I love Red vs. Blue. I have for a long time now. I wasn’t there when the show started, I actually hopped on about Season 9, but it’s had its hooks in me ever since. I could go on and gush about for awhile about how I think it’s hilarious, how I love the characters, or how I think it has excellent cinematography and shot composition for a Machinima. But honestly, it all doesn’t compare to the narrative and how inspirational I believe it to be.

Let me give some context. I am a amateur novelist. I’ve loved English and creative writing since I was in middle school. I’m also really bad at planning. Outlining isn’t something that I do well, and I’m much more at home thinking on the fly and trying to make what I have work. It’s one of the few things I hated in English classes; the incessant compulsion to think ahead and outline every detail of whatever I’m doing before even getting my foot in the door. I realize this works for some people, and I’m aware logically that its extremely helpful in laying a ground work to lay so the work can stand but the extent I was often told to outline to felt stifling.


It certainly didn’t help that I was constantly told that that’s what good writers do. How planning ahead will lead to more complex and better flowing narratives. It made me feel inadequate. Like I wasn’t doing any of this right. And then my strong sense of self-doubt would over whelm me, and all of my writing would feel choppy and poorly paced, even if I was told that it was fine. I tried to come to terms with extensive outlining, but was only met with a limited amount of success. I learned to not just write with no direction at all, and instead to make rough outlines. But the immense planning that my teachers spoke of was still beyond my grasp.

Then a friend of mine recommended RVB. He said it was his favorite show ever and it was really funny and a whole bunch of other glowing recommendations. I kinda blew him off at the time, but a week later I got sick. His recommendation came back to me while thinking of things to do, and so I started the ten season trek, thinking I’d only make it a few episodes. But to my surprise, it was pretty funny, and I continued my way through it.


Then I hit Season 6: Reconstruction.

Suddenly the show had shifted. Not so drastically that it had changed identity, but almost as if it had shown me more of it’s personality. Like the show trusted me enough to let down its walls and be a little more... well just a little more. I won’t go into detail, but a whole bunch happens that changes the show. Characters settle into being more than whatever the joke requires, plot lines aren’t quite so simple, and there are real emotional moments scattered about that add weight without ruining the show’s typically light-hearted attitude. Not only that, but revelations throughout the season change not only the shows future, but changes the way you can look on its past.


And there is no way in HELL that the producers planned all of it these things that early on.

It was the first thing I’d ever watched that I liked, that I could say beyond a shadow of a doubt hadn’t been planned thoroughly ahead. I’m sure there are others that DID develop like that, but I’d never seen evidence of it. But this? No way. There was no outline for these major reveals within Season 1-3, and I’d be willing to bet they hadn’t been a thing at all until Season 6 was being developed.




Either way though, it gave me hope. It gave me hope that just cause I was more spontaneous in my writing, it didn’t have to mean that everything I did would be horrendous. That I could make something as popular as Red vs. Blue without extensive planning and thinking ahead. Not to say that it told me there is no value in planning ahead, there absolutely is, and I’m still doing my best to plan ahead, but now I do so with less anxiety.