Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-74.101.236.56-20170321065847/@comment-4010415-20170518205419

The crew has told us that Salem was one of the earliest characters designed, so yes, Salem was going to be a character before the Maidens plot. Also, with the reveal of Salem, it suddenly makes sense why, in the volume 1 director's commentary, while Miles and Kerry were talking about Jen Taylor's recording session, Miles says one of the things they told her to do was to sound scarier. Basically, they booked her for an hour, and she did a perfect recording on the first try, so they tried to fill time by having her redo it in various ways: "Slower." "Faster." "Scarier."

As for what Salem's goal was before the Maidens... Dude. The Relics. I'm pretty sure the Relics were always the goal from the beginning. Miles said his first major contribution to the planning of RWBY was the whole thing about the brother gods, which I'm sure includes the Relics. We have the scene at the end of Of Runaways and Stowaways where Salem tells the Seer Grimm "Reinforce our numbers at Beacon. The Relic is there." Qrow outright said in A Much Needed Talk that part of the purpose of hiding the Relics in the Huntsman Academies was to keep them out of Salem's reach and that, if Salem gets her hands on them, it won't end well. This is, of course, because, as Qrow stated, if you get all four Relics, you will have the power to change the world. Raven's reason for meeting with Qrow was to demand to know if Salem got her hands on Beacon's Relic.

It's all about the Relics. The Maidens are just extra power that she wants to steal from her enemies' hands and use to more easily get the Relics.

Penny's swords have handles. Like Ark said, it's possible she could detach the swords to wield them as regular swords rather than swinging them around on wires. There are probably situations out there in which she would have an easier time fighting by holding the swords instead of using them on wires. Strong winds, cramped space, lots of things in the way like pipes or something...

Professor Port probably doesn't just talk about himself for the whole class time. He had Weiss fight a Boarbatusk, and he has diagrams of Grimm on the front wall. He probably actually takes time to teach them about specific types of Grimm, their observed behavior, their weaknesses, and techniques that can more easily dispatch of them. And then he ends up babbling on about a time he hunted and killed one such Grimm of that type, using that technique or exploiting that weakness.

Combat schools - I dunno, man, they should really explain it better. It seems like combat schools are just for getting people ready to apply to a Huntsman Academy, and even then, they're apparently not guaranteed to get accepted into the Huntsman Academy they apply to. One thing they probably learn is how to properly wield and maintain their weapon. It'd be kinda dumb to let them forge their weapon and then say "Alright, go kill shit" without them knowing the right way to wield it and how to keep it maintained. Ruby said that Qrow taught her how to use her scythe at Signal Academy. Personally, I actually kinda have a theory that Qrow was a weapons teacher and taught pretty much all his students how to wield and maintan their weapons. But yeah, in that light, sparring and practice would be good because you shouldn't throw someone into the ring without them knowing how to use their weapon.

They probably do also learn about Dust, but for some reason, they wait until Huntsman Academy to teach them about Grimm, I guess because combat school is just your basic combat skills while Huntsman Academy is an actual vocational school, teaching them about the career.

Weiss & Dust exposition - Kinda seems like she was telling Ruby what was in her suitcases. I mean, if I fall on a suitcase and someone screams "Do you have any idea of the damage you could have caused?!", I'm probably gonna think she's just pissed that I could've broken something in the suitcase, not cause a bigass explosion. So Weiss opens it up and tells her that it's full of Dust - and not just any Dust, no, it's Dust that has been mined and purified from the Schnee quarry. That's some high-grade shit, apparently. But then Ruby responds "Uuuhhh" so Weiss asks if she's braindead (literally) and starts trying to shout the information of "This is Dust, stupid! Dust!!" into Ruby's brain.

Journey to the Weast - "Yayyyy, references! *Scribbles in the script*" What... What the hell, France? Hey, Weiss alludes to Snow White and her name is literally White Snow, and she has a connection to gem miners. Ruby alludes to Little Red Riding Hood, and her name is basically Red Red, and she wears a red hooded cape. Neptune alludes to Neptune, has the same exact name, and wields a friggin' trident. Though, admittedly, Sun does have more drawn from his allusion than most, if not all, the other characters.

Not everyone has their Aura unlocked. The vast majority of civilians probably don't... which makes it utterly ridiculous that no one seemed to care that Roman threw all those cars around in the Paladin. But yeah, Pyrrha had to unlock Jaune's Aura, and before she did, a friggin' tree branch could cut him. Maybe Aura doesn't work when you're unconscious? Yeesh, then you could assassinate a Huntsman in his sleep.

Ruby apparently uses gravity Dust bullets. That's what the magazine with the arrows on it is for, and that's why her recoil while falling from the airship in volume 3 actually bounced her into the air (according to the writers). So, basically, Ruby uses gravity Dust for incredible recoil shenanigans. I have a theory that Weiss' black glyphs are actually her mixing gravity Dust with a regular glyph, especially since, when she used a black glyph on Nadir and Bolin during the tournament, there was a burst of purple when the glyph appeared, and gravity Dust is purple. She has purple Dust in Myrtenaster. We've seen that the colors associated with gravity Dust are black and purple (like in the RWBY Chibi skit where Ruby uses Dust bullets, and when Blake, for some reason, made a gravity clone in No Brakes).

