EFFORTPOST In honor of RoosterTeeth's closure I present my very meta rDrama effortpost — An analysis and overview of RWBY (Alternative Title: The Rise and Fall of RoosterTeeth )

To clarify this post is dedicated to both RWBY and Roosterteeth as a whole. RWBY's lifespan and Roosterteeth's golden age into decline are linked imo so it's a good opportunity to tackle both at once. RWBY's initial success is part of what convinced RT to try becoming a full on production company after all, and the show's post Monty malaise also lines up with RT becoming bloated and ultimately unable to cover their growing expenses.

This will also be a very meta post in which a number of dramatards are quoted and referenced. This is partially to cover gaps in my own knowledge since I'm familiar with RWBY and Red vs Blue but not so much with Roosterteeth's podcasts/channels/non web show employees. I'm also doing it so as to use rDrama as a microcosm for how neurodivergents the internet over feel and have felt about Roosterteeth. In their heydey RT was disproportionately influential to the internet culture of the noughties and early 10's. A lot of the oldstrags here were familiar with their gaming content if not outright fans of theirs, and RvB and RWBY were well known in their day. (The latter often in infamy, but still ) For better or worse this is a topic a lot of us are familiar with.

I've also seen a lot of rdrama questions related to RT and RWBY. Questions like, "Why did RT shit the bed so bad?" and "Why was RWBY ever made?" and "How much irreparable harm has RWBY done to western society?" Hopefully this post will be able to answer everyone's queries.

Destroy the IP, remove all footage from the Internet and aggressively pursue rehosters. I want anyone who even mentions the word RWBY to be sued by Warner Bros.

— @AverageBen10Enjoyer

For those who don't know, RWBY is an American "anime-influenced" 3D computer-animated web series created by Monty Oum (more on him later) and released by RoosterTeeth. RWBY was their first wholly original production unrelated to Machinima and it has since been the flagship of RT's "original IPs". RoosterTeeth itself is a, well, it's sort of a production company but it really started as a handful of dudebros who knew each other and had good chemistry deciding to make Halo parodies at the height of Halo's own popularity in the gaming world. From there the company grew to the point of collapsing under its own weight because of, uh... reasons.

In this post I'll outline the history of both the show and Roosterteeth and explain how their stars rose and fell. Along the way we'll see some guest appearances from some of our favorite users.

RoosterTeeth and Red vs. Blue

I thought Rooster Teeth was like 5 people playing Halo

— @frozengarlic

In the beginning RoosterTeeth was indeed a handful of people who got famous for playing Halo. Btw if anyone knows more than me on the specifics of RT's history then feel free to chime in.

Rooster Teeth Productions, LLC (at least that's what it's called now) was founded in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola, and Joel Heyman. While attending UT Austin Burnie and Matt collaborated with Joel on an independent film This didn't go anywhere but it gets referenced a lot when I look into RT's history so I'm guessing this is how they met or at least when they got used to working together. While working out of college Burnie met Geoff (then named Geoff Fink), Gus, Dan Godwin, and Jason. Their first venture into dudebro content (And I must emphasize that as soy as RT's fandom is now, dudebros were their original audience) was drunkg*mers, a website where they reviewed various video games while drunk. According to Ramsey, the group tried to receive free games to review, but "incurred the wrath" of several game developers in doing so.

Sorola and Burns said that the name was changed from 'Drunk G*mers' to 'Rooster Teeth' because nobody would give games or sponsor something with 'drunk' in the title "because it was so unprofessional." The term Rooster Teeth comes from "cockbite", a memorable bit of dialogue from the very first trailer for Red vs Blue.

Burnie Burns: When we went to make the actual production company we decided to register that, but the state of Texas wouldn't let us register “Cockbite Production Inc.,” so we decided on Rooster Teeth instead.

