black out the sky

*checks notes*

ruby rose. yup yup.

there's not enough content to fill a chapter. or, well, the chapters would be ridiculously short, "shorter than the prologue" short, and that's not what i'm aiming for.

so now i need to rework it all. getting rid of strict POV chapters is the easy part, rearranging events so that the chapters are still in the right order time-wise? less so. means lots and lots of getting rid of ideas that no longer work and coming up with new stuff to fill in the gaps that didn't need filling previously.

and thanks to maria, we know there's a license exam: "[...] but i scored higher on the license exam than any other huntsman or huntress that day." so why not make it actually formal, for rwbyjnr to go through whatever training they still may or may not need and then take the license exam, to prove that they're worthy of the licenses they hold.

yeah, and that included what "out of nowhere" in a sense that it wasn't even known whether anyone but pyrrha (and cardin, i guess) knew jaune cheated his way into beacon, a V1 plot point brought all the way into V8. if they can do that with such a long period of time in between, why not for something from previous volume?

not to mention that ruby did her everything to save penny, the entire plan to save the people of atlas stemmed from that, just to learn that penny had died after ruby fell with jaune playing a role in it ("why couldn't he save her, with his semblance?" would be ruby's thought process) + ruby losing penny's sword, the last remaining thing she had of her friend, just for it to. . . never really come up? save learning about it to off-screen and don't bring it during ruby lashing out because "too out of character" even tho it's something that would have absolutely been on her mind.

while qrow can activate his semblance on his own, he can't turn it off; it will do its thing whenever it feels like it, being both a boon and a curse in a fight. raven's bonds most likely aren't the type she can just decide on on the spot, it takes time to form a genuine bond with someone, which can also make their use in battle limiting (not to mention the portals aren't the most inconspicuous, making them most useful for surprise attacks than anything else).

like, they can be useful, but there's a limiting factor... which in a way makes them less reliant on their semblances during combat, highlighting their skill using their weapons. a certain lack of control, a downside, that they just need to roll with, that stops their semblances from being the Greatest Thing Ever™.

you can have multiple blogs under one account? are people using "sideblog" to talk about blogs they made new accounts for, instead of creating a new blog within the same account?? like, this is the "set-up" i have (the "+ new" next to "blogs" is where you create new ones (tho iirc it used to be more hidden before)):

ideally, it's packing your suitcase with everything you need, all neat and tidy with some space to spare even, if you happen to think of something you might need later without any need to reorganize, the suitcase closing easily.

sometimes, problems arise: you didn't get to bring your own suitcase and the one offered to you is too small for everything you need, or perhaps you miscalculated how much space a specific item would take; either way, something's going to be left out. it may be something small and inconsequential (but would have been nice to have), or it may be something super-duper important, the lack of it noticeable afterwards, a decision that may have been a calculated risk, or the first one that came to mind in a rush.

and then there are times where you're just cramming everything into the suitcase haphazardly with very little planning. all the items are the same, but by the time you're done with packing, there's no rhyme or reason to anything, the suitcase is bulging and you're struggling to get it closed while sitting on top of it, the zipper threatening to undo its whole existence given a chance.

it's not pretty. you may see all the ideas the writer had in mind, the potential, the ideal, but the execution leaves you wanting more. the reasons why the suitcase ended in that state vary; it may be lack of time, budget, or skill, or some combination of the three, but regardless of the exact reason, the end result is still lacking.

but your audience will see that potential because good portion of the people know what a nicely packed suitcase looks like, what it should have in it for a nice trip, and they will yearn for it, conjure what ifs in their mind, talk about it openly.

while i can appreciate the attention to detail and being throughout with the information provided, i feel like referring to holding a weapon for 15 seconds as a "previous owner (temporarily)" is a bit over the top.

i remember at the time the talk already was that she was only told it was her character in the grave right before they began filming the episode, so i'm not surprised. i'm glad she's still talking about it because it was such bullshit, like holy hell the disrespect towards the actors one must have to pull that just for drama.......

like you know you've fucked up when your sister-show introduces the earth-2 counterpart of the character soon after to their earth and doesn't send her back (which, iirc, was pretty common occurrence with other earth-2 counterparts) just in case.

her death was so bad too :') what do you mean you have her severely injured in the field, rush her to hospital, say she's recovering while turning her into the ship's mouthpiece in what became her last moments, just to have a random doctor say she died off-screen due to Complications™... the disrespect :'')

barely watched the show after that. i think i only came back for the 100th episode (which was part of a crossover, anyway) and that one episode where they brought her earth-2 character over from the flash.

i do agree that it was different time regarding social media and how much weight to give the voices there, but i also remember it being pretty common sentiment (at least outside shipping circles) that the showrunner's behaviour was far beyond what would be considered professional, especially when that treatment was only towards one, very specific group in the fandom.

arrow rant over, tho i have to say "arrow =/" is pretty succinct way of describing my feelings towards the show.

tbh i wouldn't be too worried over rwby if not for V9 commentary, where they specifically talked about neo being irredeemable but they still wanted to give her a chance to "bow out" thanks to her popularity, which is... not encouraging, as far as allowing audience to dictate what happens in the show goes.

my two copes are that 1) it's a one off, and 2) the writers were throwing anything and everything at the screen to "pander" towards the audience, whatever they thought would bring more views or sell more merch, because RT and the show were not doing great and any little thing counts, or that upper management were pushing them to do so, so that now, hopefully, under VIZ there's less need for that.

and i just. i don't want to lose more shows for this. please. i'm begging. fanfiction exists for a reason we don't need different ships playing house in the middle of a war, nor does every character need to end up with someone else.

thanks <3

i suppose i'm very easy to please because there's something very satisfying lining them up like this. like, bit by bit the full picture of strq is revealed... tho it's still missing pretty big pieces lol

but also it's funny how in a sea of reds there's this one spot of yellow :)

like, nothing against the blue and the purple, but the colour combo with them in it just doesn't pop as well as the OG does, and idk, it just... does not say rwby to me.

idk if that makes sense, but here's a quick edit to (hopefully) showcase what i mean (original vs edit):