RWBY

***RWBY*** is an American anime-like program created and written by Monty Oum in 2012 until he died on February 1, 2015. Since then, production has been taken over by Miles Luna, Kerry Shawcross, and Tom Alvarado.

*RWBY* has inspired derivative products ranging from FanFiction works to officially licensed video games and other merchandise.

## Coeur on RWBY

> "*Oh, I absolutely don't watch RWBY anymore. I stopped after volume four.*
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> I read all the notes and entries so I know the basics of what happens, but I've not bothered to watch anything of volume seven yet. To be fair, none of my stories involve it - and while Relic certainly could, unless it can be seamlessly sewn in, I don't want to go back and make retcons otherwise I'd be forever chasing canon and making the story worse and worse as I do. I've heard from Uber that Vol 7 is actually showing signs of improvement in writing, so I may give it a go if reviews are positive.
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> I just despised volume 4, and what i read about 5 and 6 didn't make me any more excited from it. Rather than watch and almost certainly have my enthusiasm for RWBY killed (damaging my fanfics) i decided to wait and save myself the pain.*"*
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> ― Coeur Al'Aran, December 19, 2019[[source]]
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### History

According to Coeur Al'Aran, he did not start watching *RWBY* until around three days after he published *One Good Turn Deserves Another*. In spite of this, he was able to collect various details on their characters through reading crossovers, allowing him to write the first three chapters before he actually watched the series sometime after November 13, 2014. This would foreshadow several issues that Coeur would develop with *RWBY* as he released more works, as he would often wait for entire seasons to be uploaded before binge-watching all in a short interval.

### Characters

On January 3, 2018; Coeur released an essay regarding the main characters of *RWBY* and the faults in writing which make them uninteresting characters to work with. Coeur would later include these points in his biography since people would not stop asking him why he uses Jaune and Blake as protagonists rather than other main cast members.

#### Ruby Rose

Since 2015, *RWBY* creators and commenters have published pieces on whether or not Ruby Rose works as a functional protagonist ranging from speculative videos to satirical comics. However, Coeur's sparce Ruby as a main character to the point of deuteragonism since 2014, with the exception of *Arcanum*, implicitly shows his comparable views to contemporary criticism of Ruby's characterization.

Coeur mentions that Ruby has no true "conflict" in the entirety of volume 1-3 and even lacks it into volume 4. He states that her "life dream" to become a huntress had been accomplished by chapter 2 and has a "ridiculously short" awkward moment before it is solved within 2 episodes and never mentioned again. To encapsulate his attitude on her, he describes it as a situation as being a hero for the sake of being a hero and lacking a personality outside of reacting to outside events. He speculates that if the events did not "literally happen" to Ruby, that she would not even be involved in the show, suggesting that Ruby could be cut from *RWBY* entirely and the plot would still progress with other supplementary character influence..

#### Weiss Schnee

Coeur believes that Weiss does not deserve to run the Schnee Dust Company due to her current occupation as a huntress. While he states that Weiss is a "great person and better" than the Schnee family, he is opposed to this conceptual narrative for Weiss.

#### Yang Xiao Long

https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/189701/149349119/308/More-General-Chat-Thing

#### Oscar Pine

Coeur has provided criticism regarding Oscar Pine within the Professor Arc Forum and through implicit criticism in his literary works. In chapter 6 of *Headmaster Arc*, he describes Oscar as having a "very forgettable name." On February 1, 2018; Coeur describes

https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/189701/157963823/176/White-Sheep-Discussion

