I'm not crying, I'm laughing

This is ODSalt, a rwde extension of Ozpin-Defense-Squad. Complaints, grievances, and nitpicks abound, so if you're a RWBY stan who can't handle criticism towards the series....I don't know what to tell ya, bud. Maybe go somewhere else. You like what you like and I like to poke fun at what I used to like. If you're not blacklisting the rwde tag, that's your fault.

[odsalt]

I think you guys didn’t understand what I was trying to say, so like, have fun with Nitpick November or whatever.

I don’t know how many times I had to say “this is what that tells me” as in, how I personally interpret some of the things that come out of rwde’s mouths regarding male characters, but apparently it wasn’t enough.

Oh and by the way, I brought up “manpain” because for me it goes hand in hand with the other issue, that’s why I said “And while I’m here,”.

[burgers-and-diatribe]

What if instead of Ozma splitting his own magic to make the Maidens, he split Salem's instead? And that's why she works in the shadows and gets people to do stuff for her, since she was greatly weakened by Ozma. And the whole collect the Maidens thing is so Salem can regain her magic and become all powerful? It's a pretty basic motivation, it would at least explain why she sits around doing nothing, and when she actually does something it's rather underwhelming and not that powerful.

I'll he honest, while you're right that this would go a long way towards making Salem *actually make sense* and fix a lot of problems regarding her motivations, perceived incompetence, and blank history, it's not personally an avenue I would find myself enjoying. I'm sure it could be done right if written well, but it's not my favorite idea for Salem, and here's why:

Salem as a character is already fraught with problems when it comes to the misogyny of the male writers who invented her. From what we already know of her history:

She was emotionally abused and isolated by her father, a man

She was rescued by Ozma, a man

She was devastated by the loss of Ozma, a man

She pleaded to have him resurrected by the GoL, a man

She then turned for help to the GoD, a man

GoL then accused her of manipulating them and turning them against each other, two men

She was then punished with immortality by the gods, two men

The reason they chose this punishment was to permanently separate her from Ozma, a man

Depressed and heartbroken, she tried to commit suicide countless times, at first to rejoin Ozma, a man, and eventually out of anger to spite the gods, two men

She gathered some of the world leaders together and convinced them through lies and manipulation to attack the gods, two men

As punishment, every single person on the earth was killed by the gods, two men

In a desperate last-ditch effort to end her life, she inadvertantly turned herself into a monster by jumping into a pit of Grimm-soup created by the GoD, a man

The GoL, a man, resurrected Ozma, a man, and basically sent him to control his wife or he'd destroy the earth, thus putting the responsibility for Salem's condition onto her husband, a man

Salem had been languishing away for millennia without drive or purpose until she found happiness again through being reunited with Ozma, a man

According to Jinn the Truth-Teller, Salem "lied" to Ozma about the gods being responsible for rebooting the planet, and Jinn specifies that Salem told these lies out of a fear of being rejected by Ozma, a man

Salem begins trying to help Ozma guide humanity by playing gods, and to do that, she manipulates Oz, a man.

Salem is a mother four times over and it seems to make her at least on the surface, happy, as she settles into life as a wife to Ozma, a man

Salem learns that her children can produce magic and decides to kill all humans and replace them with a race of magic Salem children, fathered by Ozma, a man

Salem catches Ozma leaving with the children and loses her shit and murders all of them, while blaming it all on Ozma, a man

???

Salem sends Cinder after the Fall Maiden so that she can finally collect all the Relics and summon the gods, two men, so that they will finally give her permission to die, and in the meantime, she gets her kicks out of torturing Ozma, a man

This story is already so misogynistic in so many ways, that filling in the "???" with something like "her powers were stolen and redistributed to others by Ozma, a man," just makes it feel like something you never intended, y'know? Like, maybe if *all of that sexism* hadn't existed, then your idea would be totally fine and actually really interesting! A villain whose main motivation is to get back powers that were stolen from them by the protagonists' shady mentor? Great concept! And like I said, if it were well written, I'm sure it could work anyway, regardless of canon. But, unfortunately, Rooster Teeth fucked up the stories of both Salem and Oz so much that this idea just... doesn't do it for me, personally.

I don't think it's a bad idea, by any means, and it's certainly better than having millennia of Salem's backstory left unexplained like [picture unavailable] lol, but yeah. Just simply not my personal favorite concept, sorry. :/

[odsalt]

I think it’s finally time for me come out and confess that this is something I take issue with within the RWDE community. While it is true that RWBY has a habit of making things revolve around the male characters (and then turning around to treat those male characters like shit), when it claims to be a “girl power anime” (like a lot of things it claims to be), posts like this make me feel like male characters aren’t allowed to do anything. They aren’t allowed to interact with female characters, they’re not allowed to be written to influence a female character whether intentionally or not.

Salem did this “because a man”.

Ruby got to enter Beacon early “because a man”.

Weiss was a prisoner in her own home “because a man”.

