Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-24901923-20140928155350

Hello all. As I've been watching RWBY, I've been noticing something that I suspect is unintentional on the part of the RT Staff. This is that while the Faunus in Remnant and the Jews IRL have some differences, they have a lot of striking parrallels too. I'll try and sort some of these out below.

Reasons for persecution: IRL, the Jews have been persecuted by many groups, especially Christians, who blame them for the death of Jesus Christ. In Remnant, the Faunus are persecuted as well, but while it is a possibility, we haven't yet had any hints that this persecution is religiously based, as is usually the case with Jews. Rather, I believe it has more to do with their beastial traits. Their night vision, as well as their more animal behavior and outwardly visible animal features, help to lend themselves to being compared to the Grimm, who appear to be shadow creatures which take on the appearance of monsterous animals, and maybe even lead to accusations of Faunus being "Grimmspawn" of some sort. However, while I consider the Grimm reflect the fundamental darkness of the world, and possibly the darkness within mankind as well, the Faunus seem to represent the baser, more primal aspects of mankind's nature, humanity's inner animal, so to speak. This inner animal is something that many IRL have difficulty accepting, and many humans in Remnant no doubt see it as being little better than Grimm. They are also reminded of this inner animal every time they look at a Faunus with visible animal features, since they wear their inner animal on the outside. This could go so far as to be that the Faunus are a remnant of or throwback to an previous stage in mankind's development when they were more attuned with nature. Given the presence of Grimm and other hazards, it's not hard to see why Remnant's humans would find reminders of the natural world to be scary. Humans, with intense tribalism dictated by the brute necessity of survival, are also notoriously intolerant of anything even slightly unknown or different, even among themselves, for fear of distabilizing, etc, the lifeline that was the tribe, so their being more-so around parahumans and nonhumans is hardly surprising to me either.

Historically oppressed minorities: IRL, the Jews were frequently the targets of witchhunts, scapegoating, and even outright genocide. They were also often forced into ghettos and otherwise segregated. In Remnant, the Faunus are very much struggling for their rights, requiring massive effort for even the slightest gains, and are likely at least de facto segregated to life outside the kingdoms or the poorer regions within them, possibly similar to American Indian reservations. There has also been at least one major attempt to round up and exile them to Menagerie, and lynchings, etc, are probably still commonplace in many areas.

Isreal and Menagerie: After WW2, the Jews were finally granted their own country, Israel, which was and is seriously opposed by many around the world, especially by the rest of the Middle East. For the Faunus, there is Menagerie. However, while Israel was created as a safehaven in the region of the world the Jewish people have typically considered their homeland, Menagerie reminds me far more of Australia. Australia was originally founded as a prison colony for undesireables, and that was Menagerie's intended function for the Anti-Faunus factions of the Faunus War. Whether or not it actually is the Faunus' birthland, I expect very much for Menagerie to be much like Australia, with very large sections of inhospitable and marginally habitable territory. Like Israel contains most of the world's Jewish population, however, I expect Menagerie to be the same for the Faunus, and I expect it's existance to be just as tenous, since many humans probably want to cut off or destroy the Faunus entirely. 