#rwby shallow sea

[lilithfairen]

The small-brained HTDM: "Faunus culture what Faunus culture nyeh"

The big-brained FNDM: "Blake being proposed the option of 'simply' being a human or a cat refers to the origin myth of The Judgement of Faunus where the Faunus were created when feuding humans and animals were both turned into Faunus~"

[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

[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.

[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.

[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

[kkglinka]

Awhile back, someone asked me what I knew about jinn that affected my perception of the Relic Spirits. Simply put, the closest analogue RWBY has to jinn as presented in both mythology and religious texts, are the Grimm. Prehistoric creatures who arise from nothing/nowhere, who live in their own groups, stronger and faster than humans, preying on (metaphorical) rot, attracted to negative states of mind, and occasionally marrying a predisposed human woman (points at Salem's "marriage" to the Grimm within the Pool).

The Relic Spirits, are just that, anima. Animism is a religious belief system — not an organized religion — that ascribes spirit or spiritual energy to all living things, many aspects of the world, and sometimes common concepts surrounding human nature. It's considered humanity's oldest belief system, found world-wide, and pretty ubiquitous among indigenous populations. Consider a recovering human population who idealized the capacity for making choices, based on knowledge, that might require destroying past things, in order to create new things. This collective belief could easily have generated the four spirits.

We know that animism is a fundamental aspect of RWBY's worldbuilding, not only because an entire continent name provides that cue, but due to the characters belief in aura and semblances. Aura is manifested anima (spirit, soul), and semblance is more explicit exposure of that soul. Indeed, animism is fairly common in western fiction, though it's never called that. (Such as the Force in Star Wars). Aura is not the only evidence, though. The second clue are the faunus.

We have two competing fairy tale explanations for the emergence of the faunus. One is extremely punitive, focusing on a group of humans and sapient animals being forcibly dominated by an unnamed, horned god. It's the sort of story that humans, within an organized religion centered on the Brothers, would tell. Given that RWBY's core narrative rewards choice, and portrays authoritarian behavior negatively, I feel this version is the less reliable of the two, though it does contain at least one very salient detail.

The second version portrays a group of humans who inadvertently travel to a strange, magical land, and are given a choice. They may enter the Shallow Sea, but doing so will reveal their true nature and thereby transform them. Some of the humans are willing to expose their souls this way, others are not. If this story is more reliable, then it absolutely explains the inheritance of traits among faunus.

Now, I take the entire World of Remnant short about the faunus with an entire shaker of salt because it was narrated by Qrow, with results in a fundamentally unreliable narrator because he's human. He even opens with an admission that information is limited. But back to the Shallow Sea. If traits are aspects of anima, rather than genetics, then it makes sense that two spiritually similar parents would produce a like-minded child, but two spiritually dissimilar parents would produce a unique one, a gestalt of select traits being another animal entirely.

All these examples of anima only appeared after the Brother's left Remnant. This tells us that the planet itself is a wellspring of anima and that infuses all life native to it. While the Grimm are alive, are sapient, and I would argue do have souls, they are not of Remnant. Neither are Salem and Ozma, until his spirit begins hitching rides within the bodies of humans 2.0. And if the Brothers weren't able to create humans with aura, then it suggests they're alien interlopers, though it's possible they're the equivalent of unruly, inexperienced children who eventually went back home. (Witness the two suns within the Ever After).

I do not believe the Brothers created anything beyond the Grimm and Humans 1.0. They came upon a nascent world, brimming with aura, and populated by sapient (talking) animals, and colonized it with complete disregard for whom or whatever might already be in charge. They decided to come up with their own superior being, and ultimately threw a tantrum when their experiment didn't work. Because the planet itself has its own core anima, it's own god... of animals.

Ultimately, humans are just talking animals. If we follow the logic of the Shallow Sea, the faunus are't humans with extra animal parts; humans 2.0 are faunus who are missing theirs because their ancestors balked at exposing their souls in such a fashion. Other World of Remnant videos note that as humans 2.0 spread, they came into conflict with faunus, suggesting the latter were in those regions first, which makes sense if their existence is more harmonious with the planet's core system.

Regardless of who bumped that human population back up, we have already seen one of those missing talking animals in the Ever After, and I think we'll see the God of Animals — the planet's own primary anima — while the protagonists are there. Some tea will be served. The four spirits of human nature will eventually be freed from the shackles imposed by the Brother Light, because they are meant to interact will all of humanity, not enslavement to serve an unwitting jailor. Indeed, Brother Light would not have enslaved the four spirits of human nature if Remnant's anima weren't a dire threat to the Brothers' control.

I think, that when the time comes, the entire planet will face those Brothers and say, "You have no power over me."

[bobauthorman]

I have this weird theory about the Ever After.

In the RWBY Fairy Tale “The Shallow Sea”, the God of Animals brought humans to an island where the ocean changed whoever crossed it to reach the shore into Faunus (AKA, the Little Bit Beastly crowd). This is what one of those people said in the tale:

“The water hasn’t changed us. It has washed away the lies to reveal what we’ve always been, just underneath the surface.”

Now, In the Ever After, we’ve got talking animals who act like people.

And there is also this mysterious entity who offers Ruby, “What if you could leave Ruby Rose behind, shed like an old coat?”

After all, lots of fairy tales are based on real events...

[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?

[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)

[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?