#rwby fairytales

[lilmissbacon]

What fairytales make up the Schnee family? (Theory/Thoughts)

I'm bored and can't mentally finish any of my other projects right now, so I think talking about something less complicated would be a nice way to try and loosen the mental gate that's refusing to open right now.

Now it's strange that most of Weiss's family don't have fairytale origins when everyone else's families do. Even throwaway characters you see one time will have a fable origin. So I've taken the time to actually come up with 2 groups theories for what I think the Schnee family's fairytale equivalents could be. I believe it's basically been confirmed that their grandfather was Santa, I know that. And I do understand that it's apparently been confirmed that Jacques is meant to be Jack Frost, but considering his character hasn't done anything directly connecting him with that character yet, along with how I think RT is willing to retcon origins (Oscar seemed to be based on Dorothy but then retconed to be Tip from the Oz book (not confirmed, just speculation)), I'm not really a big fan of Jacques being Jack Frost and I don't see why we can't just change his fairytale.

Theory group #1: Winter characters

Jacques = Krampas

I think instead of Jacques being based on a character that's usually categorized as just pretty mischievous, have him based on a fable that's actually more outwardly evil. Granted there are different takes on the Krampus tale, including him and Santa actually being in cahoots, Santa rewording good children and Krampus punishing bad children. It's been a while since I really watched RWBY or the Remnants series, but I do believe Nicholas Schnee and Jacques were work partners for a minute before Nicholas died. As well as the connection of Jacques's abuse toward his kids and Krampus being known for beating children.

Willow = Jack Frost

While I did say Jack Frost is mostly just known for being mischievous, he's a pretty flexible myth, given that no one truly knows the origins of it. He's portrayed as evil sometimes, sure, but the actual myth itself is just an obscure being who spreads frost during the fall to let humans know winter is coming. Willow was also an obscure being for the long time she was never on screen, and you could see this 'spreading frost' aspect as an allegory for Willow giving Weiss the security footage to warn her that danger is coming (ba-dum-cshhhh). Not to mention it is theorized that the Jack Frost myth originates from the Norse deity of winter, Jokul Frosti. Who is also known as old man winter, which is also another title that's associated with Santa Claus himself. Further connecting Willow to her dad. And it would mean Willow is the third person connected to the Schnee's who is based on Norse myth (Nora being Weiss's friend and Fria being based on Freya). Maybe Willow used to be much more mischievous and playful as a kid/teen before Jacques came along; as a way to really allude to her being Jack Frost as well as show how far she's fallen from grace.

Winter = the Snow Queen

Pretty sure most people have theorized this and it just makes the most sense. Especially now that she's the winter maiden and actively has snow/ice powers (yes all the maidens control in the elements in RWBY, but Winter and Fria clearly favor snow). It would be cool if this meant that Weiss and Whitley doubled as the two main kids, Gerta and Kay, from the Snow Queen tale. Which could also make sense because Kay was a nice boy before a piece of the queen's cursed mirror got lodged into his heart and turned him cruel. Only for Gerta/Weiss to come back and heal his heart. Winter having left the Schnee manor (leading Weiss to do the same) and leave Whitley behind, was definitely a large and possibly the first step into how Whitley became as jaded as he was. And as much as Whitley's 'redemption arc' was not done well, Weiss being the cause of him becoming better was what the writers were aiming for.

Whitley = Rudolph the red nosed Reindeer

Look I'm not very well-versed in old or not-well-known fairytales, and considering their grandfather being Santa, there is some connection here 🤣🤣🤣 I could just keep the idea of him being Kay from the Snow Queen but I like thinking too much. Hear me out: a young boy who is isolated for being different, only to use his uniqueness and skills to help save the day. We don't really know how Jacques treated each of his kids when they were younger, but Whitley was left behind by his sisters and he had no way of joining them in their reindeer games because he had no semblance. Only for Whitley to come around, saving the day by sending Schnee airships to save civilians when the grimm were attacking. They could even take it a step further if there ever is a volume 10. Have it start where volume 8 left off; with Winter killing grimm in the sandstorm. Have this intense life or death situation be what causes Whitley to finally unlock his semblance. And the reason he couldn't before was because his semblance is not the Schnee glyphs. Thus him protecting people in this sandstorm with energy shields that look like bubbles of bright red light. Harkening to how Rudolph led his way through the snowstorm with his red light. This all may kinda sound a little stupid but I think it's fun.

