>My interest in RWBY itself died during that time; volume 4 pretty much turned me off to the series. 

Going off on a tangent here, brace for half-baked nonsense.

For what it's worth, I think it's fine if you don't have a passion for the show. Personally, I've only ever been lukewarm on it (heh) at the best of times, but it's worked since our canon is best described as either a sidestory or a slight AU, considering the worldbuilding liberties and such that we've taken before World of Remnant fucked it all up (LOOKING AT YOU, MISTRAL). 

What we do have from the show that [i]matters[/i], and I mean [i]really matters[/i], is a fairly wide open sandbox for the characters we create to play in, with room for a whole bunch of creativity and exploration due to the existence of things like Auras and Semblances and other such excuses for "cool shit to happen". If I want to be a Chinese knockoff Nisio Isin with a budget Araragi family running around, then there's plenty of open space to do that alongside, for example, Varius [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lerU4_t8RkI]"100% MOTIVATED"[/url] Gliver without missing a beat.

If we want to get artsy and pretentious and metaphorical with it: if the characters are colors, then the setting is a canvas. It's open and pretty blank and ready for you to go wild on it with whatever colors you damn well please. That's what the game thrives off of, and personally why I keep playing even though it's based off of a series I essentially have nothing but disdain for. I think that's what Monty wanted from it too. You don't have to like the show. It's the vessel. You don't have to like the vase or the soil that much if you care a lot about the plant growing in it, right? This game is the stem, the contests leaves, and the characters are our flowers. Almost every time you look at a potted plant, I can guarantee that it's to take in the flowers.

I think you might have a better time if you looked at it a bit more like that. It's a shot in the dark and doesn't solve our immediate problems, of course, but in terms of simply [i]enjoying the game[/i], which seems like it's one of your big issues right now, I know that it's the characters and the sections of the world that we've built around them that keeps me coming back for more.

Maybe it can do the same for you.

Again, I know it's not a solution to the current problem at hand, but it's just something I felt needed to be touched on, especially given how much it means to me.