#Very nicely written wiki!! Gets to the point concisely

[cozen]

Whoever wrote the p5 wikis as far as I’ve seen is seriously crazy deep into the details and series

[massive-mythopoetic-mashup]

I hope you don't consider this too prying, but are you strain_of_thought? If so, I love what your doing with RWBY. I've always thought the strongest thing about RWBY were how the allusions played into the characters and story, but I always thought it didn't really use them as much as it should. All of your ideas paint the idea RWBY is using them far more effectively than I thought you could! One question, where do you look for allusions? You make some connections I would never think of.

I _am_ Strain of Thought! I also go by Karma Chimera in some places. This blog was supposed to be for posting concise, thorough, and well-formatted explanations of allusions I’ve found in RWBY, but unfortunately I’ve really had very little time to devote to it over the past two months due to crazy life events. Also, my thoughts on how the big theory should be organized and presented have been constantly evolving, largely as a result of having nice people who humor my attempts to explain it to them, and that’s somewhat held up producing finalized presentations. Most of the G.U.N. theory has been informally described in back-and-forth conversation over on my Discord server, but it’s very, very long and a mess to slog through.I want to be clear, before I get into this: the stuff I talk about on reddit and here and on the wiki and the RT forums and on Discord is not stuff I figured out overnight. I was a passionate but casual fan of RWBY who wasn’t into RT at all and didn’t even start watching the series until late summer of 2016. I was deeply haunted by Pyrrha’s death after finishing Volume 3 and dwelled on it for several months without finding any understanding of it; I wasn't even able to bring myself to watch Volume 4 until the last episode had been posted. Then, about five months ago, I had a sudden epiphany about one character- which in short order lead to another, much much _much_ bigger epiphany about another character that completely changed my perception of the show; since then I’ve been tearing the show apart piece by piece with an obsessiveness that still hasn’t really abated at all. At this point, I have spent many hundreds of hours researching the allusions in RWBY. So please don’t feel bad for not having immediately caught all of the things I point out. I had to _work_ to find them, and I didn’t begin to see them for a long time.That said, let’s talk about that first epiphany.The basic method I use for looking for allusions in RWBY is something you might call the “Cast of Characters” method. First, take a RWBY character who has an overt literary allusion that you're certain of- let's say Penny. Then list all the important supporting characters in the story of the inspirational character who the RWBY character alludes to. For Pinocchio that would be Geppetto, The Blue Fairy, Jiminy Cricket, The Puppet Show Master, The Fox and The Cat, The Coachman, Lampwick, and The Terrible Dogfish. Now, you can’t really tell the story of Pinocchio without having all of these characters also represented in some capacity. RWBY does have some characters who appear to overtly play some of these roles: Penny’s ‘Father’ is Geppetto, Ciel Soleil is The Blue Fairy, and Ironwood is the Puppet Show Master. But other important characters are conspicuously missing- Jiminy Cricket, for example. So go down the list and ask: “Who is playing this necessary role in order for this story to be told?”Doing this successfully often requires a lot of familiarity with the work in question, which means you often have to go back and actually _read_ something you’ve only picked up on through osmosis or adaptations. Sometimes you’re going to need to sit down with some 19th century children’s literature for a few hours before you’ll be able to pick up on the subtle cues that are hidden in RWBY. Reading material _about_ the work, such as Wikipedia articles on the individual characters, can also be hugely instructive.Getting back to Penny Polendina and the search for Jiminy Cricket- who is Penny's conscience? Who tries to answer her difficult questions and guide her morally and keep her out of trouble? Who is a Christ-like figure, especially in their purity of heart? (No, seriously. ‘Jiminy Cricket’ is literally a bowdlerization of ‘Jesus Christ’. Carlo Collodi never named him, simply calling him ‘The Talking Cricket’, so Disney named him after a clean expletive.) Who is repeatedly separated from Penny and ultimately fails to keep her out of trouble but nevertheless provides an example that inspires her and helps her become a much better person in the long run? _Who can jump really high?_Realizing that Ruby Rose is Jiminy Cricket, and that the writers had snuck that right past me in plain sight, was the first forehead slap that made me suspect there was much more to RWBY than what meets the eye. You can take the “Cast of Characters” method and systematically run every character in the show through it; if you do, some startling connections can jump out at you fairly quickly. Also, for RWBY characters with mythological, legendary, or historical origins, there’s often a wealth of supplemental information to be found about their supporting characters outside of their source stories themselves.For another example: Has it occurred to you that there might be important supporting characters in _Joan of Arc_’s story? Reading up on Joan of Arc, you’ll find that she consistently described her visions as always containing the same three saints: Saint Michael, Saint Margaret of Antioch, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria. We can read up on these three