idk what your spoiler rules for your blog are, but i HATE the name "The Ever After" for Remnant's Wonderland equivalent, its so flavorless and unimaginative but i also cant think of any other ideas, do you have any?
Re: spoilers for the show (and side media), I try to tag things whenever possible (especially in the immediate week after the episode airs; anything after that is fair game, I think). I’ll typically add a readmore to posts as a courtesy.
Since the Ever After got namedropped in V9.E2, I think it’s safe to discuss at this point.
And…yeah. I really hate how everything about the Ever After is rip-off Wonderland. It feels like it lacks an identity beyond aping the aesthetic of the book, without considering the fact that Wonderland’s weirdness was a metaphor for a child navigating the incomprehensible and sometimes arbitrary rules/etiquette of adulthood. Its nonsensical setting exists to support the underlying commentary. RWBY’s decision to cherry-pick Wonderland’s design, without using it to reinforce some sort of narrative commentary, makes it little more than a shallow knock-off.
The alliterative episode titles aren’t helping matters, either.
If it were up to me, I would have axed the entire premise of the Ever After. But if I had to give it some sort of alternative name… I would avoid anything that feels evocative of Wonderland and fairy tales in general. Nothing whimsical or romantic.
I’d likely give the Ever After two names—an endonym (a name that the residents of this place use) and an exonym (a name given to it by outsiders).
It’s bizarre that the people who live here call it the “Ever After,” when the reason why Team RWBY called it that is because it has a fairy tale vibe to it. (See: Blake’s comment at the end of Episode 1.) As in, nothing about this place feels “normal.” But for the people who live here, this is their version of normal. So why would they call it something that alludes to a fairy tale (a folklore genre populated by things that are unreal)?
Timothy Hickson does a great job talking about place names here. If you have the time, I highly recommend you watch it!
If we wanted to create a name that feels at least somewhat believable, maybe come up with a handful of prefixes and suffixes with assigned meanings. Then combine those root words to form endonyms.
A great example of this is The Lord of the Rings, where minas is the Sindarin word for “tower.” Tolkien uses minas in the names of several locations, like Minas Tirith (“Tower of the Guard”) and Annúminas (“West Tower”).
As for what Team RWBY would call this place (at least initially, after they first arrive)… If pressed, I would call it “The Hinterlands.” There are two reasons why.
Traditionally, a hinterland refers to any area that’s inland from a coast. When Ruby first arrives in the Ever After, she wakes up on a beach. Immediately she begins to travel away from the shore, and into the jungle further inland.
The second definition of a hinterland (and my other reason for choosing this name) is any area that is “unknown, unexplored, vague, or ill-defined," which nicely compliments the hostility and mystique of this place.
Not only does hinterlands work in the literal sense, but in a figurative one, too.
