Plank Sinatra

Mecha Carta Institute

Aaand finally found the time to get a post up for this.

Mecha Carta Institute

While Judgment scavenged for any information relevant to its latest herald, Jericho spared a look at Rose and her book. A single eyebrow raised up amusedly when he noted what book she was currently reading, but he was more focused on whatever it had was that had turned the timid woman's nerves to steel. When he took a glance at the cookbook's title, he noticed that her eyes were on him, and met her gaze for several seconds curiously. At first he wondered if she was going to say anything to him, before he recalled her use of sign language earlier.

Slowly, briefly, his eyes made their way down her slim neck and towards the faint web of scars that--

Judgment closed his book abruptly, so sudden it made Jericho jump. With his free hand, and a slight sigh, he slid the worthless tome down the length of the table away from both of them and turned back to Roze.

Ignorant.

Judgment tended to think most things were ignorant - especially when it came to Judgment itself. Even Jericho. Especially Jericho.

Quizzing her vehemently on whether she knew what the history was behind his spooky black apocalypse glove was not the most charming way to go about a potential introduction. It was a simple human realization that Jericho could grasp, while Judgment - by virtue of being the spooky black apocalypse glove of the hour - had neither the intellect nor the tact to acknowledge. Instead, with only several books that had undoubtedly little to offer ahead of him, Jericho decided to turn to one of the few threads that he and Roze had in common for conversation:

"You'd be a mage then, correct?"

@Cherry_Shield

Phoenix Wing (A Fairy Tail RP-Always Open, Open)

Cyare Staunton

@Krayzikk

Angel Ferrara

"No, no, it's okay." Angel slowly stood and, after a few seconds, turned to face Cyare and climbed out of the hot tub. "Kaia's blind, I should probably be helping her around myself. I should probably get going anyway. We're going to need to grab a combat job while we can."

Noting the brief look of surprise on his fellow tub occupant's face, Angel's grin took on the first gleams of ease and confidence it had displayed all morning.

"What? I may get a little tongue tied in a hot tub, but I'm not a complete slouch. Don't have to worry about most monsters showing up to fights half naked. And the ones that do...well, that's why I have a blind friend."

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

Lauren Negasi

I hate you, Sloan.

In reply, her brother's words (barely a week old) rang in her ears: Should have gone to school, Lorena. You could build yourself a real weapon.

Not that part of her wasn't itching to just break out her kickboxing experience on this runty little fucks. She could feel the familiar itch already, and her chest was racing in excitement as she watched Ben's chain lightning crackle through the swarm. But then she saw him back up - and the part of her that Ben had driven to a draw days prior in combat class realized that the concession of ground was probably for the best. She slid backwards herself - but not before she had taken a knee and cleaved right to left with her axe, bifurcating a few Grimm. As they dissolved into shadows in front of the next row of Scavengers, Lauren stood and dipped backwards, landing on the tiptoes of her right foot besides Ben.

"So this whole mission is ass, huh, Cap?" she asked cheerfully. "Not the normal kind of ass either. The 'wow, every member of BASL has the best ass in school' kind. I mean the 'these little cocksuckers are gonna tire us out until they can swarm and chew our eyeballs out through our bomb-ass sunglasses' kinda ass. Hey, got any Ice Dust handy?"

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

More than a week since the last IC post. Yikes.

@Lugubrious

day 26

rations running low. @Krayzikk and myself maintaining ourselves on willpower alone. it's getting difficult. beginning to see mirages on the horizon. sometimes they resemble @Kaithas

but it's not real. we know it can't be real.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

I don't mind Jaune. He was worse early on but now I think he's a good character. He's a deconstruction of the Butt Monkey archetype put into a setting where he really doesn't want to be one. He's also completely pivotal to Pyrrha's character. If not for him, Pyrrha would have just remained on her pedestal and seemed, to everyone else, to be a personality-devoid top fighter. It's because of his interaction with Pyrrha, and making her seem more approachable by being a Butt Monkey that is somehow interacting with the star pupil, that Pyrrha is able to make friends at all.

@Lugubrious

I personally think it's the other way around. Pyrrha was a vehicle to advance Jaune into something competent - JNPR as a whole is kind of co-dependent that way (and I'd say SSSN, too) whereas RWBY can kind of develop individually. I don't like the way it looks like it's being done for next volume, but at least they can.

Phoenix Wing (A Fairy Tail RP-Always Open, Open)

Angel Ferrara

"Alright. Well, I'll, uh, talk to my friend. And we'll keep it in mind."

Angel's eyes pointedly lifted up to the back of Cyare's head and stayed there, watching her damp hair cling to her back as she toweled off. He hadn't even considered the fact that she may be a mage herself. He thought about asking her about her powerset, but his dad had always taught him never to ask about a girl's age or weight. (Angel's gaze began to drop again, and quickly righted itself on the back of her neck. Dad would haunt him forever if he slipped up now.)

Ferrara couldn't imagine that trivial physical details like that were important to avoid, and something as intimate as magic wasn't. So he kept silent on it and smiled thankfully to himself.

"It was really nice meeting you, Miss Cyare."

@Krayzikk

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

Your hider is broken.

Watched the last episode. I won't spoil much myself, but I am wondering a whole lot about what just happened to everyone. There was some sort of timeskip, that much I know, but what exactly happened during that timeskip?

@Ryonara

Yeah, haha, guild bbcode got me fucked up. Just decided to cut what I was quoting from PoS out of the post and it seemed to work.