Like yes, these things are true, whether we can see them as “good” or “bad” (like in Weiss’s case, obviously bad, but in Ruby’s we can say it was good because it’s what she wanted, in her own words, “more than anything” and so Ozpin allowed. He just happens to be a man.) And RWBY has a bad habit of this. But what I hear when I see these posts is this: (taking RWBY out of the equation completely and applying this to storytelling in general)

A male character’s death is not allowed to have an impact on his sister, to the point where her life takes two drastic turns.

A male character is not allowed to be a villain because the mains are female and their intent to take him down means that he influenced them.

A male character, who is a commanding officer, is not allowed to give orders to his troops because some of them might be women and if he tells them what to do, that’s misogyny.

These characters that do these things happen to be men. To take issue with that makes it sound like they’re not allowed to even interact with female characters.

Again, RWBY is super guilty of having too many things revolve around men, but not all of these things automatically make something sexist (which RWBY is, and somehow it goes both ways). The bullet points about Salem may all have been caused by men, but we have to remember that they’re just 3 male-presenting characters. If all or even most of those bullet points were all different men, then yeah, I can see the issue. But despite the reincarnating, Ozma is just one man. The Gods are two male-presenting assholes, who Salem managed to influence at one point. Granted it was to “save” a man, but that man didn’t WANT to come back. It was Salem’s choice, on her own, to try. What I do take issue with in these cases is when a woman is WRITTEN to revolve herself around a man (like Nora with Ren or Mipha with Link, and then here with Salem and Ozma), and without getting herself out of that cycle. Like I can’t tell you how much I WISH Misa Amane got herself over Light, because I adore her, but at the end of the day she revolved her life around Light, because she was written to, and Death Note has long been accused of being sexist.

I don’t believe “man does a thing and it affects a woman so it’s sexist” is a fair thing to imply. It makes it sound like men aren’t allowed to do anything as characters. Ozpin was a man, so he shouldn’t have allowed Ruby into Beacon early. Old man Ozma was a man so he shouldn’t have given the Maidens their powers. Jacques is a man so he shouldn’t have locked Weiss in her room to show that he’s a piece of shit, because while he is a piece of shit, he’s a man so we can’t show him being a piece of shit to his daughter, who is a woman, so there’s no winning with this one.

And while I’m here, I want to express how much I hate, haaaaate, the term “manpain”. To me, it implies that men aren’t allowed to feel anything. Men are taught that they can only be TOUGH and ANGY because feelings like sadness and hurt are not allowed. When I read the term “manpain” in regards to Jaune, it pisses me off. Not because it’s Jaune, Jeebus knows the show does like to focus too much on him, but because I take it as a general thing, something against all men who show emotion besides anger. As we aim for more progressive storytelling, we should allow male characters to be sad, to feel hurt. We should be aiming for all kinds of representation, and that includes “the cis straight man with softer feelings”.

Even if it is Jaune. (But seriously, Crwby, your show is called Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang. As much as I’ve grown to hate them because you’ve turned them into awful human/faunus beings, it isn’t the Jaune Show).

Because when I hear “manpain”, it tells me that a male character isn’t allowed to feel sad about losing someone he cares about. It tells me that a male character isn’t allowed to be upset that he accidentally hurt his friend.

Both of these issues, the “because a man” and “manpain”, tell me that I shouldn’t write male characters because the story might come off as “misogynistic”.

I’ve been stewing on this all day and while I’m sure it’s not what you were implying (and you know that I agree with most of your RWDE takes), regardless of who it’s coming from, this is what it tells me.

I, for one, like the idea that Weasel presented, because while yes it does involve a man, it’s the same man in most of the bullet points, and it gives Salem a goddamn reason to act as a behind-the-scenes baddie, because otherwise she really is just sitting on her lazy spider ass doing nothing. At the end of the day, which is actually worse? Salem doing something or not being able to do something because of a male character, or Salem doing next to nothing because the lazy male real-life writers don’t know what to do with her?

[illusory-torrent]

i posted a freezerburn meme to reddit and got this comment...

why are y’all like this

and why do people like this feel the need to comment on my posts lmao 🤡🐝

literally this meme irl

[odsalt]

What a child.

"No! I want the blue cup!"

That's what they sound like.

[whitleyschn33]

Nitpick November: 15

So let’s make this quick!

Yang’s V7 outfit; I hate it! Beyond its mechanic vibe instead of biker girl, beyond its overuse of brown, besides that brown being the ugliest shade of brown to ever exist, it’s horrendous because it is way too fucking cold for Atlas’s climate.

The only elements of this outfit that look good for a tundra are the boots and jacket. The boots are thick and sturdy, good for hiking through snow, it looks like she’s wearing fuzzy socks under them, and the jacket at least looks padded with insulation and has fur around the neck. That’s where the warmth ends, though.

