No archive.org backups?

Now I’m curious if the MSPA forums were given much of a heads-up before the shutdown. I used to be on the old Wizards of the Coast forums back in the day and my little community scrambled to save as much as we could in the… I think it was a month we had? Not the whole of what we deemed “the mothership” mind you, but all the important bits of the Magic Flavor subforum we were a part of.

Oh, wait, really? Does that mean KSBD’s origins are lost, too?

Yeah I remember this being celebrated when it came out. I also have very vague memories of approval by Hussie himself that this would be considered canon? I could just be making shit up.

I know the time frames don’t line up but it feels like the manga took a lot of things the anime did and turned it to 11 for the sake of outdoing itself.

Honestly I got the exact same feeling.

Also I’m not entirely unconvinced that Akame Ga Kill! didn’t have some influence on RWBY (and I’m not talking about the obvious Bitchtits McFrostqueen cosplay in Ice Queendom). Sure, the anime didn’t start airing until 2013, but the manga was running from 2010 so it’s within the realm of possibility that Monty was reading it while developing RWBY.

Re: Bumblebee (is it bumblebee or bumbleby?).

It’s kinda whatever. Using “Y” at the end is supposed to be for Yang, but as people are wont to do it got shortened from “bumblebee” to just “(the) bees” (which is also used interchangeably with “wasps” to refer to BMBLB shippers).

Besides, I’m currently writing a whole fanfiction about it lol.

Lol that’s fair. A lot of people I meet nowadays are very touchy and all too ready to drop something cold turkey after discovering it has some flaws.

I’m still a little bummed that basically no one seemed to like my lounge lizards yesterday. Ah well. (Maybe people didn’t get it? 🤔️)

Oh, that’s what it was? Yeah that went over my head (also the one on the left looks like a frog and not a lizard).

Fucking thank you! I completely agree, yet all the discourse I see online talks the manga up like it’s God’s gift to weebs. The anime was so much better.

Cards on the table, I think even the Akame anime is forgettable in the extreme, but I am convinced that the reaction is because people can’t handle an ending that isn’t “happily ever after” in much the same way so many people have issues separating fictional characters from real people (e.g. all the hate Jax gets from Digital Circus).

The only real notable change is that Blake and Yang are dating now, which imo they didn’t build up enough and anyways they completely fumbled the entire dynamic.

Eyy ヘ( ^o^)ノ＼(^_^ )

This is a really impractical recommendation, but if you have like 30 hours to burn check out the first 10 or so Team JYCT streams from Celtic Phoenix – they (Judgemental Critter, Celtic Phoenix who’s behind the Fixing RWBY series, Kaiser Shounen who’s also in the RWBY critics sphere and has some good videos, and a friend of theirs called Twilight Guardian) went through the entire series looking at anything that could have been considered a “Bumbleby moment” to see how well it holds up as a romance and the conclusion, obviously, is that it basically didn’t exist until V6 and then it was fumbled hard. Like, the Ponderstorm episode basically held them at gunpoint to make them kiss.

Ruby randomly develops this “I’m a terrible leader and huntress” mindset in the volume itself (whether she actually is or not is an entirely different story) which is resolved at the end of the volume putting her right back to square 1 ig. Same goes for Weiss.

Yeah, a critique I’ve heard more than once is that V9 feels like it’s written in direct response to criticisms people have raised about the characters, like how “Blake and Yang haven’t actually kissed” and “Ruby hasn’t had any development since V1”. The Curious Cat even knocks on the fourth wall by asking “Whatever happened to that Ciel girl?”

The more I think about it, the less depth these characters have, holee fuck.

Yeeeaaahh, they’re really just paper dolls when you get down to it. The phrase “wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle” applies to all of RWBY, but sometimes it’s fun to splash in puddles, you know? That’s why they’ve become my blorbos, I think. I recognize that they’re a whole lot of nothing but that means I can play around with them ad infinitum without it feeling “off”.

