Concerning RWBY and Recent Events

For those on a time crunch: 

Expect two pieces: Chaosarmageddon's piece, and parttimedoodles's piece.

I feel that the writing in the actual show leaves much to be desired outside of the fight scenes. 

"Team WRBY 6-10" is hanging in the balance as I desperately hope for the character traits I need. Who gets them is of little concern, I just need someone to qualify for the task so that Team WRBY isn't interacting with OCs. 

And finally: Should I make the average creature of Grimm a formidable opponent in a 1v1? <--- that's your task, readers! Tell me what you want.

And now, the long version:

First things first: What YOU the reader can expect from me in the future, WHENEVER I am able to find time: Chaosarmageddon's piece followed by a piece that will be done for parttimedoodles, the talented woman who drew all of that fantastic art for my own work. 

Concerning RWBY Volume 2, I've received the latest episode, 7, with bittersweetness.


I feel that the writers (especially Miles) have deviated yet again. First, I must address Weiss, as I can actually take care of her in one paragraph. Weiss: She specifically points out a general disinterest in "boys" as they've only wanted her wealth; yet she disregards that lifelong policy when Neptune flirts with her. If Neptune was the exception, they needed to SHOW us this before Weiss asked him to the dance. They have missed their opportunity to make Neptune different from the rest of the "boys." 

Now, I could write pages on why the writing leaves a lot to be desired, but I shall leave it at this: Jaune has had his screen time. He's had it. He. Has. Had. Enough. He was harassing Weiss for a considerable percentage of the second Volume too, so it wasn't positive screen time either. There is a difference between comedic relief and harassment. Jaune was the latter. 

At this point, I'm hoping that JNPR will take a back seat for the rest of the volume, assuming we only have 9 more to go. He's had his little love life squared away, let Team RWBY star in their own show now. This obviously won't happen unless Miles drops dead. On a more subtle level, I've noticed that any character Miles voices gets a marginally bigger role in the series than other characters. I don't know Miles at all, but circumstantial evidence leaves a frown on my face. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if Miles's characters were part of the MAIN cast. This isn't even about ships, relationships, or character development; my problem is with the sheer percentage, a simple pie chart. 

When SIDE characters are getting an entire third of the screen time, you have a writing problem. I'm not a professional writer, I can't tell you what the right percentage of the pie is, but I CAN tell you that 33% is too much. (Volume 1 was an hour long, Jaune got 20 minutes. In episode 7 of Volume 2, he gets roughly 50% of the screen time. I consider that to be an unacceptable percentage.) I actually want to address "Red vs Blue" on its own, specifically the introduction of Agent Washington but that would require many paragraphs of text and make me a hypocrite in this context so I'll save it for another post.

Monty and his crew absolutely murder when it comes to writing fight scenes. That is without a doubt. But when it comes to the rest of the story, I'm noticing a lack in critical departments. Again: I don't know these fantastic people. But even Marcus Aurelius, one of Rome's greatest emperors, got twenty thousand of his soldiers slaughtered in his first major battle.

So I've said my generalized piece on RWBY, given you all the expected pieces to come, now there's one more thing I want to discuss. 

"Team WRBY 6-10/10" 

I want to stick to the five-part format. I'm not ready to commit to full-length novels, so I want to write a good story arc that can be told in 30,000 words. Here's some critical information for the "Team WRBY" sequel: 

I'm waiting for Volume 2 to finish before I even consider adding to my outline. I have the outline, but what I need are very specific world-building elements that have yet to be revealed to me. The idea behind WRBY is that Weiss is made the leader, Velvet becomes the main antagonist, and that's all that changes in terms of characters and any other of the RWBY-world's elements. That means no original characters, and if I can help it: no unbelievable plot points in a world that we still don't fully understand. 

Which leads us into the culmination of all three points: Jaune got kicked out of Beacon in the last chapter. This story isn't about eight characters, it's about four girls, three of which have to deal with an abusive relationship. (And despite the backlash, I'm still writing that abusive relationship with REALISTIC parameters. They're human beings, so I'm going to write them as human beings. Deal with it.) and finally Cinder's agenda.

Thus, Pyrrha, Ren, and Nora won't be making any appearances unless the cannon writers, by some miracle, give any of them the traits that I'm desperately looking for. Right now, I'm banking on Winter Schnee being what I really want her to be. As one might have noticed by now, I'm walking a very delicate tightrope. 

So now I want to ask you, my audience, something that will prove decisive in that sequel: Should I make the average Grimm a more formidable opponent? We've seen in the show that the Grimm will not be the main villain, their primary purpose is to give the girls a reason to demonstrate their awesome power. The main villain is going to be Cinder, but she's going to be a smaller plot point in my sequel, as the Grimm are going to have the honor of being the main antagonistic force.  

Those who read chapter 4 of WRBY will know that READING the girls killing a bunch of Grimm isn't nearly as fun as WATCHING them shred the animals to pieces. I, as a writer, could give you much more exciting content if it was a challenge for one hunter to dispatch one Grimm. Each individual animal would present a life-threatening challenge, but that would be a VERY large deviation from the actual show, which I am very hesitant to allow. But I will allow it if that's what we (or at least a decisive percentage of us) want. 

So to summarize:

Expect two pieces: Chaosarmageddon's piece, and parttimedoodles's piece.

I feel that the writing in the actual show leaves much to be desired outside of the fight scenes.

"Team WRBY 6-10" is hanging in the balance as I desperately hope for the character traits I need. Who gets them is of little concern, I just need someone to qualify for the task so that Team WRBY isn't interacting with OCs. 

And finally: Should I make the average creature of Grimm a formidable opponent in a 1v1? <--- that's your task, readers! Tell me what you want.