Her overalls look thin and like they’d do a poor job of keeping someone warm, having such a low back, unzipping down the front, and having the option to unzip and unfasten the legs. The fact that Yang refuses to keep the thigh zipped up either makes it look even colder, and makes Yang look like an idiot - why would you willingly uncover yourself in the middle of a frozen wasteland? That desperate to show off to Blake? Then there’s the fact that the only thing she’s wearing underneath the overalls is a flimsy-ass tube top. Her chest is completely exposed, and what parts of it that are covered are covered with such thin fabric that it would do an awful job at actually keeping her warm. Who the hell let her walk out into Atlas dressed like this? XD

I get that Yang is supposed to be the sexy bombshell of the group, but this is just so glaringly impractical for the weather she’s in that it makes it look like Yang should be dying of hypothermia. It wouldn’t have been any trouble to have her wearing a sweater underneath her overalls, and to have her wearing thermal leggings to cover her thigh if she insists on keeping the leg uncovered. She doesn’t have to be constantly flashing her bare cleavage to remind you that she’s the sexy party girl. I realize that I’m a (probably) straight girl and my opinions on feminine sexiness don’t count, but let me tell you - the thing I find sexiest on a man? A tight black sweater. That’s it. As much as I might drool over a bare chest, there’s something about tight black sweaters that gets me going, and from what I’ve seen, sweaters can look just as sexy on women - and that could have absolutely been applied to Yang here, giving her a tight but still warm pair of thermals that accentuate her body’s curves while still keeping her looking like she’s prepared to head out into a blizzard. It’s not that hard.

This outfit is for a mechanic in early fall, not for a huntress in the middle of a freezing tundra. 

[odsalt]

Oof girl, you mentioned a man in a tight black sweater and my mind went immediately to Oz 😍

[burgers-and-diatribe]

somebody commented on my video game pins today, and it made me happy. That's one reason I love wearing geek stuff. Makes me feel connected to the people I meet, even if just for a few seconds.

somebody commented on my Mercury jacket today and said I was their new favorite person, and it made me uncomfortable. That's one reason I hate how toxic the fndm is. I made this side blog because rwby fans were attacking me for daring to think the show is less-than-perfect, and there are 74 people on my block-list, most of whom are there for the same reason. I've been told to kill myself, I've been told to get raped, I've been told to get shot, I've been told to get covid. I've been accused of homophobia multiple times, despite advocating for better representation and being queer, and I've been accused of sexism even more often, despite advocating for equality and being a woman. I've been called ugly, despite most of my appearance being hidden on this blog, and I've been called a r*tard, only a few days after I posted about being autistic on this blog for the first time. I didn't let any of that bother me; I know who I am and I know a liar when I see one. I genuinely don't care that a bunch of random assholes got mad at me for having opinions about a web-cartoon that they didn't like. That's their problem.

But when that person in town told me that I was their new favorite person for liking rwby, the first thing that popped into my head was 'you might have sent me death threats.'

And I know that there's almost no chance of that being true. I know that the likelihood of that person being one of the harassers in my block list is nearly impossible. I know that they're probably a perfectly nice person who was commenting on my jacket for the same reason someone else commented on my video game pins. Because it's nice to connect with people, and when you see that somebody out there likes the same stuff you do, it makes you both happy.

But this fandom is so fucking toxic that I can't feel that way anymore. I don't feel connected to other people over rwby. I feel wary.

It's especially sad when you consider how rwby used to claim to be about unity and freedom of expression, but now infamously has one of the most divisive and conforming fandoms around. They sure have fallen far.

[odsalt]

I once saw someone wearing a Blake Belladonna shirt at my work and I almost said something, but one, social anxiety said hoe don't do it (despite being on the clock, as a cashier, and I'm a lot more socialable when I'm on the clock), two, he was obviously a RWBY fan and it was around the time I stopped enjoying the show, and three, well...he was obviously a Blake fan 😆

Unless somehow some way he didn't know who she is and just had this shirt with a pretty anime girl on the back of it lmao RWBY isn't the giant mega-hit its fans think it is, so it's rare to see them in the wild.

[ironwoodprotectionsquad]

I thought I was out of nitpicks but here another one.

Why does Winters cuts and bruises heal but Watts bruise remain the entire volume 8? Watts and Winter both get their injuries pretty close together.

But somehow Winter gets all healed up while Watts remains bruised.

Why couldn’t either Winter stay bruised or Watts also heal because we know he has aura like Winter so they should heal at the same time right?

[odsalt]

It's because Winter is a pwetty gorl whose face should remain unblemished.

That's why we can hardly see Weiss's scar anymore. The girls must be perfect at all times.

[burgers-and-diatribe]

Nitpick November: Day 14

Event created by odsalt, the idea behind this is that rwde-posters are frequently told that calling out the rampant sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and otherwise bigoted messages in RWBY, is “nitpicking.” Soooo we’ve decided to actually nitpick for a bit. I mean, if we’re gonna be accused of something, might as well actually earn the label, amiright? XD

(Also, I know I don’t have to post something every day, but I happened to have 30 nitpicks on my list, soooo here I am) XD

If anyone doesn’t want to see this, they can filter out “nitpick november” or “rwby nitpicks” and you won’t see any of my unimportant, meaningless complaints that I usually don’t talk about because there are bigger, more important problems to discuss.

