[RWBY] RWBY Shorts

[AJ_Talon]

Whiter Rose: Quiet Hours

Atlas never really slept. The lights outside the Schnee Manor stayed on all night, cold and steady against the snow. Ruby had found a corner of one of the smaller sitting rooms where the windows faced away from the city, and she had been sitting there long enough for the tea in her hands to go cold.

Whitley paused in the doorway when he saw her. She didn't look up.

He stepped in anyway, quiet on the carpet. "You're not usually this still."

Ruby let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "Yeah. Weird, right?"

He sat on the other end of the couch, not too close. For a while neither of them said anything. The only sound was the low hum of the manor's heating.

"I keep thinking if I just move fast enough," Ruby said at last, voice small, "if I just keep going, then none of it will catch up to me. But I'm tired. I'm really tired. And I don't know what the right next step is. Everyone keeps looking at me like I should already have the answer."

Whitley studied the dark window. "I used to think if I stayed quiet and useful enough, my father would stop looking at me like I was a mistake he hadn't fixed yet. It never worked. I still hear him sometimes, when the house is this quiet."

Ruby turned her head. Her silver eyes were bright, but not glowing. Just tired.

"I don't know how to help anyone if I can barely keep myself together," she admitted. "And I hate that I'm scared of that."

Whitley nodded, once. "I don't know how to be anything but what he made me. Even now. I keep waiting for someone to tell me I've done it wrong." He glanced at her.

"You don't look at me like that. It's… strange."

Ruby managed a weak smile. "You're not doing it wrong. You're here. That counts for something."

"So are you."

They sat with that for a moment. Outside, wind moved across the snow. Inside, the old house creaked, but it felt farther away than usual.

Ruby shifted the cold mug in her hands. "Does it ever get easier? Talking about it?"

Whitley considered the question. "I don't know. This is the first time I've tried."

She nodded like that was enough of an answer. After a second she leaned sideways, just enough that her shoulder rested against his. He went still, then carefully didn't move away.

"Thanks for sitting with me," she said.

"Thank you for not telling me to go away," he answered.

They stayed like that until the tea was long forgotten and the lights of Atlas kept burning outside, steady and cold, while the quiet between them settled into something a little less sharp.

 

[digcat]

Jokes aside i don't think Weiss could be happier than for Ruby to get with Whitley.

 

[Fusion Blaster]

I think it depends on when it happens... if was Beacon era Weiss.. i thihnk she'd be more likly to freak

 

[digcat]

Weiss after teams RWBY and JNPR destroyed the white fang.

Spoiler

 

[Hahoalki]

While you're right, there's also that little issue of "if everyone is special, then no one is"—if everyone ends up with an amputation, it also undermines the story's credibility.

Furthermore, even though the injuries involve different limbs, it would still feel quite repetitive to have both Yang and Pyrrha in such similar situations—but then again, that's just my take on it.

Click to shrink...

Then there are other options.

If Yang dies instead, Blake finally has to face consequences for her actions. And that's probably a good thing.

But maybe that's too extreme for you.

For options involving both Yang and Pyrrha surviving, we can take into account the fact that "full arm amputation" and "severing the achilles tendon" are two different kinds of injuries.

The treatment for the latter involves an initial surgical procedure followed by 6 months to a year of physical therapy before the individual in question can get "back in action."

The treatment for the former (in Remnant) involves a mechanical prosthesis.

The way I see it, Yang's issues would be mostly PTSD and depression related, whereas Pyrrha's would probably have more to do with her finding where she fits in a world that sees her as a killer and has-been. The story arcs are different enough that it wouldn't actually feel repetitive.

There's also the possibility (probability) that she'd be in Argus during volumes 4-6. The issues she's dealing with (interpersonal problems and self-image issues) are, again, fairly different from Yang's. And since things would only get resolved when JN_R arrive in Argus, we (again) have enough different plot beats for this to be worthwhile as its own thing.

And at the end of the day, Pyrrha being alive allows for more interesting things than Pyrrha being dead. So if none of this is satisfying for you, maybe you just need to bite the bullet and accept the repetition for the sake of a better story.

 

[Sift Green]

Something that I like about the whole Tablebreaker consept is just how off-base the people of Remnant are about the actual true history of their world.
The lion-jesus religion is not what actually happened, and there was no actual divinity involved in any of it, while the actual divinity that created their world and shaped history is viewed as just another fairy tale.

