Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-74.101.236.56-20170321065847/@comment-4010415-20170701093149

Hell, I actually got into the fandom because of speculation, though that was before volume 1 started. The Yellow Trailer had just gone up on Youtube when I found out about RWBY, so I watched all four trailers and then looked up the wiki to see what else I missed. I noticed people speculating about stuff, thought "That looks fun!", and joined in, and it's one of the big things that kept me here. Honestly, I could've dropped RWBY before Players and Pieces. For some reason, that episode caused RWBY to dig its hooks into me and made me decide to stick around and see what happens next.

Part of me feels that I can't fault them for not finding a good way to mention or hint to religion or anything about the brother gods because of RWBY mostly taking place at Beacon for volumes 1-3, but another part of me says that would've been all the more reason for them to search harder for a way to do it.

One thing I actually am salty about with their failure to foreshadow is the silver eyes stuff.


 * Ruby's eyes actually looked silver-ish in volume 1, but then they suddenly decided to make her eyes dark-ass gray. Why?! Ilia's eyes look so much more silver than Ruby's!
 * They could've had occasional characters Ruby met make a comment about how they've never seen someone with silver eyes before and that they're actually seriously silver, not just light gray or something. (Which wouldn't work out well if they still went with making her eyes dark gray for some stupid reason)
 * They could've had some mention of Summer telling Ruby and Yang that some fairy tales are real, with the narrative making us think, at the time, that she was just doing that usual motherly thing of bringing magic into her children's lives through telling them about stuff like Santa Claus and fairies.

I dunno, man. They really should've looked for ways to touch on the silver eye stuff and keep reminding us about it.

As for the students leaving the colosseum... The civilians were already being evacuated from the colosseum while being protected by Atlas' army. It looked like the civilians were all gone when the students went over to Ironwood after Port and Oobleck told them to leave. That's another thing: They were gonna stay in the colosseum and fight the Griffons, but Port and Oobleck showed up and told them to leave. They decided to head to Beacon because that appeared to be the main focus of the attack due to the White Fang dropping off Grimm there and White Fang members themselves even attacking people there. The festival was also on Beacon's campus, as mentioned in Round One. They were already in an airship headed to Beacon when Roman made the robots go rogue, though at least some of those robots were also at Beacon.

So, it makes sense that the students would head over to Beacon Academy instead of staying at the colosseum.

@Maidens coming up first making the Relics feel thrown-in - Yeah, now that you mention it, I can see that. It certainly doesn't help that volume 3 didn't make it clear that Amber wasn't the only thing Cinder was looking for.

@Weapons in combat school - All the more reason for them to get the chance to develop their fighting styles with their personal weapons before they get thrown into fights with Grimm. Otherwise, it'd be like picking up a video game where the button configuration is random, and by the time you start figuring out the buttons and the mechanics, you're already dying.

@Perverted European fairy tales - Wow. And, unfortunately, I suddenly remembered there were people who made fanworks about Ruby getting assaulted in a much dirtier way by a Beowolf... Every group has its dark, dirty corners, right? Heh...

@The other language theory - *Shrug* Pretty much a theory borrowed from other works, often sci-fi works that involve aliens where the audience is like "But why do all the aliens speak English??" leading to the theory being developed that "They're not, it's just being translated into English~ *Sparkles*"

@Color naming tradition - Mistral teaming up with Atlas to ban art and self-expression was explained in WoR: The Great War.

Basically, Mistral and Mantle (which later became Atlas) had a partnership going where Mistral provided Mantle with things they couldn't get in the tundra of Solitas, while Mantle provided Mistral with technology and taught them how to settle and survive in the snowy northern area of Anima. They had a pretty good thing going. But then there was an incident involving a really bad Grimm attack in Mantle, so Mantle's leader thought that if they got rid of emotional things like self-expression and the arts, that would cut down on Grimm attacks.

He then encouraged Mistral to do the same, and in order to keep their helpful partnership with Mantle, the asshats in Mistral's capital were like "Sure, we'll totally do that... everywhere but the capital. :3" In the WoR, Qrow even says that people had thought that it would be the end of Mantle and Mistral's partnership, then commented that Mistral's full of jerks, in regards to the elites in the capital excluding themselves from the ban.