Now then, let’s dive into Nitpick #14:

We were robbed of Oz v Cinder

I spent the whole fucking Fall of Beacon waiting on the edge of my seat to see Ozpin finally fight, and then they just gave us a bunch of Generic Anime Cutaway Tricks that, along with some of the other fights in V3, were a foreshadowing of the laughably awful fight choreography that would follow for the next five years.

Judging ONLY from the Ozpin v Cinder fight, do you know who could very obviously EASILY outmatch them both? You know who could probably hold her own against them even if they both teamed up against her in a fight?

Pre-Show Ruby

Volume 3 Ozpin looks like he would lose to Pre-Show Ruby, due to how terrible his fight with Cinder was. Yes, from a meta, Doylist perspective, we can say "well the problem is that they didn't have their star fight choreographer anymore, and the choreographers they did still have were grieving the loss of a friend and were also being forced to work to nonsensical storyboards and inhumane deadlines without the necessary resources they needed in order to make a compelling fight." But that doesn't change that the in-narrative, Watsonian thing we were shown is "Oz and Cinder are both bad at combat and rely on overly-flashy and unimportant Big and Bright and Colorful Magicky Gimmick Special Effects to compensate."

And as somebody who loved Ozpin from the moment he said "Hello" and had been patiently waiting for him to show off his combat skills since episode one, it was a huge disappointment - even back when I was still making excuses and saying "maybe next year they'll fix it." Flash forward to day when they still haven't fixed it, I'm just...

I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed.

[odsalt]

hhhhhAAAAGGGGGHHHHH--

This was going to be one of mine! Granted I didn't love Oz until sometime after the Beacon Arc but I had always waited to see him fight ever since he said he was a Huntsman, but it NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED. We didn't really get to see him fight until he was hosted by Oscar. Like NO, I wanted to see that gorgeous older man do cool stuff, like holy hell you really did just make him to stand there and look pretty, huh?

GIVE ME A FLASHBACK. I mean I hate what the show has become but goddamn if I don't pop in for a few minutes to watch a flashback of PROFESSOR OZPIN. And NO, a flashback of him being an abuse victim only to be victim-blamed for it doesn't count, I want PROFESSOR. OZPIN. being cool and gorgeous because he IS cool and gorgeous!

Fuck off with your flashing lights!

[ozpin-defense-squad]

"Miss Hunter"

(I'm at work, shhhh)

[burgers-and-diatribe]

(I know I'm still late lol)

Event created by odsalt, the idea behind this is that rwde-posters are frequently told that calling out the rampant sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and otherwise bigoted messages in RWBY, is “nitpicking.” Soooo we’ve decided to actually nitpick for a bit. I mean, if we’re gonna be accused of something, might as well actually earn the label, amiright? XD

(Also, I know I don’t have to post something every day, but I happened to have 30 nitpicks on my list, soooo here I am) XD

If anyone doesn’t want to see this, they can filter out “nitpick november” or “rwby nitpicks” and you won’t see any of my unimportant, meaningless complaints that I usually don’t talk about because there are bigger, more important problems to discuss.

Now then, let’s dive into Nitpick #11:

We have no fucking idea how lien works

Once again, it seems like the writers threw in a "fantasy alternative" so that they could say they had one, without actually putting in the work to actually create it.

People often criticize the money system in the Harry Potter books for not being all that realistic, but at least we have a barebones explanation for how it works:

"Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it’s easy enough."

What is a lien? Is a lien the lowest amount of money you can go? Is there no fraction-of-a-lien coin like a quarter, dime, penny, etc.? If no fraction-of-a-lien system exists, does that mean there's no such thing as sales taxes or 50% off coupons or anything like that, because there's no such thing as "half a lien?" How much is a lien really worth? Is it the equivalent of a real-world dollar, since the writers are from the U.S.? Would a ten-lien note buy you a burger and fries? Or is worth a different amount like in other monetary systems, so a burger and fries would run you around 1200 lien, but it's easier to come by? Does 1200 lien get you a burger or a television?

When a Harry Potter fic-writer is writing a scene in which someone happens to buy something and they don't want to ruin the immersion, it's easy. Is the item something nice and kind of pricy? "Sixty-five Galleons, please." Is the character paying for a meal for a group of friends like Weiss does above? "Ten Galleons, eight Sickles, please." Are they buying a package of candy? "Five knuts, please."

Every single reader will accept this and not even notice, which is a good thing if you're trying to be an immersive writer. The focus is a character buying something pretty they like or buying a gift for another character. The focus is a character picking up the check for the other characters. The focus is a goddamn coffee shop AU. You want the readers to understand the importance of the exchange of goods on a subconscious level when they're reading, so they can skim over the actual *amount* and just understand the significance.

"This is a special gift/splurge." "This is a nice gesture." "This is a common occurrence."

