Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-74.101.236.56-20170321065847/@comment-4010415-20170321190711

Hiya.

True on the Yang thing. From her previous behavior, aside from the fact that RWB weren't in the club in the Yellow Trailer, it really makes it questionable that Ruby and Weiss kept yelling at Ironwood that Yang would never just attack Mercury like that. But regardless, they did insist that, and Ruby believed that Yang wouldn't, for whatever foolish reason.

That is actually something I've wondered... Cinder saw Ruby face to face. They literally stood right in front of each other in a hallway. She knew Ruby has silver eyes. But her reaction when Ruby activated the her Silver Eye powers (absolute wide-eyed shock and screaming "What?!!!") makes it seem like she didn't know about Silver-Eyed Warriors... and yet she works alongside people who have killed SEWs before? Did Salem and the others just not think it was important to tell her about it, even though she may or may not have a Grimm literally inside of her? If she knew about SEWs, she should've tried to get rid of Ruby. If not while they were trying to be undercover, then by incorporating "kill the silver-eyed girl" into her "throw Vale into chaos and break the CCT" plan.

That is... very good detective work there, dude. Damn. *Claps* I didn't even notice she somehow got teleported to the top floor. The hallway didn't even seem to slope. Then again, I guess we didn't get to see the entire sequence of her rushing through the hallway.

Maybe if they had more time in each volume and took more time to make the episodes, they would actually show us the important things that they usually go "Eh, this happened off-screen, don't worry about it, just believe us" with. Then again, maybe they wouldn't.

- Yep, Roman stealing Dust was part of the show skipping through the entire first semester in just volume 1 alone. Recall that Best Day Ever (the first episode of volume 2) takes place on the day right before the second semester begins.

- Indeed, like I mentioned above, the entire first semester was skipped, wtf. I guess they were eager to get to the stuff in volume 3, but damn. Not to mention that we only saw one session of Jaune's training with Pyrrha, and that was only because they had a conversation about Weiss and the dance.

- Eh, Weiss' character 180 was due to her discussion with Professor Port in volume 1. She decided to stop throwing a tantrum over not being leader and try to be a great teammate. As far as her change of view on Blake, more of that could've been shown, rather than just the little convo between her and Yang, with Weiss expressing that she does care about finding Blake, she's just afraid of what Blake will say when they find her. Which, that seems like it actually partially written for Yang's "searching for Raven" arc (afraid of what Raven's explanation will be for leaving). They could've at least let us see the part where Ruby supposedly called Weiss and Yang and explained the situation to them.

- Not sure if the vote for the doubles round was really that important. Though, it did leave fans having to figure out for ourselves why they would pick that pair. Yang covers the need for a heavy-hitter, Weiss covers the need for a quick fighter, Weiss can perform support and assistance (through Dust, regular glyphs, and time dilation glyphs), etc.

Though, of course, none of this was put to use because Flynt and Neon had the intelligence to separate Weiss and Yang and take on whoever would be least effective against them. Weiss would've been able to take on Neon a lot more easily, and Yang would've probably handled Flynt better. Flynt and Neon started off the fight by having Flynt temporarily limit Weiss and Yang's free movement, and then Neon rushed in and knocked Yang away to fight her on her own. Weiss and Yang made the mistake of going with it instead of trying to switch out. Of course, if either of them had realized they should switch, it would've been Weiss, since Yang was too busy going into a blind rage at Neon's taunting. That was the purpose of their trash talk before the fight - to throw off Weiss and piss off Yang.

Now if only more of the show could be that thought-out.

- I think "Grimm invasions" was just a slipup in the writing, and... I dunno why Pyrrha said "murderers", when she could've said "criminals" in reference to the White Fang and Roman. Unless what Roman was initially convicted for was murder. We do know that Roman actually had a criminal record, considering the news showed his mugshots in the very first episode of the show. If that is what he was originally convicted for, it would've been nice if they'd told us that. Though, we do also know that the White Fang have committed murders before, especially against the Schnee Dust Company ("War, as in actual bloodshed." - Weiss. "I watched family friends disappear, board members executed, [...]" - also Weiss).

