In canon!Remnant: Atlas is supposed to be Greece( but for some reason has German influences), Mistral is supposed to be China( but also have some Greek and European culture for no particular reason), Vale is supposed to be Europe( even though we know little to nothing about Vale), and Vacuo is probably supposed to be Africa. The show is very vague on the kingdoms’ cultures and what little of it that we do know is very inconsistent. Try to find a way to have this all make sense. For example, since Pyrrha is Greek-inspired have her be from the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Atlas. Jaune is based on the European Joan of Arc, so he’s from a small farming village in Vale. Ren is based on Mulan so he can stay as being from Mistral. Another example is that the types of government are: The Vale Kingdom, The Mistralian Empire, The Atlesian Oligarchy and The Vacuan Nomads. While Beacon becomes “home base” once the heroes finally get to it, once Beacon is destroyed a mobile base like an airship will replace it. That way they can have a homebase no matter where they go. Change Hunter Academies to instead be Hunter Guilds. The Hunter Guilds have documents and files of Hunters’ Semblances and abilities. The Hunter’s Association rank each Hunter in a lettering grade from D to S based on several factors, such as test results, recommendations, etc. Give the Hunters clear agendas, scalings and structure like I would see in a lot of “anime professions”. I like to think there are multiple combat schools scattered around each kingdom, but only one huntsman academy. The names for mine are all synonymous with the names for the academies Beacon- Signal, Heliograph, Radar, Alarm Haven- Sanctum, Shelter, Bastion, Anchorage Shade- Mist, Penumbra, Obscuration, Dusk Atlas- Globe, Octavo, Tract, Scroll The school names give a hint to their nature: Beacon - A light that guides people to a predetermined destination. Shade - A place to hide. Haven - A safe place. Atlas - A map to the destination. Each of the schools probably operates in a manner similar to the name they carry, meaning that where Beacon seeks to guide people, Shade seeks to hide them, Haven seeks to protect them, and Atlas seeks to lead them. It would be a fitting theme for the academies, and leaves open the question: "Are there any schools that seek to empower the people, or do they all seek some form of control?" I always believed that the dorm system was a way of Remnants to manage a dwindling population. Why not put all the hormonal young adults with super powers together in the same dorm regardless of gender? If a few babies come about, great! More future huntsmen. An idea about how to kill the high-school setting while keeping most of the other plot elements viable: make Beacon an organization that helps rookie hunters get started instead of a combat academy. I've got to study for a midterm so pardon the post quality, but here are the basics of the changes I'm thinking of: -Beacon is an organization that legitimizes wannabe hunters, setting them apart from the average grunt-for-hire. -It provides rookie hunters with food, lodging, and missions that let them get experience, build up their reputation, and form real-world contacts for when they decide to move on. --The hunters get to choose their missions so they can specialize, but must fulfill a quota to keep getting the benefits of Beacon membership. ---Beacon doesn't pay the hunters for the missions, but it does provide a stipend and covers costs of stuff like weapon maintenance, ammunition, and other mission-related expenses. ----Rookies are often sent out in teams of two or four to compensate for their inexperience. -If you want the Forest of Death to happen, make it a pro-bono mission by Beacon to clear a forest of Grimm. All hunters who want to join Beacon that year are required to participate. --Ditch the "first person you see is your partner" and make it "heyyy, you guys gotta decide on roommates before we randomly assign you some, and you just spent all day bonding with someone over killing soulless abominations..." ---Same for the missions: hunters are not required to stick with their friends and roomies, but often choose to do so due to familiarity with each other's styles. This gets rid of the high school drama, allows you to cherry-pick the other plot elements you want to keep, and gives you several convenient plot devices to make characters meet and interact. I think it'd be best for the narrative to have the assignment of leaders left up to the team members. Also, it could be interesting to have an option available where members can vote to replace a leader if they determine that the current leader is inadequate. That would really hammer home the point that these characters are training for a job rather than going to regular school, that they're supposed to operate independently and their childhood is ending. It provides another source of conflict and audience investment to what's happening: these teenagers all have their own opinions about who should be in charge and some are irreconcilable with others. How Not To Write: Beacon Next time I’ll get to team JNPR, however, I