Like, I hope the deeper examination isn’t turning you off because while RWBY does have A LOT of flaws (to the point it’s almost more interesting examining what it does wrong), that doesn’t have to mean throwing your toys away. The fandom at large has a problem of toxic positivity and either never addressing its issues or thinking these critiques are attacks on the people who like it, but most of the best fanworks I’ve seen have come from people who see the flaws and want to fix them because they still love the world and characters.

To do proper in-depth analysis, yeah, it’s best to rewatch a series several times (preferably taking notes if you want to actually debate your stance), but usually what I’m doing is giving my impressions in a couple of paragraphs after I’ve finished a show or game the first time.

Occasionally, I’ve re-watched an anime subbed instead of dubbed (or vice-versa) when I didn’t know what to make of it, like with Domestic Girlfriend or Monster Musume, or if I’m still really unsure, go to the source manga to try and figure it out (as happened with Highschool of the Dead). Rarely, I’ll even get into some disagreement or discussion that compels me to deep-dive into a show that I don’t actually love because someone is making a hard-to-believe claim like “the manga fixes all the issues the anime had” (e.g. Akame Ga Kill! (and, personal opinion: the anime ending was much better as most characters get better sendoffs and it cuts out a kind of terrible arc at the end (incidentally, I’m half-planning an adaptation of sorts because putting RWBY characters in an Akame situation would fit perfectly))).

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I’ve heard the same about Korra, I still need to go watch it one day.

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It is unfortunate that RWBY still doesn’t have an ending (and I fully expect them to plan out 3 more volumes in Vacuo – whether or not they get 3 volumes remains to be seen) but I think they shot too wide after the V3 finale. That and they hardly know how to wrap up a season. There was a discussion that popped up a while back that V9 is “filler” and I’m inclined to agree because the plot was 110% put on hold so RWBY (and Jaune for no damn reason) could have a little side-adventure in Neverland.

Like, V9 took an entire extra year because they were struggling to get approved and that’s what they decided to do with it?

I know that exact feeling. Have a hug:

(つ๑•́ U •̀)つヘ(•́ ∀ •̀๑ヘ )

Well, it’s been pointed out by a LOT of people that Grimm being attracted to negativity, even if it were something as local as visual (as opposed to a lingering effect like scent or heat) would consequently create a positive feedback loop after any natural disaster (as he points out) where the panic and grief attracts more Grimm who kill more people and wipe out entire civilizations.

Even canonically, Mistral’s and Atlas’s governments were shaped by this issue. Mistral chose to try getting people to focus on art and celebrating human life to directly counteract negative emotions; Atlas tried flattening the curve and practically making emotionlessness a government mandate to try and make it so no one had any extreme emotions in either direction.

Like, Grimm being attracted to negative emotions at all is the kind of wide-reaching worldbuilding element that should shape the entire setting, like how alchemy influences most every aspect of FMA’s world or how so much of the society in AoT revolves around the fact that titans exist. Back in the day (because I have been an on-again-off-again fan of the series since the Red Trailer) I fully thought Yang’s anger-mode would be important because of this and the fact that her eyes turned red would play into it. Nowadays I still think that’s an interesting way you could take the character, that her Semblence itself is a liability because it runs on an emotion that attracts Grimm (or at least, should. It’s really inconsistent whether anger triggers Grimm or not).

One of the thoughts I’ve had on the subject has been bubbling in the back of my mind lately is that hunters should probably be trained to suppress their emotions (like suppressing power levels in DBZ/Bleach/other battle shounen) and then follow that thread to see how that would affect them psychologically (

). That’s fanfic idea, though.

I’ve spent a LOT of time over the years consuming critical media analysis, but one of the boxes that I tick in the autistic spectrum is that I’ve hardly been able to do more than parrot the exact lines of people I’ve listened to. I’ve gotten better in recent years, but the absolute travesty is that RWBY was perfect for me as someone who cannot analyze a show while in the middle of watching and worse than that, I tend to forget about anything that’s not right in front of my face. All the plot holes in RWBY never occurred to me without someone else pointing them out to me.