saints in turn, and in doing so we learn some interesting facts:Saint Michael is actually the Archangel Michael, revered by military orders as a soldier who is the leader of God’s armies and battles demons, but also paradoxically strongly associated with medicine and tranquil, healing waters. He’s an angel of mercy: he repeatedly prevents deaths, and is specifically named as the angel who provided the ram to prevent Abraham from killing his own son Isaac. Most remarkably, Michael is strongly associated with Christ, and many protestant traditions have held that Michael actually _is_ Christ in his heavenly, pre-incarnation form.Saint Margaret of Antioch was the daughter of a demon-worshipping pagan priest, who abandoned her as an infant when he had a vision that she would become a Christian. She was raised by a Christian nurse who took her in, and became a shepherdess as a teenager. As she grew up she developed a fanatical, virginal devotion to Christ that bordered on romantic fixation. She resisted worldly temptations by a pagan lord who saw her herding and was captivated by her beauty, and she kept her faith through being tortured by him after her rejection. Eventually, she faced and was swallowed by a demonic dragon, but was able to escape from its belly because the cross she wore irritated the dragon’s stomach so much that it vomited her up.Saint Catherine of Alexandria, lastly, is an absurd Mary-Sue even by biblical standards: she is not just a saint but also a martyr, a brilliant scholar, and a _princess_. She brought _herself_ to Christ through study and boldly appeared before the emperor of Rome to rebuke him for his cruelty. The emperor summoned _fifty_ pagan philosophers to argue against her, and she defeated them in debate one after another _and converted them to christianity_, prompting their immediate executions. She was whipped and imprisoned, but hundreds of people came to visit her in the dungeon and she converted all of _them_ as well, including the emperor’s _own wife_. The emperor attempted to use torture upon her, but every torture device used upon her magically broke, including a massive breaking wheel she was strapped to that was specially built to kill her. Even when she was finally beheaded, her body was carried away by angels and placed upon Mount Sinai where God spoke to Moses; there her body remained fresh without rotting, her beautiful hair never stopped growing, and she continuously issued a ‘stream of healing oils’.Are you seeing any patterns here? Can you think of three people in Jaune’s life who exhibit some of these traits? I hope you can! Now understand: I knew basically _nothing_ about Joan of Arc when I started this other than the basic “Hears voices, drives the English out of France, gets captured and burned at the stake.” bits that you can pick up through cultural osmosis as an American. I vaguely remembered her liberating Orleans entirely because of a campaign mission in Age of Empires 2. You ask where I look for allusions- my answer is, I pick a character and just start reading things about them until I feel like I’ve exhausted the resources I know to look at, and then I move on to the next one. Then later I end up coming back for additional passes with a fresh sense of what I’m looking for and what to read, and a better sense of how the show is written, and find even more connections. RWBY has given me ten times the education in western literature that college did, and even if I’m wrong about everything, I still want to thank the creators of the show for that. They couldn’t get me to read the _Iliad_ in school, but I cracked it open and tried my level best for Pyrrha.Not only does taking the thorough approach and investigating seemingly less promising character allusions like Joan of Arc allow you to find layers to the show you’d likely never pick up on otherwise, but finding who _else_ a RWBY character is drawn from besides their overt, top-level allusion often becomes very instructive in understanding them and the ways that they differ from that top-level character. I’ve repeatedly had my perception of a RWBY character completely changed by discovering some lower level allusion that recontextualizes them, and I’ve found paradigm-shifting revelations in sources as diverse as black-and-white 1950s American western films, the works of Dr. Seuss, and episodes of _Sesame Street_. I’ve generally found that the top level character allusion informs a RWBY character’s personality more (and obviously their appearance) but the immediately underlying character allusion has a much bigger impact on their story and character arc- and sometimes there are third and fourth and even _fifth_ level allusions with major impacts on a character. In one case, the layers of significant allusions go down to a _dozen_. What took me almost all of the past five months to realize is that RWBY characters are designed exactly like RWBY weapons: they’re crazy awesome mashup combinations of multiple completely different things that externally _appear_ to just be extra cool versions of one thing, but then at critical moments they perform dramatic, spectacular transformations to reveal other essential aspects of themselves that have existed within them all along.For all the reasons I’ve mentioned already, if you want to be able to perceive the allusions within RWBY, the most important thing is to just experience the world of literature it’s drawn from. In the interest of helping fans do that, I’ve started a regular weekly online film viewing group where RWBY fans can watch and discuss films together whose stories RWBY alludes to. The group is open to everyone and based from my Discord server. If you want to learn more, or maybe just watch some good films, come check it out:https://discord.gg/PMNSfhK