If you're writing a RWBY story and a character is buying some nice and kind of pricy thing? Paying for a meal? Buying candy?

I could write lien as if it's equivalent to the U.S. dollar. "That'll be eighty lien." "Sixty twenty-nine, please!" "Alright, seven fifty."

And it would IMMEDIATELY pull someone out of the story because maybe they headcanoned lien to be something else. "Eighty-five lien for that?? I thought lien was like [other monetary system], I'd have priced it at 1200!" "Sixty twenty-nine??? Twenty-nine what???" "Seven fifty. For coffee. If you're going to just turn lien into an equivalent of the U.S. dollar, don't make up lien at all."

Because it's OUR job to "make it up."

It's really annoying. If the writers wanted to make up a fantasy-equivalent for money, they should have made it up. What they actually did was fucking lazy, and is yet another example of their incompetence.

[odsalt]

Gonna be honest, my fantasy monetary system at the moment is more like U. S. currency because I'm not good with math. 100r is approximately $100, give or take. A sad bounty for a hunter, to be sure.

Yes, I am a cashier, what of it?

[burgers-and-diatribe]

I think a series that does the "unique superpower" better than RWBY is Tiger & Bunny.

In that series, people with powers are called NEXT. In the first episode they explain how every NEXT has a unique power. They achieve this by having people with pretty mundane abilities. For example a person could have the ability to change their hair color, or make their neck grow three feet long, or even sweat a river out of their armpits. And yes, all those abilities were shown in an episode.

The main hook, both in universe and as a series, is the rarity of the title characters having the same superpower. They can both multiply their physical abilities a hundred-fold. Though they each have a different tactic using it. Kotetsu, "Tiger," uses his power as soon as possible, using his overwhelming strength to catch crooks. Barnaby, "Bunny," relies on his natural abilities and gear first. He doesn't activate his power until absolutely needed.

I feel as though if CRWBY wanted to better show off how unique Semblances are, then they could've shown people with mundane abilities. It would help with worldbuilding to show how everyone has an Aura and Semblance, but not every Semblance is cut out to fight Grimm. Or even show Hunters with mundane abilities, so they train even harder to fight Grimm.

What do you think?

Old ask, sorry I'm late.

Without ever having seen this show, I agree that it sounds much better than RWBY.

Another property that handles "everyone in the world could have superpowers" better than RWBY is the Pixie Hollow books series XD

Seriously, those books are actually pretty nice! My two younger sisters were huge fans of them when they were being written, and I used to read their books when they got them. I won't pretend it was the "media of the century" or anything, but they were cute, had compelling characters, and made for a day or two of easy, feel-good reading, and the artwork is gorgeous.

'And yes, I specifically found pictures that depicted the fairies that had "mundane" jobs. Because part of the system in the Pixie Hollow books is that every fairy has a 'talent,' a special skill that makes them happy and creatively fulfilled when they are free to use their talents doing what they love. And those talents can be something simple like 'baking' and 'painting' and 'running a successful tea cafe.' And it made the characters feel real and special, even the unnamed background characters, because they were all out there living their best lives, doing whatever it was that gave them joy, and every single moment was magical.

We're supposed to believe that RWBY has a "Hopeful," "Optimistic" message, when the worldbuilding tells us "everybody could have a magical power that is unique to their soul and gives them the ability to do cool, special things... but only the SuperCops know how to access them. Everyone else is fucked and they have to live in a constant state of stifling their emotions because if they don't they might get eaten alive by soulless evil monsters of darkness."

I wish we saw people with mundane semblances, like a famous author with the ability to write a thousand words a minute (can I live vicariously through them please?) or a baker who never makes a mistake in the kitchen, or an artist who can change the colors of an object at will, or even more "mundane" semblances like a taxicab driver with unending patience or an accountant with a semblance that functions as a perfect calculator. If nearly everyone in the world had a semblance, even if it was a "common" one that had no practical use in combat, it would really sell the "Unique and Special Extension of our Souls" thing they claim to have going on.

And, as a bonus, if they had actually committed to having "Unique and Special Extensions of our Souls" be a real thing in the whole universe, then characters like Mercury would be a lot more interesting and compelling. Instead of "Around half of the combatants have a boost but I am one of the MANY combative characters that don't have one because mine was stolen so that means that I had to work harder than the half of the combatants that have a boost and that's not fair," it would actually MEAN something and be an impactful and deep part of his core character. Having part of his soul ripped away from him would have been a super cool and angsty thing that his fans (like me) could have just loved. But instead it's just "Mercury is like Roman and Watts and Canon-Ironwood and Jacques and tons of other characters, but we're supposed to think it's a big deal this time."

They could have really done a lot with their premise, but they're just... too lazy.

Also, next time somebody accuses me of "hating RWBY because I hate hope and optimism," I'll just point them to this post about Pixie Hollow XD

[odsalt]

Sooo.... A special talent that makes a special mark show up on their butt. owo

[rwbycritblog]

I wanna do somet nitpicks for November too so. Sleeves

The sleeves

Piggybacking the sleeves, Blake's whole coat.

