I watched a video by famous YouTuber, experimental video essayist, long-winded analyst, super researcher, and omega cringelord "hbomberguy." The video is a two and a half hour dissection of the first three seasons of the show RWBY: a history of its creators, their ideas, what he could find out about the production, what was good, what was terrible, the point of it all, and most importantly what made the show so disappointing, at least to him. Personally I like the show, although it started airing when I was younger so perhaps I was stupid and got too invested to quit. It is occasionally funny and has some good parts. But throughout the video "hbomberguy" made a ton of really good points, and over the course of the following few hours I couldn't help but think of the myriad of ways in which a ton of things could be fixed and improved. So I had an idea that maybe someone else has had before but probably not in this format and hopefully not as widespread marketed as this will be if I get far enough to feel like publishing it.
With this preamble I'd like to clarify a couple things. First, much of this only makes sense and can be done because RWBY exists already. I am not coming up with these ideas necessarily from out of nowhere, I am trying to emphasize and foster characterization that already exists but was either made uninteresting, dropped, ignored, or poorly resolved. Even if you think I executed it better, I'm using preexisting characters and plot. I'm also not going to be inclined to completely create my own scenes unless I view it as a necessity.
Second, many of the ideas for these changes are inspired by "hbomberguy." I don't wholly agree with him, and he in fact got a couple things wrong such as the silver eyes bit, a line mentioned in the first episode that was used in the finale of the third season. That doesn't mean it wasn't poorly done, but it was set up. Anyways this wouldn't exist without his video since I typically don't think about the systemic flaws of a work or how to fix them, and certainly don't make an active attempt to fix them. I just had too many ideas being generated during that video to make this specific work more interesting.
There are several core issues that "hbomberguy" repeatedly mentions RWBY has in his video. Exposition, characterization, character motivation and conflict, and cohesiveness are the three in particular that stand out. The exposition is poorly done and confusing, the characterization often doesn't exist or doesn't matter, the character motivations are tenuous or don't exist, inter-character conflict rarely exists, and there is a lack of cohesion between the fights and the narrative, with the former seemingly inexplicably introducing characters and settings that the stumbles its way into in silly ways. By already knowing the setting, where the story is going, and what character relationships do and will exist, I aim to give the characters more interesting agency, relevance, and dynamics while also more cohesively transitioning from scene to scene.
I plan to accomplish this by, starting from the Red Trailer, going episode by episode through the series and rewriting dialogue and scenes where I think necessary. This is all done using the animation, proper nouns, and voices the series uses. Meaning, this should be viewed as a companion piece to the series, not a replacement. When you read the dialogue, you read it in that character's already existing voice. In any given scene, unless I provide a different description, the visuals are that which the show put in place (although if they were to redo the series using this rewrite (optimism at its finest), they would ideally redo everything to make it cleaner and match my changes). Part of this is because I don't want to get bogged down writing setting details which can already be seen, and also because I don't want to change the fights. I'm likely already cringe at writing dialogue (especially slice-of-life type stuff), I don't need to also be cringe at writing fights.
The actual method with which I do all this might be confusing. Again, you need to watch the show alongside reading this to notice what I change. I will be jumping into the dialogue where I want to begin changing it, at which point I will follow the scene to the end unless otherwise stated. I will explicitly mention if there are scenes I wish to cut. Anything else unmentioned I want to leave in. Basically, while watching the show when a line or description matches the show, everything that follows is a replacement for the rest of the scene. You might have to think a little bit at times to figure it out, but it shouldn't be hard to figure out.
There are several specific things I wish to change, but no spoilers. You'll just have to find out by reading. I hope you enjoy.