[i-aim-to-overanalyze]

Fanfic writers meme: 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 27, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, and 50 (my question for #50 is: Your favourite character from any of your fandoms (pick one or several characters you like) is writing a fanfic STARRING YOU AS A CHARACTER. Regarding this fact, what kind of fanfic do you think he/she/they are writing about and how would you feel about you literally being in it?)

Thank you so much for sending in an ask! :D

3. Name three favorite writers.

Ahh, this is a toughie! I’m going to list three writers from different fandoms that I admire a lot.

A. Anappleofdiscord from fanfiction.net I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have a tumblr and even tho it’s been forever since I spoken with her personally, she is an awesome person and an awesome writer. She writes for the Hetalia fandom, focusing on gen stuff centering around England and America. If you know anything about the Hetalia fandom, it’s ridiculously rare to find platonic fics about these two and her fics are like the cream of the crop. Her characterizations are on point, her fics are educational and hilarious (and also a rollarcoaster of emotions) plus she pulls off OCs superbly. If you ever check out her fics, tell her that Listenerofshadows sent you ;)

B. Glimare from fanfiction.net I don’t know her personally, but I love her work in the DC fandom. Sadly, she’s since mostly moved on to other fandoms (which is great for her, if the feeling’s not there, don’t push yourself to write fanfic for certain fandoms) but she has a TON of content and it’s all so good. Her most-well known work is a collection of one-shots known as “Daddy, Not Bats”. It’s an AU where Bruce encounters the bat-kids at a younger age and decides to retire to raise them all. It’s sweet, fluffy and angsty all rolled into one.

C. @elfpen from AO3, Fanfiction.net and Tumblr.  I stumbled across her fanfic Reprise when looking for a good star wars time-travel fanfic to satisfy my needs and boy, DOES SHE DELIVER. Most time-travel fics center around the OT era or Obiwan and/or Anakin traveling to TPM, but hers focus on OT!Obiwan traveling back to the era BEFORE TPM. It’s a great fic, I love the characterizations and her OCs are on-point. Not to mention, she also has a lot of other awesome SW and HTTYD content. 

Putting everything else under the cut because this is gonna get long quick!

4. Name three authors that were influential to your work and why.

A. Anappleofdiscord, again. Because she has actually beta’d my work before and given me great writing advice. I haven’t finished Neverlast, nor barely touched on it, but I’m thankful for her influence she’s played on it.

B. It’s hard to pinpoint my inspiration for my writing, because it’s kinda an intuitive thing? Like, I’ll be writing and a phrase comes up and I’m like “I know I stole that phrase from some fanfic lol” but i don’t know which one??? But basically all the fanfic writers I love are legions above me and I admire them all. But I have to say, I’ve started writing more third-person present tense because of a few good fanfics (but I can’t pinpoint which ones) which it’s a rare tense for a novel to pursue but I love the rhythm of it.