Both the sleeves and the front are too small to zip up. Why the - I mean, what size is this coat supposed to be, and who was it made for? A skinnier Watts?

Because weren't they supposed to have like, been given this stuff once James pardoned them and gave them jobs they weren't qualified or prepared for? Why did Blake choose a coat that so clearly and painfully doesn't fit her? Why was this coat a thing at all? This isn't a coat for winter, spring, or autumn because it genuinely lookes so small and thin that it's digging into her skin, but it's definitely not a summer outfit, because look at her armpits. That thing will be chafing and bunching and sticking to her poor skin, and those zippers will be burning her since, you know, they're directly digging into her arms.

And the sleeves are too long. I hate this whole thing.

[odsalt]

How dare you make me look at these atrocities up close with my own eyes.

[rwbycritblog]

I figured it out, Ods! The coat is for this stunning rhubarb!

[odsalt]

Blake WISHES she could pull off this stunning rhubarb's look.

[ozpin-defense-squad]

Kinda tempted to make a blog for my book just to vague-post about it.

[rwbycritblog]

I wanna do somet nitpicks for November too so. Sleeves

The sleeves

Piggybacking the sleeves, Blake's whole coat.

Both the sleeves and the front are too small to zip up. Why the - I mean, what size is this coat supposed to be, and who was it made for? A skinnier Watts?

Because weren't they supposed to have like, been given this stuff once James pardoned them and gave them jobs they weren't qualified or prepared for? Why did Blake choose a coat that so clearly and painfully doesn't fit her? Why was this coat a thing at all? This isn't a coat for winter, spring, or autumn because it genuinely lookes so small and thin that it's digging into her skin, but it's definitely not a summer outfit, because look at her armpits. That thing will be chafing and bunching and sticking to her poor skin, and those zippers will be burning her since, you know, they're directly digging into her arms.

And the sleeves are too long. I hate this whole thing.

[odsalt]

How dare you make me look at these atrocities up close with my own eyes.

[odsalt]

For Nitpick November: The weapon upgrades that the characters got in V7 felt so lackluster, like the writer's had "Upgrade character's weapon" written down as a goal for V7, but couldn't actually think of anything noteworthy, at which point the better option would be to just not go through with it, rather than give us disappointment. Seriously, has Ruby used her upgrade once since it was first introduced? (Sorry if this isn't nitpicky enough, it just bugged me)

Isn't Ruby's scythe just able to...bend the other way now or something?

Weapons upgrades and superpower powerups are such a shonen anime thing, but once again R W B Y includes it in the show without putting in the work as to why upgrades and power ups matter.

It's an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink show, because the kitchen sink holds all the weight. R W B Y tries to be other shows, without understanding what makes those stories so great.

So yes. "Weapons upgrades" really does just feel like a "shonen quota" they had to reach, but that they, like many things, just didn't do anything with.

[burgers-and-diatribe]

Nitpick November: Day 9

Event created by odsalt, the idea behind this is that rwde-posters are frequently told that calling out the rampant sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and otherwise bigoted messages in RWBY, is “nitpicking.” Soooo we’ve decided to actually nitpick for a bit. I mean, if we’re gonna be accused of something, might as well actually earn the label, amiright? XD

(Also, I know I don’t have to post something every day, but I happened to have 30 nitpicks on my list, soooo here I am) XD

If anyone doesn’t want to see this, they can filter out “nitpick november” or “rwby nitpicks” and you won’t see any of my unimportant, meaningless complaints that I usually don’t talk about because there are bigger, more important problems to discuss.

Now then, let's dive into Nitpick #9:

They did such a bad job of building Remnant's map

First off, let's talk about Vale

The way these districts are set up is fucking terrible. First off, it's already strange to have them so clearly divided by U.S. zoning standards, when the writers apparently have told themselves and the audience that Vale was not actually very clearly designed like a U.S. based city. The reason the U.S. follows such strict and nonsensical zoning laws is because in the 1950's, the government decided to bulldoze the nation and rebuild it specifically to center society around the car. For thousands of years, humanity has built their cities so that residences and commercial buildings go hand-in-hand, so that people could easily get from their home to their workplace or the marketplace or the pub or the eateries or the shops, without having to take more than a short walk. But then the States began what they called the "Suburban Experiment," when they made this kind of zoning illegal and instead divided cities up into the blocks you see above: Now, if you want to get from your house to anywhere else, you have to drive. And if you are poor or disabled or you just don't want to drive, sucks to be you. When I go to one of the big box stores like walmart or target, it's a four-hour day trip; I have to walk for over an hour along dangerous roads (some of them as busy as freeways, some without sidewalks, some without safe pedestrian crossings, and also the noise level produced by a busy road full of cars is scientifically proven to be damaging to hearing) and then I usually take my time in the store because I'm tired and either too hot or too cold and need a rest - and then I have to walk back home for another hour, usually stopping in at a fast food joint along the way for a chance to rest and get something to eat and drink.