Like, if I can mount a slight defense of myself, endings are paramount to a show and RWBY… has none. Like, I wasn’t prepared to actually analyze it as a whole until it ended. I did step away at various times because it got to be a bigger and bigger time investment without an ending, but I never actually thought critically about it until finally stepping into the fandom… I guess 2 years and change now? It was when news of RT’s shutdown filtered down to me.

Okay, I’ve watched the video now and can say a few things about it:

1. He points out that if Aura has regenerative capabilities then Weiss shouldn’t have a scar, which I somehow never put together myself. Like, even if we’re being generous and taking Aura less as full magical regeneration and more just the body’s natural healing at a more rapid pace, then any wound deep enough to leave a scar like that across her eye would probably have left her blind in that eye – which, I’ve seen some art and fic that do that, but it is very clear that’s not what was intended with her design.

2. With as much as he goes on about Jaune, I’d recommend checking out FatManFalling’s videos on the volumes. They’re each rather long (the V5 video is like 5½ hours) but if you enjoy a bit of critical analysis they’re pretty good. FatManFalling goes fairly in-depth on Jaune in the V1 video, IIRC. He’s also a friend of Critter’s, I’m pretty sure. They’re both connected through CelticPhoenix, at the least.

3. I’ve been wanting to address the “Grimm are attracted to negativity” the way he does for a long while, but I have so many thoughts about it it’s hard to put into words.

I feel this in my bones.

Oh, I remember this one. It’s an older video, isn’t it?

I still like Judgemental Critter and will dip into her content semi-regularly (I especially like her videos on character designs) even if I occasionally have issues with the conclusions she draws; tho TBQH it’s good that I can find issues with her arguments and not follow blindly along 100% of the time. A lot of the fandom seems to take umbrage with her critiques such as this very one, tho, to the point where her vids/posts were basically banned on the big r/RWBY subreddit.

As to the video itself, yeah, from what I remember she raises a lot of valid points. Rewatching V6 in particular is kinda painful nowadays because they go from “well, they won’t let us in the front door” to “let’s commit a federal crime” like they were speedrunning treason. Early volume fights vs. the White Fang are cringe-inducing but I think Unicorn of War covered that topic much better and more thoroughly (it’s actually what opened my eyes to that whole debacle). I forget what all else she brings up.

Those kinds of things are why I tend to consider the RWBY writers as like first-time fanfic writers except that RWBY is this whole fully-produced fanfic right out the gate. It’s the kind of plot beats that what I would expect out of somebody who doesn’t think about what they’re writing and just wants to put it out on the internet.

One thing I’ve seen some artists do is take a picture of themselves in the pose they want so they can get the anatomy right for something like this. It does add a small layer of complexity but I think most people nowadays have a phone camera that can be set on a timer so the main question is how much time do you devote to posing yourself rather than drawing?

I’m not really sure if that’s helpful or just rambling.

What ElanoidesWahl said. The perspective really makes this stand out.

See no evil–wait

Where I think you messed up is that the angle and size of the hand doesn’t really line up with the arm, makes it look disjointed. I think you did a good job tho! It did take me a minute to process that was Mineta, tho – thought I was looking at a foot at first (>//w//<)

In a way, it’s a wonder we as a species managed to make it as far as we did considering how traumatic childbirth is in humans.

Also I know those statistics remained pretty uniform up until the last few centuries. I spend a lot of time looking into classical antiquity and a LOT of our ideas of “people didn’t live as long in those days” tends to come from all that child death bringing down the median age of death. From what I’ve heard, at least for societies like the ancient Romans, once you made it to puberty you had a pretty decent chance of living to 60 or more. I wonder how true that was for people many thousands of years ago.

Oh, that’s a cool. The kind of whimsical nonsense you used to see in movies like 9.

Oh, I’ve seen these photos. They’re staged – he actually jumped up and they took a picture while he was midair. :P

Joking aside, honestly good work. The face doesn’t really fit the action but the anatomy is great and I love the shadow.