Luna's Musings

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

Anonymous asked:

Imo the Beacon "Arc" sometimes feels kind of aimless. Like most of the scenes and interactions don't have a purpose. If you would agree, how would you fix that?

Well, firstly, while I do think the Beacon stuff has some issues and could use a fair bit of polish in places, and I see where you’re coming from, I don’t fell like that’s necessarily a problem. What happened is that during Beacon it was more of a character driven show, but also being an ensemble cast that means you don’t really have a main throughline for the story in the way the later seasons (try to) have. Instead, the scenes and “plots” are more about seeing the characters develop and confront their own personal issues, and interact with one another to develop bonds.

Now, that said, while I do like this sort of thing, I don’t think it was executed incredibly well. Normally you see this done in slice of life shows, but very few have a big ensemble cast specifically because it gets very difficult to manage screentime and development for so many characters. Rwby doubles down on that in the Beacon era especially by having very short runtimes and, unlike most slice of life shows, being set in a fantasy world (and not even Generic Fantasy World where a lot of stuff can just be assumed) so in addition to juggling the characters’ development and screentime with the limited runtime, it also has to establish the setting so that the audience can get what’s going on. That’s an extremely tall order, and one that the rwby staff simply weren’t up to, but tbh I don’t know if anyone could satisfactorily give us a good amount of solid character development for 10 characters (at least), plus believable worldbuilding that treats themes of racism, disability, bullying, and toxic masculinity with the respect they deserve, plus the kind of fight scenes that were the backbone of the early seasons, in under 8h (including trailers and credits).

Tl;dr, they bit off more than they could chew. So, how would one fix that? Well, it depends on what you mean by “fix”.

If you mean “how would you keep as much as possible the same, but turn it into a plot driven show from the start” since it seems you don’t care for the more character driven earlier nature, that’s easy enough: you just introduce more of the (or a) main plot earlier and have the whole main crew involved in it, and make sure at least say 80% of your scenes drive that plot along in some way.

If you mean “how would you keep as much as possible the same, including the character focus, but make it work better and flow smoother” well, the first thing is you need way more time to work with all this stuff, and then you give each element enough time and attention to do it justice. And to do that, you have to research the topics you’re writing about and have consultants look over the scripts to ensure you understand it and aren’t unintentionally sending the opposite message (if it’s intentional ofc you don’t care, but yeah). And to do all of that, you need a good editor and director who can see the big picture of things and keep the show on track, or else a team who’s extremely in tune with one another and never really disagrees (which has its own problems, and you don’t want them).

If you mean “how would you make Beacon era rwby, starting from scratch with just the initial idea of the team rwby girls themselves, to avoid most of those pitfalls in the first place” it gets a bit more interesting. See, when you’re creating something for commercial distribution, the first thing you always need to keep in mind is the parameters you’ve been given to work within. For a webseries there’s some wiggle room, but it’s not infinite; you still need an idea of how much money you’ve got to work with, if nothing else, and how much time that translates into, and how that time can break down (conversation type scenes are much cheaper than well choreographed fight scenes, for example). You have to know these things, at least in general, before you start writing (or at least before you start writing later drafts) or else it’s very likely you’re going to run out of money (which means run out of runtime) well before you run out of story, and you really don’t want that. So, once you have at least a general idea of how much time you’ve got to work with, and how much each kind of scene “costs” out of that time budget, then you can figure it out. In this case? Given rwby had a very small time budget early on, and they want to use some of that for special fight scenes, here’s what I’d do:

