formatting is overrated

Hello September!!

...fuck it I hate September.

But disregarding the worst month of the year, this post will mainly be about speculation. Yeeeeeeee, speculation, a word contested quite a bunch among my friends, so if you disagree with the definition I attribute it to, then just take this post as me spouting off baseless theories or something. ANYWAYYYY~ It's gonna be about RWBY because despite my burning tire mountains of DR theories, it'd be gigantic big red spoilers. And I should talk about Touhou more often but I am like super-lazy at picking up its manga... (I heard Miko appeared in the most recent chapter!! And Kokoro will show up in the other one!! SO SOMEDAY!)

So I was watching Weiss' trailer for the billionth time, and a thought occurred to me. For half the fight, she did not use dust, attempting to defeat the oversized armour with her own skill and repertoire. It was only until she was injured did she begin relying on the dust; the dust mind you, that her company produces or mines or however that stuff works. Considering how incredibly nerfed inexperienced she seems to be in battles outside of trained, controlled situations, it seems like Weiss' fruitless attempts at rebellion go further than just the style of her hair or (baseless theory!) her retaining of her scar. Perhaps she wants to prove herself and not rely so heavily on the gunpowder stuffed in her revolver, but due to being smacked in the face, has very little confidence in doing so, so she's kind of trapped in this mentality that she is nothing without her family despite disliking them so very much. That further fuels her lack of self-esteem, causing her expected rich, prissy attitude to be laced with bouts of uncertainty and insecurity. She wants to be better than others but is very aware, maybe only subconsciously that she's nothing herself. So now she is at school away from however demeaning her family might be, paired with an untrained puppy who, to her, probably can do nothing to resolve her problems or even make them worse, thus her desire to be paired with the super-competent Pyrrha earlier.

Well I dunno. Hey, let's go to Blake! Because believe it or not I actually like every title character in this series, even if it's very very short so far and not too much has been revealed. I've mentioned before how much I dislike her trailer. One reason the opening song is so popular besides the awesome instrumentals and brilliant singing are the lyrics. They're somewhat vague but give us an idea of how the show will go about. Unfortunately for at least three of the four trailers the lyrics are less mysterious and instead feel like they're just spelling out everything the future will hold of the characters. From Shadows is the biggest offender, though I Burn and Mirror Mirror suffer from it too. This is actually quite jarring for a character who is meant to be mysterious with an image song that has none of that quality. And even if the lyrics do way too much of telling and not showing, the trailer itself still tells us barely anything about Blake anyway because Adam steals the entire show! While I am liking Blake much more lately, it's probably because of this and not her lack of screentime that brings about a lack of judgement for Blake initially.

Anyway the writing of those lyrics give me the impression that the writing of the story won't be particularly deep or compelling. I certainly hope that is untrue and so far I've enjoyed the limited moments we've been given to see. Even so, I still love Mirror Mirror and everything it implies and I'm also not hating on Red like Roses.

Oh I've also begun reading fanfiction on the series...predictably 99% of it is shipping but they were pretty damn well-written shipping stories, so you have that. The most baffling works are the ones written before the first episode even aired, so there's tons of OOC moments, in particular Weiss. The AUs that came from those stories were very fascinating, but I could not enjoy them as they were because of how "un-Weissy" Weiss was. As some random internet user once said, Weiss is a "precious little shit" and that is the characterization I expect in fanfiction, soooooo. My favourite theory in some of these fics though is how it handles the lyric "Black the Beast" ...I'm especially reminded of Cybersix when they depict Blake as an out-of-control ferocious black panther resulting in glorious and convenient angst and drama; it feels perfect, but certainly not a guaranteed or even likely outcome in canon. Ah fandom, giving me false hopes and memories when the subject itself has barely leapt out of the gate, giving us mere glimpses of the plot and character. It's also probably why there is a sizable fanbase atm, as well as the creator's fame.

Also my favourite is Blake as the punchline. You don't even need to explain the joke, just add Blake and it is instantly hilarious. Yes.

HELLO THIS IS SPOTTO I was going to scrap the above post because I just watched the latest FUCKING EPISODE HOLY SHIT IT WAS AMAZING... but it did knock off a few of my theories (or at least made them least likely) thus not continuing the above post, but leaving it there for...archive sakes I suppose. Certain fans have pointed out that Blake's bow twitches in the latest episode too...possibly foreshadowing her fauna-ness? I HOPE SO. I thought Weiss warmed up to Ruby way too fast considering she didn't do a thing to prove herself except trying to fling herself into more danger, but then someone pointed out that what Ruby was trying to do was exactly Weiss' (suspected) character arc is supposed to be about, trying to be the best to prove to people your merit, ie: her parents. Suddenly everything made sense and Weiss would be able to relate to what Ruby was trying to do! Though all her badassery this episode also destroyed my "she is inexperienced insecure" belief since she was pretty damn confident and kickass. Perhaps that can be explained by watching Ruby's actions and seeing her fall and tumble reminds her of the big picture and she starts growing more relaxed in her role? I've no clue!!

