#rwby shallow sea

[strqyr]

why does 'the shallow sea' make such a big deal about grimm not figuring into this story so don't think about them. it does it three times and it certainly feels incredibly deliberate:

(And Grimm. There have always been Grimm. There will always be Grimm. But those creatures don't figure in this story, so just put them out of your mind, if you can.)

(No, not Grimm. Grimm are not alive in the usual sense, nor does anyone want them. Please do put them out of your mind, if you can.)

(Were you wondering whether there were any Grimm on the island in those days? As I've told you, Grimm do not figure into this story, and I wish you would clear them from your mind.)

like, there are plenty of others stories in the book that don't feature grimm, but only 'the shallow sea' keeps mentioning over and over again. it's the constant "i bet you were thinking about grimm when the story never actually mentions them besides these parentheses parts which causes you to actually think about them but really, you shouldn't, so why are you after i put them into your mind?" that's mind boggling to me.

[nightmare-foundation]

Half baked crack theory that I don't particularly believe but think is an interesting concept anyways:

Oz accidentally made the faunus between the time Light gave him his curse and reincarnating.

To explain it, essentially, Light explicitly states that "your kind will come back" when talking to Ozma. Not only this, but there's an established time between dying and reincarnating (him immediately reincarnating in Oscar is implied to be unusual iirc). I doubt he'd remember this in between state either, if anything even happens in this state.

Also, both of the faunus creation myths feel kinda Oz-ish. The shallow sea places an emphasis on individuality and being yourself (something Oz deems is important multiple times), and the judgement of faunus has an emphasis on unity. The animal god himself sounds and feels a lot like Ozpin.

So like, maybe Ozma's soul wandered Remnant for a while as humanity was evolving and somehow he created the faunus (whether accidentally or on purpose somehow).

Who knows lol, I'm throwing this idea out there. I don't really believe it, but it has some weird amount of ground to stand on.

A possible explanation for the faunus creation myths feeling Oz-like is that he could've helped shape their cultures (if he can reincarnate into faunus, which I can't see why he wouldn't).

[qrowpilled]

watching ppl reference the novels and spin off shows while making RWBY theories when i havent read or watched any of them feels like this

[bestworstcase]

Genuine question, but where did you pick up "the Brother cult is a common religion in modern day Remnant" from? At least, I'm pretty sure you've said this before on here; my memory is pretty bad lol.

I'm just curious since I've been rewatching RWBY lately, and i remembered that, and I thought it was interesting bc I never once saw or picked up on anything that would suggest that in canon (unless it's like, a headcanon on your part, in which case feel free to ignore me, I'm not here to needlessly criticize a fun headcanon if that's the case loll, i have my own fantasy religion headcanons bc I'm unhinged abt worldbuilding).

If you don't mind, I want to explain my reasoning/thoughts on why I don't think the Brothers are worshipped on modern Remnant (feel free to pick them apart):

-> Qrow says that "not many people are super religious these days". Mind you, I don't take much stock at all in what characters say, especially not in RWBY (i frequently side-eye characters who speak on the Oz merge who aren't Ozpin himself, Light, or Jinn), but i feel like this would be an odd thing to say if it wasn't true. This is supported by The Shallow Sea fading into just a 'fanciful creation myth', as well as none of the main or even side characters being religious (though it could be bc it's just not important) nor discussing religion. Churches don't seem to be common (aside from the one in v4), and imagery of what seem to be altars are scattered and infrequent. Religion is also never brought up when discussing the kingdoms' governments either. So, so far, Qrows line holds true.

-> When Qrow talks about the Brothers, RNJR never really shows that they recognize the story, or at least that they don't put weight on it, unlike finding out the Maidens are real. They're just like "...okay so why is that important", unlike how I imagine religious people would react to finding out their God(s) are real. Plus, Qrow has to explain it to them; if it was a well known religious story, I'm sure the writers would have written it more like "So, you know [insert religion name]? Yeah, according to Ozpin, that story is real. In case you aren't familiar, let me explain it for you... [insert convenient lore dump for the audience]". Plus, the way Qrow phrases it gives me the impression that it's an obscure story. Weaker point, though, I'll admit.

-> In any of the times that we see what *might* be evidence of religion (i.e. the candles/altar in the White Fang in v4, the church in Ruby's v4 short), there's no religious iconography depicting the Brothers (at least, nothing that I've caught). In general, there doesn't seem to be any dragon imagery in modern Remnant (again, nothing that I've caught yet).

-> It's depicted as a fairytale. When Ozpin asks for Pyrrha's favorite fairytales, the first thing she says is The Tale of the Two Brothers. It's also in his fairytale book, something i feel would've been a controversial (if extremely funny) decision if it was a popular religious story (like if you put Jesus' crucifixion in a book including rapunzel and Cinderella).

-> Also, there's no common sayings including the Brothers (like how fics like to have the characters say "Oh Brothers" and other variations).

-> And, in general, Oz's inner circle really wasn't at all concerned with the Gods or really even the Divine Mandate. All they knew was that the Gods created Remnant, humanity, the Grimm, and the Relics and promptly abandoned Remnant, and that "If someone were to collect all four [Relics], they'd be able to change the world." And that that's "exactly what the enemy wants." So they only know the absolute basics of the Mandate, and the way it's worded implies (to me, anyways) that Oz worded it in such a way that cautioned against collecting the Relics (which is very interesting to me. This also tracks with how he depicts the Mandate in TTOTTB). So in general not even the inner circle feels like Brother/Light followers to me, just Oz followers (in general i imagine the events of the infinite man made him learn that bringing up judgement day is a Bad Thing, considering before bringing it up the Circle flourished, but after spreading the message, it was immediately destroyed. Instant karma. Poor dude). Though this starts leaning into the territory of my theory that Oz actually gave up on his mission (which like, could be wrong, but I'm holding onto it until I'm proven wrong), and I'm sure you don't wanna hear that one lol.

In general it seems to me like there isn't a Brothers-centric religion so far, even though Remnant still has organized religion (albeit uncommon). But I'm honestly not sure if I missed anything? I'm sure as hell not the type to comb through every background to see if I did lol.

Sorry for the long ass ask. Take your time answering, and have fun picking apart my reasoning. Please be nice abt it tho 👉👈 I just want to know your thoughts and if i missed anything that proves it's a modern day religion :)

-🌙

okay. first, at the risk of being condescending: religious people believe that their gods are real. you know that, right? religion is not a big game of play pretend. people who practice religion do so because they believe in it.

yes, religious people can and do experience doubt. but a religious person whose doubting and questioning leads them to conclude their god(s) aren't real don't continue to practice the religion they don't believe in. i mean, they might make an outward performance of doing so if it's unsafe for them to leave and they're likely to keep cultural practices and even moral frameworks--see: ex-christians who are exactly as dogmatic and puritanical about whatever new belief system they've adopted--but people who don't believe in gods don't practice religion. 

this:

They're just like "...okay so why is that important", unlike how I imagine religious people would react to finding out their God(s) are real.

is a fallacy you're making because (i presume) you aren't religious and have never been so; i suspect you just don't have any frame of reference and consequently you're projecting your own skepticism onto the hypothetical religious people in your imagination. to be clear, i don't mean this as a personal attack on you--this is a very normal thing for people to do when we're trying to conceptualize experiences that are profoundly different from our own.

my background though is evangelical christian. i was raised in a staunchly religious household attending church 2-3 times a week; i attended a christian school until transferring to public school in fifth grade; i've been to bible camps and conferences where they teach you how to evangelize to nonbelievers and that kind of thing. i'm not talking fundie cult here, to be clear--this was a relatively-by-evangelical-standards socially liberal and theologically mainstream nondenominational protestant church--but christianity was the central organizing structure of my life until i left home. i'm agnostic and fundamentally disagree with the moral framework of christianity but i know a lot of very devout christians and i'm very familiar with the religious praxis. 