Theory Group #2: Snow White characters

Family members in RWBY don't have a trend of being connected fairytale-wise as well. After all, Ruby and Yang themselves are based on Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks, tales that have basically nothing connecting them. And from what I understand, Blake's parents are Jungle Book characters, despite her and Adam being Beauty and the Beast. So it's not like Weiss's family needs to be Snow White characters. However, if their fairytales are not my first pics as above, I think it would be really cool if they were. And we've already seen their butler, Klein, fall into the category of being the seven dwarves to compliment Weiss as Snow White. I clearly don't have nearly as much to say or explain here so let's just get through them.

Jacques = Evil Queen

Just makes more sense as the villainess parent who keeps trying to stop his daughter from being happy.

Willow = Poison apple

Considering she wasn't seen for the longest time, it's easy for an off screen character to just be a reference to something rather than a character (I.e. Summer Rose being based on a poem). And even now that she's had screen time, her main character trait is that she poisons herself through alcohol.

Winter = The huntsmen

The one who has a profession in huntsmen-ship and ultimately protects Snow White from the Evil Queen.

Whitley = Magic mirror

From what we've seen from Whitley, he's definitely the kid in the family who adapts to who he's surrounded by. He was left alone by his sisters with their father and by proxy, started becoming more like Jacques. Not really because he wanted to be, but as a means of survival. And then in volumes 8/9 he's shown to became more sympathetic and even heroic to an extent (I.e. calling a doctor for Nora, using Schnee resources to help civilians, and he + Willow crushing the grimm). Aka; the more time the "heroes" were around him, he became more heroic. His character probably wouldn't keep bouncing around like this depending on his companions, but it comes to show that on screen thus far, he's a character who is reflective of the people around him. And it's not to say that he can't just act certain ways to manipulate the villains in the future, in order to keep this reflective aspect of his character. After all, he just acted more like Jacques as a defense mechanism and to become the favorite child. He was only annoying towards Weiss because she and Winter had left him behind, we never got the chance to see what he was like towards anyone else.

These are just my thoughts/theory for now, let me know what you think.

[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).

[autumnsorbet]

Do u all think Oz made this book

And the book colors have Oz colors on them

And there this person who maybe an oz

And if I think about it his current like-minded soul also is named after these colors

Gold/Golden pine/pine tree

Gold tree there is a gold tree on the book

[diddyspice]

Childhood Friends to Adult Lovers AU when?

[raeezor]

"...I think we're in a fairytale."

[bestworstcase]

the perennial Tai Discourse is really interesting to track bc, speaking broadly, the two major camps are just:

those who focus primarily on ruby’s recollection of her childhood and relationship with her dad (and filter what yang says through that lens such that “i had to pick up the pieces and keep things together when i was five” gets diluted into “yang had responsibilities as a child”)

those who focus primarily on yang’s memories and her arc in v4 (and tend to just ignore or minimize the things ruby says that suggest a positive relationship with tai, in particular often just flat out disregarding how excited ruby is to spend time with or receive care packages from him)

when it’s like. yeah that’s. literally the point. that ruby and yang had profoundly different childhoods.

they’re half-sisters in a story about fairytales and only one of them had a decent dad. rwby is unsubtly interrogating the fairytale archetype of the Evil Stepmother/Dead Mother with raven (not dead, but absent) and summer (villain, presumed dead) and that archetype quite literally requires its counterpart archetype of the Neglectful Father who remarries and tacitly participates in the Evil Stepmother’s abuse of his child from his first wife

tai is as much an exploration of the fairytale Neglectful Father as raven is the Dead Mom and summer is the Evil Stepmother. that’s. a core aspect of the narrative surrounding the rose xiao long family.