RWBY's Older Brother

RT's first real production, the 2003 series Red vs. Blue was a Halo machinima — a web show "filmed" in a video game using video game assets and mechanics. Initially there wasn't much plot or anything. It was simply a Halo parody making fun of the classic capture the flag game mode. The main characters were all multiplayer avatars stuck in an endless conflict over their flags, except they mostly stood around talking and lamenting their pointless jobs fighting over a pointless box canyon. It's satirical you see

Stupid "organization" that never deserved any of its wealth, Red vs Blue isn't even funny and they got big off of being the first YouTubers to include — checks list — The minimal amount of editing. Oh, I hate the early internet, where mediocrity = success because everyone else was just dumping their unedited recordings with no commentary.

— @Camembert

If something that even managed to capture the exact spirit of RvB came out nowadays — even if it was based on Fortnite or Helldivers or Palworld or whatever the frick the youngins are playing — I doubt it would make as much of a splash. RvB was right place and right time since it came out in the rising rocket trail of Halo's extreme popularity. Everything Halo got a lot of attention back then.

To give you an idea of the era, other popular Halo web memes include Jon Graham's Master Chief Sucks At Halo in which Master Chief is a literal action figure who speaks with the Microsoft text to speech program

And Randall Glass' Warthog Jumping, which is basically just a gameplay video of peepeeing around with in game physics. This and RvB were actually referenced by Bungie in a Halo: Reach easter egg

RoosterTeeth is one of those names I see all of the time online and I still have zero idea what they actually do.

— @1066_International

Red vs. Blue was only planned for one season but was continued after taking off in popularity. Apparently the first episode got twenty thousand downloads in a day, and keep in mind this series was getting popular back when dial-up internet was still sorta common. Some people would wait like 30 mins for these episodes to finish downloading.

Red vs. Blue would run for many seasons and followed the Halo series itself as it went from Halo 2, to 3, to Reach and beyond. Meanwhile Roosterteeth slowly started up other projects. Apparently their paid premium service actually first started way back in 2003. Over the years this would evolve into the FIRST program, something that allowed paypigs special perks and discounts RT also started working out business deals such as commercials with GameStop. Eventually they started making merchandise and DVDs and sold them through retailers like, again, GameStop. Apparently Joel was a driving force here.

In 2004 RT released The Strangerhood based on The Sims In ‘05 they moved out of Burnie's house and into an office. They attended the Sundance festival They released PANICS based on the game F.E.A.R. and apparently at the request of the Monolith Productions devs. In ‘06 there were "RoosterTeeth comics" and in ‘07 they moved into a fancy Congress Avenue office. They created 1-800-Magic based on the game Shadowrun and Red vs. Blue reached 100 episodes. In ‘08 they created Achievement Hunter (And I might be wrong here but I think that was their first gaming meta channel thing or whatever. Other dramanauts probably know more about this side of the company) They released Stroyent and The Drunk Tank podcast came out. At this point there was actually a pilot for a Red vs. Blue animated series.

And in 2009 they hired none other than Monty Oum as an animator

Extremely Powerful Autism

You watched rwby? Why?

Cuz Monty's final Fantasy/DOA fight videos

— @RICHARD_NIXON_IS_GOD and @eva_isachud

Monty was hired by RT to be the lead animator for Red vs Blue. Now, you may be wondering why Roosterteeth even needed an animator for a machinima. Well, remember the season 1 trailer I posted earlier in the thread?

This is what the show turned into.

(Also notice that the show eventually got a real soundtrack? Jeff Williams was the composer for RvB seasons 8-10 and later worked on RWBY)

I like how you can tell his personality and hobbies just by looking at him.

As for the man himself, Monyreak "Monty" Oum got his start making fan videos. In fact he loved making fan videos so much that he dropped out of high school to make more vidya content. In January 2007, he discovered some reverse engineering techniques online that allowed him to extract models from Halo 2 and, utilizing assets from Super Smash Bros. Melee, created the "ultimate showdown" between a SPARTAN (Halo) and Samus Aran (Metroid) in a video called Haloid. This was followed by Dead Fantasy in which characters from Final Fantasy and Dead or Alive fight.

These videos went viral and a lot of people including some of the zoomer-boomers on this site were already familiar with Monty before he started working on Red vs. Blue.