(including what genuine, good faith evangelical proselytization looks like--not door-to-door like what e.g. mormons do, or street corner chick tract fundie cult behavior, which is what non-christians typically think of as evangelism. but that stuff is a tactic high-control religious groups use to strengthen identification with the in-group through rejection and alienation by the out-group--evangelical churches that aren't culty don't do that, and in fact the idea that door-to-door and street corner preaching is an isolation tactic used by predatory religious groups is something that was first explained to me in sunday school by the people who taught me how to evangelize. put a pin in this for now.)

so: i'm not imagining hypothetical religious people when i say this, i'm imagining a few hundred specific religious people whom i personally know and how they would react in an equivalent situation. 

what qrow does in 'a much needed talk' is he sit the kids down, goes "not many people are super religious these days… there's a lot of (false) gods people have made up throughout history, but y'know, these two are real. here's the truth…" and then tells them a simplified version of the two brothers creation myth. 

he doesn't do anything to prove that these two gods, in particular, are real. he gives zero evidence. he doesn't even demonstrate that magic is real. this isn't "finding out" that the gods are real, this is uncle qrow doing a little impromptu sunday school lesson like that's an explanation for why some lunatic attacked us earlier. this is like if some rando tried to grab you on the street and pull you into an unmarked van and i saved you and me and the van guy clearly had some sort of history because he knew my full name so you asked me "WHO WAS THAT GUY. WHAT THE FUCK" and i said okay sit down, the first thing you need to know is that in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth…

regardless of your personal religious beliefs or lack thereof, you would probably go "…what. does this have to do. with the van guy who ATTACKED ME" because that's like, truly a bizarre non-sequitur. but it's not like God Himself is descending from the heavens in a flaming whirlwind to demonstrate his existence. it's just me telling you he's real. 

if you're a christian, in this scenario, that is not in any way a revelation to you. that's akin to, like, "the king of england is real." BIG IF TRUE?--you know this. you already know this. if you are a christian then you believe that the christian god exists and is the one true god. in this hypothetical scenario i'm telling you things you already know and believe foundationally to be true. a devout christian would probably respond more in the vein of "amen! god is good!" but one whose practice is casual--the christmas-and-easter christians--and secular christians would absolutely be "okay and…?" in an equivalent situation to 'a much needed talk.' 

hell, come to that, i'd be asking what this has to do with the crazy guy who tried to kidnap me if i were in that situation. who cares that my dead headmaster was a true believer or whatever i want to know about the guy with the knife! you feel me?

the type of person whom i can imagine making a big deal out of qrow's little creation myth are:

reddit atheist types who cry and scream and shit bricks if they have to talk to somebody who believes in a god; you know. the kind of person categorically incapable of talking about religion in any capacity without at least one sneering "sky daddy"?

someone with no previous exposure to this religious tradition or anything remotely like it. imagine if i were to sit you down and earnestly tell you that the only Real Gods were, like, the hero twins who descended into the underworld to challenge the lords of death to a ballgame. you'd probably be like "HUH??" because hunahpú and xbalanqué are not a cultural reference point you're familiar with in the way that you're familiar with the crucifixion of jesus christ.

like, all religions are fucking weird. the christian gospels are not remotely less weird than the popol vuh, or whatever. you're just familiar with the essentials of the gospel story--even if you're not and have never been christian--because christianity is culturally dominant in the west. and the familiarity makes it normal. unremarkable.

invisible, in a way. 

this is something the writers of rwby really get. if something is normal and ordinary in the world of remnant, the characters don't pay attention to it, even if it's bizarre to the audience. to use a non-religious example, civilians don't know what aura is! it's not common knowledge! we know that because jaune's never heard of it, civilians in vale are shocked and confused when penny stops a truck with her bare hands, and oscar (who has dealt with "occasional grimm" before) has no aura training and doesn't know what a semblance is. but to the rest of the characters, aura is a completely mundane aspect of their day to day lives and they're a little taken aback by characters like jaune and oscar who don't know about it. 

with that in mind, i want to really underscore something about the things qrow tells RNJR in 'a much needed talk' and the way the kids react. 

because. first, qrow gives them the same intro level rundown on the maidens that pyrrha got in v3--offscreen because that's shit the audience has already heard and don't need to be rehashed. the kids are like, "that's a lot to take in," and jaune in particular is like "this is all very sketchy, what the fuck is actually going on." 

THEN, apropos nothing, qrow drops "not many people are super religious but These Two gods are actually real btw" and an abbreviated creation story, with NO proof and NO apparent connection to the maniacal cultist who ranted and raved about his body and soul belonging to his goddess-queen who sent him to "retrieve" ruby for her. and none of the kids express the slightest bit of skepticism about this super out of left field sunday school story, no one is like "what the fuck" or "are you drunk"--ren just goes "okay but how. is that relevant." 

whereupon qrow finally tells them about the relics hidden under the schools and salem wanting them and that BAD THINGS will happen if she gets them. and then, jaune the skeptic goes: "alright, so let's say we believe all this--there really is this crazy evil being behind these attacks, not just some thugs trying to become powerful. why doesn't the world know?"

THAT'S the part he finds outrageous and difficult to believe. not that the two brothers are real, but that SALEM exists. salem. these kids literally JUST got attacked by a lunatic cultist who kept babbling about MY GODDESS HER GRACE THE QUEEN and directly stated that he is cinder's associate and referred to the white fang and torchwick as pawns, but the thing that makes them go "wait but this is crazy and makes no sense" is qrow explaining that there's a malevolent entity called salem who orchestrated the attack on beacon and sent that guy to capture ruby. like, objectively, from a purely logical standpoint, that's the least unbelievable thing that qrow tells them. 

but people aren't rational agents. and one thing this scene does very effectively is establish the relative normality of each major chunk of information through the way the kids react:

maidens? "there are four special people who can do magic without dust? and when they die that power passes on to someone new? that's. well that's a lot to process but. sure."

brothers? "and this is relevant how?"

salem? "that's crazy how could someone like that possibly exist without everybody knowing about it? why should we believe any of this!?"

salem is so fucking far out of their previous understanding of how the world works that they all kind of have a kneejerk "that! can't be real!" response even though tyrian shouted from the literal rooftops that he's working for a 'goddess' who was behind the attack on beacon.

but the maidens? they have a frame of reference for magic--magic is what anyone can do with dust, and ruby…petrified a massive grimm with her eyes somehow a few months ago, so like, it's not THAT unbelievable to accept that an old story about four maidens who can do magic without dust is true, apparently. 

whereas the stuff about brothers… nothing. not one of these kids so much as blinks even though. again, from a purely logical standpoint, the creation of remnant by the brothers is the most fantastical part of qrow's explanation. but the kids don't react that way, because it's normal to them. ergo they're either casual practitioners of brother-worship or brother-worship has cultural hegemony in vale and mistral, where RNJR grew up.

now! it's actually a simple matter of text whether the second possibility is true or not and this is the part of the answer where i have to just say: you're factually incorrect actually. 

-> In any of the times that we see what *might* be evidence of religion (i.e. the candles/altar in the White Fang in v4, the church in Ruby's v4 short), there's no religious iconography depicting the Brothers (at least, nothing that I've caught). In general, there doesn't seem to be any dragon imagery in modern Remnant (again, nothing that I've caught yet).

there is a big statue of the dragon brothers smack in the middle of the train station in mistral. one gold, one dark. very unmistakably a depiction of Those Two. this is in v6 so if you're only up to v4 on your rewatch you can't uh, be expected to remember. (<- i am just unhinged enough about fictional religion i can tell you off the top of my head that yang and ruby swear by God in v1 but the ship captain in v4 swears "by the gods" and i think that church in ruby's character short implies maiden-worship on the basis of the statue of the cloaked young woman in front, details of this kind just stick in my memory for nerd reasons.)

[as an aside why would… the white fang… have an altar to mankind's gods… like. there are no faunus in 'the two brothers' and the culturally dominant religion among faunus is worship of the god of animals, as ozpin notes in his commentaries on 'shallow sea' & 'judgment.' the trappings of religion that we see in the white fang's private spaces are… obviously… god of animals-worship. this feels half a step shy of saying "well the altar in salem's war room doesn't have any draconic iconography, so therefore brother-worship isn't a thing." brother-worship is explicitly not the only religion in existence!]