  1. Reduce the cast down to just the core 4. In later seasons we can add more primary characters if we want, but to begin with we want to keep the focus on this group. Others can be there, but we don’t focus on them, so there’s no Jaune bullying arc or whatnot. Now our primary cast gets a lot more screentime, and those arcs can go to them. Bullying? That’s Ruby for sure. Forged transcripts? Blake gets that one, given her past (we’ll change her background up, but see below for that). Pining? That’s a Weiss arc, from whichever direction we want to play it. We’ll change up some of the other arcs to fit better too, but either way, all of them that really get focus go to the main girls (and a little bit to Cinder & co).
  2. Change Remnant to alternate earth and use the school setting to explain it. They have a history class, a biology class, etc., and over the course of a few minutes total between them, spread out through a few episodes, you get the setting info in a way that makes sense. Grimm are animals (or sometimes people) mutated by some weird element (maybe some asteroid hit the moon, shattered into a ton of pieces, and rained down along with moon chunks; it didn’t destroy life on the planet cause they were small chunks, but it brought the Grimm creating stuff or whatever). It activated a latent aura ability in some people, they go to special hunter academies. Most of humanity got wiped out in the initial disaster, and the rest have holed up in big walled cities, save a few scattered settlements here and there that stubbornly cling to their old way of life and try to make it on their own. That’s just off the top of my head, put some real thought in and it could be much better and require only a little explanation for people to be up to speed. This also has the advantage of not requiring us to create fantasy racism if we want to tackle racism, we can just …do that. However, my personal advice is…
  3. Don’t do racism. This is alternate earth, where an apocalypse happened and demon beasts roam the land. Let’s make it better than our world in this way at least. If we want to deal with racism (or sexism, or homophobia, or whatever other bigotry), we can have some little isolated community of bigots that our cast comes across in a later season or something. We don’t need the whole setting to be as shitty as real life in this particular way. Instead of being the weird “world’s only civil rights group but also so called terrorists”, the White Fang become an organised crime group with a mixed reputation, kinda like certain triads or yakuza groups, and Blake’s family is the head of it.
  4. Keep it character driven, because as mentioned above those types of scenes are cheaper on the time budget, but have more sense of the main plot happening too. Crucially however, have that also be driven by the characters; they come across stuff and pursue it, and rather than having Ozpin bend and/or break the rules to help them, a lot of their activities are dodging school stuff, finding loopholes, etc. so that they’re the ones driving the plot forward. We want our protagonists to be proactive.
  5. Write out the whole story, or at least the whole arc, before storyboarding it. That way we can use our budget wisely, and edit as needed throughout the arc, not just at the last minute. Nevertheless…
  6. Keep all the cut material! We can try to get an expanded budget for the later seasons if the earlier are received well, and might be able to use some or all of that material in them. If our season 2 runtime adds 45 min, that’s great! That means we can both put in stuff that might’ve never gotten to the audience otherwise to make the show richer, and we can spend more time making all of what gets to them the best it can be.
  7. Don’t change the whole format of the show a few seasons in. This is, to me, one of the biggest problems rwby has. It went from a fairly lighthearted character driven and focussed comedy action show to a trying to be dark but not commit to it except like once heavy plot driven drama with some action now and then. And just. No. Bad. You can change stuff up, fine, but you do it gradually, and even then you don’t turn it into an entirely unrecognisable show. So we’re for sure not doing that. Your question was about the Beacon era I know, so I won’t go into later changes, but what I will say is that we won’t be dropping in anything about maidens or relics or gods or magic. Or at least, not in any sense like rwby did, because following that whole plotline is what led it to where it is now. No, instead, we’re going to keep the focus on the people, on the choices they make and the actions they take, not on a laundry list of macguffins they’re trying to collect before their foes. We neither need nor want that.
rwde answers

autistic-writer asked:

Nora found a Quarter!

Everyone else thinks this is just like, a bit of good luck, but Nora knows the truth: it’s the beginning of an epic fetch quest! Over the course of her schooling and adventures, she trades for ever more ridiculous items – a stamp, a jar of honey, the skull of a beowolf (how? who knows! certainly not Nora!) – until, by the time she reaches Vacuo, she’s somehow literally the queen of the castle. Take that, nonbelievers! Bow to the queen, and bring forth your tribute of pancakes!!

rwde answers

Anonymous asked:

There's this really popular Russian visual horror novel (video game) named "Tiny Bunny". It doesn't rely solely on jump scares. It delves into themes of childhood fears, trauma, and the corruption of innocence, emotionally connectint with the players' underlying issues such as bullying, social isolation, and family disarray. Also, the game is visually striking, with a unique and unsettling art style that perfectly captures the eerie and dreamlike atmosphere of Russia's 90s. The narrative is full of mysteries and unanswered questions. Players are driven to unravel the secrets of the forest, the bizzarre events happening in the village, and the true nature of the supernatural elements at play. This mystery is enhanced by the multiple endings and choices players must make, accompanied by elements of Slavic folklore and mythology.