In a way RWBY would evolve from the cgi action show that Red vs. Blue gradually became, or rather from RoosterTeeth's demand for a serious action IP that they didn't really have since, you know, five guys playing Halo. RWBY was based off ideas that Monty had been developing for years, and working with RT allowed him to propose the show to Burnie Burns during the production of RvB Season 10. Burns, worried for the production schedule, told Oum "If you finish Season 10, then you can do whatever you want."

Not only was Season 10 finished on time, the very first trailer for RWBY debuted shortly after and was attached as a commercial to the end of a RvB episode. From then on countless Americans would be consigned to eventually training out

Fun fact this trailer was supposed to be several minutes longer and the extra content was just Ruby Rose (the character in the trailer) fighting some more. Someone convinced Monty to cut it down.

Also to give some insight into how RWBY was "written" — it's part of Ruby's character premise that her legendary hero mother disappeared when she was very young and she always wanted to follow in her footsteps. As for how this was conceptualized,

When questioned about who was in the grave, Monty replied "I don't know. We just thought it would be cool if she visited a grave." Jeff Williams went on to ask, "What if it's her mom?" To which Monty answered, "That's cool."

As for why Roosterteeth greenlit RWBY in the first place?

So like JonTron -- a simple channel about the vidya became an entire production facility, sponsorship tie-ins, Roombas in the hallways, and they forgot the funny.

— @1

I think RvB's escalating budget and evolution from a Halo parody into a serious action/drama/(sorta)comedy shows RT's intent. It's clear that as they grew someone or other decided it was important to have a real intellectual property under the company's belt. Something that went beyond vidya content. Something that could be licensed out and used for merchandising

To an extent RT did make money off of Red vs. Blue. They sold DVDs and also started producing RvB merchandise. I've always wondered about the exact legal details there since even if RT made the show itself, Microsoft still owns all the, not-quite-sure-what-it's-called, visual rights associated with Halo. Because it started as a machinima the RvB characters wear Halo armor. Use Halo guns. Drive Halo vehicles. In particular I remember the Red and Blue team emblems showing up on merchandise even though these came right out of the game. Microsoft must have looked the other way or maybe they got a cut or something. In any case RvB wasn't entirely original. RoosterTeeth couldn't say it was entirely theirs.

Monty's idea was an opportunity for a new media franchise, and indeed it would become the flagship of RT's properties once the show started to take off.

RWBY

Still the most baffling about [RWBY] is the creator is just an animator

He is just so popular and has power that he "create" the show but humble enough that he is shit at writing so he gave the concept art to 2 r-slur RvB writer to write it. There is a clip of him giving the 2 r-slurs "anime homework" to weebify them to write this "anime".

The whole thing is so embarrassing it single-handedly end my weeb phrase

-- @skitzo

In this section I will describe what RWBY is and how it was made -- God willing I won't sperg too much and this'll be at least somewhat interesting to you guys We'll also explore a brief history of American weebery. Some people on this site have claimed RWBY started this trend, but no. It's only a milestone on a very long road. I'll also attempt to answer why this show went viral and how it became so corruptingly influential to certain sections of the internet

RWBY is sort of a fantasy series, though it's more specifically like those Final Fantasy settings where modern conveniences like firearms and electronics exist alongside magic and monsters. The series is basically a battle shounen with female protags in which the initial plot -- the four main characters are training to fight monsters called Grimm -- is fundamentally an excuse for fighty-fight. The tone of the show is whatever the frick the writers felt like for that episode. I think RT really tried to reach across the aisles for this one to attract as many genre fandoms as possible, even if the result ended up a big fantasy shitpost.

According to Monty, the basic idea of a team of female action heroes each associated with a color came to him in a dream. He told RT employee Kerry Shawcross about this and when it came time to make the show he also recruited Miles Luna. The three were the initial showrunners. Shane Newville is another animator who also worked with Monty on RvB. Dillon Gu joined later for Volume 3. These two animators were later fired from RT in a controversial moment. (And in modern news rumor has it they're interested in the now up for grabs RWBY IP rights)

A true creative Monty had been shitstorming fantasy esque ideas for years and prompty used them to fill out the new series. For example, the "gunchucks" used by Sun Wukong and the character design of Qrow Branwen actually predate the RWBY leads, and even though they're minor characters, Sun's team SSSN was the first to be fully designed. Beta team JNPR was also finished before the protags.