In some places, The Tale of the Two Brothers might have evolved into something where they were just two regular humans/faunus, who build a whole bunch of things, and one got yealous and created the Grimm, with no diety or divinity ever getting involved (or possibly the one brother making a deal with the "devil" of the local religion to create the Grimm).

The religions of Remnant are way off on what the actual dieties were like (in canon very close to greek mythology with how the gods had massive flaws and egos that caused constant conflict), and even the fairy tales they have that are close to the truth are off (The Tale of the Two Brothers portrays Light as the good one, while in actuality he's a selfish basterd who set up the rules with his brother in his favor, etc).

Click to shrink...

To add on to what AJ_Talon has already said even if you're having The Two Brothers be actual real deal Gods in your take on the setting there would still be room in the cosmology for a deity like the Tablebreaker to fit in, because The Two Brothers aren't the end all be all divinity even in the original show; you just need to consider the implications of the inclusion of The Blacksmith as the mother/creator over-deity of The Two Brothers.

Giving the creators their own creator raises the question of who created their own creator, and did that creator in turn have their own creator? If you follow this logic to its ultimate conclusion you have a lineage of creator deities stretching back from one generation to the next onwards and onwards until you reach the foundation of eternity. In this rendition The Two Brothers would simply be members of the most recent generation of gods, meaning there would be plenty of other gods out there in the cosmos that could see value in saving a few souls from a world members of the youngest generation have abandoned as a failed experiment.

Now if you put your foot down and say The Ever After actually is the foundation of eternity so The Blacksmith is the true end all be all of Divinity that still doesn't preclude the possibility of a Tablebreaker style god saving souls on Remnant. The Blacksmith is a creator that's still actively creating, so what's stopping her from making more gods after The Two Brothers? The Two Brothers' backstories in the Ever After don't allude to any unique element to their creation that would prevent The Blacksmith from making more gods after them. On top of that the Ever After's flexible relationship with time means that a god not yet created in the Ever After could still have a profound impact on Remnant's past, so you can't say the absence of such a deity during Jaune and Team RWBY's time in the Ever After is solid evidence against the possibility.


In other words the existence of The Ever After's Blacksmith blows the doors wide open for including gods that aren't The Two Brothers into the setting of RWBY, even if you aren't reworking that part of the backstory in your own personal take on the setting.

 

[Hahoalki]

Other points to highlight: Weiss, Nora and a few of Hyrule's scientific minds figure out how to use Elemental Chu Jelly as a substitute for Dust.

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I really like this.

I've recently been developing my headcanons for Ren and Nora, and one of the things I realized was Magnhild is terrifyingly complex for a weapon that was almost certainly built without the resources that someone who attended a huntsman training school would have.

Nora is every bit the techie that Ruby and Weiss are - and perhaps even more so in some respects.

I cannot readily conceive of reasons to keep her around that benefit Team RWBY's story more than they tax and encumber it.

Click to shrink...

The trouble is that you're focusing on Team RWBY. Team JNPR always had more narrative potential, IMO, at least once the conflict between Blake and Weiss is resolved at the end of Volume 1.

Which is why, even in Beacon, and even in stories principally about Jaune, I see them still as a narrative obstacle that I have to circumnavigate or surmount.

I know when and where I should logically be writing them, but for me, writing them is frustrating, exhausting, and cannot reach beyond surface level tolerability because I cannot think of an expedient and plausible way to get them out of the way or reorient the course of the story such that it doesn't run into the wall.

Click to shrink...

Then try making them the main characters rather than Jaune.

I've explained who Pyrrha is supposed to be at length on prior occasions, but we can run through that stuff again if you like.

For summaries of Ren and Nora, I'd say this:

Ren is on a quest for revenge against the Grimm that destroyed his village and his life. His big flaw is that he tends to "bottle up" his emotions rather than dealing with them - partially as a defense mechanism when he was in the wilds and letting himself feel his grief would have probably killed both him and Nora.

Nora, having started out as a homeless orphan, is mainly looking for a place to belong. Since Ren was the first person to meaningfully bond with her in a positive way, a lot of that search for belonging is focused on him, specifically. Her big flaw is a little less straightforward than Ren's, imo, but it exists for similar reasons. While Ren tried to keep them alive by suppressing his emotions, Nora tried the opposite - she attempted to become a beacon of positivity. Her cheerful optimism and quirky antics? Mostly a facade. And not even she knows who the person behind the mask actually is.