- Miles and Kerry went back and decided to change what Gray said about the timeskip being 6-8 months, and they've decided it's actually just an unspecific amount of time. Even still, it might have actually been better if volume 4 had actually been watching RNJR travel from Sanus over to Anima toward Mistral, what Blake was up to, and... I guess Weiss and Yang's stuff could've still gone pretty similarly.

They were too eager to get to the next step in the story, when it would've been better to let us watch the characters progress, develop, and journey. It would've been better to let us watch RNJR get better at fighting and face Grimm and whatnot. It would've been better if they didn't suddenly skip to Blake on a ship and have us believe it actually took that long for Blake to notice Sun following her.

Their Aura isn't their life force, though. It's just an energy that passively coats their body to form an invisible armor, and for whatever reason, Dust can be triggered and controlled via Aura. The only danger that they've mentioned from running out of Aura is the fact that they no longer have that passive armor and therefore can actually be injured or killed. Pyrrha also ran out of Aura and was still breathing, moving around, and talking, but without her Aura, Cinder's arrows were able to pierce her ankle and chest.

I guess the reason that Amber went into a coma was because of the process of how Cinder stole half of the Fall Maiden powers from her. I don't know why the script keeps having characters say "Aura" when they mean "soul", but at least when Ozpin was talking to Oscar, he said "Our Aura, our souls, are combined". So, essentially, since the Fall Maiden powers were attached to Amber's soul, and no one could rip the power from her without taking her soul with it, Cinder essentially ripped Amber's soul in half.

I dunno, maybe if they told the world about Salem and her lackies and people actually believed them, then Salem could have people start accusing innocent people of being her lackies, thus sparking an event similar to... the Salem Witch Trials (and also the Red Scare). When people are faced with the knowledge that anyone around them could be working for the enemy, paranoia sets in, and they can mistakenly assume an innocent person is the enemy. In this case, it's a matter of weighing whether it'd be better for people to only look at certain other kingdoms as their enemies or look at their neighbors as possible enemies. Even then, how would this start a Great War, unless Salem twisted the situation to people saying "Oh, so the reason Atlas attacked Vale is because they work for Salem!!" and getting it to snowball from there? Unless this "another Great War" would be in a different fashion, in the form of a series of civil wars sparked by general chaos or... something, I dunno. Hell, the Great War itself was sparked by a riot that went to hell.

College freshmen are generally 18 or 19. At least, here in the US. High school is age 14 to 18. I dunno why MMK decided to go with 17, but we have actually ended up comparing Beacon to college rather than high school. After all, here in the US, people don't generally live on the campus of their high school, but many do live on their college campus.

CFVY being that competent was all a matter of Monty's Rule of Cool approach in directing Breach. Notice how Coco's bullets were severely nerfed in volume 3. She went from exploding a Death Stalker and cutting a Nevermore in half to being unable to shoot through trees. This was Miles and Kerry's attempt to put a bandaid over Monty's previous "Rule of Cool!!!" incident in Breach. So, as far as the actual writing part of RWBY is concerned, second year students are not actually as badass as CFVY was in Breach. That was just a hiccup in the time space continuum from Monty wanting cool shit to happen.

This is exactly what I mean whenever I talk about how Monty and Shane's desire for Rule of Cool had a bad effect on the quality of RWBY's writing and why it's a good thing that Miles tried as hard as he did to keep that under control. The food fight, RWBY vs Roman in a Paladin, and Breach led to issues and inconsistencies in the plot and characters' abilities, thus leaving stains on the writing.

Those were, indeed, Nevermores, even further proven by Winter's summon of a bunch of tiny Nevermores in It's Brawl in the Family. It seems that not all Grimm are born tiny, since The Next Step showed us that the Beowolves we usually see are actually born that way, so the Goliaths may have been born big instead of tiny. Even still, it would've been reasonable to kill the Goliaths when they were young... if people could've found them.