The Suburban Experiment was promoted by the government, firstly through the zoning laws I've already mentioned (residential areas are divided not only from the commercial or industrial districts, but also from each other, making it illegal to build duplexes or condos in areas zoned for single-family, and vice versa) but also through creating a figurative pyramid scheme of municipal grants and loans: when a city builds a new suburb, they get tons of money for it in federal loans. They build outwards, laying down new roads and new waterlines and new telephone and internet lines and new gaslines and new sewage lines and new homes, devastating the environment to do so, under the expectation that the income gained through property taxes will pay back the loan. But it never does, so cities will build a new suburb and use the money they got from that loan to pay off the first one, and so on and so on. Additionally, cities get federal loans to build new roads and infrastructures, but they're on their own when it comes to maintaining and repairing the ones they'd already built; and since the tax income for a sprawling zone of single-family residences or a huge zone devoted to a small handful of Corporate Tax-Evading Big Box Stores surrounded by a sea of parking lots is not self-sustaining, the Suburban Experiment is basically like if a farmer's response to finding rot in the crops is to just leave it and start a new field right next to it. The farm gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and he needs to buy more and more equipment, and hire more hands, and spend more money on gas the farther and farther he has to drive to get to the outer fields, but he never grows anything because the rot expands as quickly as his borders do.

I... didn't mean to go on this tangent about the damage of the Suburban Experiment lol, but I've been super interested in it lately so welp here you go. XD

Getting back on track, Vale definitely participated in the Suburban Experiment, made obvious firstly by the map showcased above, and secondly by their show of car dependency and outrageously huge amounts of infrastructure to support it:

But here's my problem with Vale's map. The car dependency and strict zoning blocks is possible (I literally just talked about how the U.S. suffers from the same rot) but the way the map is zoned off shows such a poor understanding of these zoning laws that it would be even worse to live in Vale than it does to live in the States, and it also makes Vale look like a super tiny city.

I've often compared the "feel" of Vale to "Seattle Lite," so let's look at the zoning map for the city of Seattle, to showcase the differences:

The zoning map of Vale feels like an eighth of the size of Seattle. Also, agricultural work usually takes place outside the city? So idk why it's listed on Roman's map as part of Vale? And seriously, Beacon is bigger than the entire isle of Patch, and seems to be almost equal to the agricultural district in terms of land space, so are we really saying that Vale's farmland is as small as the Beacon campus???

Usually, in large cities of this type, the major establishments and institutions (such as what we are meant to perceive the Huntsman Academies to be) are more centralized, with various commercial and industrial districts spreading out from there, interspersed with multi-unit residential districts, with the single-family suburbs spreading out like weeds, and the farmlands take up the space outside the city - which is why the view from a plane window looks like this:

Vale's map makes it look like it's barely bigger than my small hometown, with a population of around three thousand residents. Seriously, I won't post a picture of it, since lol I'm not about to post a shot of my hometown on the internet, but yeah. Vale's map makes it look like a small town befitting 3,000 people, not a large city like Seattle, which houses around 700,000 - and doesn't look anything CLOSE to big enough to house the population of New York City, which has a population of over 8,000,000.

This is part of why Remnant feels so fucking small. The Kingdoms are meant to be these huge, massive city-states, bigger than any other cities in the world (literally, they say in Volume 6 that Argus is the biggest non-Kingdom city in the world) but Vale's map looks like it only has enough room for a few thousand.

Now moving onto the world map itself. This map already seems really small to begin with, even though it's supposed to be the entire globe. It barely looks bigger than the British Isles.

But you know what's even worse? When you overlay Vale's map over the world map.

(by the way apparently the map of Vale isn't even accurate to the coastline which is why the perspective is janked: I had to warp the image to make it *mostly* match up with the coastline at half transparency, and that revealed that Patch apparently lost a huge chunk of itself and is also a floating island that moves several thousand feet a year and will eventually crash into the coastline.)

Also, you remember in Volume 1, when Yang and Ruby say that they can see their house in Patch AND Beacon from the same window in the airship? Well, I did a little thing to the world-map, and you'll never guess how many "Patch-to-Beacons" it takes to get from Patch to Mistral.

The distance from Patch to Mistral is only five times longer than the distance from Patch to Beacon. Remind me again why it took Ruby either six OR eighteen months to get from Patch to Mistral???

This map fucking SUCKS. btw, Ooblek's map is inaccurate to the coastline as well. Look how skinny he gets when I warp it to match the world map:

It's especially bad in the part with VALE, which was the FIRST PLACE IN THE FUCKING SHOW and would logically have therefore been the FIRST PART OF THE MAP THEY ACTUALLY CANONIZED.

What the fuck is this map. It's TERRIBLE.