-> Also, there's no common sayings including the Brothers (like how fics like to have the characters say "Oh Brothers" and other variations).

in v7, 'pomp and circumstance' specifically, ironwood says "brothers know you deserve it" in reference to RWBYJNR receiving their huntsman licenses. and a quick round up from the novels:

after the fall: "thank the brothers you found us," said by a bit character.

before the dawn: "thank the brothers," said by octavia; "by the brothers," said by finn asturias when he learns what his kids are planning

roman holiday: "thank the brothers," said once by neo's mother and once by a bit character. 

there are also general exclamations of "my gods" or "by the gods" and general references to "the gods" both in rwby proper and ancillary materials, with "gods" being in far more frequent use than the singular "God"--gods, plural, doesn't necessarily mean the brothers every time, because qrow does make a point of noting that remnant's people, collectively, worship "dozens" of gods. but it is pretty evident that the dominant religion across the four human kingdoms has more than one god, and the coincidence of that with, taking the novels into consideration, characters from literally every kingdom except mistral which has a honking big statue of the brothers in its train station swear by the brothers… yeah the dominant religion globally is brother-worship. probably not in menagerie. but in the four human kingdoms, yeah. 

-> It's depicted as a fairytale. When Ozpin asks for Pyrrha's favorite fairytales, the first thing she says is The Tale of the Two Brothers. It's also in his fairytale book, something i feel would've been a controversial (if extremely funny) decision if it was a popular religious story (like if you put Jesus' crucifixion in a book including rapunzel and Cinderella).

…and the second is 'the shallow sea,' which is also a religious myth. 'the story of the seasons' is alsowhat we'd call a myth, not a fairytale. 'the girl in the tower' is the only story pyrrha names in that scene that is actually a fairytale per se. in general the delineation we make between "fairytale" and "myth" in the real world, as discrete genres of folklore, doesn't seem to exist in remnant--legends and fairytales scattered in time, and all that. the conceit of rwby is about engaging with fairytale-as-myth, so this is a very intentional blurring; like, this is a narrative where maiden-in-tower IS the creation story, fundamentally. rapunzel is orpheus is prometheus and that's how the world was made.

and that's the kind of thing that we as the audience have to just accept as a fact of the fictional reality, because… like… gestures at 'the shallow sea.' 

ozpin included THAT one in his book of fairytales, too, and in his commentary he explicitly describes it as part of a closed(!) oral tradition whose inclusion he deliberated for fear of being disrespectful. he devotes more than half of his commentary to justifying the choice to include it, and the rest to describing the myth's cultural context to his (presumed human) readers. he asks forgiveness for "overstepping himself." 

and it is very obvious, in the way ozpin talks about 'the shallow sea' in particular and the book generally in his forward and afterward, that his concern is not "it is grotesquely horribly disrespectful to place this profoundly meaningful and important creation myth (of a culture that is not my own) in a collection of frivolous fairytales" but rather "this book is meant to be a collection of profoundly meaningful tales drawn from all of remnant's cultures and i believe this one is too important not to include, but i am also acutely aware that it is a closed tradition to which i do not belong." the latter is still out of pocket, but the simple fact is that a character who so obviously knows that publishing a story from a closed tradition without permission is Not Okay and so obviously feels immensely conflicted and guilty about doing so isn't a character who would blithely denigrate a myth like this by publishing it in a book of trivial fairytales. and a character who would denigrate the myth that way wouldn't agonize over whether it was important enough to be worth violating the closed tradition. 

and then you consider that, out of the twelve stories ozpin put in this book, three are explicitly religious creation myths ('the shallow sea,' 'the judgment of faunus,' and 'the two brothers'), two others are myths describing the origin of natural phenomena ('the story of the seasons' and 'the gift of the moon'), and one is a mythical culture hero ('the infinite man')… so fully half the stories in this book aren't actually fairytales. they're myths. 

so the inclusion of 'the two brothers' is less cinderella-and-christ than it is "here is an eclectic collection of folklore from around the world" in terms of what would be equivalent in the real world; and… like, 'the shallow sea,' 'judgment of faunus,' and 'the two brothers,' the plain text of these stories is clearly and unambiguously religious in nature, and ozpin explicitly discusses them as such. 

his commentary on 'the two brothers,' in particular: "there are many versions of our creation story […] but certain elements are always consistent: they arrived from a realm outside of our own and together created the universe from nothing. and then they left us on our own." and "whether or not you believe in the brothers, or in this story in particular […] like the twin gods, we are intricately connected to each other" and, um:

Even if the gods aren’t real, even if they don’t return to judge us for our deeds, we should act each day as though they are arriving tomorrow. In the end, we will be the arbiters of our fates. We will either create a beautiful, peaceful world and live in harmony together or destroy ourselves and our planet, and the gods will judge what we have chosen.

remember how i said i'm intimately familiar with, specifically, evangelical christianity and what actual evangelism entails? not the deliberately off-putting door-to-door shit but proselytization for the purpose of bringing new people into a church that isn't a predatory high-control group?

the way ozpin talks about the brothers here, and the way qrow talks about them in 'a much needed talk,' is christian evangelism 101.

"not many people are super religious, these days." you know who says this type of thing? like, fucking constantly? evangelical christians. never mind that christianity is the majority religion in the US by a significant margin (66%!)--evangelical christians inhabit a constructed alternate reality wherein they're an embattled minority shining candlelight into a sea of darkness. (many of them accomplish this by deciding that most other christians aren't real christians; the classic protestant move of course being "catholics aren't christian" but your average evangelical takes a dim view of like. any denomination that isn't their denomination and when i tell you the nondenominationals are the worst offenders in this regard... lmao. anyways)

"not many people are super religious [christian] nowadays. people believe in all kinds of different gods and creeds, but there is only one true God"--this is literally just how evangelicals talk. both to each other and to non-believers they're hoping to interest in the church, although the tone depends on who's listening. internal discussions of this nature are strategic in nature--how do we reach people and speak to them effectively in these godless times? what is the right balance between presenting ourselves and our faith honestly while still creating a welcoming and accessible space for people who don't know jesus? how do we share what we believe with people who just don't care? and so forth--whereas the framing with nonbelievers is that it's innate in human nature to crave purpose and meaning and that everyone seeks fulfillment but few ever manage to find it because none of us are born knowing where to look, etc. 

meanwhile in his commentary ozpin is doing a fantasy repackaging of the pascal's wager tactic, which like. i have sat through literal educational films on the rhetorical use of pascal's wager in effective evangelism. "well, if i believe in god and i'm wrong, i'll have lived a good, moral life and lost nothing; if you don't believe in god and you're wrong, hell" is one of THEEEE evangelist talking points. ideally, one used to open a conversation with friends and/or people who have indicated interest in talking about your faith in some way, especially if they ask "what if you're wrong?" because then the idea is to demonstrate that you're not rigidly dogmatic in your faith but instead you've given serious thought to the possibility that you might be wrong, and thus show that you understand and empathize with the nonbeliever's skepticism so as to build a genuine rapport. (whether it *works* that way in practice is highly dependent on like. charisma and actual meaningful ability to click with non-christians, which a lot of devout evangelicals… just can't even when they really earnestly do try, but ozpin as a character does have the charisma and the knack for connecting with people that can make this approach effective at getting irreligious people to give "hey, come to this church thing with me?" a shot.)

i cannot emphasize enough that after the obvious one of "directly openly stated religious beliefs," the reason ozpin and qrow specifically read to me as highly religious characters is because they talk exactly like evangelicals in secular company. they talk about and share their beliefs about the brothers the way i was taught in church to talk about christianity. 

you don't go banging on people's doors or harassing them in the streets. nobody fucking likes that and it makes people not want to go to church. you don't go around with a stick up your butt about the non-christian people in your life not being christian. what you do is treat people with kindness and respect and draw firm boundaries for yourself to keep yourself safe (<- unironically growing up in an evangelical christian household is a huge part of the reason i am SO comfortable just fucking saying no to things i don't want to do and i think this is the one thing that evangelicals really have on a LOCK) while being open and honest and unapologetic about your own faith. you save the bitchy judgmental gossip and fire and brimstone garbage and like, talking about the eschaton for when it's just true believers. 