The basic designs for the main characters were drawn up by Monty and further refined by artist Eileen Chang, who Monty was apparently a longtime fan of. The 3D animation models were developed from there. Virtually all RWBY characters were designed under two philosophies. Monty decided each character would be associated with a color as a "hook", an idea possibly inspired by RvB itself. Characters also allude to fairytales, mythology, folk tales, and real historical figures.

I suppose the color rule speaks for itself. It's interesting to wonder if Monty suggested this as a way of tying RWBY into Red vs. Blue when originally pitching the concept to Burnie. It's sort of evidenced by the leading teams (RWBY from Ruby, Rubies are red/JNPR from Juniper, berries that are blue) In that case RWBY's color obsession ultimately descends from the simple multiplayer conventions of Halo.

[Monty] made the world shape by smashing ketchup in a napkin

-- @Jimbo_B_Beterson

As noted by resident white supremacist Hotep RWBY's setting is inspired by fairytales and other old timey lore and draws from a wide range of ideas. Monty pitched the idea for Ruby's character to Burnie as "a badass Red Riding Hood". Sure enough the Grimm antagonists are also based on folk critters, with the ones debuting in Ruby's trailer obviously based on werewolves. Other examples,

Mythology: is based on Achilles, said in some sources to have had red hair and to have once disguised himself as a woman named Pyrra

Folk Tales: is the scorpion who stung the frog. He's an evil assassin because it is simply his nature.

History: Based on Joan of Arc, I guess. Furthering this his season 1 school bully was even inspired by Henry Beaufort, who is commonly said to have overseen Joan of Arc's prosecution

The writers also liked to give some inspirations a darker twist, like and being Rapunzel and female Aladdin, but evil

The signifigance of these allusions is all over the place. Has the backstory of Cinderella if she snapped and killed her step-family, becoming a tragic villain in the process. Meanwhile is based on the Roman god, but the only real connection is that they both run a lot.

On finding the correct tone and inspiration for the series, Kerry Shawcross cited Grimms' Fairy Tales as well as... uh... The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as influences.

RWBY is funny because it was developed like the opposite of a comic book. Instead of having a writer create a script and guidelines that the artists would follow, in this case Monty was the animator and he got scriptwriters to follow his lead in developing and refining the story bits he didn't care enough to manage himself. As mentioned earlier the writers were given anime "homework" so they understood what Monty was going for. This list possibly included the likes of Gurren Lagann, Sword Art Online, Full Metal Alchemist/Brotherhood, Soul Eater, FLCL, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and Akira. Of course Monty himself was working off his many video game influences, Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry, Blazblue, Dead Or Alive, and probably countless others.

Monty came up with major character arcs and plot points, such as Beacon's eventual destruction and Pyrra's death. Otherwise he just did the fight scenes as he saw fit. The scriptwriters came up with everything else, tasked with trying to explain how Fight Scene A would go to Fight Scene B.

Volumes 1 to 3 were animated by the internal animation team of Rooster Teeth's studios in Austin using Smith Micro's Poser software, which Monty had years of experience in. Assets were modelled on Autodesk Maya. Apparently some motion capture was involved but I'm not sure how much. This initial animation was very, let's say, "indie" and often used animation cheats, as an example many background characters in Volume 1 are really just silhouettes and don't have real models. Regarding the design, Oum wanted to "present a two-dimensional, toon-shaded look, but with all of the depth and complexity of a 3D-animated production".

Everyone always says RWBY looks like jank but you have to understand this was all very new and low budget, plus they couldn't just use Halo assets like RvB. Also everything 3D looked like jank back then so people accepted it.

To give credit where it's due, the animation has improved in all these years.

For all their faults one thing RoosterTeeth didn't cheap out on was the soundtrack. Jeff Williams returned to compose the majority of songs all the way to Volume 8.

I don't expect you guys to listen to all that but even just a few seconds makes it clear the show received professional quality music. Many of these songs features vocals by Williams' daughter, Casey Lee Williams. Despite the deep sounding voice she was only fourteen or so when this was made.

