#i am. ready for the v9 lore drop

[bestworstcase]

Now that you mention it I still have NO idea on how mankind came back to Remnant after the Gods left. Maybe the final stage of Grimm evalution is humanity? Or maybe the 2nd Generation Humans were derived from the Faunus? I'm not sure, it is suspicious though.

i think the most horrifying possible answer is that humans just straight up evolved again,

do you ever think about the probable aftermath of the massacre because i do and it haunts me like

the gods slaughter every person on the planet, including salem, who reconstitutes. then they leave, shattering the moon on their way out

consequently an enormous quantity of moon chunks hammers down on the planet, which in the best case scenario causes a prolonged impact winter and subsequent mass extinction of other species; worst case scenario, depending on how severe and how long the bombardment lasted, we’re looking at ‘everything is on fire everywhere and the oceans are boiling away’ levels of apocalyptic. salem is alive for all of this,

im distraught.

anyway regarding the revival of humankind i have a small fleet of theories gamboling around in my head, including:

1. salem did it. team oz may have forgotten or overlooked the fact that she got dunked into and equally changed by THE POOL OF LIFE too, but i haven’t

2. squints at the very humanlike spirits who inhabit the relics squints at the god of light i have questions (or: this is something of a crack theory but i am not sure i believe the brother gods actually made those spirits, and that the two we’ve met are both wrapped in chains is perhaps more than an aesthetic choice)

3. millions of years pass and myriad different ancestor species convergently evolve in accordance with the cosmic ‘blueprint’ the gods established when they made humans the first time, like carcinization except it’s humankind hdjfhdjsk

4. in order to make humanity, the brothers combined their innate natures and accidentally made something greater than the sum of their parts; that is, while the gods are stronger than humankind as a matter of raw power, metaphysically the dual/harmonious nature of humankind surpasses the broken and strictly dichotomous nature of the gods, and in making humans the gods created something they just aren’t capable of destroying, no matter how many individuals they slaughter. (i think the general thrust of this is likeliest to be what rwby is going for, given the staunchly humanist outlook saturating the narrative + the hopepunk lean)

5. the god of animals is real, has nothing to do with the brothers whatsoever, and is playing silly buggers in the sandbox they abandoned (this is the funniest option we love a god who rocks in after the apocalypse and goes MY PLANET NOW) (realistically though i am doubtful that the god of animals exists in the literal sense) (i have been toying with the theory that the god of animals might actually be the god of darkness, which go hand in hand with the mulling i’ve been doing that the divine ultimatum wasn’t a joint declaration / the brothers have split from each other a lot more than we realize since the massacre; see also, the ‘it is SPECIFICALLY light who will be the final boss’ tinhatting and vague thoughts i don’t think i’ve ever written out properly regarding how dark is, on balance, actually the lesser danger vis-a-vis humankind)

6. the humans on remnant were and aren’t the only humans in the cosmos, and humanity 2.0 actually came from somewhere else (an intriguing possibility given that rwbyj are now somewhere else, plus the girl who fell through the world)

7. all of the above somehow

bonus round: funny u should say that about the grimm because, while i have not the slightest clue where rwby’s going with them, that is in fact EXACTLY how i decided it works for the purposes of the for want of a nail au i’m working on rn—not that humanity 2.0 evolved from the grimm somehow, but that when the brothers made humankind they combined destruction+knowledge and creation+choice and the grimm are straight up just the raw material dark whipped up in preparation for that process. take a person, cut away creation+choice, and you get a grimm; likewise, give a grimm creation+choice and you get a person. i promise to utterly lose my shit if this turns out to be how it works in canon too