6. How did writing change you?

I’ve been writing before I could even write. Basically as a little four-year-old, I’d make pictures and then dictate to my older sister/mom what the pictures were about, essentially creating a storybook out of it. Since writing has been part of my life for so long, it’s so innate to me like breathing air. I know there’s a lot I could improve on writing, but it’s just a freeing way for me to express myself in a clear and concise manner. In real life, I can be awkward in how I word things and I have a tendency to trip over words or don’t fully pronounce my th-s and s-es. Fanfiction is great because I can explore my favorite concepts of a fanfic in a medium that people can enjoy reading in :)

7. Early influences of your writing

Once I discovered reading was fun (I didn’t learn to read until 2nd grade but that’s okay, because once I did I was reading several grades above my level) I devoured books. Some of my favorite books as a child are: PJO, Chronicles of Narnia, Boxcar Children and Black Beauty. I also did some RPG’ing at a young age, which greatly improved my writing as the constant writing at a rapid pace forced my writing to improve exponentially. There were roleplayers that I admired greatly that I imitated because I wanted my writing to be as good as theirs.

10. how do you do your researches?

Google, man, Google. For example let’s say my fanfic is a historical AU. I know a lot about history, but I might look up a historical site to proofcheck my dates or phrases of the time. Fanfic is nice, because it gives you an excuse to rewatch your favorite show if you wanna make sure you nail the characterizations. I might just look at a fan wiki if it’s a minor detail like what’s Ahsoka’s smaller lightsaber called. 

13. Hardest character to write

Oohhh boy! I think everyone can agree that Yoda and Darth Vader are the two toughest SW characters to write for. It’s hard to get into the head of a 900 yr old troll and Vader is just…really hard? Palpatine is also hard not to make him the typical cookie-cutter villian (Which he is, but I’d like to try to give him some depth). I feel like I write a different take of Anakin every time I write a different AU involving him, but I think that’s because the AUs are at different points of his life and also the AU effects his reaction to things.

14. Easiest character to write.

I know it’s contradictory, but Anakin. He’s definitely chaotic good and it’s fun to write that archtype. I haven’t written much Obiwan (actually I have, but I can’t post it until I write the chapters bridging to him :/) but he’s more lawful good compared to Anakin and throwing those two into the same fic is fun to see. Padme is a fun one to write as well as Ahsoka.

17. Favorite AU to write

I have so many AUs so again, hard choice. Gotta say Impetus, since it’s the most I have written for and I love it. It deals more with the traumatizing effects that slavery/the Jedi have inflicted on Anakin plus an even more problematic Palpatine. I didn’t mean to recreate Palpatine in that fashion he’s basically a pedophile in this AU, the characters kinda just made it happen and I ran with it. It was supposed to be a humorous/fluffy what-if but like everything I touch, it’s also angsty ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

19. Favorite fandom to write for

My favorite fandom to write for naturally changes with my interests. I was obsessed with YJ for a while, then Hetalia and now SW. Star Wars is fun to write for because there’s a big audience and it’s pretty easy to find a pocket audience who love the same types of things that you do. YJ will always be my first love. I’m currently writing a fanfic for a YJ fandom event, but I’ve been kinda struggling? I’ve lost my enthusiasm writing-wise even tho I still love it to bits.

20. Favorite Character to Write.

Anakin, probably. It’s funny because I used to never like the PT, but the Clone Wars changed all that. It’s a shame that Lucas went the direction he did for Anakin in PT because TCW uncovered a problematic but likeable hero and I wish we could’ve seen that live-action (It’s not Hayden’s fault btw, the director is the one responsible for what portrayal the actor gives)

27. Best review you ever got.

Okay, so. I used to share an account on FF.Net with a friend and I wrote of a lot of YJ fanfics. One of them was a gen one-shot involving Bart and Jaime that received a good amount of attention. AND A REALLY GOOD FANFIC AUTHOR THAT I ADMIRED AND LOOKED UP TO REVIEWED MY FIC AND I HAVE NEVER GOTTEN OVER IT. I never in a million years imagined that my favorite authors potentially read my fanfics, let alone review/favorite it.

39. Do you want to be published some day?

Kinda. As a kid I’ve always wanted to get published but now I’m not so sure. I’ve never finished any fics other than one-shots and that really has gotten to me. My current goal is to finish at least one of my fanfics but I think I’ve been putting it off because I’m afraid it’s impossible to acccomplish. It’s silly, I know. I just need to do it.

40. Which one of your stories do would you most like to see as a movie/series?

Hmmm….probably my one-shot involving those two bounty hunter OCs. I could just see them trying to survive the universe with the least amount of weird space stuff happening but they seem to get pulled into it anyway. Those two are actually the easiest OCs for me to write, btw.

