#results might be biased due to the fact that i miss grimm <3

[naivety]

d....david giuntoli....

oh mr grimm my Beloved

Yikes, I Don’t See The Appeal || Not My Type || He’s Alright || I See The Appeal But I’m Different™ || Cute But On Alternating Wednesdays || He Has A Kind Face And That’s Good Enough || Pretty || I— I Love? We Don’t Deserve Him.

send me your favorite average white man and i’ll rate him

[rwby-redux]

Deconstruction

Worldbuilding: History

In hindsight, I probably should have called this topic political sciences, or social studies, or the humanities. Literally any of those would’ve been more accurate than simply calling it history. Sort of shot myself in the foot with that one. Oh, well. I guess we’ll just have to make do.

History (as it’s defined by the Redux) is an umbrella term for human geography, economics, legal systems, global affairs, anthropology, civil rights, technology, and resources. Its primary concern is analyzing how all of these studies shaped the actions of people in the past, and the ripple effects that carried those societies into the present. Being an interdisciplinary topic, it’s nearly impossible to talk about any of these studies in isolation without accidentally overlooking crucial details. Anyone who’s ever opened a history textbook knows that with that complexity comes controversy, and RWBY isn’t exempt from that trend. As we’re told by Salem in the show’s debut, modern-day Remnant was forged by that forgotten past, by the omission of the gods and monsters that set things in motion.

It’s often said that history is written by the victors. And if history is indeed a book, then you’ll quickly find that RWBY’s has pages missing.

Let’s start by laying our cards on the table and talking about what facts we do have. RWBY’s canon can be roughly divided into three vague time periods: the era of Humanity v1.0, prior to the gods’ exodus; the era where Salem and Ozma’s first host briefly ruled together, several million years after Humanity v2.0 evolved; and the era characterized by the aftermath of the Great War, about several thousand years after the collapse of Salem’s and Ozma’s apotheotic kingdom. Anything in-between is obfuscated by the show, either accidentally (due to a lack of worldbuilding) or intentionally (as an attempt to make the series “mysterious”).

My first instinct is to start calling bullshit left and right. There is no justification for spoon-feeding your audience crucial lore through a spin-off series, and then waving your hand and saying that the show doesn’t have the time for worldbuilding. If I had to start pointing fingers, I’d lay the blame on the writers for prioritizing animating bloated fight scenes that ate up the episodes’ already-stunted runtime. I say this knowing that some people will balk at the accusation, because there exists a demographic of viewers that does prefer watching the fight sequences with their brains turned off. And I’m not above that. (I could spend an hour raving about the choreography of the fight between Cinder and Neo, or about the coordination of the Ace Operatives in their takedown of the Cryo Gigas. Believe me, I’m not knocking the absurd enjoyment of spectacle fighting.)

My problem is that RWBY’s premise is so deeply-entrenched in rule of cool that it left its worldbuilding malnourished by comparison.

But fine. Let’s, for the moment, give RWBY the benefit of the doubt. What in-world reasons would the series have for its history being believably underdeveloped? (And no, we’re not talking about the erasure of the Maidens and magic. We know that information was deliberately expunged from the annals of history. We’re focusing on the parts of Remnant’s history that deal with ancient cultures, defunct countries, and influential past events.)

The immediate solution that comes to mind is the Creatures of Grimm. As we’re told by numerous sources, the Grimm not only prioritize attacking humans and Faunus, but they discriminately destroy any of their creations. [1]

“With every alternative form of communication that was proposed, there seemed to be the perfect obstacle. The destructive nature of the creatures of Grimm severely limited the reliability of ground-based technologies.” | Source: World of Remnant, Volume 3, Episode 3: “Cross Continental Transmit System.”

This leads to the conclusion that Remnant’s past was physically destroyed, and any traces of it were removed by the Grimm. This would include archeological records—artwork, architecture, books, clothing, jewelry, burial sites, tools, ecofacts, and so on.

The issue I have with this explanation is that it’s not consistent. Throughout the show we see ample evidence of immediate-past and distant-past societies. The remains of Mountain Glenn and Oniyuri still stand, despite the high presence of Grimm at the former (and the presumed presence of Grimm at the latter). Brunswick Farms is relatively intact and provisioned with food and fuel, even though the Apathy are quite literally hanging out under the floorboards. The Emerald Forest even has the derelict ruins of an ancient temple that Ozpin incorporated into the Beacon initiation.

Petroglyphs (parietal stone-carving artwork) of early hominids fighting a Death Stalker. | Source: Volume 1, Episode 7: “The Emerald Forest - Part 2.”

If the Grimm are RWBY’s get-out-of-jail-free card, then they’re certainly not being used to their full effect. The examples I provided tell us in no uncertain terms that Remnant does have an accessible history in the form of archeological artifacts. For fuck’s sake, Oobleck is literally an anthropologist. He teaches history classes at Beacon Academy and has a PhD on the subject.

Similarly, if we assume the format of World of Remnant (a classroom lecture given by Qrow) to be applicable in-world, then that means the history of the last few centuries pertaining to the kingdoms is common knowledge. [2] The existence of this information tells us that Remnant has a flourishing history, and yet we see little of it represented in the show.