Also one reason I enjoy RWBY so much is that it IS American and not Japanese. No I am not being racist, I'm talking about culture differences. Tell me have you seen a single anime make use of sarcasm? I doubt it because sarcasm is deeply a western thing, so seeing Yang basically snark it up throughout the entire episode was highly amusing and something easily missed in Anime. My favourite part in episode eight that wasn't the ridiculous action was how Pyrrha just fell splat on the ground after being chased by the scorpion for forever, and Yang's just all like "Well the gang's all here! Now we can die together!" The comedic timing on that was genius! Usually the line "we can die together" is fairly standard, but having Pyrrha just fall flat on her face just before (and all the other crazy stuff that happens) make it especially more clever.

Oh yes and thankfully Ren was nerfed this episode. I'm probably going to regard the characters' skills with game terminology. Ren was super badass and aloof and cool in episode six, so seeing that he is indeed mortal means he isn't some author avatar meant to be almost perfect. In that sense, Weiss was very much buffed, going from almost nuking Ruby and regarding real time battles as real-time strategy, to pretty much helping set up the entire sequence in beheading that gigantic bird. I feel sorry for the Giant Nevermore or whatever it's called actually. It was probably only super-aggressive because Ruby murdered its child way back in episode five. A family forever shattered and no more, how could you Ruby, HOW COULD YOU!? I still think Blake needs a buff despite her calm and cool exterior, since she tends to be the lottery winner of the "if someone needs to get hit who should it be!?" jackpot. Granted it only happened twice to her and I'm sure other characters have been smacked a bunch themselves, but for some reason it's especially noticeable with Blake. (This is outside Jaune, who is obviously smacked a whole bunch for comedy instead) Perhaps her voice acting just makes the pain of being hit all the more believable? I dunno. NORA's introduction with her weapon was nigh ridiculous though, so she might need a nerf but maybe she'll kill me with a pink hearty grenade if I dare continue this sentence. Everyone else has been fairly consistent with their abilities so it seems no nerfs or buffs are required.

As always the action has been immensely entertaining, but the awkward animation continues with every other shot. It wasn't quite as noticeable today, perhaps because the entire second-half overshadowed all the flaws I could potentially point out. The humour still seems to be animated in a rather stiff and odd fashion, but it seems I'm getting used to it, unlike after seeing the Pumpkin Pete joke or Weiss deviously planning that looked rather lifeless at the time. Oh yes people are also speculating on the redheaded manly dude of the TEAM CRDL to be Michael from Achievement Hunter and I heavily disagree. This dude is MANLY, remember!? And you hear him grunt when he was launched off the platform! Considering Ryan mentioned that he voiced someone in RWBY without mentioning who, I'm pretty sure this dude is Ryan. Maybe mohawk is Michael or the other two guys (though I hope not, those other two dudes look rather generic) And if Gavin is meant to be more important than the role of Junior from the Yellow Trailer, I tend to think of an entirely new character as opposed to a third team, but who knows?

Oh, I never mentioned here that I became a pretty big AH fan. Hoho! Yes. I initially watched their GTA IV stuff what with me becoming especially interested in GTA and my petty sense of humour found Jack being a girl in every video highly amusing. But over time and watching other videos of the crew (my favourites have become the golf and trials' let's plays! Hohoho! Though their Minecraft stuff renewed my interest in getting the game too!) R&R connection have quickly become my most favourite. Gavin's a heavy favourite of the masses, but I find he is consistently trying to screw people over. As in, instead of just fucking people over or fucking himself over occasionally he just does it ALL the time and it starts to feel rather predictable actually. If he does something stupid and it's the first time you see him doing especially stupid things, it's amusing, but the more often he does it the less it becomes funny due to being predictable is all. I've been subscribed to the Slo-Mo Guys for over a year or more so that's where I recognized Gavin from and him being an idiot makes total sense considering the idiotic things he does with Dan the Man in the slowmo videos. Never have I ever seen a man break the British stereotype so hard as Gavin has. My best friend for example enjoys Let's Plays with commentary from cynical British people (and Ed likes Jingles, the British guy who records War Thunder vids) due to the British Accent being a very pleasant voice to hear. The accent also gives you a feeling of intelligence and sophistication, and then watching Gavin all of that goes down the drain. I can see why he is so popular.