Dust in its "raw form" means using Dust itself, not sticking it in a bullet and shooting the bullet. Technically, Weiss uses raw Dust because she uses vials of powdered Dust. Technically, Cinder used raw Dust in volumes 1 and 2 by having Dust sewn into her clothes, which she uses her Aura to channel the energy from. Technically, Amber used raw Dust because her staff has a fire Dust crystal and a wind Dust crystal, which she uses her Aura to channel the energy from.

I think the mixing of Dust isn't "I'm in the middle of a fight, and I'm gonna take this fire Dust and this water Dust and mix them together right here into steam Dust." I think it's "I'm going to mix this fire Dust and this water Dust into steam Dust that I can use later." Hell, WoR: Dust said that Dust is found in four basic types and can be mixed to make new types, and we saw that the store From Dust Til Dawn sold a hell of a lot more colors than just four. I'm pretty sure mixing Dust is something that you do beforehand, not in the middle of a battle. It was said that mixing Dust produces new types, not "causes new effects when activated at the same time" or something.

We know from WoR: The Great War that the kingdoms used to be ruled by actual monarchs, not councils. Vale had a king, and Mistral had an emperor. During the treaty signing on Vytal, they made a lot of changes, one of which was to government. I guess during that treaty signing, they changed the governments to be councils but didn't bother changing what the kingdoms are called.

The story about the brother gods is way too fucking important to just put in a World of Remnant video, dude. At least they slipped it in through Qrow explaining it to characters who didn't know about it. That shadow show was a lot more interesting than just watching Qrow sit there talking. I have absolutely no problem with the brother gods story being presented to us that way. It would've been bullshit if they stuck that in WoR instead of explaining it in the show, just like how it was stupid of them to mention in a WoR that the CCTs need all four towers to function but not say anything about it in the show itself.

Well, we know that Jacques let Winter attend Atlas Academy. Maybe if Weiss had attended Atlas, he would've been a lot more strict and been a lot more involved in her education than he was with Winter. I wouldn't be surprised if he would've insisted on her continuing to live in the Schnee manor instead of staying in a dorm on campus. "Honey, we're practically right next door to the academy. Just take the limo to school every morning."

Yeah... We know End of the Beginning was supposed to signify that that was the end of the prologue. Beginning of the End isn't a very suiting title for that flashback episode, when that isn't really the beginning of what's been going on in the first place, and it's not a good idea to have both End of the Beginning and Beginning of the End, especially in the same exact volume as each other. Burning the Candle was a pretty good title because it refers to the saying "Burning the candle from both ends".

Yeah, they forced mention of Winter awkwardly into volume 2 so she wouldn't be out of nowhere in volume 3. "I think your sister Winter might be here as well." Oh, operator lady, I don't need you to specify my sister's name, but thank you.

During the Tumblr Q&A (ugh), Miles said that RWBY will have its light times and dark times, just like life, so... I guess, really, even though they want RWBY to get more mature over time, they're not gonna have it be constantly dark and serious. As for jokes that made me laugh, I found myself caught between laughing and cringing at Sun.

I assume there's no such program because most people don't know the old tales of SEWs are true. The thing is, though... I understand why the Maidens have been shoved away into the shadows and reduced to mere fairy tale, since people were actively hunting them down and trying to gain their powers. Why would SEWs need to fade away into legend? Why would the Ozluminati do that?

"We never see them mourn once" Exactly. If they hadn't timeskipped, we would've gotten to see them all grieving and dealing with Pyrrha's death. Instead, volume 4 mostly focuses on Jaune's grief and acts like he's the only one who was affected by her death, which is stupid, annoying, and unfair to the other characters. The most we get of any other character being affected by it is Ruby, and that's just a little bit.

Yep... All in the execution. It's like the SAO situation: Has a pretty good and interesting concept that you expect to be awesome, but then you start watching, and it was not very well executed in the least, yet somehow a lot of people enjoy it.

.*Draws a rainbow* Anime.~ Anime tends to have all students in school wear a uniform, with all the girls wearing rather short skirts. Even though this is a school where they fight, MMK decided they should wear uniforms anyway... even though, I believe, students in anime like Soul Eater and Naruto don't wear uniforms and instead wear their usual outfits that they fight in. Students in Bleach wear the same outfits that full fledged soul reapers wear, and those outfits include hakama, which are pants that have the advantage of hiding the minute movements of your legs from your opponent so they have a harder time predicting your next move.

Ah, but remember they put a bandaid on the Paladins issue in volume 3 by saying they were just prototype models. Ironwood said he didn't know when the Paladins would be on the shelves, but it would be "within the year", yet they were still in the prototype stage? Not sure he should advertise and show holograms of something that's only in the prototype stage and promise it'll be available within the year.

Ozpin sent Team RWBY and Oobleck to act as scouts, like he said to Ironwood. They were supposed to just locate where exactly the White Fang was hiding out there, see what they were doing, and report it, but Ruby had to go and fall through a conveniently-timed sinkhole and get captured.

"It is like this show was just built to be a series of action scenes with a toilet paper thin plot that falls apart whenever you try and examine it closely." To be fair, that's... actually pretty much what Monty did. He wanted to make an anime series, but he wanted his new project to actually have a plot that explains the fight scenes he made rather than it being a series of fight scenes with no story for why the characters are fighting each other like his previous projects. But he wasn't good at writing stories, so he recruited Miles and Kerry and had them help him with his ideas, build a world, and come up with a plot outline to follow.