Once you have a major goal and flaw for a character, it shouldn't be too difficult to sort out how they can fit into a narrative.

 

[Bommel]

Which is how it should be. If the answer to What is God? in your universe is that they're a pair of asshole children... That's rather disappointing, isn't it? Better to keep it a mystery.

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Not necessarily.
Again coming back to the Greek gods, the people who worshiped them knew exactly how much petty immature assholes they were, but that caused a crapload of drama (and sometimes comedy), and the Greeks absolutely loved both of those in spades.
Despite all the negative aspects of the Greek Gods, they also had plenty of good points, because the Greek gods were a reflection of what was true, not of what was ideal (in contrast with the Abrahamic god, who is a paragon).

We in the western world are primed to think of gods as good guys, and in many cases "perfect", but in several other religions they're often much more human-like and flawed.
Personally I'm not a fan of the ultimate all-loving omnipotent good guy interpetation. Because the world has too much unnecessary pain and suffering in it for such a good-guy god to be the case, or for me to respect if they claim to be such (see Steven Fry's statement on god and bonecanser in children).

The pair of petty asshole brothers can work for a story, and I think that it could have worked for RWBY if they didn't bodge the execution (which might have been cause they followed Monty's plot guidelines, but he unfortunately died to let it be portrayed well).
I do hope they will eventually get punched in the face at the end of the canon story (or at least get what is comming to them in some way, preferably in some ironic way).

To add on to what AJ_Talon has already said even if you're having The Two Brothers be actual real deal Gods in your take on the setting there would still be room in the cosmology for a deity like the Tablebreaker to fit in, because The Two Brothers aren't the end all be all divinity even in the original show; you just need to consider the implications the inclusion of The Blacksmith as the mother/creator over-deity of The Two Brothers.

Giving the creators their own creator raises the question of who created their own creator, and did that creator in turn have their own creator? If you follow this logic to its ultimate conclusion you have a lineage of creator deities stretching back from one generation to the next onwards and onwards until you reach the foundation of eternity. In this rendition The Two Brothers would simply be members of the most recent generation of gods, meaning there would be plenty of other gods out there in the cosmos that could see value in saving a few souls from a world members of the youngest generation have abandoned as a failed experiment.

Now if you put your foot down and say The Ever After actually is the foundation of eternity so The Blacksmith is the true end all be all of Divinity that still doesn't preclude the possibility of a Tablebreaker style god saving souls on Remnant. The Blacksmith is a creator that's still actively creating, so what's stopping her from making more gods after The Two Brothers? The Two Brothers' backstories in the Ever After don't allude to any unique element to their creation that would prevent The Blacksmith from making more gods after them. On top of that the Ever After's flexible relationship with time means that a god not yet created in the Ever After could still have a profound impact on Remnant's past, so you can't say the absence of such a deity during Jaune and Team RWBY's time in the Ever After is solid evidence against the possibility.


In other words the existence of The Ever After's Blacksmith blows the doors wide open for including gods that aren't The Two Brothers into the setting of RWBY, even if you aren't reworking that part of the backstory in your own personal take on the setting.

Click to shrink...

I do like the idea that some other gods showed up after the Brothers stormed out.
For that to make sense though they'd have to be minor gods who are much weakers than the two original creators of Remnant, and while they're trying their best, they're unable to really change much of the status quo (like removing the Grimm alltogether, or fully bring magic back like there once was).

Like the big furniture smashing lion-god could be real, and could be a very good and decent person, but they and the other gods aren't powerful enough to actually change the fucked up game the Brothers set in place (both intentionally and unintentionally).
So they help the best they can, and it's up to the mortals of the world to actually make sure they get the good ending, so that the actions of the characters of the story still matter (rather than them all being the meaningless entertainment for the gods, who can decide who lives and dies, while their own choises don't matter).
They can't stop the Brothers if they return, they can't remove the Grimm or Salem, but they can help the heroes be a little bit lucky when they really need it (even if that luck takes the form of some bigass thunderstorm).

