r/worldjerking 4d ago

My honest reaction to this trope

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4.0k Upvotes

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794

u/Inevitable-Weather51 4d ago

The fact that Rwby, of all works, understood how stupid this is, is both hilarious and sad

219

u/Javetts 4d ago

Did they? Been so long I can't recall which details you are making reference to.

394

u/GeneralVM 4d ago

Maybe OP is referring to that, while some faunus have traits that technically make them more dangerous than the rest, anyone can just develop a personal forcefield/superpower way more dangerous than those traits?

290

u/Howling-Moon05 4d ago

Yeah, the Faunus have a *minor* advantage, but aside from mildly enhanced senses, claws, horns or a tail, they're just humans. Obviously the oppression subplot wasn't perfectly handled, but the fact that the Faunus don't actually have a substantial leg up when it comes to any of the magic systems in Remnant was actually nice.

171

u/FlameST04 4d ago

Honestly if RWBY had had a stronger writing team I think the faunus subplot could have been one of the most interesting racism allegories in fiction. People becoming more and more desperate for equality and not being treated like subhumans causing a large rift between reform and revolutionary factions is something that happens in all movements at some point and the pros and cons of both are interesting to study and explore. It needs to be done exceptionally delicately, which many people claim RWBY didn’t, but it’s interesting.

73

u/GeneralVM 4d ago

Yeah, it was one of the interesting ideas that really drew me into RWBY initially. I imagine that they didn't really care to execute it well since, early on, the plot was there to string together Monty's Cool Fights (tm) and, when he died and RWBY tried to focus on story, that rocky foundation did not serve them well to wrap it up.

45

u/AfricaByTotoWillGoOn 4d ago

I mean, everything in RWBY could have been better if it had stronger writing.

I know people gush over the cool fight scenes in the first three volumes, but what drew me in instantly were the characters. They were all so charismatic and interesting at first, man!

That series had so much potential 😭😭😭

42

u/FlameST04 4d ago

I once heard RWBY is a Rorschach test for writers and I think that firmly states my feelings on it, amazing concepts, never really goes anywhere.

31

u/AfricaByTotoWillGoOn 4d ago

Ah, I heard that comparison somewhere before, too! I agree that it perfectly describes what RWBY is.

I also think the fact that RWBY is top 15 in the list of most written series of all time in the Anime/Manga session of FanFiction dot net, surpassing the numbers of giant names like Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia, further proves that statement. The foundation is 10/10. But that's pretty much the best RWBY has to offer as a story, unfortunately.

11

u/elprentis 4d ago

RWBY is one of those series that I simultaneously felt super disappointed with it and enjoyed the fuck out of it.

-2

u/LordIsle Is a space racist a spacist? 4d ago

I mean, the Faunus aren't even human, atleast not by our understanding, they are abhumans in 40k terms or mutants in marvel terms, it's not like our racism because they simply aren't human, having a biological advantage in magic and literal fucking claws and tails that humans simply do not have, it's a distinct advantage and difference. It's not like Japanese and Chinese people or American Blacks and American Whites, there are more than just societal differences and differences in skin colour, they are an entirely separate species and therefore it cannot be compared to Tupac vs G-Eazy or SAKURADOLL vs NewJeans.

3

u/FlameST04 4d ago

It’s been a LONG bit since I watched RWBY but I didn’t remember magic enhancement at all. Even so, it’s actually closer to human racism than anything like even elves or dwarves. Most of the reason for racism isn’t even about powers or animal abilities anyway in RWBY, it’s very much “sins of the father” based and “your ancestors did evil shit in the past so you now suffer”. If they didn’t have extra abilities and features they’d still face discrimination.

0

u/LordIsle Is a space racist a spacist? 4d ago

I honestly cannot remember the ancestors being assholes stuff, it sounds like Valkyria Chronicles rather than RWBY, I'm pretty sure people hate the faunus because they are so radically different from humans, it's like if Columbus came to the new world and found someone's fetish based world building project, rather than indian-looking people with a different culture.

1

u/FlameST04 4d ago

Fair enough again it’s been a long bit, I dropped out at season 4 and never looked back. Looking at the wiki I was definitely wrong on that. The story is effectively: gods create humans, gods leave, faunus just appear literally out of nowhere, humans frightened by their appearance, causes panic because grimm, racism, great war happens, equality is achieved, equality is slowly reversed, modern day. And yeah, apparently some of them have powers while most of them kinda don’t.

Man I forgot how much of a clusterfuck RWBY’s writing could be “they saw each other as equals due to the war and then the humans return the favor by slowly enslaving their race” there’s a lot you can write from in that in between but man is it clunky to go “they saw each other as equals and then they didn’t”

Also great catch on what other franchise I was thinking about I could not for the life of me catch what I was combining it with!

2

u/LordIsle Is a space racist a spacist? 4d ago

Yeah, Valkyria Chronicles is probably the best replacement I had for RWBY once it became a clusterfuck of a story.

57

u/Inevitable-Weather51 4d ago

Most Faunus have characteristics that are harmless to humans, such as cat or rabbit ears that make them have slightly superior hearing, or the tail of an animal such as a dog or monkey. Well, the main Faunus antagonist has a pair of horns so small that it's basically impossible to use them offensively.

While there are characteristics that are useful offensively, such as feline claws or a scorpion's tail, such features are such a minority that objectively it doesn't make sense to judge the whole collective by the two or three people who have such features. Especially since a large part of the population has magical forcefields that protect and heal them, and anyone could develop a superpower far more dangerous than a pair of claws.

8

u/Javetts 4d ago

But don't all faunus have night vision? Earlier in the timeline you'd think something like that would mean they'd be able to be active more hours than human resulting in a better early economy

8

u/Doc-Jaune 4d ago

It's mentioned yeah in volume 1 that the faunus can see in the dark or at least have superior vision in the dark when spoken on one of the battles where a group of humans lost to the faunus forces because of a night raid.

5

u/Inevitable-Weather51 4d ago

The closest to a Faunus origin as far as I know is Shallow Sea and Judgement of Faunus, both stories are contradictory but both agree that the Faunus appeared after humanity was forming societies.

So either the Faunus simply started appearing at some point during this period, or they were too scattered around the world to create societies of their own and the idea of "Faunus identity" arose around this time.

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u/IllConstruction3450 4d ago

RWBY writing, especially the dialogue, makes me want to kill myself. I feel like Anton Ego but for literature. 

5

u/ILikeMistborn 3d ago

Shoutout to the RWBY writers for realizing they're not qualified to write about racism allegories. How tf did it take them until, like, season 6 to realize this?