish that she was the main character. But I’ve already gushed about Bubblegum in basically every review of every episode she appeared in and I’m sure you’re tired of reading it by now. I’ve always been interested in Bubblegum’s character and I always had a feeling that she would end up being my favorite, but this season was the one that made it official. This was the season where Bubblegum became everything I hoped she would be. I always liked Bubblegum when we saw her in previous episodes but I was also annoyed that we rarely saw her do anything. We were told about how smart she was and we sometimes got glimpses of this as well as other aspects of her character, but they only felt like glimpses. Mostly Bubblegum seemed like a catalyst to get plots moving for Finn and Jake, she didn’t do much herself. Luckily, Bubblegum was given more screen time and became a lot more active this season, as well as just a wonderful and dimensional character. She’s complex and flawed and fun and interesting, I think she’s fantastic.

Aside from Bubblegum, I think Ice King is probably the most interesting character in the show, though he’s not exactly the most likable one. I like watching him and learning more about him, especially after learning his backstory because it puts so much about him in a different light. This season we got to find out more about how exactly the crown affects him and also about his relationship with Marceline, both of which I hope will expanded on even more. Seeing more on Ice King and Marceline especially would be interesting. They’re probably (some of) the oldest inhabitants in Ooo since they were around at the beginning of the apocalypse, right? Ice King of course wouldn’t remember any of it except maybe bits and pieces but Marceline probably remembers all of it. Speaking of Marceline…

Marceline needs to be in more episodes. She’s in so few of them, it’s easy to forget that she’s even part of the show sometimes. I really like Marceline, she just suffers from not being around enough. To be fair, Marceline is probably the most difficult one to write for because she’s so closed off and she should be a bit mysterious, but even so personality-wise Marceline comes off as kind of flat compared to other characters. It feels like everyone else is becoming so much more interesting and Marceline is being left behind. I think just allowing her to be in more episodes, both as a side character and as a major character, could rectify this.

I’m really surprised that we didn’t see Flame Princess more this season. I was expecting most of this season to be about her or at least Finn’s relationship with her. I’m a bit disappointed, actually, since I do like Flame Princess and I think she could be a great character. I guess we’ll see what happens with her later.

My fondness for Lumpy Space Princess has diminished. Back when I first started this series and wasn’t particularly attached to anyone, LSP was easier for me to like simply because she was funny. My love for her was always partly exaggerated as a joke, just like my crush on Plankton was/is partly exaggerated as joke, but I really did like her a lot. She consistently made me laugh and kept my interest, which was more than I could say for most of the characters on the show at the time. Now that other characters and the show in general have started developing more, my attention no longer goes to just the one that makes me laugh the most because now there’s so much more to grab my interest and keep it. At this point if I was going to rank everyone on the show, LSP would probably only land somewhere in the middle of the list. Don’t get me wrong, I still think she’s hilarious and I do like her, but she does now pale in comparison to other characters.

In other news, I still want to see more of Lady Rainicorn, maybe another episode focusing on her and Bubblegum. I liked their friendship in Lady & Peebles, even though Lady didn’t actually have that much of a part in the episode in the end. I’m not the only who noticed that, right? The episode was more “Ricardio Being Gross to Peebles” than it was “Lady & Peebles” (still great though). More Lady would be nice. Surprisingly I really want more Lemongrab too. Well, I want more episodes about his relationship with Bubblegum at least, but Lemongrab actually has become slightly more intriguing to me, which I really didn’t think would ever happen.

You know, when I talk about the people working on this show I never really talk about them individually. I always refer to them as just “the writers” or “the animators” and conflate them all together. I did the same thing in my SpongeBob reviews and I do that with almost any other show I talk about with some exceptions (like anything made by Rooster Teeth, though even then I do sometimes just say “the writers” instead of “Miles and Kerry” or “Burnie”). That probably isn’t fair, but it’s just easier that way. However, a commenter once pointed out to me that most of my favorite episodes are written by someone named Rebecca Sugar and that I should watch for her name because she’s really talented and has never written a bad episode. So I did start to watch for her name, and that commenter was right. She has written most of my favorite episodes and so far I don’t think she’s written one that I didn’t like (not that there have been that many episodes I haven’t liked at least a little bit so far but still). Clearly Sugar’s style works for me and I wanted to point this out because, well, I never really point this stuff out, but credit should be given where it’s due. So, you know. Rebecca Sugar. She’s pretty great. Unfortunately I know she also left the show so I don’t know how many episodes of hers I have left.

Well, I’ve run out of things to say. Time to wrap this up. Season 4 is a great season, it’s full of really interesting episodes and it expands on the characters and this world nicely.

Season rating: 7.7

Best Episode: Lady & Peebles

Worst Episode: Web Weirdos

Quick heads-up about what’s going on for the next month or so.

I need a break from reviewing Adventure Time, and since I never got around to reviewing Volume 2 of RWBY and I have a lot to say about that mess of a show, I’ve decided to devote December to RWBY reviews and then get back to AT once those are done. The timing for this isn’t very convenient given how Season 4 ended, but I had already decided to do this a while ago and I don’t want to put it off any longer. How was I supposed to know Season 4 would end with a cliffhanger?

If you’re only here for the AT reviews and don’t have an interest in RWBY… well, I’m sorry for making you wait, but it shouldn’t be for too long. I’d like to try to get back to AT by January 2nd at the latest, but I won’t make any promises about that because I’m not the best at posting on schedule on this blog. I’ll try though.