But anyway about the voice acting of RWBY, a lot of the poor voice-acting people notice can come down to what RoosterTeeth is about, comedy. Their voices sound fine and natural in relaxed environments, when the point of the scene is to be humorous. It's the more dramatic moments where sometimes the voice-acting feels a bit lackluster. Yang getting angry at the bears in episode....six I think, wasn't especially believable. I heard more "I'm TRYING to sound angry" as opposed to "I AM ANGRY!" in her rage-filled yell. But whenever Yang is snarking for example, she sounds pretty damn perfect. I found Pyrrha's voice to be rather inconsistent at times, and considering her character hasn't been fleshed out beyond "super-competent and Canadian-nice" it's somewhat understandable. I don't actually understand people who have her as a favourite character. Everyone else it makes sense to me, but all Pyrrha's done is be attached to Jaune fairly quickly and easily, and then keep him alive. Why did she develop such an interest so quickly? Did she see potential in Jaune? It feels like she just fell in love with him at first sight and kept him alive or something, but that really tells us nothing of her, herself. Hopefully she gets more development later on in the series because that is my first impression of her.

It's scenes like these that cause me to wonder if I should catch up on RvB. I never specifically dropped the series or anything, in fact I even watched until Monty animated his first super awesome action sequence way back forever ago. The series just fell out of my mind and by the time it was relevant again there were like five or six more seasons which I just cannot be bothered to go through so much of. Just like the official manga of Touhou...so much to go through and so lazy to do so. I AM TERRIBLE FAN AM I NOT. Anyway I've forgotten what else I'd like to say about RWBY beyond HOLY FUCK THE NEWEST EPISODE GO WATCH NOW and watching it over and over again. The one thing I AM sure of is that no matter what horrible things happen to my favourite characters in Dangan Ronpa 2, RWBY will be the antithesis to pull me out of the hopeless despair. Two awesome series to follow for the next year or so, giving fandoms I once or currently have a lot of competition, in particular MLP. I love MLP and all but to the point that it deserves such a mind-blowingly humongous fanbase? Not entirely sure. It's a good show and all but not ridiculously awesome that it would attract such a massive amount of people. I pretty much criticize and dislike at least half of all the episodes and generally do not enjoy episodes certain writers produce, so keeping interest in MLP may be difficult. This is ESPECIALLY after disappointments like season three's finale and that outrageous movie. (I saw some live-action Equestria Girls commercial too...I'm almost at my limit here guys!) It just saddens me what MLP is starting to become and how a good number of fans accept it as if it were...quality or something. Yeah, subjective opinion and all but I cannot understand the people's perspectives' that the EQG movie was good...simply cannot. Were their expectations that ridiculously low? is that how we are supposed to judge such a show now?

Perhaps I am out-growing the show, as most of the fans are in the 18-20 year-old range, but still....kind of saddens me where it's heading. If the initial CREATOR hates where its heading then I'm pretty sure my love was with her vision and not Hasbro's.

ONE MORE THING.... there are tons of dissenters of RWBY, like those who complain about its short length or how there's not enough action or what have you. Criticism is one thing, but I especially disliked those who said "FINALLY A DECENT EPISODE OF RWBY I ALMOST GAVE UP HOPE" type of people...episode eight was MERELY decent? I've seen a whole bunch of movies thanks to MotW, and I would rather spend all that potential wasted money on watching this VERY episode than those. You know why? Because this was actually fucking good. It blows my mind how many millions of dollars go into making movies with terrible storytelling or for some sort of gimmicky shit, and then somehow the movie might even MAKE money with its mediocrity because its fanbase is a bunch of fangirls in love with a poorly-written romance novel or something. Then we get this series made for free, for some strange reason created the very week its supposed to air (I think standard production is half a year making the thing and then half the year releasing it instead...a series like RWBY should not have a South Park schedule lol no wonder the crew is super stressed) and even if the show has flaws with a bit of the pacing (due to abrupt endings) or voice acting or awkward animation or what-have-you, people still feel the need to complain as if they were the ones being served a personal platter of food at a highly prestigious restaurant and they're some sort of supreme leader of food critics!?

No.

That feels extremely entitled. If it's free and it's crap, don't watch it...if it's paid and it's crap you can complain forever. If it's free and pretty damn decent what the hell are you acting like a spoiled brat for!? Criticize so it'll be better, but surely you have something else to look forward to that week instead of hoping that five-minute episode of RWBY next week will be packed with solely action and might possibly be longer! Good lord the number of complaints was appalling. I almost wish this episode wasn't so long and awesome because those types of "fans" don't deserve it.

Oh, I kind of rambled at the end there didn't I? Well this has been Spotto and HOLY FUCK GO WATCH THAT EPISODE OH MY GOD STICKS OF A FIDDLE