evangelical christianity is an eschatological religion, by the way. in case you didn't know that. evangelicals believe that we are living in or on the cusp of the end times and the political action of evangelical christians in the united states is motivated in large part by a desire to enact the prophesied conditions that will herald the second coming of christ. for example a lot of evangelicals like trump because they think he's a divine implement of the great tribulation. evangelicals are obsessed with and actively trying to enact the apocalypse. and rwby is straight up the only fictional story i've ever encountered that understands how an eschatological cult operates because you can NOT advertise that shit. it FREAKS PEOPLE OUT. you keep the "i want the world to be riven by unprecedented catastrophe and suffering so i can be taken up to heaven in the rapture while the wrath of almighty god crushes what remains as grapes in a winepress" between yourself and the other doomsday cultists. 

it's not like. SECRET. it's in the bible. but very few non-christians bother to actually read the bible and the ones who do are just not going to have the cultural context to know how very deadly serious evangelicals in particular are about the book of revelation or how much of a core pillar the eschatology is to evangelicalism; meanwhile american evangelicals are knowingly deliberately voting for the apocalypse. similarly,

“We must take back our gifts,” the God of Darkness said. “Reclaim our power and wipe this experiment from existence.”

“I disagree,” the God of Light said. “And we promised to share in the fate of our joint creation.” He gave a mighty yawn. “Let us rest, and when the time comes, we will see what Humanity has become in our absence. At that point, we will judge them. If they are worthy, we will take their forms and walk among them as equals. If not, we will take back our gifts and start over elsewhere. What do you say?”

“Who will decide whether they are worthy?” the God of Darkness said.

“Humanity will make it plain. If they come together in unity and find a way to destroy the evil in the world and within themselves, then they are worthy. If not … we will let them burn,” the God of Light said.

“So shall it be.” The two brothers agreed. But even in rest, they needed some distance from each other. Each dragon transformed himself into a new continent at one end of their world.

And there the dragons still sleep, until the day that the gods will waken, rise, and judge.

ozma's mandate is not a secret. the apocalyptic final judgment is clearly and emphatically spelled out in the myth of the two brothers, which he included in an anthology of tales intended for the general public and annotated to the effect of "i believe this one is true and even if you don't you should act like you do. btw. because it's true" YEAH MAN WE GET IT. 

(he also asserts apropos nothing in his commentary on 'the gift of the moon'--a myth that does not mention the brothers at all--that the sun is a "celestial gift from the all-powerful god of light," so either 'the gift of the moon' is brother-cult doctrine or ozpin is pointing at a myth from another tradition and making it about his god.)

the main difference between ozpin and your average evangelical is that ozpin fears the end times because he doesn't believe anyone will be spared. but his behavior is the same. his way of presenting his religiosity in a way that minimizes and obfuscates the eschatological intention at the core is the same, if not more intense because the material reality of his situation, as the accursed chosen one literally commanded by God Himself to immanentize the eschaton, is a lot more terrifying and desperate. 'the infinite man' is quite literally a veiled autobiographical story about how he figured out that he CAN'T… go around just… TELLING EVERYBODY… that he's MAKING READY FOR THE FINAL JUDGMENT.... because people don't fucking like that and will kill him and put his cult to the sword about it.

that emphatically does not mean that he doesn't still believe in it; it means that he has, in the same way that evangelical christians in real life have, figured out how to code-switch. there's the public face for mixed company where you're friendly and humble and make a concerted effort to live by the virtues of your faith while being open and unapologetic about your religious identity while maintaining a posture of respectful invitation toward everyone else and engaging in meaningful ways with people you personally know to gently encourage them to explore your faith…

…and there's the private face for when it's just you and your fellow true believers and you're talking in intricate detail about how current world events line up with this or that prophesy about the end times. ozpin in public is the mixed-company evangelical to a T. and ozpin in private with people who have been informed of the whole situation re: maidens, relics, salem is like "i am the divinely-ordained champion of the gods and we must stop her from getting her hands on the relics that My Schools were built as fortresses to defend."

in 'the lost fable' these kids literally hear the god of light say with his whole chest that mankind will be found irredeemable and destroyed if they are "unchanged," and they do not even blink. 3.75 volumes spanning months later, they STILL haven't really registered that the god of light holds the view that not a single person alive on the planet RIGHT NOW TODAY deserves to live. why?

because they knew that part already. not the precise detail of ozma being the one who's meant to decide when the world is fit for divine judgment and actively invite the brothers back, but the final judgment and the need for humans to be United when the day of judgment comes lest they be burned to ashes? They Knew That. it is invisible to them except inasmuch as salem embodies, to them, the danger that mankind will be condemned, because it's normal. regardless of their personal religious beliefs or degree of religiosity, they're all familiar with this story to the point that hearing God Himself promise to exterminate everybody didn't even mildly startle them. they knew. 

like. fundamentally. the story as-written and the way the characters present in the lost fable do not react whatsoever to the divine ultimatum does not make sense unless every single one of them already knew the story about the dragon-brothers who created the world and then departed and will return to judge humanity's worth, to either reward them with completion or wipe them from existence. and because the kids seem to fall in the zone of irreligious to casually religious the simplest and most likely explanation is that there is a global hegemony of brother-worship, akin to christianity in the west. 

taps the sign. and this sign too.

like. in one sense it's a question of your frame of reference and specifically whether you know what deeply religious people are like and how an eschatological religion actually functions in the real world or if your mental model for what this looks like is drawn from, like, pop culture fundamentalist caricatures. i can tell you that the way qrow segues into and tells the brothers creation myth is something i can imagine almost verbatim coming out of the mouths of elders in my parents' church and that ozpin's commentary on the same myth is a point-for-point translation of christian evangelism into his fictional religion. i can tell you that your presupposition that a religious person "finding out" the god(s) they believe in really do exist would feel any kind of surprise or revelation about it is baldly incorrect in a way that leads me to believe you have zero real personal experience with religion or religious people. i can tell you that your presupposition that the secular democratic institutions of government in the kingdoms means there can't be a religious cultural hegemony of brother-worship (or any other religion) is, again, just factually not correct.

but in another and, in many ways, more important sense: rwby is a story about a religious conflict. there are two gods who destroyed the last world and a promised day of judgment that will be ushered in by four divine relics, each guarded by fortresses that act as the central hub for each plot arc, and the overarching narrative conflict is about a power struggle between two people--the immortal agent of rebellion against the gods and the divinely-appointed chosen one tasked with preparing for the final judgment--fighting for control of these relics. that's the plot. 

why are you reading scenes where the characters intricately involved in this power struggle talk about religious matters like the existence of gods and divine relics and divinely-ordained tasks as evidence that these characters… aren't religious? why are you reading actual myths that are textually presented as religious stories as… not a religion? why are you looking at a character commanded by God Himself to unite mankind, who in the present day speaks incessantly of the importance of unity and existential threat of division, who annotates the aforementioned explicitly religious myth with an exhortation to act each day as if the gods will return to judge you tomorrow, and concluding that he… is not religious and does not fundamentally believe in any of it?

what do you think a religion is?

and in this story, of all stories--when the central narrative conflict is overtly a war over divine relics left behind by the gods for the sole purpose of bringing about the final day of divine judgment--why in the world is it your baseline assumption that religion is not something that matters very much within the world of the story? why do you take qrow saying "not many people are super religious these days" completely at face value to mean "most people are agnostic/atheist and religion has no cultural relevance whatsoever" even though the next thing out of his mouth is "but these two gods are REAL" and even though, a single volume prior, his colleague said "what we're telling you goes against hundreds of years of human history, religion" and insinuate that consequently the truth would cause uproar and panic to justify keeping the maidens a secret?

i think that ozpin and his inner circle are religious because they speak and act like it and the core purpose of their "brotherhood" (as they call it) is to safeguard the divine relics while they publish religious myths about their gods and talk about how those gods are real and nothing is more important than keeping the divine relics safe. if it acts and looks and quacks like a duck and repeatedly turns to the audience to say that it believes in ducks, i believe it's a duck. i am not going to say "well it complained one time that there aren't a lot of ducks left in the world, so i think it's actually a chicken." that's nonsense. 