the Dead Mom often reincarnates as a bird or tree or similar spirit to watch over her child; rwby turns this on its head by reimagining the Dead Mom as an absent one. raven watches over yang in her bird form because she is too afraid to be meaningfully present; she isn’t dead, but her absence in yang’s life is so complete that she might as well have been, and the fairytale tension between the Dead Mom’s death and her lingering presence is explored through these cramped and inadequate half-measures raven takes in trying to have it both ways.

the Evil Stepmother is a vehicle for making the fairytale heroine miserable; she has no identity nor any reason for her monstrous treatment of the child who is not her own. rwby, again, flips this over with the mystery of summer rose. who was she, really? did anyone know? she was a good stepmom—she loved yang like her own daughter—but now she’s gone. she left. she never came back. she lied. she joined salem. why? what expectations did she feel on her shoulders? what broke her? why did she do the things she did?

lastly, the Neglectful Father must either be a love-blind fool or a weak, contemptible man with no love or loyalty to his own blood; he forgets his motherless child at the behest of his new love. rwby turns this on its head too by rendering tai as a human being—messy, flawed, fully-realized. wicked stepsisters exist for the purpose of being spoiled by the Evil Stepmother in juxtaposition with her cruelty to the first child, who is kind and good because she remembers her mother’s lessons. the fairytale children of these archetypes function as repetitions of their mothers. rwby makes that the central conceit of its spin on the Neglectful Father: what if he loved both the Dead Mom and the Evil Stepmother so much and then both of them broke his heart in mirrored ways, leaving him a single father to both of their children? if he sees raven in yang and summer in ruby, how does that color his relationships with both girls? if you take away the Evil Stepmother but not her daughter, does the Neglectful Father remember his first child? or are people more complicated than that?

and with all three, the narrative engages with these one-dimensional archetypes by constructing complicated, multi-faceted characters on top of them; by tossing the simplistic moral didacticism of a fairytale and presuming, first, that everyone is trying their best, that bad choices can be made from good intentions, and that no one gets it right all the time, or even most of the time. love and profound dysfunction can coexist.

ruby and yang had very different childhoods. that’s the narrative foundation the whole rose xiao long family is built on, because they’re a deconstruction of the archetypal fairytale blended family.

[sir-adamus]

one thing i haven't seen brought up yet re: the Crown is Jax and Gill's claim of being royalty is because of their father's story about how once a generation one person in their family has the crown shaped birthmark (them both having it at their father's insistence is later questioned when Coco notes Gill's looks like a brand, implying she wasn't born with it and her father put it there, or neither of them actually were born with it and it's complete crap) and that they're descended from Vacuo's royal bloodline

well now we have someone in Vacuo who actually knew the last Queen of Vacuo and could confirm/deny the veracity of that claim

[rwbyrg]

What Inspired the Fairytale: Warrior in the Woods as a Rosegarden Allusion

I've broken down Ruby as Little Red Riding Hood, and Oscar as the Little Prince, now I want to analyze the two of them within a canon fable. The very first story within RWBY: Fairytales of Remnant: The Warrior in the Woods.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, I will summarize, or you can read it in the official free preview of the book here. One disclaimer before I get started: I'm not speaking about the animated adaptation here. Something Oz mentions in his fore/afterward of the book is that fairytales often shift and change depending on who it is that's telling the story. The book itself seems to aim to tell the most objective version as possible, whereas in the episode of FToR, it's very clear Tai's experiences and biases greatly influences the way he tells the story. With that out of the way...

The story is about a boy who lives in a village surrounded by a forest that is said to protect its residents from Grimm. One day, the boy ventures into the wood further than anyone would think to look for him. There he is attacked by a monster, the first he has ever seen... Only to be saved at the last minute by a cloaked warrior carrying a curved weapon. He thanks her and asks for her name, but she tells him to leave and not return. He doesn't listen. Every year since the day of their first meeting, he ventures further into the wood hoping he will meet his saviour again. And every time, he is proven right when she shows up and saves him at the last minute. Each year, the boy grows older and wiser, training himself how to fight, bringing the woman gifts as thanks for protecting the village alone and without appreciation all these years. Until one day, the village is attacked by Grimm for the first time in ages. On their next planned meeting, the boy - now a man - fights his entire way through the forest to the hut where she lives, and finds it torn apart and empty. He returns home and tells the villagers her story having taken up the mantle of protecting his people in her place. When asked if he kept going back to see her just because she saved him, he replies (paraphrased): "For that reason, and many more. But I believe she knew the deepest reason of all. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her silver eyes."