4 out of 5 episodes of the game are out. You could find a non-commentary walkthrough on youtube to see if you find this stuff appealing. Check it out if you like, I think it's a banger.

Huh, I’ll have to take a look at some vids at least, it sounds interesting. Thanks for the rec!

answers

autistic-writer asked:

Blake and Yang do not get together. The storm from the Everafter ends when Blake apologizes to Yang for running away and being a coward while Yang admits she was in the wrong for what happened in Atlas.

Gotta admit I don’t really know where to go with this. Like by that point they really don’t have any character outside of bees, so take bees away and…what? Blake continues to be meek catgirl waifu and Yang just stays yangry at everything for some reason I guess? So basically the same except they’re not making heart eyes at each other?

rwde answers

autistic-writer asked:

When Rubu drinks the tea, Weiss is the only one horrified and appalled about it. Her horror turns into rage after Yang disregards her sister and lashes out at Yang for it. Weiss in turns heads to the tree to find a way to bring Ruby back.

She doesn’t exactly find a way to bring Ruby back, but she finds something better: a way to return herself to a previous point in her life. She picks before going to Beacon, and immediately rushes over to tell Winter about what’s going to happen. Of course it sounds ridiculous, but Ironwood happens to overhear them talking and is suddenly very serious about this whole “maiden” and “Salem” situation.

A little while later Amber’s ride is being interrupted by Cinder’s attack, but they’re swiftly dealt with by the waiting Ace Ops. Ozpin has a looooot of explaining to do and his trust is at an all time low. An anonymous tip leads the Beacon screening process to detect a forged transcript on a student’s application and reject it with a stern warning. Weiss smiles as she sips her tea at the table with Pyrrha, who she’s made a good first impression on this time, and Ruby, who she brought cookies for. Life is good.

rwde answers
doomalade
rwby-confess

image

Confession #674

doomalade

Oscar hate is a red flag tbh

lunatriense

Oscar had the beginnings of an interesting story, what with the whole “this spiritual parasite latched onto me and is taking over my body, something which I am Very Much Not Okay With”, but as rwby is wont to do, they gave us the setup and then didn’t even bother attempting the landing. They just stopped, faceplanted, got dragged off to thunderous applause by “fans”, and had themselves a self-congratulatory piece of cake while the judges were baffled wondering wtf was going on and why people were clapping in a non-sympathy way.

rwde

Anonymous asked:

I saw in another ask that you said that you’ve read and or heard about the RWBY/MLP crossover fic SAPR, right?

How do you feel about the story and progression of it, the characters, particularly the main characters, Sunset/Jaune/Pyrrha/Ruby?

I’ve only recently gotten back into the story.

I have, I read all of it through Interlude 2: Vale iirc. I think the story is very well told and deep, albeit extremely long for that depth and the number of characters the author puts focus on. Which, given this is the realm of fanfic where no editors are breathing down your neck, is fine but it’s def a hell of a commitment and daunting to start lol.

As far as the characters… well, that’s a mixed bag imo, but mostly because of my own biases. When I started reading it, I didn’t loathe Jaune the way I do now, so that was more palatable; I’ll give the author this, though, the SAPR!Jaune is a much better character than official Jaune, or that found in many other fanworks, and were he my only exposure I probably wouldn’t have this reaction. Ruby is great, SAPR!Ruby is a really nice take on her character that has very much influenced how I see her. Sunset I never particularly liked, but she had one redeeming quality for me that made her tolerable as a protagonist to spend millions of words with, but then she did like a total 180 on that so I began to just fully dislike her. And then Pyrrha…best girl is…complicated in SAPR. On the one hand, the author has given her an extensive backstory with a rich history and culture behind it, messy family dynamics that make sense for her character, and just done a wonderful job in general of presenting her as a flawed character and showing her inner turmoil. On the other, though, because of Sunset being there and doing her thing which just keeps sidelining Pyrrha, she again comes off feeling like an accessory for Jaune, just this time he’s not a massive asshole 24/7.

And those latter two (along with the thing Sunset did her 180 on and my ever-increasing hatred of Jaune in general) are the long and short of why I stopped reading it. If those things in particular don’t bother you though, or you don’t get the same feel I do, I always recommend it to folks. I consider it very well done, it just went on a different path than me.

answers rwde