[but-a-humble-goon]

Adam Taurus Stans confuse me. Like, of all characters to die on they chose the Worst Guy in the show, and will swear up and down how cool he is on account of “black and red Iaido sword fighting is cool.”

For the exact same reason they get mad at the RWBY girls for developing outside of their initial seemingly two dimensional personalities. RWBY early on managed to attract the kind of people to its fanbase that subsist entirely on shit like Sword Art Online (or worse). Anime where the girls exist solely to be assembly line waifus distinguishable entirely by a small handful of endlessly repeatable shallow personality types so ubiquitous they literally have their own names

Category:Dere Types | Dere Types Wiki | Fandom Likewise the men exist solely to be avatars of pure, shameless power fantasy. Bland, empty cyphers the male audience can more easily project themselves onto. We call it bad writing, they call it the entire point. A lot of people like to use Jaune as their self insert but he is a gigantic loser and some people aren’t into that. Emphasis on some because the entire harem genre is built on loser protagonists which is why this fandom has so much of that going on. But still a lot of people were waiting for their Kirito. A badass edgy sigma male Gary Stu. Ren's much less of a loser than Jaune but also very much does not fit into that category. Wouldn't you know it though, there is exactly one other relatively age appropriate male character in the show from the start and he totally does meet that criteria if that's what you're looking for. In fact he fits the bill suspiciously well... Before we knew anything about him, before he'd had any screentime outside of the trailer and one five second long ending reveal in Volume 2, Adam Taurus had already been pre-selected as the designated male power fantasy self insert by a huge swathe of the audience. And to be fair that was intentional on the part of the show. It's not an accident that Adam is a walking goulash of things weebs are hardwired to have wet dreams over. The entire point of him was to brutally deconstruct the exact archetype of character he represents. The problem is we're dealing with media literacy on par with the average deep sea invertebrate. So season 3 happens and all the normal people went "oh wow that Adam Taurus guy is a creepy abusive psycho stalker and a complete monster, I can't to see him get his comeuppance" but all of the guys I've been talking about were instead sat there like "...so when does the power fantasy begin?" Then by the time they realized two entire seasons later that they were the ones being made fun of they were already very committed to this character. Channels like Eruptionfang had already put out playlists of media analysis videos examining the complexities of this completely made up version of the character that existed solely in the realm of their imagination who, were he ever real, would be the perfect sigma male antihero they were so desperately waiting for. Bit hard to just accept you were wrong by that point.

[goldenamaranthe-blog]

Jailbreak pt. 2

Guard: Alright, you four. Up and out.

RWBY: (walk out of the jailcell)

Raven: And what have we learned?

RWBY: That the amount of "Find out" directly correlates with the amount of "Fuck around".

Raven: 'Atta girls.

Kali: (sprinting into the jail panting) Gods of the Shallow Sea, am I out of shape! Girls, are you alright?

RWBY: Fine, Mrs. Belladonna/Mom.

Raven: (squints) Kali???

Kali: Raven?????

RWBY: YOU KNOW EACH OTHER?!?!?!?!?!

Kali: Oh! Um....

Raven: Hey, it's good to see you again, Black Cat! You remember those mouse Faunus twins back in Mistral?

Kali: (sweating) All too well...

Blake: MOM!!!

Kali: Blake, I told you I used to have wilder days.

Blake: A ménage à trois! Trois! Three! THREE!!! Not FOUR with one of them being my girlfriend's MOTHER!!!

Kali: (leans over to look at Raven's ass, then looks over to stare at Yang's) I thought those legs looked familiar.

Blake: MOM, NO!!!!

Yang: Wait.... Raven got with your mom?

Raven: What? It was before you were born.

Yang: ......get it, ma.

Kali/Blake: YANG!!!!

[deadbeatbirdmom]

Hello, a question about the artbook. I remember seeing one of your posts about a map of remnant and their concept names, is it alright to know them? And where can I buy the artbook? Thank you.

Hi! Thanks for the ask.

I'll answer the second question first. I got my copy of the art book from the Crunchyroll store, and it looks like it's still available there:

RWBY art book on the Crunchyroll store

Just in case you haven't seen one of the posts where I mention it: the majority of the book's text is in Japanese, including the interviews with CRWBY.

The concept map of Remnant with the place names on it is interesting, it's just definitely not entirely accurate with where places turned out to be in RWBY.

But with that caveat out of the way, sure, I'm happy to share them. Some are tricky to make out because the map's text is tiny (bonus pic of the napkin with sauce stains that inspired the map):

Detailed pics and transcribed place names under a read more cut:

In alphabetical order by kingdom/country:

Anima, containing the Kingdom of Mistral

Roughly from north to south within Anima: SoulCrest Phantom Break Crystal Forest Crystal Chasm Glass Heart Serpent's Cove Mistral Haven (with teams CRBN, NMEZ) Stile Isle Turtle Bay White Mountain Overlook Harlot's Cove Jagged Bluff Sand Flow Burning Coast Obsidian Sea Tale's End

Far to the east of Anima: Sea Fan

Dragon shaped continent, unnamed and presumably uninhabited in canon RWBY.

North to south: Dragon's Eye Thorne Nest Diamon Drop Signal (this is different in canon RWBY, because Signal is the combat school on Patch where Ruby and Yang went before Beacon)

Menagerie, again north to south:

Nora (prototype name for Kuo Kuana?) Menagerie Shallow Sea Siren's Walk

Solitas, with the Kingdom of Atlas, formerly Mantle.

North to south: Deep Frost Atlas (with team name PSCY) Heaven's Spiral Mantle The Ice Crawl

Vacuo, on the west side of the continent of Sanus.

North to south:

Shade (with teams SSSN and WTCH) Sea Bolt Vacuo Fiery Landing White Sand Hatch Mountains Wolf's Den (possibly in the kingdom of Vale) Skull Cliffs (possibly in the kingdom of Vale) Pygmy Reef

Vale, on the east side of the continent of Sanus.

North to south: Watch Point ArrowPort Forever Fall Vale Beacon (with teams RWBY and JNPR) Garden Vale Cliffs Starlight Mist Lake Mermaid Isle

Patch isn't marked on this map, but it's the island west of Vale.

[vaelerys-targaryen]

Watch "RWBY Fairy Tales, Episode 3 - The Shallow Sea | Rooster Teeth" on YouTube

Something for us to watch while we wait for Volume 10

[bonnibellexox]

Snippet from Time Together

“I’m going for a swim. Wanna come?” I wiggle my eyebrows and grin sadistically.

Jaune huffs, contemplating for a moment.

“I’m… I’m not stripping in front of you.” He states, slowly undo his armour while looking anywhere but forward.

“Fine. Strip behind me then.” I spin on my heels and gaze out at the sea, hearing metal and fabric land in the sand.

Unable to resist, I peer over my shoulder at the exposed man behind me. His toned upper body twists and flexes as he unbuckles his belt and slides his pants off. I bite my lip a little…

“Hey! Keep your eyes to yourself missy.” He scolds, stepping clumsy out of his pants and almost tripping over.

“~You’re blushing~” I purr, stepping into the water.

Jaune scoffs and shoves me, throwing me straight into the icy depths.

“Hey!” I yelp, wiping the soaked hair out of my face before he grins and throws himself on top of me, pulling us both under.

When we resurface, we laugh and holler, splashing each other playfully. However, I’m pulled from the fun when something brushes my leg.

“Ah! What was that!” I squeal, repelling away from the offending sensation.

But then I see Jaune, mischief in his eyes and a plan in his mind, as he sinks his nose underwater, watching me like an ambush predator. His fingers brush my shin and I yelp again, swatting his hand away but he creeps in closer and closer, pinching, skimming and grabbing at my legs as I try my best to swim away. His hands climb up my body and pull me in, trapping me against his chest.

“StOP! sTOp IT!” I cackle, snorting involuntarily. And to my surprise, he does.