EDIT:

huh, yeah, it was list after all

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

My Hider

You're right. This is supposed to be a long and cohesive story, but it's been confirmed by M&K that these three volumes are supposed to comprise what would be, in a 23/24 episode anime, a full season. Looking at this through the lens of a season finale, it's infuckingcomplete. If Breach wrapped things up all at once and is considered a bad season finale for it, then why is wrapping up literally nothing and just putting more pressure on the spine of the plot any better?

That doesn't change the fact that she's a loose thread. Her impact on the plot was negligible given that it doesn't seem like Yang is going to be hunting for her while moping in bed and missing an arm.

I'll grant you Ironwood, and that he has a lot to take care of on his plate right now, but the fact that we know more about Papa Schnee's whereabouts than the man who runs Atlas and is part of the Ozlluminati is just more proof that things needed to be tied up on more fronts.

In just last week's episode, she talked about how "she wasn't running." Blake owning up to her problems and believing in the ability of herself and her friends to take care of each other has been pretty much all that keeps her character going since she first met Sun. It makes sense for her character to run (I personally think she's a total coward when push comes to shove) but it would have made more sense to do it when the going is rough next volume, as opposed to her scampering off while her teammates all lay injured.

Playing Jenga with a series of increasingly vaguely-defined superpowers in a universe where more often than not Semblances are OP to begin with is not the way to properly reestablish your main characters as badasses. Ruby couldn't even beat Roman, Neo, or Mercury head on over the course of the past few weeks, but when they figured out that they had written out or shoehorned away everyone who could plausibly stop the dragon or Cinder's conquest of the tower, Ruby's silver eyes suddenly came into play. I'm not arguing that they're potentially valid as a power. Monty had two decades in his head for RWBY; clearly at some point the silver eyes had to come into play. But you don't do it after you've spent half a volume building up to Maiden powers and how much they can change the world before trumping them whenever Ruby gets too stressed out. A good writer would have used them against Salem (who looks, unless we're being thrown for a serious loop here, like she's far more hellish than Cinder) to show that Ruby had really matured as a warrior the way that silver eyes imply. Time away from the rest of her team, on her own adventure, learning more about herself and fighting on her own, would have led to the point where that kind of reveal would have felt like a reveal, not a throwaway line of dialogue from Volume 1 that got pulled out of the ass when Cinder looked like she was too close to winning for good.

You're looking at what I meant re: Cinder's plan too broadly. Obviously her plan to sow disunity between Atlas and Vale worked; Yang confirmed that much, and it makes sense.

I mean Cinder's personal stake in this plan. It's clear that she really fucking wanted to be the Fall Maiden, and given that that's literally all we know about her character (she's an incredibly flat villain) the fact that she could be dead, frozen along with the dragon, or have escaped to go serve Salem again is a loose thread. All the end sequence would have needed was one more addition to the frame: Cinder on her knees in that hellscape Salem was in, head bowed and eyes glowing while Salem finishes the monologue. This establishes:

She's alive
Her Maidenhood helped her weather Ruby's silver eyes
Although as a Maiden she's incredibly powerful, wielding powers almost no one else in Remnant possesses, she's still totally subservient to Salem
She can be sent out again as a competent threat against RWBY in the future.

Just adding Cinder to that scene would show not only that she's licking her wounds and ready for a rematch, but that whatever Salem is, she's strong enough to totally trump a Maiden we saw obliterate Pyrrha, intimidate Roman, and stand toe to toe with Ozpin. This establishes the mindsets of both the people we know to be major villains at the moment, as well as their hierarchy. It tells more about Cinder's character, that she would be willing to prostate herself before this mysterious woman. It resolves what Cinder's been up to. Instead her whereabouts are about as intangible as Pyrrha's corpse.

I think a good many of my questions are valid, and patronizingly calling me naive for questioning a writing staff that has given us no reason to trust their latent skill in writing this genre over the past three volumes doesn't change that. Cliffhangers to one or two plotlines are a way to foster interest going forward in those characters - and for characters that are somewhat interesting, like Ruby or Qrow, they work. But making almost every character MIA or leaving their motivations for the future dangling isn't something you do in a finale. It's not good writing. It's waving your hands and expecting that the problem will resolve itself next time we see the characters - a lot like how the whole battle for Beacon ended in the first place.

@Prince of Seraphs

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS

I didn't like it. Really didn't like it. It confirmed a lot of the bad feelings I was starting to get last week and amplified them.

The finale gave no REAL resolution to the events of the last three volumes (seriously, not even a scene detailing what happened to the individual members of CMEN? Roman confirmed dead in a livestream? What about Raven? What about Ozpin? What about Ironwood - communications or not, why hasn't he just flown back to Atlas and explained the situation by now? Clearly the Schnees can still traverse kingdoms, you're telling me fucking Ironwood can't? Blake just RAN THE FUCK OFF?) and instead offered a plethora of new shit for us to care about. (Taiyang was cool but needed to look like less of a beta shithead around Qrow, and mentioning silver eyes offhand one time doesn't count as foreshadowing when you've built up the Maidens as the super world-breaking power of choice for the back half of the volume and then suddenly blow everything the fuck out with Ruby's silver eyes. Why would they trigger for Pyrrha's death and not for Penny? Where the hell was Jen Taylor's character standing? What was the point of invalidating all that time we spent waiting for Cinder's plan and compounding the fact that we don't even know if she failed or not?)

It's not the way to end a season, especially when you've rushed most of three years of plot into one volume to begin with and we expect real answers and endings for some of the characters after all this time.