I chalk up the lack of history to a nasty habit of the writers. You see, CRWBY has this infuriating tendency to treat RWBY like “it’s like our world but…” It’s like our world but with magic; it’s like our world but with Dust; it’s like our world but with bloodthirsty monsters. You get the idea. As I said back in the Worldbuilding: Overview, if you make your fictional world a one-to-one analog of your own, you end up either ignoring, underdeveloping, or erasing the history exclusive to that setting. And RWBY is largely bereft of any historical identity that it could call its own. Here, let me pitch a few examples of what I’m talking about:

If slavery was only outlawed less than eighty years ago, why don’t we see Mistral creating legal loopholes to retain the system, like through indentured servitude or penal labor? An empire built on human rights violations doesn’t lose that disregard overnight. While we see plenty of poverty-stricken neighborhoods in Mistral, [3] and we’re told about its infamous criminal underworld, [4] these aspects of Mistrali culture seem rather disconnected from the recent history of the country, and ultimately have no impact on the main characters or the plot.

The Faunus Rights Revolution was a three-year conflict that (presumably) took place across all four kingdoms, and involved countermanding the reparations made to the Faunus after the Great War. From a chronological perspective, this was extremely recent. I know Rooster Teeth has a track record of poorly handling systemic racism. Usually this manifests in characters doing tokenly racist things, like using slurs or refusing to serve Faunus customers. But here’s the thing: a discrimination-based conflict this recent should have more bearing on current events. We should see examples of things like police profiling, higher incarceration rates, a lack of representation in media, social pressure to conceal Faunus traits or assimilate into human culture, fetishization, inadequate healthcare, forced sterilization, a lack of clothing retailers which stock apparel that accommodates Faunus traits, and so on. To put it bluntly: Faunus are an underprivileged minority, and immediate history should be influencing how that plays out in the show.

To reiterate: the Great War was eighty years ago. Meaning that there are likely still people alive that fought during it. How have their attitudes and beliefs shaped the world in the last few decades? Did they pass on any lingering hostilities or biases to their family members or community? What about in the present-day? Do people from Vale that migrate to Mistral ever deal with bigotry? Do people in Atlas harbor any lingering ideologies from that time? Is authentic pre-war artwork from Mantle considered priceless because most artwork was destroyed during Mantle’s suppression of creative expression? Did immigrants from the other kingdoms help rebuild Atlas’ cultural identity by supplying it with the values that they brought with them? What about shifts in culture? Did kingdoms have to ration resources like sugar or cream? Did this result in cultural paradigms, where nowadays drinking black coffee is more prevalent as a result of adapting to scarcity?

Because Vacuo’s natural resources were heavily depleted by invading countries decades before the Great War, did this have a major bearing on technology? Does modern Vacuo have wind farms or solar arrays to compensate for a lack of Dust? How does this affect their relationship with other kingdoms? Mistral loves to pride itself on its respect for nature. [5] Does this attitude ever anger Vacuites from the perspective of, “Yeah, I can really see how much you ‘respect’ nature. You respected it so much that you invaded our country and destroyed our oases.”

As you can see, history can’t be idly ignored. It has long-lasting impacts on the people who lived through it, and it continues to inform the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of people to come. What we get instead are traditions that only exist within the relevance of the immediate past, like the color-naming trend that emerged in response to artistic censorship. Anything which predates it, though? Remnant might as well have sprung into existence a hundred years ago with how little its history exists beyond that context.

It’s frustrating and disheartening. We know precious little about Remnant because its history either exists separately from the story (and is delivered supplementarily through transmedia worldbuilding), or it wasn’t developed in the first place. This doesn’t even take into consideration how much the writers deliberately withhold for the sake of artificially creating suspense. (A suspense, I might add, that frequently lacks payoff, either because it gets forgotten by the writers, or the characters never bother to seek out knowledge from available sources, like Ozma. Seriously, why do these kids never ask any fucking questions? They did this throughout all of Volume 5—Ruby in particular, who I badly wanted to strangle when she said “I have no more questions” back in V5:E10: “True Colors.”)

RWBY didn’t even bother to give us a calendar era, like the BCE/CE one used today. Hell, if the writers wanted to buck the system, they could’ve gone with something similar to Steven Universe or The Elder Scrolls, where eras are divided by significant historical events.

Sorry. I swear, I’m done dredging up examples. I’ve already made my point. As we talk about the other topics in their respective posts, we’ll be able to analyze these problems in greater detail.

Trust me. We’ve only just scratched the surface.

-

[1] Volume 1, Episode 1: “Ruby Rose.” Salem: “An inevitable darkness—creatures of destruction—the creatures of Grimm—set their sights on man and all of his creations.”

[2] World of Remnant, Volume 2, Episode 2: “Kingdoms.” Salem: “In the countless years that humanity has roamed the planet, civilizations have grown and fallen. But four have withstood the test of time: Atlas, Mistral, Vacuo, Vale.”

[3] Volume 5, Episode 6: “Known by Its Song.”

[4] Volume 5, Episode 1: “Welcome to Haven.”

[5] World of Remnant, Volume 4, Episode 2: “Mistral.” Qrow: “There's one common thread that links all these people together, though, and that's their respect for nature. Particularly the sea and the sky.”