Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24183436-20131118140639/@comment-14909251-20140507053303

BenRG wrote: I disagree about that. I base it on Ooblek's lesson. The discussion of the Faunus War was too sterile and detached. If it were recent enough that the current students were born in its immediate aftermath, I would have expected far stronger reactions - including implications that the Faunus somehow 'cheated' by using dishonourable means and Ooblek having to counter some students parroting anti-Faunus propaganda that they would likely have heard from their parents who spent their young adulthoods hearing it - if it had happened during their parents' time.

That makes it seem likely to me that it is at least as far back in their past as the First World War is for us; far back enough that the question as to whether the RMS Lusitania was a legitimate target and the like have become academic and even boring to some poorer students. Not really. Do you know many 20-somethings who spout Cold War propaganda whenever someone brings up Russia or China? Some of the propaganda lingers, but the reality is that people who were not raised in the era of the Cold War do not have the same mentality of those who were raised in that era. These kids would have not really had significant formative experiences regarding general society and politics until their tweens or early teens. Social attitudes would be shaped more by their interactions with peers, who would be just as ignorant of wartime and pre-war attitudes and may even include Faunus. Consider the attitudes of those 20-somethings in our world regarding LGBT issues as opposed to those of older people. The sociopolitical environment is simply different and thus their attitudes are different.

On "The War", I have said previously that I think it is a reference to the battle against the Grimm, but that it really should be understood as an ages-old ongoing war with the present time period being a lull where humanity has become relatively safe from the Grimm and thus more likely to focus confict internally. The War began very long ago, Dust came some time well after it began, and the lull may have started around the time Jaune's great-great-grandfather fought. Now The War is a more distant conflict and less grand in scope.