felt as if I needed to address one last topic before moving on to good old Juany-boi Missed opportunity describes many aspects of RWBY, but I would argue it best applies to the setting of the first three volumes: the school. Schools can be a tricky topic to debate, because while one could argue that everyone experiences the education system and may not wish to see it while viewing their entertainment, others may enjoy the reliability of fictional characters going through the same hardships or familiarity of the setting. However, most depictions of schools rarely explore the idea beyond jokes or just as a convenient location to justify a circumstance where main characters meet one another. And RWBY is no exception. Given that RWBY takes place in a fictional world with its own set of rules rather than a copypaste earth, the education system is a logical place for the audience to learn about how the world functions. The education system presents many opportunities for world building. Instead, the school’s primary function is just an excuse for the main characters to be forcefully grouped together as well as show off a “variety” of side characters. We don’t need a surrogate character if we have a setting that should explain to the audience and the characters how the world works. Instead of Jaune learning about Aura, why don’t we have a scene where Ruby is learning about aura during her time at Signal? Then we cut to Ruby on the blimp toward Beacon. Honestly, just this scene would be enough to render Jaune’s initial existence moot. Likewise, if rwby were wandering the city instead of the school, there could be far better or at least more frequent displays of faunus discrimination, such as faunus being rejected from a store, being yelled at by a racist, and even a faunus about to be assaulted before Blake intervenes. Besides learning about that all faunus have night vision (including Sun apparently, even though the vast majority of primates have POOR night vision), the only functions the school serves are the lesson during Badge and the burden, forcing the characters together, having a dance arc, having a field trip, and having a tournament. Being brutally honest, forcing characters together is not a conceptually sound idea. Simply put: having a team join forces over a common interest will always be more compelling than a team formed because the plot demands it, as the former shows each character having agency in the matter. Likewise, tB&tB suffers heavily because both Ruby and Weiss have to be convinced to give each other a chance, rather than coming to that conclusion themselves. In both cases, the school setting makes the plot work, but hurts the characterization. The dance arc was not necessary, being a generic prom with a generic love triangle that led nowhere and had an insulting bit about Weiss being rude because she dared to not date a guy she wasn’t interested in. The field trip as well didn’t need the school: one of the characters (presumably Yang, given her already shown penchant for finding information) hears about something going on around mount Glenn. Finally, the tournament can just…exist, the school is already only tangentially related. Without Beacon, the show wouldn’t have to hammer in a rule about requiring every side character to have three more useless bodies attached to their hips, we wouldn’t need Ren or Nora, the rest of Velvet’s team, the rest of Sun’s team. To avoid serious rewrites, Beacon can simply be a gathering point for hunters and huntresses to meet, as well as the relic vault and all that jazz. However, if you absolutely have to have a school setting, make use of it to explain your world’s rules damnit. Even if it seems strange to have aura explained this late in the education system, it’s less wasteful to use the setting to explain it than create a new character as a surrogate. The school could explain more about Grimm, explain more about faunus, explain more about semblances; it could do many things, but it didn’t, because the writers didn’t think two steps ahead, nor did they actually care about the school. You don’t have to have everything occur at school, but you should at least take advantage of the setting, rather than treat it as a hindrance like RWBY does with both the second volume opening song and an exchange between Weiss and Blake implying the school is holding the four back from stopping crime. Also, your characters don’t need silver eyes, family inherited powers, etc, if they already stand out because they can hunt monsters. Just saying, the school setting really undersells how special the mains characters are without all the extra bullshit. Each schools have different curriculums that reflect their society, such as the combat schools in Atlas making robotics, military law, electronics, math, and science classes mandatory because their Hunters will be fighting as dogs of the military alongside robots. In canon, it doesn’t make sense that Hunters represent kingdoms and go on solo-missions because it runs counterintuitive to the Hunters being independent and having a team-system structure. Several points to unpack here: Firstly, unless grimm