Instead, arms wrapped around my body, he rests me in his lap with my legs cast to one side as the shallow waves rock us back and forth.

“The water is really nice... I thought it would be freezing, but it’s perfect.” He observes with a hushed tone, gazing up at me.

“I don’t know, I’m still a little cold…” I muse, snaking my arms around his shoulders and drawing our bodies together.

He too gathers me in a little tighter and spreads his hands out over my hip and around my back, holding me flush against him. No closer could we get.

“Better?” His voice is deep, almost drowned out by the crashing of distant waves.

“Yeah…” I smile, melting into his embrace.

He rises up slowly, staring at my lips again. My heart pelts in my chest as he almost closes the gap, his soft breath tickling my skin. Just a little more…

Squawk!

Snapping apart, a large colourful bird grabs our attention as it digs through our belongings and steals various food items. Scrambling through the water, we rush back to the beach, grab Jaune’s clothes, and race up to save our stuff.

Probably for the best…

[sheepydraws]

An absolutely wild theory a friend who doesn't write meta is allowing me to post:

Humans were a joint creation by the Gods of Creation and Destruction. However, The Last Fable makes a point of saying that Faunus didn't exist until after the gods fled, and RWBY has said multiple times that Faunus aren't human or considered, like, a subset of humanity. They're strictly different beings.

If you've read the RWBY fairy tales you know that Ozpin collected two Faunus creation myths. Both reference a God of Animals that was integral to the creation of the Faunus. The Shallow Sea, claims that Faunus are humans who chose to embrace all the things that made them unique. The Judgement Of The Faunus treats becoming a Faunus as a punishment delivered so animals and humans would know what it was like to walk in each others shoes.

Ozpin believes that the difference in the myths is based on prejudice. Of course the story told in Faunus communities celebrates Faunus and the one told by humans demonizes it.

But consider!

There are four relics, and they correspond to Creation, Destruction, Knowledge, and Choice. We also have a god of creation and a god of destruction. The Faunus creation myth always mentions a god of animals, but in one version the god acts as a god of choice, and in the other it acts as a god of knowledge.

What if the God of Animals is actually two gods intertwined? This would explain the discrepancy in the stories, the fluid nature of the god's appearance, it would give us four gods to go with the four relics (and the four maidens, and the four kingdoms, and the four teammates...RWBY is really big on fours) and it would serve as a nice contrast to the diametrically opposed Brothers.

A bit crack-y but Huge If True, you know?

[nyxlarkyn]

Jaunes Rabbit Traits:

I finally have a moment to dive down this rabbit hole I've been plotting ever since I read this post:

What if Jaune has some doormat Faunus genes within his bloodline and enters the shallow sea and grows some bunny ears?

This started out as a crack theory but now I'm kind of getting too into it.

We know during his beacon years Jaune did mirror Velvet, a Rabbit Faunus, via Cardin's bullying.

Secondly, we have Jaunes Pumpkin Pete's illusions (wearing rabbit clothes and eating rabbit food):

(Sidenote: this scene did make me notice his back hair tuffs look like bunny ears.)

Then there's Tyrians interest in Jaune:

Which yes, many speculate his ancestor who originally wielded Crocea Mors fought against Salem in the past. I like to think one of the reasons Tyrians curious about Jaunes relation to them is because that ancestor was a rabbit faunas.

Now I didn't finish RWBY IQ and I don't think I will. I don't remember much of Jaunes bit in it but, a post about the connections of Rabbit Jaune, had this picture, which inspired this post.

And this screenshot is just screaming hidden Faunus DNA to me.

And then the obvious Jackolope Steed

Which made many of us in the fandom aware of his White Rabbit Illusion based on his lack of time which I won't fully go into in this post.

Now I'm not expecting him to become a rabbit Faunus, I'd just think it'd be neat. Especially if Faunus are set up as Remnants minorities I wanna see more of them in the cast, same with people of color. I wonder if we'll get Alyx this Saturday with Jaune?

[vezovoices]

Day 10 - RWBY Tales of Remnant - The Shallow Sea

This one was WAY harder then the last few surprisingly. I I think it was definitely because of the different word choice and I did it a bit earlier in the morning.

I added a DQ 8 song because it hands down one of my favorite games.

[richardsondavis]

I just really hate the current discussion surrounding this fucking small part of the show!!!!

"They emasculated him."

They made him a soft boi so I'll give them that.

"Why do they hate us?"

What the ever flying fuck do you mean?

And I just checked Arkhaven which I didn't know they had a blog and they just always mention that since it's made by the same people that made She-Ra it's automatically bad. They dismiss this shit.

Then again I also dismiss the latest entries in the SCP Wiki and RWBY cause I've experienced first-hand the decline of those series. Although I'm still very, very uncomfortable with strong opinions.

Just goddamn. It's making me self-conscious about what I like. I am limited by my region. I can only access what I can in the seven seas so I won't be able to check out comicsgate or the like and I have seen a comicsgate work, Kamen America and it is dull and I'd probably labeled as a grifter and a woke person and an NPC and all that vile crap for expressing my opinion?

That when I watched my Adventures with Superman, that it was the first time I've enjoyed myself and actually look forward to every week. Are they really going to make me so self-conscious that I must only cater to their fucking definitions OF WHAT IS GOOD!?!?!

Fuck the anti-woke. Fuck the fact that I believed in them. I want to be happy. I kust want to enjoy myself not get fucking mocked for watching a show or thinking something is alright!!!!

I hate it so much i hate it i hate it i hate it

I just want to be free to enjoy what I want

I don't want to keep thinking what would others think of me. What the anti-woke would think of me. Because they would like to kick me out if they ever realize that I don't think like them. That I enjoyed something made by a person whose only descriptor that they have is the maker of the new She-Ra. She's a producer in the new Superman show.

I just want to enjoy myself. I don't want to be stuck in an echo chamber but I also don't want this vile comments that are not directed at me per se but in general but still feels so personal. I just want to be rid of them. Rid of the mindset that I need to have a pre-approved opinion that the people like It'sAGundam, The Critical Drinker, Arkhaven Comics, Vox Day, Geeks+Gamers, BleedingFool, The Movie Cynic, r/KotakuInAction, some anons over at the /co/ board at 4chan, the haters in Instagram of the woke media, and many more.

I want to enjoy what I want and I want to discover that but it's hard to do so when you're faced with a lot of negativity.

That when you enjoy something the anti-woke hates, they'd call your tastes shallow and tell you to consume more smarter media.

I read AoT. It's not that great. Entertaining but not that great. I didn't take much away from that show. If I wanted to learn, I'll watch videos and read articles about that.

I hate how I've programmed myself to revere what the anti-woke says about something. It's a toxic trait. See what the people who'd probably hate my opinions think about so that I may conform to their ideas and mold myself, forcefully, if need be to their standards.

Tried it once. It made me realize that it was stupid. Stupid to conform to the anti-woke.

Get ideas from them, see if they have merit but have your own opinion and be strong enough to take that into account.

I just don't know what to do when someone says my taste is shit. I just want to enjoy myself. Fucking hell.

Why can't I enjoy myself without these fucks raining on my parade?

I am responsible for me.

I am me.

I'm not sure why the sailor moon transformation for Superman is controversial?

It's just dumb fun. I don't get it. I fear I won't get it. Unless someone explains to me who superman is and he is not a soft boi who gets transformations.

I mean in hindsight I'm starting to see why some people are being peeved by it but still. The reaction seems to much. Too very much.

[yangscutebutt]

I have the BIGGEST HEAD CANNON FOR VOL 9.

It all started with reading this…if you haven’t taken a look at this vol. 9 prediction by reddit user u/iamthatguy54 please do

And while im not on reddit i had some opinions about this which lead me down… a rabbit hole. Id love to hear all your comments and thoughts about this!

Alice in Wonderland is a perfect allusion to what happened to the squad at the end of vol. 8. And Yang is Alice, making the other people who also fell into Wonderland characters as well. I have chills writing this you guys!!! Ive taken some screenshots for proof and it is UNDENIABLE.