 

[Maximize]

I Think Team RWBY Are Poor Protagonists, but Ruby Had Potential

This might be a controversial opinion, but I honestly think Team RWBY are rather poor protagonists as a collective. The problem isn't necessarily that Weiss, Blake, and Yang are bad characters or that they don't have interesting backgrounds. It's that, as the main protagonists of the series, I don't think they work particularly well. RWBY struggles to give all four members a meaningful role in the overarching story, and their individual character arcs often feel disconnected from one another. Rather than feeling like four characters whose stories naturally contribute to a central narrative, they can feel like four separate characters competing for limited screen time and development.

I think this is one of the biggest problems with RWBY's storytelling. The series introduces four main characters, but it never really manages to balance their importance or give them equally compelling journeys that consistently contribute to the larger plot. Weiss has her family and the Schnee Dust Company, Blake has the White Fang and Faunus discrimination, and Yang has her family and relationship with Raven. These are all potentially interesting storylines, but they often feel like separate character arcs rather than parts of one cohesive narrative. Once some of those personal conflicts are resolved, it's also difficult to see what their ongoing role in the central story is supposed to be.

Ruby, however, is a different matter. I actually think she could have been a very good protagonist, perhaps even the best choice to carry the series on her own. She has a clear motivation, an understandable worldview, and a natural connection to the central conflict through her Silver Eyes and desire to become a Huntress. Her optimism and idealism also provide plenty of room for character development, particularly when confronted with the realities of Remnant and the increasingly difficult decisions she has to make.

The problem, in my opinion, is that the series never fully capitalised on that potential. Ruby should have been the character through whom we experience the world, learn about its history, understand the conflict with Salem, and explore what it actually means to be a Huntress. Her ideals could have been challenged, her understanding of the world could have evolved, and the contrast between the person she wanted to become and the person the circumstances forced her to be could have formed the backbone of the story. Instead, her role as the central protagonist often feels surprisingly underdeveloped, especially considering how important she is supposed to be.

I don't think this means Weiss, Blake, and Yang need to disappear or become unimportant. They can still be major characters with their own storylines, development, and contributions to the overall plot. I simply think the narrative would have benefited from having a much clearer central protagonist rather than trying to distribute that responsibility equally across all four members of Team RWBY.

As an additional thought, I'd also consider making Jaune a second protagonist alongside Ruby. I think the two could complement each other quite well, with Ruby's idealism and established connection to the larger conflict contrasting with Jaune's more grounded perspective and gradual development from an inexperienced student into a capable Huntsman. However, this is more of an additional idea than something I think is necessary. Ruby could absolutely carry the story herself.

Ultimately, my main issue is that I don't think Team RWBY works particularly well as a collective group of protagonists. Ruby had the potential to be a genuinely compelling lead, and I think the story would have benefited from recognising that and building its narrative around her. Whether Jaune is included as a second lead is another discussion entirely.

 

[digcat]

Jaune's brides

Spoiler

 

[Bommel]

I really like this.

I've recently been developing my headcanons for Ren and Nora, and one of the things I realized was Magnhild is terrifyingly complex for a weapon that was almost certainly built without the resources that someone who attended a huntsman training school would have.

Nora is every bit the techie that Ruby and Weiss are - and perhaps even more so in some respects.

Click to shrink...

Maybe it was build in multiple iterations?
Like the first Magnhild was literally a grenade/bomb taped to a sledgehammer.
One end of the head was for regular smashing, the other was for if something really needed to die quickly, but at the cost of destroying the weapon (and taking a chunk of the wielder's Aura in the boom).

Then try making them the main characters rather than Jaune.

I've explained who Pyrrha is supposed to be at length on prior occasions, but we can run through that stuff again if you like.

For summaries of Ren and Nora, I'd say this:

Ren is on a quest for revenge against the Grimm that destroyed his village and his life. His big flaw is that he tends to "bottle up" his emotions rather than dealing with them - partially as a defense mechanism when he was in the wilds and letting himself feel his grief would have probably killed both him and Nora.

Nora, having started out as a homeless orphan, is mainly looking for a place to belong. Since Ren was the first person to meaningfully bond with her in a positive way, a lot of that search for belonging is focused on him, specifically. Her big flaw is a little less straightforward than Ren's, imo, but it exists for similar reasons. While Ren tried to keep them alive by suppressing his emotions, Nora tried the opposite - she attempted to become a beacon of positivity. Her cheerful optimism and quirky antics? Mostly a facade. And not even she knows who the person behind the mask actually is.

