Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-4820209-20150202184613/@comment-11188061-20150203023259

We will see RWBY Volume 3 come to fruitation. Monty has worked on it and completed some of the most complicated animated sequences for the show (In his Tweets, Sun Wukong's nunchuck moves), and this is the original story from Volume 2 merely pushed to Volume 3. In a sense, Monty is a good planner and has delegated for quite some time the writers of the story to Kerry and Miles, music to Jeff Williams, and is obviously training his people on animation during Volume 2. His brilliance in directing combat sequences may never be replaced, but we cannot say that there won't be one who equals or even surpasses him in the future. I look forward to that day.

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Monty, in the past I have frequented your blog a few times, and read your heartfelt post on life when your mother has passed away. It remains in my heart to be one of those beautiful things that can never be replicated or replaced, and writing is not even your best skill. For so long I have written and written, never able to truly clarify those unspoken feelings in my heart about many things, and you manage to do it in one post. Dead Fantasy was the main reason I was so excited about your animation, and it opened my eyes to possibilities that I've never even thought of in my entire life. But perhaps it is that blog post that kept me being such a dedicated fan, despite your hiatus on Dead Fantasy and disappearance from public for nearly two years. It really is just that one day when I was surfing the Internet, suddenly thought of you, which eventually led me to seeking you out and found the RWBY Trailers. I was so happy at the time, I can still remember that moment clearly.

I'm so young. I'm only 24, and I've only see 1 genius writer whom I truly admire, passed away at the ripe age of 41, leaving behind a legendary series so close to completion (Familiar Zero), but will never be done. I have had that strange feeling then, that with the unbelievable fire you strike in people's hearts, that you might be another person to... go, just like him, simply because you are too brilliant and that you burned too bright. Of course, that's just a bullshit feeling. For countless of times I feel that I may die as soon as tomorrow too, but I'm still here today.

But... you really are gone, now. When Burnie revealed such a grim statement I already know that whatever state you're in, it cannot be good. I refrain from putting anything dire to statement because the situation seemed nothing but. I was still naive, however. I thought that you'd be in a bad enough condition that we wouldn't hear anything about you for a month and settled for the long run, so imagine my shock when I woke up in the morning, surfing Pixiv and Deviantart for RWBY fanarts as usual... to find this. It was nothing like I had imagine, it was just a simple allergic reaction. And yet...

I remember telling my friends from an articled from Cracked.com a few years ago, about allergic reactions being more dangerous than they seem, and has killed people a lot more times than other more well-known conditions. That people lack awareness of this (unless they're allergic themselves) is because writing that people died from peanut butter jam is infinitely less attractive than say, a car accident. Perhaps in a sense, I am glad that you died not because of your own neglect - that you did watch your health, and did not let your passion backfire - and perhaps, in my own selfish opinion, an allergic reaction is a superficially more dignified way to pass away than a horrible car accident. But all the same, I wish you hadn't... passed.

Ironically, I may have cried far terribly for your death than I ever did for my grandma, for as I grow up our once strong bond fade away with age, and my admiration and feelings for you and your works remains strong. It did not matter. You should not have gone. You should have presevered. You're the only person I've known, even among workaholics, to put every moment in his life constantly doing the things he love, never relenting, and I am but a lazy failure who cannot even be bothered to put effort on things he dislike (like work), and even then the breaks I take are far too frequent. Maybe that's why I admire him so much. Maybe that's why I love him so much. RWBY wasn't really a sterling series to be objective, but I know in my heart that somehow, it is a series I will follow to the end.

And it really is the end, of Monty Oum's RWBY. His children will live on either as shadows of reminiscence, or may even evolve into greater and better things, and with RT's workforce being one of the greatest and dedicated I've ever seen, I have no doubt that they will match or even surpass your light given enough time in the future. After all, 'the only thing that's stopping people from making cool things is time', right?

So... yes. I guess it's time. I've never planned to stop writing, one of the few passions I have left in this world, and I don't plan to stop either after your passing. I may be a terrible person, but at least there are still some promises I can and will keep. You and I have never met each other in real life, and I've known you only through your works, live streams, interviews and podcasts - maybe you've even read some of my works, although of course, I will never know. To you, I may just be another faceless fan like those ironic silhouettes in Volume 1, or infinite Nora clones in Volume 2. But all the same, it is a promise I will keep, for you who can no longer keep yours.

I've always thought some of these lines are cheesy and embarassing, but I see now that they are truly heartfelt, and only people who have truly experienced loss by death can understand. I won't say goodbye, but I will say see you again, Monty Oum. When my time comes, I will be expecting to see a mountain of legacy that will put everyone among the living to shame.