Even Carp likes the music

RWBY -- Backwards for You Become a Weeb and R-slurred

What can I say about RWBY other than it ruined this country. I'm not saying it was super bad, or the sole reason we have a bunch of 's running around, but this show is like the Anime community's version of the Rosetta Stone. It transcribed all the tropes of groomime into their pallatable culure.

-- @HOTEP

So now we know Monty made RWBY because of I guess Final Fantasy and RoosterTeeth funded it because they wanted money But why would anyone watch this, right? I will explain exactly why I think RWBY resonated with so many people, because it was undeniably popular for a good long while there

Some blame RWBY for the existence of American animu The spread of weebshit through the Anglosphere truly deserves its own longpost but to briefly sum it up I would disagree and lay blame at the feet of the 90's.

First of all, I'm pretty sure Xoomers were getting their hands on anime even going back to the 80's and that they were forming their secret societies ever since

Second, Toonami was a Cartoon Network programming block that premiered in 1997. A lot of dubbed anime was shown to a wide audience in the United States for the first time through Toonami. Notable examples include Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Voltron, Robotech, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, The Big O, Outlaw Star, Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach. You even had some shorter series like Evangelion and movies like Char's Counterattack

It must be noted that these were simply marketed to kids as action cartoons and were shown alongside western cartoons like ThunderCats, Jonny Quest, and the DC Animated Universe shows. Kids growing up in this era -- the same kids that would be high school/college aged going into the 10's -- didn't seek these animes out because they were already weebs. They were converted because they were unfortunate enough to be watching Cartoon Network at the wrong place and wrong time. They would prostrate themselves before the electric Nip much the same as they'd watch wholesome Anglo programming like Justice League or Ben 10

As for the birth of "American anime", I'm pretty sure we can safely blame Gen X for that. T'was their number who ultimately gave us increasingly anime inspired western media with the 2003 Teen Titans, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Godzilla: The Series, The Boondocks, Megas XLR, and Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! as just a few egregious examples. These aren't shows with animation exported to East Asia to be sure, but properties that intentionally drew from Japanese pop culture even if they were produced by entirely western teams and studios. This was all shown to children right alongside an unprecedented amount of dubbed anime.

Proto-Coomers and Proto-Weebs who didn't know how to watch Anime in 2013

-- @KoreanStragKing

RWBY's timing was well positioned to take advantage of these poor children as they reached their teenaged and young adult years. While I'm sure there was content out there for the savvy, anime whatnot streaming was only just starting to get somewhere by 2013 and wasn't as widely known as it is today. I can see a lot of early weebs being attracted to RWBY when it first went viral and having it be their gateway drug. If RWBY premiered now it wouldn't be anything special, but like RvB it had the perfect timing to be quite novel.

All these years I specifically remember how the Red trailer was attached to the end of RvB's season 10 and how confused a lot of people were in the comments. While many of the classic Halo dudebros didn't make the transition, I'm sure a good chunk of Red vs. Blue fans were willing to give the new series a try as a built in audience. After all RvB itself had ceased being a true machinima by then and RWBY was more of the same for those who liked the cgi.

And of course Monty Oum was well known in some circles and a lot of people came to RWBY just to see what he was up to. He was well respected in nerdom

Furthermore RWBY was kinda brilliant in how it managed to attract both moid and foid neurodivergents through different aspects of its premise.

Sidenote i've noticed that a lot of shows that get the same kind of fandom as rwby have a few features in common (undertale, homestuck, steven universe, MHA etc). I guess the unique character designs (great workout for fanartists) + Barely formed roots of personalities pretending to be complex (perfect to write fanfiction with) can be used as a cheat sheet to appeal to that crowd.