Once you have a major goal and flaw for a character, it shouldn't be too difficult to sort out how they can fit into a narrative.

Click to shrink...

Really like this dude.
Not just the opinion, but also the analysis and suggestion.

 

[Leo 123]

I Think Team RWBY Are Poor Protagonists, but Ruby Had Potential

This might be a controversial opinion, but I honestly think Team RWBY are rather poor protagonists as a collective. The problem isn't necessarily that Weiss, Blake, and Yang are bad characters or that they don't have interesting backgrounds. It's that, as the main protagonists of the series, I don't think they work particularly well. RWBY struggles to give all four members a meaningful role in the overarching story, and their individual character arcs often feel disconnected from one another. Rather than feeling like four characters whose stories naturally contribute to a central narrative, they can feel like four separate characters competing for limited screen time and development.

I think this is one of the biggest problems with RWBY's storytelling. The series introduces four main characters, but it never really manages to balance their importance or give them equally compelling journeys that consistently contribute to the larger plot. Weiss has her family and the Schnee Dust Company, Blake has the White Fang and Faunus discrimination, and Yang has her family and relationship with Raven. These are all potentially interesting storylines, but they often feel like separate character arcs rather than parts of one cohesive narrative. Once some of those personal conflicts are resolved, it's also difficult to see what their ongoing role in the central story is supposed to be.

Ruby, however, is a different matter. I actually think she could have been a very good protagonist, perhaps even the best choice to carry the series on her own. She has a clear motivation, an understandable worldview, and a natural connection to the central conflict through her Silver Eyes and desire to become a Huntress. Her optimism and idealism also provide plenty of room for character development, particularly when confronted with the realities of Remnant and the increasingly difficult decisions she has to make.

The problem, in my opinion, is that the series never fully capitalised on that potential. Ruby should have been the character through whom we experience the world, learn about its history, understand the conflict with Salem, and explore what it actually means to be a Huntress. Her ideals could have been challenged, her understanding of the world could have evolved, and the contrast between the person she wanted to become and the person the circumstances forced her to be could have formed the backbone of the story. Instead, her role as the central protagonist often feels surprisingly underdeveloped, especially considering how important she is supposed to be.

I don't think this means Weiss, Blake, and Yang need to disappear or become unimportant. They can still be major characters with their own storylines, development, and contributions to the overall plot. I simply think the narrative would have benefited from having a much clearer central protagonist rather than trying to distribute that responsibility equally across all four members of Team RWBY.

As an additional thought, I'd also consider making Jaune a second protagonist alongside Ruby. I think the two could complement each other quite well, with Ruby's idealism and established connection to the larger conflict contrasting with Jaune's more grounded perspective and gradual development from an inexperienced student into a capable Huntsman. However, this is more of an additional idea than something I think is necessary. Ruby could absolutely carry the story herself.

Ultimately, my main issue is that I don't think Team RWBY works particularly well as a collective group of protagonists. Ruby had the potential to be a genuinely compelling lead, and I think the story would have benefited from recognising that and building its narrative around her. Whether Jaune is included as a second lead is another discussion entirely.

Click to shrink...

I've thought for a while that Weiss, Blake or Jaune would make for better protagonists than RWBY. I had the idea a while ago of ditching Yang, Ruby, Nora and Ren to make a team with Weiss, Blake, Jaune and Pyrrha instead. You'd have to make adjustments to the story and what order things happen in so people get the character development they need, but I don't think it's entirely unworkable. They do drive the majority of the plot and any plot given to the removed characters can be given to someone on this team. It would cut down on cast bloat too, you only have 4 main characters to start with, not 8. Just have to not add more characters later, or at least don't give them more screen time than they need.

 

[Sift Green]

Personally I'm not a fan of the ultimate all-loving omnipotent good guy interpetation. Because the world has too much unnecessary pain and suffering in it for such a good-guy god to be the case, or for me to respect if they claim to be such (see Steven Fry's statement on god and bonecanser in children).

Click to shrink...

So the climax to The Book Of Job is a very lengthy conversation between Job and God that can be oversimplified as God saying to Job "I need you to understand how radically different my perspective on things is from yours."