Even the summary alone paints a picture very reminiscent of Ruby and Oscar's paired arc throughout the show thus far, but I want to break it down even further. First things first:

The Warrior

She is described as "a fair woman in a flowing (threadbare and tattered) black cape" with a "curved blade" she can spin so quickly it "blurs". Her hair is "almost as dark as the Grimm's, white (ones) standing out as brightly as bone", and in the boy's eyes the first time he sees her, remarks that she is "beautiful and fierce". We know by the end of the story, as well as one of the Grimm fights, that she has silver eyes as well and she tells the boy at one point that she fights alone because she is alone, since all the people like her were killed by other humans. This lines up well with how Silver Eyed Warriors have been hunted by Salem and her forces for generations.

When we compare this to Ruby when Oscar first meets her, it hits all the same marks. He is captivated by her silver eyes the moment he first meets her:

She is fair skinned with black hair (if you include the books illustrations, with a reddish tint), has silver eyes, and a torn and tattered cloak.

There is a point at which the woman also ties a red ribbon around her weapon's handle to hold it in place, which immediately acts as a tie in to Ruby's colour scheme.

Lastly, the boy meets the warrior for the first time in a "moonlit clearing". And we all know how much moon imagery Ruby has associated with her by now, that I really don't have to go over it again.

The Village Boy

There are no photos or descriptions of him within the text, just that he is a boy when we first meet him and is a man by the end of the story after visiting the woman annually 4-5 times. So he is roughly 14, aka the same age as Oscar, for both their first appearances.

What we do know about the boy, is shown in the objects he carries for himself and the gifts he imparts onto the woman in the woods.

The first is a parcel of clothing. It includes some blouses, leggings, a black skirt, some boots... and a new hooded green cloak. Ruby's cloak is red, but as we know both in show with ships like Bumbleby, and thanks to Eddy's bit of trivia in that Reddit AMA a while ago, that wearing the colours of people you care for is a common sign of affection within Remnant. Within this story, the woman dons a cloak in a green colour (something heavily associated with Oscar Pine), whereas within RWBY in V6, it is Oscar who dons Ruby's colour on his shoulders in his outfit upgrade.

The second is the sword the boy forges for himself before their third meeting. It is described as long and thin which immediately calls to mind The Long Memory.

From there, the next gift: a bag full of food.

"She opened the bag and pulled out parcel after parcel. There was honey cake, a strawberry tart, and sweet biscuits. When she unwrapped a stack of fresh-baked cookies, her expression lightened, and her happiness made him happy."

The first bolded example: strawberries are cited by Monty as Ruby's favourite food, and as we know by Ruby's first meeting with Ozpin (which is important given his connection to Oscar), she's a big fan of cookies too.

Now that all the aesthetics and symbolism are out of the way, I want to compare the structure of the two stories.

Separation and Reunions

The Warrior in the Woods, as well as Ruby and Oscar's arc throughout the show (as well as The Little Prince) are stories of absences.

The boy starts his tale without the woman in his live for many years before he meets her. When they do meet, it is for only a moment within a day until they must wait another full year before seeing each other again. When they do meet, at least the first 3 times, the warrior saves him from Grimm attacks. Then, at the 4th time, he runs into no obstacles and is able to sit and talk with her without incident, only for her to disappear shortly before their 5th visit, leaving him to take up her job of protecting the village.

Ruby spends the first 4 volumes of the show not knowing Oscar, but when they meet he, just like the village boy, is in awe of her silver eyes. From there, she saves him from Grimm twice (I imagine we are holding out on the third where she saves him with her silver eyes for a volume we haven't received yet)...

...and they are faced with constant separations and reunions thereafter.

Oscar goes missing in V6E8 only to be reunited with everyone in V6E9...