### Story

#### Volume 4

> "*Animation quality up, but no plot to speak of. We meet a few new baddies and what little plot there is they reveal to us. Thanks for the mystery we no longer get. Ruby and co. are... just randomly fighting stuff.*
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> Maybe I missed some stuff, though. I actually founds myself skipping through it a bit, dragging the video bar along. But that's not usually a good sign anyway.*"*
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> ― Coeur Al'Aran, October 29, 2016[[source]]
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> "*Season 4, where the animation and sound quality goes up, but I fear the writing has gone down again.*"
> ― Coeur Al'Aran, 2016 October 31
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> "*S4 was also a disappointment because of the lack of any reaction to Season 3.*"
> ― Coeur Al'Aran, January 3, 2018[[source]]
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> "*S4, i.e. the shit-tier seasons where Beacon doesn't exist, the main cast are scattered pointlessly (since canon then just brings them back with 0 development), and you have Self-Insert Oscar running around, who also has no Intention, or brain, apparently*"
> ― Coeur Al'Aran, February 1, 2018[[source]]
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##### Chapter 1

Coeur would watch the first chapter of volume 4 on 2016 October 29, the day of its release on YouTube. Coeur stated that "most seemed good", but was unimpressed by the Blake arc because it would go against a held opinion that Blake was abandoning her team since she did not want Adam Taurus to attack them. The implication that she would go off and stay with her parents' counters this conception, as she is avoiding her team to place others at risk, which Coeur finds "disappointing." In a follow-up response to twigggy, he states that Blake being with Sun instead of Yang felt "weak", further stating that if Blake says her rationale to abandon her team is to "protect Yang", he would be fairly unimpressed.

Coeur stated that he would not mind the plot problems if RoosterTeeth would "DO something" about it, but he had the suspicion that it would not be mentioned, believing that Blake would say it was "all for her team" and that the audience will be expected to accept that. Coeur found the transition between Blake being in tears when Yang lost her arm to romping off with her boyfriend and family as neurotic behavior inconsistent for her character. Coeur states the only way to resolve this, in his mind, would be a flashback or mini-arc revealing Blake developing self-destructive tendencies trying to hunt Adam but ending up saved by Sun and her family, but he finds the issue of Blake not contacting her team unusual even if it were the case.

###### Reflection

Coeur said the rest of the first chapter was "eh and meh", with better animation quality but no real coherent plot. Coeur states that he found himself "skipping through" by dragging the video bar along, making it likely that he missed some content, but he doubts he missed anything relevant. He attempts to resolve his discontentment by asking for good *RWBY* FanFiction pieces to read, as he has not read one he liked for 4-5 months.

##### General Reflection

On January 3, 2019, Coeur called volume 4 "nothing short of a disaster." A follow-up comment would state that season 4 was a disappointment because of the "lack of reaction" to season 3 from personal tragedy outside of Yang and Jaune.

Later on February 1, he would say that volume 4 was a "shit-tier season", noting his discontent lies with Beacon not existing, the cast being scattered, and a self-insert Oscar running around with no brain. He notes that by this point, the narrative of RWBY has been falling to pieces since the factor of unification of Beacon had been removed.

###### Parodic Interpretation

On December 19, 2019, Coeur would release an omake on *Headmaster Arc* poking fun at a specific plot point about Jaune receiving upgrades for his weapon. The main point of the omake was to answer about why he does not include Jaune's weapon within the narratives, which he states are because it would be repetitive in a literary sense and impractical in a combat sense.

### World-Building

On Coeur's profile, he states that the reason he likes *RWBY* is that he finds the lore and world to be interesting, as people are resigned to living in smaller areas pressured to teach and arm children to fight monsters. The specific plot point most interesting to him was the "mix of risking [one's] life to fight monsters and [go] to school", being dystopian without amoral tendencies.

## References

1. ↑ https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11353797/9/Professor-Arc-Staffroom-Chronicles
2. ↑ https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/189701/156644771/150/RWBY-Spoiler-Discussion
3. ↑ If she says "It's to protect Yang," then I'm going to be fairly unimpressed.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20191111071156/https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/189701/156644771/3/RWBY-Spoiler-Discussion
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/189701/149349119/308/More-General-Chat-Thing
6. ↑ https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/189701/157963823/176/White-Sheep-Discussion
7. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20191219191154/https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13220830/40/Professor-Arc-II-Headmaster-Arc