Lets looks at Alice’s entrance to Wonderland. This is a photo of her decent down the hole which she crawled into

Heres yangs fall! Both long blondes falling in the exact same position. Coincidence, I think NOT.

Then I went to see what the original animations fall scene and i noticed this… do you guys see that!!!!

That is an allusion to Blake! Alice and the cat literally part ways. And Alice starts the decent aloof and confused. Alice then falls. But gently falls down and shes able to inspect the world that is this tunnel/ hole, picking up books, even sitting in a rocking chair momentarily.

Then i saw this gif. While shes falling past all these artifacts we she her breifly pass this…

If you haven’t heard theres a tale called the girl who fell through the earth like OP mentions. I know the diagram Alice passes isnt very clear but to me it looks as though its a diagram explaining her fall, as a fall through the earth. Further aliding to the fairy tale from Rwby.

As you can see at the end Alice falls on her head. And for me I can predict vol 9 to start like this:

Yang will be falling unconsciously. She will regain consciousness during her fall and start to notice she is falling but doesnt know where. She may see things while falling down to e island but have enough time to regain atleast some if not all of her aura back. Even though she’ll be totally aware for her landing she might be distracted and will clumsily land on her head. After falling on her head shell see something in the brush that catches her attention which she follows deep into the forest trying to catch. Only driving her away from the shore and closer to the TREE.

Because of these predictions too, i don’t think they will fall very far apart from one another in respect to time, they will all get there the same day. Unfortunately they will all fall very far away from each other except for Blake and Ruby and maybe Jaune and Weiss.

Okay I hope youre still here because. I wanted to check my theory out a little more. If alice was falling through the earth its safe to say our crew is as well. So i sought out to find if falling from “around atlas” where exactly would straight through go? Now i know that this was inside a pocket dimension so theres no way to say, however. I found these globes of Remnant rendered by another reddit user u/shazarakk.

The first thing to note is that THE WATER IS THE LAND AND THE LAND IS THE WATER!

I hope my labeling is helpful and please know i tried to the best of my ability to be as accurate as possible. I looks for certain geographic locations and if you want to know how i get a certain location id be happy to answer.

I noticed in the map its seems like i couldn’t see Menagerie very well because on the map its Remnants south ish pole?! Making atlas is north pole! At least to me anyway.

Therefore if they fell straight through the earth like depicted by the pole animation in Alice in Wonder, its very possible that they went to the Shallow sea as also speculated in OPs HC. The shallow sea could be menagerie but it could be a pocket dimension near menagerie. And if this is all true there could be the god of animals that we are still yet to meet and maybe our heroines have some knowledge to seek from him and maybe he lives in THE TREE.

So to conclude, because Yang is so heavily alluded to alice in wonderland i think each member who fell will aquire a “new character “ so to say. I havent thought well into who is who but here are some roles to fill

Ruby, weiss, blake, jaune, and neo.

Mad Hatter (neo)

Caterpiller (maybe the god of animals)

Cheshire cat ( i couldn’t guess who this could possibly be. )

White rabbit (i think is on the island when yang gets there and not typical cast member)

The queen of hearts (weiss especially if she fell around the same time jaune and they have to work together)

Tweedle dee

Tweedle dum (jaune is one forsure)

[bestworstcase]

Out of curiosity (and some confusion), how do you think Faunus came about? Unless I'm misremembering (in which case this would be pretty awkward) Faunus didn't exist in the First Wave of Humanity, and given that the two creation myths we're presented with (not even by an actual Faunus) disagree on almost every point I'd be surprised if there was an actual answer-

you’re remembering correctly that the faunus are unique to remnant. also tonight has been one of my periodic episodes of being unhinged about this so here is some Background Reading.

of the two faunus creation myths one is explicitly a very old faunus oral tradition and the other reads to me very strongly as a syncretism with the (human) brother-cult, in that the earlier conceit of freely chosen, joyful transformation and liberation by a wild but benevolent trickster god is retained but presented within an explicit framework of divine judgment and moral imperative to be peaceful and harmonious or else bring about self-annihilation through conflict. which is exactly the sort of cultural evolution that you’d expect to get from refracting ‘the shallow sea’ through the eschatological prism of ‘the two brothers’ and the doctrine of the brother-cult generally.

(for a real historical exemplar of this sort of shift occurring, see the cultural remapping of ambiguous deities in many pre-christian polytheistic traditions onto the christian idea of The Devil; this is fairly ubiquitous but the most generally accessible case is the popular conception of hades as an evil god and hades as hell, whereas in actual practice hades was the god who ruled over hades, which was where everyone went when they died and encompassed a variety of different areas raging from very nice to okay to unpleasant.)

see also: ozpin’s commentaries on ‘judgment,’ which gestures at exactly this phenomenon. “faunus always cast their god as a wise and noble figure, while human stories portray the same god as a trickster, not to be trusted.” he identifies both tales as faunus in origin (& certainly the characterization of the god of animals in ‘judgment’ is more ‘wise and noble’ than ‘trickster,’ although i think ozpin is also showing his own biases here because the god depicted in ‘the shallow sea’ is a trickster who is also very wise, honest, and fair. so ‘wise and noble’ vs ‘untrustworthy trickster’ is something of a false dichotomy, but also one that maps perfectly onto the gods of light and darkness as depicted in brother-cult doctrine.

<- the way rwby Handles religion is really excellent

anyway. i have a theory.

it’s lightly implied that grimm and faunus came first, humans second. (per WOR: there has never been a time in human history without grimm, and faunus have been around as long as humans “if not a little longer,” and there was a historical period when faunus were more numerous than humans.)

which is incongruous with the faunus’ own creation myths, both of which hinge on humans choosing to be transformed into something new by divine power.

salem squares that circle. salem was the last human of the old world, all that remained of humanity, and by extension she was also the first person of remnant. if faunus came to be before humans were revived, and salem embraced the faunus as her own people as discussed in the background reading post, it’s perfectly cogent for the faunus to be older than this humanity whilst understanding themselves as a people who came from humans, because for the very oldest one of them that was true.

which explains the myth, more than the factual history, but i do think it probably gets at the factual history too, because…

mechanically speaking.

what did salem do when she jumped into the pool of grimm? she combined the waters of life (pure creation) with the waters of grimm (pure destruction) into a new kind of being (herself, a grimm-person) in the same pattern as before (herself, a human-person with free will and a dualistic nature).

that’s, uh, how the brothers created humankind. and the jabberwalker. and the cat by combining their magic (dark’s fire, light’s smoke) into new kinds of beings modeled after themselves.

what did salem hope to achieve by rebelling against the brothers? she wanted humanity to “claim the powers of their creators and perfect their own design.”

and she failed but also succeeded in the end because she Did That—in the very literal sense. salem Remade Herself in the pool of grimm; jinn’s framing of the story through ozpin’s point of view elides salem’s agency at every step and implies an uncomplicatedly suicidal motive for jumping into the pool of grimm, but—i mean–

—the blacksmith has been right under our noses this whole time because she’s the form that salem gives to the idea of remnant’s souls. the lore put forward in v9 recontextualizes and clarifies a lot of what happens in the lost fable, not just in terms of the interpersonal history with the brothers but also the reason certain things unfold as they do and (most importantly) where the missing pieces might be.

the god of light’s understanding of balance is wrong. death as permanent unconscious stasis is not the natural order of things, it’s an arbitrary rule the brothers made up, and they themselves are beings from a place where death is a moment of rest and healing before rebirth as yourself again. they made humans in their image. balance is something that happens when things are given the time to figure themselves out.

what happens to the nature of life and death on remnant when the brothers remove themselves from the artificial system they created? it’s not balanced. it’s like a ball perched juuust at the upper rim of a ramp after you pull your hand away: it might not start rolling right away, but if you leave it long enough then something will eventually give it a nudge, whether the wind or the vibrations of a truck passing by or tiny imperceptible movements of the earth, and then that potential energy will be released.

the “death is when you stop and don’t change, forever” system was a ball sitting on a ramp in a room with someone who both really wanted to get the ball rolling and had absolutely nothing better to do than figure out how to give it that nudge. for millions of years.