That difference in perspective between the mortal and the divine is frequently brushed aside whenever people want to debate how good an omnipotent and omniscient being can be.

Consider death. It's inherently tragic to us because it is a permanent separation that cannot be reversed. Now consider the standard platitudes used to comfort people who've lost someone to death; "They're with God now" is near the top. But have you spent any time thinking about the implications of that platitude? Especially if taken at face value.

Death is not a separation to someone in God's position, making the ordeal inherently less tragic to someone with that perspective because it is an arrival instead of a departure.

If something as fundamental as Death would look so different to somebody in God's shoes then everything else a mortal goes through would also look different.

When God and Job's conversation ended God did not deny his part in Job's suffering, for while Satan was the one who actually acted against Job it was something God could have prevented. God then takes full responsibility for not stopping the bad things that happened to Job instead of shifting the blame onto Satan by proceeding to act responsibly by restoring and doubling Job's good fortune, with hints towards heaven as the book says God doubled the number of Job's children even though Job only had seven more children meaning Job's dead children were still counted towards Job's estate in God's eyes.


The so-called problem of evil hinges on the idea that a good deity cannot be responsible for anything bad, but God's claims to be good are never claims of irresponsibility. Christ's great sacrifice entailed taking responsibility for everything and everyone after all, and so taking responsibility and bing responsible are the things that make a God good, not bearing no responsibility for the bad things in the world. The fact that the bulk of the recompense happens in heaven instead of mortality is honestly the real thing people take issue with, which brings us back to God's conversation with Job that can be oversimplified as "I need you to understand how radically different my perspective on things is from yours."



So that's why I don't have any problems with an ultimate all-loving omnipotent good guy interpretation of the divine. Bad things do happen, but that doesn't mean god won't take full responsibility for them.

 

[GraveyardShift]

This might be a controversial opinion, but I honestly think Team RWBY are rather poor protagonists as a collective.

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Controversial? That is the most milquetoast take ever that preaches to the choir. RWBY has long since been more the "Jaune and Blake show." Jaune being the actual underdog who learns what it means to be a huntsman and Blake driving the plot for FIVE volumes with her White Fang obsession.

This is literally what every RWBY critic ever has said needs to be done and any fixit series tries to do when they're not leaning hard into the original Knightshade premise to mock the show.

You're among friends here with that take.

So the climax to The Book Of Job is a very lengthy conversation between Job and God that can be oversimplified as God saying to Job "I need you to understand how radically different my perspective on things is from yours."

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The trope for this is referred to as "Blue and Orange" morality.

For beings that exist outside our 3D perception and whose minds are so alien and utterly incomprehensible, we cannot even begin to understand it and trying to apply a human perspective doesn't work because nothing about it is 'human'.

For all we know, the Great Old Ones of Lovecraftian horror very much like humanity and wish to preserve and safeguard it. But their thought processes and methods are so inhuman and alien that we can't even begin to fathom what that actually looks like to them. And so their very nature inspires dread in humans because it's unknowable.

The greatest thing that humans ever feared. The Unknown and Unknowable.

 

[Sift Green]

I think this is one of the biggest problems with RWBY's storytelling. The series introduces four main characters, but it never really manages to balance their importance or give them equally compelling journeys that consistently contribute to the larger plot. Weiss has her family and the Schnee Dust Company, Blake has the White Fang and Faunus discrimination, and Yang has her family and relationship with Raven. These are all potentially interesting storylines, but they often feel like separate character arcs rather than parts of one cohesive narrative. Once some of those personal conflicts are resolved, it's also difficult to see what their ongoing role in the central story is supposed to be.

Click to shrink...

You're right about this being the biggest issue, and this is a big issue because these stories shouldn't have been disconnected. Weiss's story with the SDC and Blake's story with the White Fang are different sides of the same story. Half of what's wrong with Weiss's life can be connected to stuff the White Fang did to the SDC. Half of Blake's worldview was shaped by what the SDC did to the White Fang in response.

And so you have two living embodiments of this conflict at the same school and on the same team, having to live in close proximity and get along. The dorm room is now microcosm of the SDC/White Fang war, Weiss and Blake's efforts to make peace between them shadows of what would be needed to make peace between the SDC and the Fang.

But we didn't get that, and the show suffered for it.