42. Do you plan or do you write whatever comes to mind?

I’m a weird creature. In life, I like to know things ahead of time. I like things to run exactly the way I planned. I don’t like unexpected variables. but in writing…I rarely outline. I usually write whatever is on my mind. Pure inspiration is awesome…until it runs out and feels like you’re pulling teeth to just to write a single sentence. That’s when I attempt to outline things.

45. Share the synopsis of a story you haven’t published yet

“Whatis love? To a young child slave, it is the words his mother used to caress himafter a brutal beating by their master. It is wrapped in the kisses she givesto each bruise and lullabies that lull him to sleep.” A meta on Anakin’s varying views of love a crappy summary authored by moi

46. Share a scene of a story you haven’t published yet.

Welp. Might as well share from the above fic.

Whatis love? To a young child slave, it is the words his mother used to caress himafter a brutal beating by their master. It is wrapped in the kisses she givesto each bruise and lullabies that lull him to sleep.

Hismaster can freely touch every part of him he wishes. He can say words to him—hecan do anything he like to him.

Hecan say things like, “You know I love you, boy?” and the slave obedientlyanswers, “Yes, master.”

He’sso very young, but he knows that his master’s words and touch are not love.Only his mother’s is. He doesn’t know how to describe it. But he can feel thewarmth behind them, like hovering over a fire on a cold desert night. They arelike a thick blanket made of bantha furs, soft and comforting. They melt awayhis tears and fill his lungs with laughter.

Everyday, his mother tells him “I love you Ani.” and Ani, the slave boy, freelyreplies, “I love you too, Mom!”

Hefollows by her example, smothering her with hugs and tells her silly stories tohear her laughter that rings like the bells at the market stands. Because heknows love is the best medicine to heal anyone. It makes them feel fuzzy insideand they don’t feel so sad knowing someone cares about them.

Hismom gets sad a lot, so he does his best to repel the sadness away. He doesn’tget angry when she’s sad, because she isn’t angry when he’s sad.

“It’sokay to be sad,” She tells him one night as she runs her hands through hishair, “Everyone gets sad, just like how everyone gets angry or happy.”

“Mastersdon’t like it when we’re angry though.” Anakin pouted.

Shepauses; looking down at her son with a sad smile, “No matter what they say,you’re allowed to feel angry, Ani. Bundle it up, and keep it to yourself—andrelease it when they aren’t looking.”

“Areyou ever angry, mom?” He yawned as he snuggled closer.

“Yes.”His mother breathed deeply, and he could feel a bit of her anger—for aninstant.

It ishot—not warm like Love’s fire. No, it burns and consumes him for a moment. Itreminds him of all the bruises and welts that his masters have given him. Angeris selfish and doesn’t love. He doesn’t like seeing the giver of his Love feelthis way. He internally sighs in relief when her anger melts away as he told atale about a funny customer that came in that day.

Hehas never truly felt anger. He flinches from its’ touch and refuses to feel theemotion that his masters are fond of.

50. Your favourite character from any of your fandoms (pick one or several characters you like) is writing a fanfic STARRING YOU AS A CHARACTER. Regarding this fact, what kind of fanfic do you think he/she/they are writing about and how would you feel about you literally being in it?)

I feel like everyone relates when I say I don’t think my life is interesting. I’d pick Cassie from YJ because I feel like she’d be the type to write fanfic. I will say one ironic moment in my life is that I starred in a play as a shy bookworm girl who got the lead role in her school play alongside her crush, the star basketball player, incidentally they ended up together in the end. Everyone irl teased me about this but the truth is….I actually had a crush on the actor himself. We’ve known each other for years and are good friends. And the closest I ever gotten to “kissing” him was a moment in the play where our characters almost kissed before being interrupted by other students. But of course nothing real came of the play and we still remain good friends.  I always note in my head that the hollywood version is that we…would’ve hooked up in the end. I’m sure if I was a fictional character and Cassie shipped me with him and we didn’t get together in the end, she’d be writing a fix-it fic where our pairing is the true pairing in the end. If i wasn’t fictional, I’d feel really weirded out by it. I don’t like fic involving real people in it, especially if it involves ships. I’m almost 90% sure this guy doesn’t have a crush on me and just regards as friends. Which is okay, because I’m not sure if I even want a relationship at the moment.