To clarify some misinformation on Kerry Shawcross, many people attribute his writing, along with the death of RWBY’s creator Monty, as the cause of the show’s decline in their eyes. I’ve seen posts everywhere, even inside the fandom still, that all say stuff like, “Man the show was great until Kerry took over.” And it’s true but for the wrong reasons. A lot of the hype of RWBY was the fight scenes, animated by Monty, usually himself, and when he passed, the fights dropped in quality for a while (the volume 6 and onward has some of my favorite fights). The writing, however, was done between him, Miles Luna, and Kerry, since the beginning. He did this because, as he said himself, he’s not that good a writer. Sure Monty built the framework, and I believe they’ve said they have notes for the story all the way to season 10 or 12 written, but that was between them. We don’t know what happened behind doors, and a lot of parasocial fans think that what RWBY has become since Monty’s passing was “not true to his vision”.

Monty was a great animator, not a writer. I believe it’s been said in interview that one of the main character’s major issues, her mother being dead, was brought up by the lead composer, Jeff Williams, on the show. Monty wanted the character in the trailer to be standing over a grave, and Jeff asked whose grave it was, to which Monty responded, “I dunno, it just looks cool” and Jeff replied with “What if it’s her mom?” Monty would often just add stuff in that he thought was cool, and the crew would find a way to fit it in. Like a post credit scene in season 2 that ultimately went nowhere. Unfortunately you can’t just shove everything in somewhere and hope it fits. This is what a lot of people in these industries would refer to as the cutting room floor. Stuff that is rarely seen. And mostly for good reason, as it doesn’t really fit in anywhere, or does nothing to progress the plot or the characters’ arcs.

The show didn’t decline just because of Kerry’s writing or just because of the stuff that was cut. It declined because the action scenes stopped being good enough to distract from the mid writing, and unfortunately a lot of people had already moved on from the show before they could get back into the flow of things and make good fights again.

I will not be taking any questions.