2. They are separated for much of V7 due to disagreements and other external circumstance, only to reunite and make up in V7E9...

3. They are then immediately split up again, one going down to Mantle and the other staying in Atlas, only to reunited at the beginning of V8E1 (suspiciously after Oscar stares into a fire much like the boy at the end of the story).

4. It is short lived before they split up on different teams AGAIN, which leads to another reunion in V8E10...

5. Only to - you guess it - be separated one more time when Ruby falls into a void, leaving Oscar to think that she died and take charge as the new leader carrying her responsibilities in her place.

Which follows the structure of the original fairytale - at least in numbers - down to the letter.

Beyond that structure, there is also the matter of what both relationships are built upon: the act of taking care of one another.

In the book, the woman explains that she protects the villagers "because she can, because no one else will, and because some people are good, like the village boy, and that gives her hope".

This heavy responsibility the warrior carries is very reminiscent of Ruby's character arc. A leader who feels she can't be a failure, who can't rely on her friends and teammates to share how much this all weighs on her, someone that lost all her silver eyed family and fears for her own fate because of a trait she had no control over. Even going so far as to try and push people away for fear they will end up hurt because of her. Someone that "remembers all the people she saved, and all the ones she didn't".

This is juxtaposed by a boy who was sheltered and safe, far from the dangers of the world, but set out and joined hers anyway. And when he did, he brought her new clothes, a new weapon, some food, and an ear she could tell her stories to. When he explains his motives, he says:

"You've spent all these years looking after us. I thought maybe it would be nice if someone looked after you for a change. Because that's what I can do. Because no one else will."

Which ties into Oscar's character exactly as well. After his conversation with Ruby in V5 about how scary all of this is, his first thought after saying she's amazing, is to acknowledge how hard this must be on her. And from then on out we see him looking after her to the best of his ability, despite his inexperience, time and time again. Protecting her when she's hurt, standing up for her when their friends fight, and baking her a casserole after she's had a tough day.

All of these things tie into what Ozpin cites as the main message of the fairytale in his notes at the end of its chapter:

It is often used as a cautionary tale, intended to discourage children from wandering too far from home on their own, or from relying too much on others to save them. But the most enduring, and I think the most inspiring, aspect of this story is one which many have taken to heart: If you can help others, it is your responsibility to do so. Whether that means fighting evil singlehandedly, or baking cookies (for kindness can be as rare as silver eyes) is up to the reader to decide for themselves. From each according to their own abilities.

Ruby and Oscar are two characters driven by their responsibilities to do something about all the bad in the world, in whatever ways they are able, before they run out of time. While Ruby's main allusion is Little Red and Oscar's is the Little Prince, I think it's really inspiring to see a canon fairytale within RWBY's own universe that relates to their story so well as this one.

[goldenrose-rwby]

A knight and her princess / (prince)

This is my peace for the @rosegardenshipcollab This was so fun to draw!

[fairytale-poll]

ROUND 1D, MATCH 3 OUT OF 16!

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Carrie:

Cinderella’s ball goes badly and she kills a town. What is there not to love?

Carrie is a horror retelling of Cinderella, look it up it's true

Cinder:

She killed her evil stepmother and stepsisters (technically they "adopted" her as slave labor and the narrative treats her as the villain for this but tbh out of all the things Cinder has done, this was the most justified)

She's my wife and I love her and she's also evil but it's okay

She does cool fire stuff and murders people but I think that can be forgiven

I love her. Jkjk uhm she's really cool and while a lot of people say she's an evil Cinderella she's more like a Cinderella who never gets saved and has to save herself. And she's so super cool and charming and a genius. And she kills people sometimes but it's okay because she's very very sad and I think more people should care about her.

Cinderella as a villainess! What if Cinderella wasn't saved by her fairy godmother and instead murdered her step-family and joined an evil witch terrorizing the world? Cinder Fall is a dangerous villainess who has helped topple kingdoms and will do anything to gain power.

