User blog comment:Varzan Deodinm Beldinm/The "meh" factor of this show has finally gotten to me. ( please read, then judge.)/@comment-3387274-20131013142836/@comment-67.242.84.56-20131019072854

On the fauna topic, I'm fairly sure in most fantasy universes predominantly populated by your standard human, non-standard humanoids/intelligent beings tend to face a lot of discrimination. Fire Emblem: Path of Radience and Tales of Rebirth have extremely similar situations, in which there is heavy racism towards their respective animal-like races. In FE:PoR, at least, they don't even associate or intermix with each other. Tales of Symphonia/Phantasia also comes to mind where racial equality/discrimination among humans/elves/half-elves is a huge theme and arguably the driving force behind Symphonia's plotline.

I would say fauna are less a deconstruction of animal-ear people (and the adoration of those characters I believe is largely on the part of the audience rather than the in-universe characters) and moreso a minority race, an oppressed race in the world of RWBY (they must be if they're protesting). I can't think of what you'd call the trope you could put to that (but feel free if you come up with it, I've never been able to remember all those fancy trope names and instead get overly wordy like I am right now).