yeah? here’s salem telling ozma “our souls transcend death.” that’s a surprise tool that will help us later.

the natural order of things, in remnant as in the ever after, is change. changing, it rests. ascension is just how it is in the ever after, meaning it’s in balance, meaning it’s the rhythm the ever after kind of settled into over time. the ball is on flat ground down there, jabber and all.

but the ever after didn’t begin the way the brothers’ world did—it wasn’t created ex nihilo with a specific prescription for how life/death were going to work, it was cultivated into a garden from wilderness. (ascension is the cycle of the harvest: when you have finished, when you are ready, the tree calls you back—you’re reaped—and then the seeds of you are sown and you begin again. this is a life/death system that developed through gardening!)

so it’s silly to imagine remnant’s balance will necessarily look exactly like the ever after’s balance. different beginnings, different variables, different environment. neither the ball nor the ramp are identical, so why in the world would the outcome be the same?

here’s pyrrha chanting that it is in passing we achieve immortality, through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death, i release your soul. that is also a surprise tool that will help us later.

but we can look at the ever after to get an idea of what the “lowest energy state” for the rolling-ball of a life/death system is, practically speaking, because—like i said—ascension is a cosmic repetition of how the ever after was made. the garden is populated by living fruits and blossoms of the tree who are reaped and sown in a continual cycle. the proverbial level ground is a pattern that wears in some grooves for the changing to follow. rivers, to change up the analogy a bit, don’t go flooding around everywhere all the time; the water flows through its channels, generally.

so, what patterns has remnant got, potentially?

death either takes a really, really long time (because it was dammed up for so long, the reservoirs is deep) or happens really fast, in a flood (what happens when a dam breaks?)

dying once makes you infinite (salem drowned in the fountain of creation, and became immortal)

dying twice unbinds you (salem drowned again in the pool of grimm, and remade herself into something new)

the “really fast” way of dying can maybe bind you to someone else, changing both of you in ways you may not like (ozma’s soul is continually recombined with another and he is changed against his will)

penny ambrosius bootleg ascension (i hope ambrosius enjoys his probable eventual new role as the chthonic god of remnant’s very complicated afterlife. he cannot possibly do worse than the guy who built the dam.)

however ozma’s curse gets resolved is likely to complete or alter the existing pattern(s)

gestures at the maidens. that’s a “really fast” way of dying that follows both the ozma pattern (the maidens cleave to new hosts) and the unbinding salem pattern (maidens choose themselves and also do not compromise the free will of the host or corrupt or take over the host’s conscious mind or identity)—maidens are twice-dead because they were cut out from ozma’s soul (<- spiritual death) and their cycle began with the deaths of the first four women who were given this magic.

gestures at whatever the hell is going on with silver-eyed psychopomps and the white liminal space between life and death. ruby’s eyes make her a conduit of some kind for that passage through the void; she hears pyrrha’s and penny’s cries for help (and pyrrha’s last words) after they die, and in the ever after she is haunted by penny’s sword. and the light motivated by her desperation to save people she cares about appears to be the white light that fills the void where life and death both part and come together again.

if death is a reservoir behind a dam and it happens either quite fast or very slow, what—or who—are the floodgates? [checks notes] the biological children of the “really fast” pattern-maker absent the interference pattern of salem. obviously.

notably, ozma’s influence as a pattern-maker is constrained to specific things with a direct spiritual or biological connection to himself, which tracks because his reincarnation sitch is relatively new. (likewise, i expect the penny ambrosius bootleg ascension deal will not have far-reaching effects any time soon; there are much older, deeper patterns at work here.)

salem, on the other hand, is two fucking hundred million years old. probably. on account of plate tectonics. which means that she has a much greater gravitational pull, so to speak, and is most likely to be that pattern that life/death on remnant ‘wants’ to fall into. the ball rolls down; water will flow into the deepest available channel.

so she died and became infinite and then died again in a manner she hoped would “take [infinite life]” away from her (TAKE AWAY FROM AN INFINITE QUANTITY AND AN INFINITE QUANTITY REMAINS. WAS SHE SUICIDAL OR DOING MATH.) and so remade herself.

salem wandered the face of the planet alone, awaiting a death that would never come. then she jumped into the pool of grimm. then ???. then the god of light pulled ozma out of stasis and told him “mankind is no more, but in time they’ll come back” and also he’ll kill everyone again if ozma doesn’t make them obey teach them to live in harmony with each other and stop demanding things from the gods :). THEN ozma comes back and there are human civilizations everywhere and all the faunus he encounters are in cages.

remember how the faunus are older than humankind? tha-at would be our “???” gap between salem crawling out of the grimm pool and light digging up ozma. probably.

you’ve got grimm. there have, as it’s said in ‘the shallow sea,’ always been grimm. they survived the moonfall.

you’ve got faunus. they were created when salem remade herself—the infinite life taken away from her brought them to life, in her image, just as original humans were brought to life by the brothers’ power in the brothers’ image (and of course the power salem has now was the brothers’ power and is now hers). this is maybe not what she was expecting to happen but she’s not alone anymore and, unlike humans of old, the faunus can coexist peacefully with the grimm with salem to mediate.

you’ve got the god of light taking a peek to see if perhaps salem is ready to grovel in repentance yet and going HEY WHAT THE FUCK THAT’S NOT ALLOWED…

…and hastily attempting to get the situation back under control by arranging for the “right” creations (he and his brother’s) to crowd out the ones salem defied him by making (WHEN WILL SHE LEARN HER LESSON!) and for good measure sending her beloved to punish her (SURELY THIS WILL MAKE HER SEE THE ERROR OF HER WAYS. BECAUSE SHE’S DEFINITELY THE ONE WHO’S WRONG.) because he is the god of the sunk cost fallacy first and foremost.

of course, the mere fact of allowing mankind to rise again achieves nothing but completing the “very slow” pattern—humans were dead for a long time and now they’re alive again. whoops! this is what happens when you meddle with forces you don’t understand.

anyway i think probably everyone on remnant reincarnates very slowly, not the way ozma does and also not the way ascension happens. i think when you die in remnant a part of you stays behind—infinite—to wander the face of the planet until it finds a way to guide the rest of you back home, in whatever form that takes. (BUT AS A BABY PROBABLY.) ’cause that’s the salem pattern.

points at the autumn leaf dancing around pyrrha’s memorial statue that guides jaune to see her so he can meet her mother and say goodbye. That’s Actually Pyrrha For Real. maybe. probably. a sliver of her soul left behind to find her way. i think faunus have the same cycle but it’s a bit smoother for them because they were never stuck in the old artificial death-as-stasis system and also this is why faunus genetics are so FUCKING weird, it’s because if you’ve got cat ears the first time you have cat traits forever even if in one of your lives your parents are, like, a crab faunus and a tortoise faunus. possibly children of interracial couples are more likely to be new, hence the more genetically logical outcome of usually inheriting the faunus parent’s animal.

but yeah i think the faunus like popped into existence as a consequence of salem grimming herself. that was my working theory prior to volume nine on the basis of mechanically how humans were created but in light of the v9 lore it’s quite literally the most thematically coherent explanation.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Well, the choice to have the Shallow Sea be overshadowed by the Judgment of Faunus is certainly an interesting one, and I’ll be honest, I’m kinda disappointed since I enjoyed it more. The Shallow Sea was the more stylized of the two and thus needed less story beats to convey the overall idea, but the way it’s framed suggests that this is a more symbolic tale of the homeland they crave, and that the Judgment of Faunus is believed to be closer to the truth. And yet, the episode is still called “The Shallow Sea”, implying that the Sea is the most important part. Hmm....

There’s also a number of choices made here that are interesting. One, the way the first shot is framed similarly to the end credits scene of Volume 8, and two, “They were chosen. But chosen....by whom?”. The god does have a male voice actor, but they are still referred to as “they”, and the design has the horns of both Brothers and two more horns besides. (Four is an important number. Strange how there’s only two gods.) The gods were absent from Remnant when the Faunus came into being, so who made them? Who chose the Faunus?