And also, the fact that they didn't actually EXPLAIN HOW THE KINGDOMS WORKED within the canon, and our only clue about it was when the girls were playing "Let's Conquer Remnant" and informed us that Vacuo was a desert and Mistral *existed* and that Atlas was "A part of Mantle." This led me to believe that Atlas was a city in the KINGDOM/COUNTRY of Mantle, and then when I later found out that Atlas WAS the Kingdom, I thought that Atlas was a City/Kingdom in the CONTINENT of Mantle, and then finally, seven years into the series, we finally learned that Atlas and Mantle were simply adjacent cities operating under the same government in the Continent of Solitas. This is fucking overly complicated and ridiculous, especially since they DID NOT FUCKING TELL US ANY OF THAT FOR THE FIRST SIX YEARS OF THE SERIES.

The World Map of RWBY has always bugged the hell out of me. I hate it. One of the most important steps in creating a fantasy world - especially one in which travel and distance is a fucking IMPORTANT PART OF THE PLOT IN EVERY VOLUME AFTER 3 - is making a conclusive, comprehensive map. I'm not saying these people have to go all out like Tolkien or anything, but for fuck's sake, how are they comfortable with calling themselves professionals when their mistakes are THIS FUCKING BAD???

It's honestly ridiculous.

[odsalt]

My book is a travel-based fantasy adventure story inspired by RPGs and other fantasy adventure video games, so the map is SO important. I'm drawing it out as I go and I've had to redraw it 3 times already because I want to get it right.

Another Crwby mistake to avoid and I intend to avoid it.

[odsalt]

I gotta hand it to R W B Y for being so bad and for causing rwde to exist. It's made me a better writer than I ever imagined I could be and I can't wait for my book to progress.

I hope posting that cleared my writer's block...

[oddlyhale]

Just a side tangent on something that's bothered me tonight.

So, I completely forgot that RWBY: Grimm Eclipse was a thing because I barely hear anybody talking about it. Not even the fans seem to give a shit about it. I probably would've never heard about Grimm Eclipse if it weren't for a RWDEtuber, and even then I had never heard of the first edition from 5 years ago.

RWBY games stink, they're just cash grabs. I guess that much is obvious, I mean, the new Arrowfell looks like any other side-scroller adventure game. As if I hadn't seen 100+ of those already on the app store.

But I'm gonna focus just on Grimm Eclipse, because dear god. That game is an absolute travesty.

The Game: The first thing that stands out to me is the awful voice acting, but I shouldn't expect too much effort in a rushed game.

The arenas you're in are all so horribly spacious. Not even the right amount of space to give your character and enemy room to fight - I mean, a ridiculous amount of empty space everywhere. What's worse is that the environments aren't even lively. The forests are just dull, nothing lavish and wonderous like the show pretends it is.

Next, the fighting is not good. It could be that I had been really into DMC, Bloodborne, and Sekiro lately, but I always enjoyed how those games are aware of weight and combat. You can make enemies stagger - the enemy can make you stagger. You can build up your stats, which means enemies will be stronger as you go on. You can feel how the character puts effort into lifting their heavy weapons and how it takes much of their strength to swing them, and this applies to enemies too. Enemies have the advantage to have superhuman strength at times - being more powerful or outsmarting you. The more you challenged the enemy, the enemy now challenges you.

As you can guess, Grimm Eclipse has nothing like that.

The characters are very floaty and weightless, even when they wield heavy weapons like Crescent Rose. They move so quickly and have no consequence, and they can wipe out a group of Grimm fast, it doesn't matter what the HP is to the enemy. You just go in, blast up the place, and leave to kill more of them. Boring.

Not to mention, every Grimm you encounter is comically tiny. Who scaled these motherfuckers?

By the way, this is all you see throughout the game. Every single Wave is just these pathetic groups of Grimm coming to fight you. And of course, since every single character you play is so perfect, you can easily wipe them out and move on.

Your professors talk to your characters through the scroll, and it's just the same, "go here, go there, Control Center there, Control Center there." I don't even care. The story is nothing, either. You wonder why I never brought it up?

Overall: If you have 0 knowledge of RWBY, you may like this waste of time. It's a brainless beat 'em up, but even people who get sick of repetitive gameplay will get sick of this game. It's a lazy cash grab that the company was surely betting on, hoping megafans of RWBY would just eat this up. But the hype of this game was lukewarm, and when it died, it died.

I suppose the only reason why I made this post was that, once you've started to experiment with better games that are - not only hack and slash - but also flourishing with better graphics, story, and characters, you begin to look at games like Grimm Eclipse and think of how tragic it is.

And really? This garbage costs $29.99 on Switch?

And from what I saw in the comment section on the Grimm Eclipse Definitive Edition trailer, people from last year were hyped about Arrowfell because... well, they figured Grimm Eclipse was ass without playing it.

Oh, how the disappointments keep on rolling in.

[odsalt]

Reasons to play Grimm Eclipse: Ozpin is in it and I miss my king.

Reasons not to play Grimm Eclipse: All of the points mentioned above, and also Hyrule Warriors and HW: Age of Calamity exist.