#faunus article

[sunder-the-gold]

The White Fang is separate from Menagerie

It has always been an international organization.

The faunus fought and won a war for the right to remain citizens of the Great Kingdoms rather than be exiled to Menagerie. Afterwards, those who settled on Menagerie banded together with the faunus who remained in those kingdoms in order to establish the White Fang.

As a peaceful international organization originally intended to continue suing for equality, the White Fang has never been the military arm of Menagerie. Menagerie’s only known village, Kuo Kuana, has a completely separate institution of guardsmen, with a unique uniform, who answer to the village’s chieftain rather than to the White Fang’s high leader.

Likewise, no one in the White Fang answers to the chieftain of Kuo Kuana. As political entities, they are close allies, but separate. Ghira Belladonna can disagree with Sienna Khan’s actions, but he has no responsibility to stop her because he has no power to do so.

This is likely the reason why Atlas never declared war against Menagerie after the White Fang assassinated members of the Schnee family and Dust Company board-members. The murderers were likely not foreign agents, but faunus citizens of Atlas itself. That makes it a nationally internal matter of domestic terrorism.

Even so, there would be no denying the international chain of command leading back to Sienna Khan. So I hypothesize that Sienna Khan protected Menagerie from potential reprisal from the Great Kingdoms by renouncing any citizenship she might have enjoyed on Menagerie; effectively declaring herself an outlaw with no legal rights in any kingdom. Her followers might have done the same.

I also hypothesize that even before the attack on Beacon, the new White Fang filtered any news that managed to reach Menagerie, to hush news about the assassinations they carried out except to deny any accusations as propaganda and lies. Otherwise, I don’t think Ghira would have allowed them to maintain an unmonitored diplomatic presence in his village.

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[sunder-the-gold]

Thanks for the response to the Grimm question. May i ask for your opinion on whether the possibility exists that there is none or an extremely low amount of Faunus Racism, and the White Fang are exaggerating things to perpetuate old grudges?

I imagine that if things had been fine, Ghira would have attempted to disband or re-purpose the White Fang on the basis of its original goal being fulfilled.

Things were bad enough that Blake’s parents allowed her to participate in peaceful rallies and protests as a small child, and those are often dangerous for the protesters. Furthermore, Blake grew up without Adam’s spite for humanity or lust for violence, so things had to be bad enough that she abandoned her parents to side with Sienna Khan’s use of violence and terrorism.

Rooster Teeth falls short of delivering the sort of world they want, but it’s still possible to judge their intent. Blake is the main character associated with the faunus, and her character arc has never even slightly been about saying “maybe we were blowing things out of proportion", but about how to best achieve harmony and equality between humans and faunus rather than perpetuating a cycle of oppression and violence.

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[sunder-the-gold]

What do you think the Grimm situation is like in Menagerie. Since it's been a Volume and a half and we've yet to see any(unless you count the Sea Dragon.) I imagine it being pretty bad since Menagerie is Faunas Australia(where regular Australia everything can kill you.). And on top of problems like overpopulation and lack of farm land and resources.

I don’t think Kuo Kuana attracts nearly as many Grimm as Vale City, simply because it’s harder for Grimm to randomly stumble upon a fishing village than a mega-city. Also because there are fewer souls sending out negative vibes.

I think a single one of the Grand Goliaths marching around Vale City could probably destroy Kuo Kuana and would definitely take the chance. The village’s borders hopefully have artillery stolen from Mistral towns and cities during the Faunus Rights Revolution, along with anything that the faunus were able to buy honestly, but I don’t think it would be enough to stop a Grand Goliath.

I am not really sure how the Grand Goliaths even came to be at Vale’s borders. I think Vale would have hunted any Goliaths before they got that big, but if they’re hundreds of years old, we’d need to know more of Remnant’s history.

Maybe Menagerie has a lot of brave faunus hunters who find titanic Grimm like those things, taunt them, and lead them on terrifying chases back into the depths of the wilderness to keep them from ever finding a settlement?

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[sunder-the-gold]

Do you think Faunus have dietary taboos? For example, if Adam (a bull Faunus) ate beef, is that "not kosher" since it's technically "cannibalism"?

I don’t think faunus have dietary restrictions that different from normal humans any more than I believe they have different behavioral instincts.

I think faunus are just humans who, for unexplained reasons, happen to have extra features for one reason or another.

On the other hand, I have to admit that someone who grows antlers is going to have extra dietary needs compared to someone who doesn’t, in order to get the nutrients and minerals necessary to grow the antlers.

Likewise, maintaining better-than-human eyes might require eating richer diets than humans. I believe having less-than-the-best organs is the biological way to reduce costs. Faunus eyes may go bad more easily than human eyes if they don’t have a proper diet, just as one’s antlers might be stunted and brittle.

Sun may need to eat more meat than others in order to maintain the fifth limb that is his prehensile tail.

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[sunder-the-gold]

I know with regards to Ruby that you prefer things to be more positive. Still how about this. Could you share some thoughts about what you think are interesting or good or positive about the White Fang. And any adjustments that you make to the story in the preceding seasons for their depiction so that that way it could go for what you think that they would be best used for well them and the fanous

Talking about making adjustments to RWBY’s story is all well and good, except the first people standing in line to make impossible changes would be CRWBY themselves. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Still, let’s remember that Volume 1 told us that the White Fang disrupted a peaceful protest being held by other faunus. That was a big clue as to the organization’s current character, particularly in the Vale branch.