We keep getting stuff about how no one knows much about the Grimm, what they are, where they come from, etc. so it's safe to assume that no one knows Grimm are born from pools of black goo. In which case, no one has found their birthing grounds. But how would the land-dwelling Grimm get from Salem's domain to other continents (Beowolves have been shown on both Sanus and Anima, as well as Solitas in WoR: Atlas)? This means there must be goo pools on all continents, and yet somehow, they haven't been found. So, maybe people didn't find those Goliaths until they were so much older and in such a large group that it would've been dangerous to take them down, and they decided to monitor them instead or something. Given that the Goliaths were "possibly" hundreds of years old (Oobleck said "possibly", right?), then we have to consider what state the settlements may have been in centuries ago.

Really, there better be a good explanation for how and why no one has found Salem's domain nor any black goo pools yet.

The virus did affect everything, but it began in the CCT. The purpose of infecting the CCT is because the CCT tower is a broadcast point for both phone and internet services. By infecting the CCT with the virus, Cinder was able to get the virus to spread to every device that connected to the CCT whether wirelessly or directly, and then infected devices further spread the virus to other devices that then connected to them.

Amity Colosseum used the CCT to broadcast the tournament live across the world. Since Amity Colosseum's computer system connected to the CCT, this meant that the virus was able to spread from the CCT into the colosseum's computer system, thus giving Cinder access to the randomizer program. From there, she was able to rig the randomizer.

This is also why Ironwood's Scroll got infected from being placed on Ozpin's desk.
 * Cinder infected the CCT
 * At the end of Breach, Ozpin used the CCT's service to have a group video call with the Vale Council and Ironwood on his desk-computer-thing
 * Therefore, Ozpin's desk-computer-thing became infected
 * Ironwood connected his Scroll to the desk-computer-thing to display a hologram of the City of Vale to make his speech all dramatic
 * Virus spreads from desk-computer-thing into Ironwood's Scroll

The question is, between being in that video call and his Scroll getting infected, why didn't Ironwood's ship get infected sooner?

Ohhh. Sorry, the way you had worded it didn't make it seem like that's what you were saying. Yes, they probably also rigged the other matches. After all, they did use Yang in their plan and wanted to know who RWBY chose for the doubles round. Weiss uses Dust and has a tendency to favor ice Dust, so it makes sense that RWBY vs ABRN took place in an arena where both biomes were filled with Dust crystals, especially an ice biome with ice Dust. Weiss did end up using the ice Dust in the ice biome, to create a ramp for Team RWBY's finishing team attack.

I'm pretty sure Miles and Kerry were not responsible for the majority of the non-dialog parts of the team fights considering that they generally only ever set up fights like this:
 * Tell Monty/the animators how the fight began, the situation, any parts with dialog, and who wins the fight, maybe how it ends.
 * Let Monty/the animators fill in the rest.

So any of the other bullshit was the animators, not Miles and Kerry, as those two generally don't choreograph the fights. Even then, RWBY's initial selling point was "Really cool fights!" because the fights are what hooked people in, not the writing. So of course they tried to make the team fights look cool (though SSSN vs NDGO seems like it was meant to be funny, not cool). It still wouldn't make a damn bit of sense for it to just be coincidence when Miles and Kerry literally wrote into the damn script that Cinder, Mercury, and Emerald knew that JNPR was going to win.

You're right, a lot of people couldn't tell that's what she was doing. It's not that she was making her clothes, it's that she was sewing Dust-infused thread into the clothes. I guess it was meant to show that Cinder infuses her clothes with Dust rather than having someone else do it, and maybe to give her something to be doing while she talked with Mercury and Emerald, rather than having her awkwardly sit there on her bed doing literally nothing (same reason Mercury was reading a comic book, I guess). They seem to wanna give the characters something to do when they're hanging out in their rooms - Mercury doing pushups while Emerald uses her Scroll, Nora listening to music while reading, that kinda thing. I recall something about it also being a reference to her voice actress, Jessica Nigri, making her own cosplays.

Indeed, it is terrible that they couldn't compromise and find some sort of balance and that it had to end this way, especially with Shane leaving in such a bitter way. It's just fortunate that Monty, Miles, and Kerry had worked together as a team to plan the course of the entire story, so Miles and Kerry know what direction the story is supposed to go in, rather than being left lost and having to try to piece something together. (Also, I hope you don't mind I edited the link in your first post to link directly to the comment.)