Apparently, Mistral and Mantle had also been sharing other habits that the people of Vale didn't agree with before that point - things like slavery and insisting that their way of life was what was best for everyone. So... pre-Great War, Mantle and Mistral were a bunch of stuck-up assholes, apparently.

@Pyrrha's name - It's pretty much both. Pyrrha's first name comes from the fact that Achilles, her allusion, disguised himself as a red-haired woman named Pyrrha, and like I said, the name Pyrrha meant "flame-colored" in reference to the red hair. But then, running with the name Pyrrha, they also gave the RWBY character the last name Nikos - "victor of the people" - to create a name that is almost equivalent to the term "pyrrhic victory".

Rubies are gems that can be red, but they can also pink. But we most often associate the color red with a ruby.

Ironwood - a type of hardwood tree, thus brown. And iron brings to mind the color of iron itself.

Taiyang - Means the same thing as Yang. It's Chinese for "sun", with "Tai" meaning "greater" or "elder", so basically Greater Little Sun Dragon, which makes his name practically Little Sun Dragon, Sr. The sun is very often depicted as being yellow, and it is a yellow star. So, yellow.

@Semblances + Negativity - Indeed. Kinda makes me curious how that worked out, but I doubt they'll ever really bring it up.

Side note: I kinda think that the show's earliest example of high negative emotions causing accidental Semblance usage is Yang. We thought it was just a thing that Yang does, her way of throwing a tantrum. But since then, we've seen Pyrrha and Weiss accidentally use their Semblances due to negative emotions and Ren accidentally discover his Semblance while highly stressed and terrified. So, I think Yang's anger issues cause accidental Semblance use, rather than her intentionally throwing a superpowered tantrum.

@Blake's "gravity" clone - Indeed, which is why I've questioned why that was even a thing that happened. Unless people are able to decide which direction that gravity Dust directs gravity, and the bullets only do "push" kind of gravity because of the Dust's effect just bursting outward in all directions from the bullet going off.

After all, Weiss' black glyphs (which may be gravity Dust) are most often used to pull, rather than push, which kind of makes sense, as her normal (white) glyphs push things. The only time that I can remember a black glyph doing something other than pull was when she used one on Bolin and Nadir, causing them to levitate in the air and then start basically spinning around, before she dropped them and made an ice fist around them. Though, the black glyph that held her in place in the air while she fought the Boarbatusk could also count as something other than pulling, unless you consider that to be an example of a glyph enacting a weak pull on her against true gravity pushing her down.


 * In Players and Pieces, Weiss' black glyph pulled Ruby back on the ribbon catapult. I'm still unsure if the glyph turning red and speeding up its rotation was Ruby mixing her Semblance with the glyph or, for some odd reason, red Dust, which is fire.
 * In Round One, when Bolin was behind Ruby, Weiss kicked him into a black glyph, which sucked him through it and shot him out the other end.
 * In Two Steps (blablablah title), Weiss made a black glyph on her bedroom door, and the door swung forward and slammed shut. It seemed like, through some kind of physics, the glyph pulled the door shut.
 * In Taking Control, Weiss made a black glyph around the doorknob to Jacques' office. I just checked Remembrance and Taking Control, and... there's something wrong with that door.
 * In Remembrance, when Weiss enters the office and when Ironwood leaves the office, the door swings outward into the hallway.
 * However, in Remembrance, when Weiss exits the office, she is seen pulling the door shut from the hallway, in a way where the door had been opened inward into the office.
 * In Taking Control, Ironwood is seen trying to pull the door open from inside the office, so Weiss using a black glyph to pull on the door from the hallway actually makes sense in this moment. Though, Ironwood then decides to start slamming into the door.

@Using gravity bullets - Heftier recoil, and perhaps higher damage due to a strong outward burst coming from the bullet?

Bleh... The audience shouldn't have to buy the manga just to understand what the hell was going on in the White Trailer. All they need is a quick recap flashback in the show, and people will finally understand that Jacques and his secretary made a bet with the odds stacked against Weiss to try to force her to stay home, only for her to push her Aura to its limit and get a scar on her face because she was determined to earn the freedom to attend Beacon.