This propaganda is just going to be me listing all the ways she fits her Cinderella allusion. Like all of the characters in RWBY, Cinder is an allusion to a character from fairy tales/legend/etc. In her case, CINDERella. She's one of the earliest and most important antagonists, although at first there wasn't a whole lot to connect her to the Cinderella story besides some surface-level references(her name, her superpower being the ability to create glass objects, that one part of the dance arc where she infiltrates a communication tower and has to be back to the dance by midnight when she transforms into a dress), but in the later volumes the Cinderella aspects to her character become way more clear. (spoilers for later parts of the show here on out) People have summarized this way better than I am about to, but basically: She came from an orphanage and was adopted by a wealthy family from from another kingdom(a mom and her two daughters), but was really only adopted so that she could do servant work at the prestigious hotel they owned. The "prince charming" in her story wasn't a romantic interest, but a huntsman(someone who fights the monsters in the world, a career all the main characters go to school to become) who frequents the restaurant in the hotel. He sees her being mistreated and secretly trains her so that when she's 17 she can apply to one of the combat schools and leave her "stepmother and stepsisters." Like all the villains, though, she's like a version of her allusion where things went wrong, so instead of being whisked away by "prince charming" to his world, she ends up in a position where she kills the "stepmom" and "stepsisters," "prince charming" tries to bring her in for murder bc it's his job, and she kills him too. Now a child with nowhere to go, she gets picked up by the main villain, Salem, who acts in the Cinderella allegory as the "fairy godmother" who uses magic to give her "freedom." Except the magic is a parasite monster that gives her certain abilities, most importantly the ability to take the powers of a very select kind of person that Salem needs. This "magic" also has a time limit like the dress and the carriage, except it's the fact that it's a parasite that's slowly consuming her. Cinder thinks she wants these powers because if she's powerful, she can secure her freedom, but has yet to see that Salem is just using her, making her the new "stepmother" in her story(she came close to realizing this, mentally comparing Salem to her "stepmother," but then turned around and threw herself into her quest for power even more). Some people also compare the other characters in Salem's inner circle to a new set of "stepsisters," especially with how none of them like Cinder and wished her good riddance during the period of time she was missing and possibly dead, and that there's subtle competition between all of them for Salem's approval, similar to how siblings can be with a parent. Some people have also said it's possible that Neopolitan played the new "fairy godmother" role during said time where Cinder was on her own, because Neo was able to help Cinder a lot with her illusion powers, including using them on an airbus("carriage"), which was also the scene where Cinder got her outfit change for the new arc. There is also a part in the Atlas arc where she lets the General know she was in his office by leaving a glass chess piece on his desk(like the glass slipper that Prince Charming identifies her with), when she fucked him over earlier in the show with a computer virus with a chess piece logo.

Literally explicitly based off cinderella yet somehow people were shocked when her backstory involved basically being a child slave to her "stepmother" and abused by her "stepsisters". She put up with their abuse for years until they finally crossed the line then she snapped and killed them. But now she's still being manipulated by another stepmother figure. She seeks power because she thinks it will give her freedom. She can shoot fireballs. She has the most outfit changes of anyone in the whole show. She's a poor little meow meow and a girlboss.

Hot

[heyahs]

team rwby as the four maidens

ruby as fall maiden

weiss as winter maiden

blake as spring maiden

yang as summer maiden

— ♡ —

the tale of the four maidens is obviously the story of how ozpin met them. could it be that when he looked at the rwby team at the beacon academy he remembered his old maiden friends? 👀

[scattered-winter]

man. thinking about how jaune wanted so badly to become a hero that he lied and cheated his way into beacon, and eventually did become a literal fairytale hero but at the cost of literally everything

[sunnysunsins]

Oh yeah, i forgot i can post it now Have the maidens painting i did

[rwby-is-the-best]

still cool how ren was able to sense tyrian way before anyone else! maybe he sensed his aura? fox is able to do that (which coco thought was a very advanced technique)

also we still don't know why jaune interests tyrian! he said that after looking closely into jaune's eyes. jaune has a big family; what if tyrian has run into some of them before?

[seasicksilver]

top ten silliest moments you won’t forget

[strqyr]

"but, there was nothing about ascension in the story."

they're so close to getting it. so damn close.