-- @Dahl_Fook

Somehow the moids who made this show figured out the perfect blend of foid-coded cartoon and young adult novel, because RWBY attracted the usual suspects (teh penguin of doom) like flies on a pile of pasture poo. I think g*mergirl types were just inherently enchanted by the pretty colors, female representation, shipping potential () fanfic potential, and JRPG influences they could smell from several spork lengths away The show also has a high school slash boarding school setup not unlike Harry Potter that every YA fan seems to like. It's not a coincidence that everyone remembers the characters being students, many people unaware that the plot ever even progressed from there

But the show also attracted a lot of dudes, and not just future MtFs either. The fight scenes were enough for some. The show's emphasis on weapon autism was another aspect a lot of moids enjoyed. It's not as though tumblrina types care about things like whether or not the main character's bolt action rifle cycles correctly, but I can speak from firsthand experience when I say that it was the littlest of these small details that attracted many moid neurodivergents to RWBY when it first came out. RWBY weapons have as much thought put into them as the characters wielding them and did a lot to reel in the male JRPG crowd.

Plus there are tons of moids who love to watch cute animu girls fighting and if anything were conditioned to feel that way by the above media.

And there are certain moids who came for the "2D art" -- moids that shit up my notifs with their three letter fetishes

Otaku Ouroboros

I bought a licensed cereal of [RWBY] because it was on sale.

-- @911roofer

RWBY generated viral hype from the moment of its announcement and first premiered at a RoosterTeeth convention in 2013. It was popular enough to fill the seating at three showings. Oh and also RT started hosting its own conventions and some people willingly paid money to attend them. RWBY was initially released on both RT's website and YouTube. By mid-2013, the series had reportedly contributed to a 9% increase in views for Rooster Teeth's official YouTube channel. In August 2013, streaming website Crunchyroll announced it would simulcast RWBY. DVD and Blu-ray sales soon followed and the show's success led to a greenlight for season 2 and beyond.

RWBY grew rapidly in these golden years of the mid 10's, an era coinciding with RoosterTeeth at its spendiest Netflix picked up the show going into Volume 3. A spin-off RWBY: World of Remnant released in '15 and the lighthearted RWBY Chibi in '16. This cgi is even more nightmare inducing than the original.

There's also some whatever spinoffs that I don't feel like keeping track of like a DnD campaign. Two video games were released, Grimm Eclipse and Arrowfell. There's also some mobile shovelware like a card game or something.

RWBY also went on to achieve the highest honors a weeb could ask for,

Matt Hullum: This is the first time any American-made anime has been marketed to Japan. It definitely usually works the other way around, and we're really pleased about that... As huge fans of anime, we are honored that RWBY is the first American anime production to be exported to audiences in Japan.

Monty Oum: Some believe just like Scotch needs to be made in Scotland, an American company can't make anime. I think that's a narrow way of seeing it. Anime is an art form, and to say only one country can make this art is wrong.

The show gained a following in Nipland and a dub was released there starting in '14. This was handled by Warner Bros Home Entertainment Japan, which may actually represent the very beginning of RoosterTeeth as a whole eventually coming under WB. RWBY Volume 4 even got a limited theatrical release there.

Eventually the would produce two RWBY mangas

And finally an actual anime spin-off

RWBY characters also showed up in the crossover fighting game BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, apparently because series creator Toshimichi Mori was a personal fan of RWBY. They're notably the only participants in the base game to not hail from a fighting game series already and to have entirely original in game assets made for them.

Back in the west the series would get an official comic book published by DC followed by a crossover with DC characters

The crossover was adapted into one of DC's animated movies.

And let it be known that Kang promised to review these for us. Don't let him forget.

Of course these particular RWBY releases weren't a thing until RoosterTeeth became more involved with DC's parent company Warner Bros. Let's check back up on RT.

RoosterTeeth's Expansion

I think it's Jim Sterling syndrome where you just don't give a shit about gaming anymore and desperately want to pivot to something else that feels more like real journ*lism, but all your opinions are garbage.

-- @Wegkerflurgler

At the time the early 10's seemed like a golden age for RoosterTeeth. As an original property with no Microsoft strings attached RWBY was milked for everything it could have been worth, and the company dipped its toes into anything that might have expanded their internet presence.

