Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4444715-20190406160119/@comment-43757330-20191112223633

I think that the main consensus is that RWBY has steadily declined in quality in recent years. This site doesn't really reflect that because it attracts the most enthusiastic fans by its very nature. But if you take a tour of more neutral sites on the internet, you'll find that people tend to be upset with the current direction of the show, rather than satisfied.

And I'm not just talking about rabid haters and wackos like Hero Hei. There are a lot of level-headed people who voice calm and coherent complaints with the show; from the dialogue to the fight choreography to the rise in fan service, and those voices deserve to be heard, not only by us, but by the creators of the show as well.

Personally, I'm not satisfied with the state the show is in, for two main reasons. The first being that the dialogue is objectively lackluster. To be fair, that's not new; it's always been lackluster. But it's easier to get away with bad dialogue when the show is upbeat and funny, than when it's dark and serious. That was always my concern with the tone change.

Tone changes are fine, as long as your writing style suits that new tone. I believe that the writers of this show are better at writing light-hearted comedies, than they are writing character studies and dramas. I think that it suits their style more, and I think they're more enthusiastic about it. That's why, for example, Miles Luna was so good at writing RvB. RvB facilitated his style more because it was always comedy first, drama second. Now he's in a situation where the tonal balance is reversed.

The other thing that I'm not happy about is the rise in fanservice in recent volumes. A lot of the writing in this show seems to be purely a reaction to the fanbase's desires. The fanbase wants Bumblebee? They get it. The fanbase hates Adam? He dies. The fanbase wants Neo back? Yep.

Part of what made Volume 3 so amazing is that they did what they did knowing full well that it would irritate the fanbase. They didn't do it to make us feel good, they did it for the good of the story. And, forgive me, but they're just not doing that anymore. So many of the writing decisions these days seem to be explicitely designed to increase viewership, with total disregard for how those decisions might derail the plot or cause character regressions.

And on the flipside, the writers of this show have completely lost the nerve they had in V3. Part of the expectations that come along with changing the tone dark is that the tone has to stay dark. What happened to all those tragic character deaths? I mean, let's be honest, since Pyrrha died, they've only been willing to kill off ancellary background characters and characters that the fanbase actively want dead. In fact, they've now retroactively diminished the tragedy of V3, by bringing back Penny (good as new and just as she was).

They need to stop worrying about viewership and what the fans want, and just write the show the way they want. Because the truth is that design by committee will never beat an artist's vision.

The thing that needs to be stressed is that these problems, despite being pervasive, are both fixable. That's what keeps me watching, and that's why I have hope (naive as it may be) that this show will get back on track.