I wonder if she can summon the Nevermore, considering she wasn't the one who delivered the finishing blow. That would've been a lot more dramatic, though I wonder if Jacques has the authority to send people in airships after her. How did she explain the broken window, anyway?

Yeahhh, they mentioned LGBT characters even before that Q&A. Monty had said there'll be LGBT+ representation in the show, but it's something that will be revealed as things go on and that the characters are still fairly young and learning about themselves. It was mentioned that Monty was pretty adamant about one character that was introduced in volume 3 being an LGBT kind of character. Personally, I think it's Scarlet and that the fan holding the Scarlet sign being a guy was meant to be a hint to Scarlet being gay or bi.

"No spoiler questions lol!" To be fair, they do get asked questions that are obviously spoilers in pretty much every Q&A. Here are some examples from the 2015 Q&A that was done before volume 3's premiere:


 * "Will we see Jaune's Semblance finally show up?" - Why would they tell us whether or not a character's Semblance is going to be revealed in the upcoming volume?
 * "Who's this mysterious Team FNKY that was mentioned at RTX?" - Why would they actually tell us who Team FNKI is beyond what was mentioned (just the team's name)?
 * "Are we going to see Sun and Adam fight over Blake?" - Why would they tell us whether or not such a fight will happen?
 * Someone brought up Gray implying in an interview that there's a Cheshire Cat alluding character, and this someone asked who that character is... despite Gray having been really, really obviously trying not to say anything spoilery in that interview.
 * Basically, Gray and JJ (Mercury's original voice actor) were asked if Neo alludes to the Cheshire Cat. Gray's response was a very nervous "Youuuuu, okay... *Voice got a bit shifty during the "Youuuuu" part* .... In-Interesting that you bring up the Cheshire Cat. Nnno, that's not Neo. ... So-so, I think I'm going to leave that one there." Quite obviously avoiding telling us who the Cheshire Cat is.
 * "Is more things going to happen with JNPR this season? Like do we learn more about them?" - Why, why would they tell us?
 * Someone posted a "Season 3 questions" list in the Q&A, and one of the questions was "Will you guys show Blake Belladonna's backstory and family?"
 * "Does Nora's semblance get revealed? And Ren's?"
 * "Besides knowing that Raven is Yang's mom, will we see any interactions between them?" - Basically asking if Raven would appear in volume 3 and interact with Yang
 * "How soon will we see what is in Velvet's box?"
 * "Will Velvet show her weapon/semblance this season?"
 * "Will Jaune discover his semblance in season 3?"
 * "Will we see more of Neo kicking ass?"
 * "Does Jaune semblance get revealed?"
 * "Will we get to see what Velvet's weapon will be in vol 3?"

On and on and on, essentially being a lot of "What's gonna happen this volume?! Will we see this, will we see that, will that happen?! I don't want to wait until the episodes come out to find out!" And that happens in every Q&A. Which is why Miles and Kerry tend to answer with "Watch the show" and "No spoiler questions".

In that Q&A, they actually explained the Faunus genetics thing that WoR: Faunus later explained, but everyone ended up arguing over whether "Dog Faunus + Cat Faunus = Random Faunus" meant it would be random for the kid to be either dog or cat Faunus or that the kid would literally be a random type of Faunus. WoR: Faunus eventually cleared that up.

At least the reason that RWBY and JNPR do a 180 and decide to fight the Nevermore and Death Stalker is because they end up forced to. Even after the Nevermore circled around in front of them and the Death Stalker broke free of the ice and chased them, they were still trying to run away. However, the Nevermore broke the bridge in half, thus splitting them into two groups.

One group was trapped between a dead-end broken bridge and a Death Stalker that was too fat to walk on the bridge and too big for them to get past. On the other side of the gap in the broken bridge was the other group's situation: stuck on a structure on stilts in the middle of a foggy canyon with a giant bird monster.

In that situation, of course they changed their minds and fought. They had no other choice anymore. It was either fight back to escape or stay trapped. Before being launched, they had been told that the instructors would not step in to help them, so staying trapped wasn't a very good option.