In Which RoosterTeeth Tries to "Compete" with Tech Giants

In 2011 they started RTX, a gaming, internet, and all around shitpost convention held every year in Austin, and for a time in Sydney and London too. Your boy here even went to one in '15. (Funny story there, it was completely involuntary ) In '13 RT began a newsletter and started their Extra Life live stream charity. In '15 they opened a division in Los Angeles called Funhaus and made their feature film debut with Lazer Team. In retrospect I do remember RTX being themed around that back when. RoosterTeeth Games was created as the company's very own gaming division and RT also released an iOS app intended as a hub of sorts for their service. ScrewAttack would become a division of RoosterTeeth.

Burnie Burns: We didn't join YouTube until late 2008, because when we first looked at it, honestly, I viewed them as a competitor... Now we're not competing with the PewDiePies and the Homestar Runners of the world. Now we're competing with Netflix and HBO and Amazon. And we're more than ready for that challenge.

As RoosterTeeth grew Burnie at least saw a comparison to the first dotcom boom. He genuinely saw all the tech powers of the time as challenges RT should rise to meet. I can't be sure what the end goal would have looked like -- I mean, what would a RT version of Amazon have looked like? In any case we can see their intent in exanding the company from a small team of dudebros into hundreds of employees, with a greater emphasis on both IPs and "influencer" content. The company also obsessed over its website, app, and FIRST program because they didn't want their users to be using "competitor" websites at all.

In 2014 they were bought out by Fullscreen, an entertainment company which offered cowtools, services, and consultation to social media content creators and brands. Burnie said this provided "the resources and cowtools" to be competitive against other producers. RT's entire business strategy changed from here on and they would never be independent again.

But with the general upward trend of my post, surely RoosterTeeth's prosperity continued into the second half of the 2010's and beyond? Surely things were only on the up and up for them? And RWBY most definitely continued to increase in quality with every new season?

Monty's Death

Man, I miss the old RWBY. Awful non-fight animation, nonsense plot, offensively bad voice acting, but it had the kind of soul only an neurodivergent's passion project can deliver and the fight choreography was downright groundbreaking.

-- @tothenines

In retrospect the history of not just RWBY but RoosterTeeth as a whole climaxed with the sudden death of Monty Oum on February 1st, 2015. He was only 33 years old.

I've heard different versions of the story but this is my understanding. Upon achieving success in the creative industry, Monty further realized he could obtain the dream of every Asian-American otaku. He landed himself a mid white woman

Monty's wife wanted to take in a stray cat she found, but Monty was very allergic to cats. He agreed to go to the hospital and get some kind of allergy shot treatment. Unfortunately he had an allergic reaction to these shots and died in the hospital.

Following this his wife launched a kickstarter and started ethot posting.

It's been said that RWBY with no Monty is like Breaking Bad with no Vince Gilligan or Seinfeld with no Larry David. In any case many people have criticized the show's decline ever since Monty's departure. The "FNDM" (four letters like team RWBY geddit ) has been divided in half ever since and if you ever see a fervent RWBY hater online then there's a pretty good chance this was a Monty era fan that came to hate the show. People who never watched aren't very likely to bring it up. Not unless they lost someone to RWBY's "influence" or something

Meanwhile RT continued with RWBY and a few other original cartoons and an assload of podcasts and programs and other fluff bits of debatable quality. From what I've written so far it would seem RoosterTeeth was on track to becoming an unstoppable juggernaut of internet culture. And yet, they're set to go out of business this year? What could have dragged them down from so great an apex?

As I wrote this post I realized it would have to be a two-parter with Monty's death as a logical stopping point. Hopefully you wonderful rDrama people appreciate this post because if I come back it would be to detail how all this came crashing down. How did Fullscreen lead to RT ending up under Warner Bros? What future might RWBY have? For now you'll just have to stay tuned.

Since this post was very meta -- many dramatards were followers of RT and even RWBY back in the day -- I'd like to close with a funny meta arc in which @Dahl_Fook slowly comes to regret getting pinged whenever someone typed "RWBY".

Eventually it starts to get old.

He also had a now deleted comment where he complained about getting pinged by Bard Bot a lot. Why? Because Bard Bot sometimes lists top ten Bard respecters, I am a top ten Bard respecter, and my username happens to be RWBY

Finally he realizes the error of his ways.