Blake also left the White Fang entirely. She didn’t leave Adam specifically, or even just the Vale branch. She could have gone to join the Atlesian branch… y’know, the ones likely responsible for murdering members and friends of Weiss’ family. She could have gone back to the Mistralian branch from which the whole White Fang likely sprung, but she didn’t do that either. She just broke clean away from her very identity as a faunus in order to become a huntress separated from the White Fang, even though she’d been part of it her whole life. She couldn’t even stomach going back home to her parents, that’s how bad the White Fang had gotten for her.

We also saw the White Fang turn their back on their principles to work together with Torchwick, a wanted human felon who verbally abused them with every second word. This moral compromise became even worse when we finally saw what heinous thing they planned to do with all of that stolen Dust and equipment.

Oh, I think we saw plenty to establish the character of Vale’s White Fang. Including the willingness to overlook (if not condone) the murder of one of their own members who simply tried to leave.

As for the Valish faunus who didn’t belong to the White Fang, we know that some of them were unhappy enough with matters in Vale to stage a protest at the start of the show… and that one semester later, some others (and not necessarily a different crowd) joined the increasingly radicalized White Fang.

However, I like to think the new Valish recruits were not actually told that the plan involved letting the Grimm devour their own home. Because that’s just dumb.

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[sunder-the-gold]

Do you think that Adam's grip on "his" White Fang branch is weaker since the Fall of Beacon?

Not enough data.

Vale’s authorities and hunters aren’t in the best shape to crack down on the local White Fang. The loss of Beacon is demoralizing at least, and that’s assuming none of the professors died. The border defenses kept the parade of Grand Goliaths and most of the accompanying Grimm army away from the kingdom, but at the cost of how many lives? Whatever strength Vale has left over needs to be spent cleaning up the last of the intruding Grimm, protecting the borders from new Grimm, and trying to take back Beacon.

The local faunus may be stuck in an awkward place; those who might have supported the White Fang before might be aghast at using the Grimm as a weapon to murder the entire kingdom, human and faunus alike. But the humans of Vale might be turning against all faunus and thus leaving many faunus with few other options besides banding together with the White Fang.

Those Vale faunus who joined the White Fang before the catastrophe might have wanted to leave, but could they really expect to be forgiven by the other faunus, let alone the humans?

The pressure from all sides is made worse by the total shut-down of outgoing aerial traffic for any purpose but sending foreigners back home. Some foreign agents of the White Fang (the ones most likely to be “in” on the plan to murder Vale) could take off the masks and make a legal flight out, and Adam Taurus can use special resources available only to the higher ups, but everyone else is left stuck in the kingdom they betrayed.

One way or the other, Vale is a big mess, right now.

All of that probably seems like a major victory to Adam, but we’ll have to wait to see how much of the White Fang agrees with him.

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[sunder-the-gold]

Menagerie: Is it really worse than Vacuo?

It’s part of my headcanon that after Menagerie was “gifted” to the faunus in the Vytal Accords, experts from Vacuo went to help the immigrants make a home there... either out of the goodness of their hearts, or because someone paid them. The Last King of Vale, in particular, might have spared some personal funds to pay for the job.

So when Blake says that Menagerie's desert is different from Vacuo's, and that the wildlife is more dangerous, I don’t think this is an uninformed opinion. It’s probably an opinion passed down to her from her parents or grandparents, who personally met survival experts from Vacuo. Experts who might have thrown up their hands and said, "Fuck this continent. I'm going back home to Vacuo where it's safe."

However, this still doesn’t make the notion of greater danger an objective fact.

By the time of the Vytal Accords, people had already been living in Western Sanus for hundreds of years. Whatever dangerous wildlife existed there, the local people had long understood intimately. New and unfamiliar wildlife is always the most dangerous; the people of Vacuo and Menagerie get by today because of the ancestors who survived by learning from the tragic examples of those who became lessons.

But even setting aside the wildlife, Vacuo is objectively better off in many other regards. Even before the Great War, the people of Western Sanus had established infrastructure: cities, walls, outposts, fortresses, smithies, mines, livestock, trade routes, and maps to all known sources of water. That’s what allowed them the strength to prove a threat in the Great War, such that Mistral and Mantle feared Vacuo joining forces with Vale.

The faunus exiled to Menagerie had none of that, and no expertise in how to start building it.

Since the faunus of Menagerie naturally wanted to pursue the developmental path that would lead to the fewest deaths, they stuck to the more hospitable coastline. Mastering Menagerie’s desert can wait until Kuo Kuana becomes strong enough to project a colonizing force without risking as many lives. The time spent waiting is also time that volunteer scouts can spend gathering vital information for those future colonists.

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[sunder-the-gold]

The first faunus of Solitas

The humans of Ancient Mantle arrived at Solitas after sailing across the sea, apparently leaving everything behind them in order to flee some threat.

But where did the faunus come from?

These should have been the days when all humans kept faunus at arm’s length, at best. Would the ancestors of Mantle have allowed faunus on their ships? Would the faunus have been able to get close enough to learn how to build such ships for themselves?

Did Mantle’s later waves of immigrants bring faunus slaves with them?

Did Mantle’s original settlers send out an open invitation to anyone seeking to flee from Mistral’s conquering armies, and the faunus were begrudgingly accepted as volunteer immigrants?

Did faunus only arrive on Solitas after Mantle began trading with the slave-owning empire of Mistral?

Or... is it possible that the ancestors of Atlas’ faunus population were living on the frozen continent even before the humans arrived?

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