Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-70.162.165.193-20130520231501

I'm kind of amazed at how (literally) single-minded a lot of speculators are. Only one speculator on another board had a similar idea as this, and their post was quickly buried by the hive mind.

Let me pose a question to you: if indeed Blake is based solely on Beauty and the Beast, why does she dress like a cat? My personal feelings about weird-ass neko aesthetics aside, there is no basis for her appearance in any traditional incarnation of the fairy tale.

Thus, I postulate that Blake's character is taking inspiration from two fairy tales. Beauty and the Beast correlates nicely with several key traits:

1) Blake's last name (sort of) references beauty

2) Adam's name being a reference to the Disney prince

3) Adam's rose theme

4) Adam having monstrous powers.

Note that Beauty and the Beast really doesn't give us much to define a femme fatale by. The "Belle" character lacks any unique features; in fact, aside from being a generally good person her entire characterization is defined by the beast she hooks up with (anything that made the Disney version a complex character wasn't part of the original story). So how do you make "Belle" an interesting character? Mash her up with another fairy tale. In this case, Puss in Boots. Evidence for this:

1) Blake looks like a cat

2) Blake wears boots

3) Blake is robbing a (royal?) train with a partner in crime, similar to how Puss in Boots brings the miller's son to wealth by tricking a passing (royal?) coach.

Note again that the main character of Puss in Boots lacks any notable features and is again defined by his feline companion. By combining the two fairy tales, we now give "Belle" and "the miller's son" more personality than they ever could if we drew from only one story. I expect to see plenty of play off of both tales (and possibly others if there are more stories that complement their archetypes).

"But wait!" You say, "why does Blake get TWO stories?  What makes her so special?  Why don't Ruby and Weiss get fairy tale pairings, too?" I say you're right, and I think they already have them.

Let's look at the most obvious: Weiss. Think back on what you know about Snow White. She:

1) Has skin as white as snow/is "fair"

2) Is "fair"/has a thing for mirrors

3) Is a disenfranchised princess

4) Sings into reflections and to the animals (okay, in the Disney version--she really doesn't have much to go off of)

But where do we get inspiration for the rest of Weiss's character? Why does she have a cold personality? Why is she lonely? Why does she control ice magic? Because all of these traits also coincide with the titular character of Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen. Weiss is clearly a mix of the two, and I fully expect we'll be seeing elements of both. Again, an instance where the two tales work off each other to form a more complex character than either could build alone. (Also, if we see more than two fairy tale tie-ins, I am willing to bet that Weiss ties into Swan Lake too: that would explain the fact that she is a performer/dancer)

This brings us to our as-yet-be-revealed character, Yellow (Yelena?). We have five clues to build off of: yellow, beauty, burning, gold, and hearts. I am going to ignore the beauty hint because while it is an oddly specific distinction in light of Blake being a titular "Beauty" and Weiss being "the fairest of them all," I feel the other three hints are much more unique to define a character by. All of these characters are intended to be attractive. So, grouping fairy tales by common associations, we have:

1) Yellow - Goldilocks (yellow hair), Rapunzel (golden stair)

2) Gold - Goldilocks (the name), Rumpelstiltzkin (miller's daughter spins straw into gold), Laughing Eye and Weeping Eye (it's a stretch, but there is SO MUCH GOLD)

3) Burning - Goldilocks (too hot, too cold, just right), Cinderella (sleeps in the fireplace), Gretel (burns the witch at the end)

4) Heart - I'm stumped here.

Clearly Goldilocks is the favorite, but I don't think Yellow will have much, if anything to do with the character. Her archetype overlaps too much with the star of the series. On this basis I dismiss the possibility that yellow will be Goldilocks.

Other qualifications of note:

a) The lyrics of "Red like roses" contains very, very vague references to the character archetypes.  The only reference to Red Riding Hood we get are roses (the flowers she picks up on the way to granny's).  White is "cold" and "royal"--a good match for Snow Queen but ambiguous with regard to Snow White.  Black is a "beast" from "shadows"--the vocabulary is Beauty and the Beast but taken literally it really only applies to Blake being Puss in Boots.  It is entirely possible that a "yellow beauty burning gold" might reference one fairy tale more than the other, or not at all.

b) Puss in Boots has nothing to do with being black.  Yes, boots are commonly black. Yes, black cats are easily the most symobolically rich.  Beauty and the Beast has nothing to do with black, either.  Blake is an example that the fairy tales chosen for Yellow don't need to have obvious references to the color.  They just need to be aesthetically compatible with a yellow theme.

c)  Blake's symbol has no obvious connection to her character's inspiration.  It doesn't clearly convey the idea of beauty, or a cat.  Yellow's symbol must also be taken with a grain of salt.  I think it is reasonable to guess that the "burning heart" in conjunction with "burning gold" suggests that she will have a strong fire theme, but even this is not certain.  I think it is the safest guess, however, because it does create a nice duality between team RWBY members (life/death, ice/fire).  I don't want to completely discard the possibility of the heart having significance, but until more evidence presents itself I am choosing to believe that, like Blake's and Ruby's symbols, it doesn't have much to do with the fairy tales themselves.

d) The Snow Queen and Puss in Boots are publicly known, but (as evidence of this and other RWBY speculation boards)...not iconic enough to be immediately recognizable.  Yellow will definitely utilize one of the major fairy tales (Rapunzel or Cinderella) to make her instantly recognizable, but the second might not be particularly well known.

With these points in mind, I predict that Yellow will primarily be Rapunzel, with either some Gretel or Cinderella thrown in. I say this because Rapunzel satisfies the golden qualification, while Gretel and Cinderella each have their own associations with fire. Furthermore, her primary conflict is with a mother/witch...who can conveniently fill the role of the antagonist as either the witch from Hansel and Gretel, or the mother from Cinderella. Each of these dynamics have enough of a core identity that any royal princess or woods wanderer elements that might conflict with Ruby or Weiss can be omitted and still make for an interesting character arc. For even further compatibility, if Yellow is indeed named Yelena, that creates a perfect setup to also tie in the tale of Baba Yaga as a tertiary or quaternary tie in.

What about Ruby, you ask? What fairy tale could possibly complement Little Red Riding Hood? Seeing as I can't find any reasonable fairy tales that tie into the wolf-hunting motif or red cloaks, (aside from the three little pigs), I am willing to bet that if she draws inspiration from another tale it will very strongly connect with the gravestone. My personal theory as to the significance of this gravestone lies in the lyrics to "Red Like Roses." If roses fill her dreams, then she was sleeping, which makes her a shoe in to incorporate elements from Sleeping Beauty. Maybe even the rose is intended to be a nod to "Briar Rose"--a bit of a stretch for me, but again so was Adam. The more I think about it, the less interesting a purely Red Riding Hood interpretation for Ruby becomes. Her story has a goal (killing wolves), but no past. Makes for a pretty boring main character if you ask me. Sleeping Beauty gives her that past...learning to live with how the world has changed since she fell asleep.

And here is where the speculation rooted in facts ends. I now end this post by submitting to you one final overarching theory, a speculation based purely on speculations. Who put Ruby to sleep? Who turned Blake into a human? Who will turn Weiss into a swan? It is the same witch that Yelena is connected to. She doesn't have to connect specifically in these ways, but when we fill in the gaps with Sleeping Ruby and Yelena the Witch Slayer, we find that all of the girls now have been negatively affected by evil magic. And since the evil witch is almost as iconic an archetype as the girl in the woods, the princess, the thief, the maligned stepdaughter...I find it hard to see how the big bad can be anything else. 