fight like huntsfolk then this training is at best a waste of time against them. At worst it's counterproductive. It's only value is for fighting other huntsfolk. Secondly, history focused on military engagements. Do recall that the question Oobleck asked was strategically relevant. Further recall that Beacon is not a high school. It is a collage. Every student attending should be expected to have the fundamentals of standardized education behind them. Teaching political and military history is a waste of time that could be used to teach grimm migratory patterns, tracking, grimm anatomy, foraging, field medicine, navigation, or any other directly relevant subject. Should all such subjects be accounted for, this time could be made available for relaxation and team bonding, or optional extended study. Thirdly, the Vytal Tournament is not safe. This argument hinges on one detail: Aura is inconsistent. It does not provide adequate protection. It has failed to protect multiple characters in multiple instants on screen, and we have been informed in the very first season that even when it's functioning, it has variable protective power. I think the issue here is that the creators didn't see the contradiction between "Hunter academies have to answer to their respective councils" and "individual Hunters are recognized internationally and hold no loyalty to any one nation." Which I suppose isn't an outright impossible setup... but is very, very stupid in very obvious ways. "I was just watching your "fixing RWBY Vol 1-3" video and i had a thought about the Vytal festival itself and how fucking stupid it is in the context of the RWBY world. The reason this is the case is because if it ever so happened that one of the schools consistently didn't have many successful fighters, "Vacuo with their more laid back approach to life for instance" that would likely result in the general populace becoming worried about the strength of their huntsmen. A much better idea would be to capture grimm and set up literal combat arenas to show that the huntsmen in training can actually handle and strategize to defeat grimm. Of course there would be fail-safes to help protect all student's lives. You could even still tack on the 1v1s at the end for the most promising fighters of the 8 highest scoring teams just for fun and good sportsmanship. This accomplishes 2 very important things. 1. It allows a reason for the Vytal festival to be a real celebration about showing off the potential of the next generation of fighters against actual tangible results (killing actual grimm instead of fighting other humans) and 2. It gives a spotlight and job for actual professional huntsmen to do, they go out and capture grimm for the festival, that can be one of the "many" things those professional huntsmen that "definitely exist" do. It also excuses Ironwood's military invasion of another country. They were simply there to help provide security and transportation for the Grimm. It also opens up the idea to mechanized Grimm capturing robots which would be cool to see them literally abducting students and civilians during the invasion of beacon. Make these Grimm captured the stronger variety that the students normally wouldn’t be tasked to fight on regular missions. Each schools have different curriculums that reflect their society, such as the combat schools in Atlas making robotics, military law, electronics, math, and science classes mandatory because their Hunters will be fighting as dogs of the military alongside robots. In Episodes 5 and 6 RWBYQOM nearly die to a grimm species that are physically weak but sap your will to live in groups. They nearly die because they can't see the signs of an Apathy infestation, even though Maria recognizes them instantly when she sees the name in the journal. This takes me to my post title - Beacon is objectively a terrible school. Before you ever let a diesel mechanic work on an engine, they go through a class on how that engine could kill them horrifically. Before you set foot on a flight line, you're taught to secure your belongings and stay the fuck away from engines, active taxiways, fuel trucks, and ordnance. Every profession that risks death or grievous injury has a class about "ways you'll end up having a closed casket funeral." With today's episode, it's obvious that Beacon doesn't have an Identifying Grimm 101 class. A school training huntsman and huntresses should be teaching all of their students about dangerous grimm, especially the ones that are more metaphysically dangerous, long before they're sent out on even a supervised mission. Sure, they were bickering, and sure they were dealing with the revelations from Jinn, but they were all suspicious that something was wrong with the house. Someone should have gone "hey guys, what kind of grimm causes people to go to sleep and never wake up?" Hell, even Qrow noticed that everyone had given up before he started drinking alcohol like water. That he couldn't draw the connection to the Apathy is a sign that he was never taught about them and never encountered them. I'd call Ozpin criminally negligent, but that seems a bit redundant at this point.