Characters / RWBY: Scars

Characters for the fanfic RWBY: Scars. Many of the tropes from the main RWBY series' page also apply. Beware of spoilers from both works.

---

Team RWBY

Ruby Rose

Ruby, after the Fall

^{Click here for her V 7 appearance} 

• Adaptational Intelligence: Ruby's naivety has been toned down a bit, which allows her to more easily pick up things that seem off to her (for example, she's suspicious of Cinder and her teammates when she bumps into them in the hall).
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Canon Ruby has dark red hair. In Scars, her hair is black and red.
• Alliterative Name: Both her given and surnames start with "r".
• The Baby of the Bunch: Ruby is only fifteen at the start, making her two years younger than the rest of the first-years. She's also the most childish out of her team.
• Badass Adorable: Ruby is bright-eyed and cute but that doesn't stop her from being an adept fighter.
• Chocolate Baby: Ruby is a mini clone of her mother with no resemblances to her father Taiyang. This is because Tai is her step-father who raised her since she was a baby. The black-haired Qrow is her biological father.
• Covered with Scars: Ruby's hands and arms are covered with scars because she doesn't always use Crescent Rose correctly.
• Family Eye Resemblance: Silver eyes are a family trait from her mother's side.
• Flower Motif: Ruby is associated with roses in particular, from her surname to her color palette.
• Glowing Eyes: Her silver eyes give off a slight glow that Winter finds uncanny.
• Grade Skipper: Ruby began Beacon two years earlier than the norm.
• Half-Sibling Angst: Upon learning that she and Yang have different mothers, Ruby reacts negatively and runs off. She's upset about not being told this and asks if Summer was just a rebound. Eventually, she gets over her angst.
• Kid Hero: Bordering on being a Child Soldier, she's only fifteen at the start of the fanfic and is already fighting Grimm.
• Like Father, Like Son: Ruby is almost like a miniature clone of her mother Summer in terms of both personality and looks. They're both energetic and very caring.
• Perky Goth: Ruby has a gothic fashion sense and shows some interest in gothic-esque literature. She's also very chipper and sweet.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Penny becomes her girlfriend when Penny asks her out to the prom.
• Related in the Adaptation: Her uncle Qrow is her biological father.
• Stepford Smiler: She becomes this in Volume 4. Despite all her trauma, she tries her best to fake happiness and pretends that she's fine.
• Sobriquet Sex Switch: Her name prior to transitioning was Crimson.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She looks like a younger version of her mother.
• Sweet Tooth: Much like her canon counterpart, Ruby likes her coffee ultra sweet. Her first meal at Beacon consisted of nothing but cookies, strawberries with cream, and cake.
• The Tragic Rose: Ruby has a rose motif and tragedy seems to always follow her. It doesn't help that she was destined from birth to be a Silver-Eyed Warrior.
• Trans Tribulations: Ruby worries about people, including her father and friends when she came out, reacting negatively to her being trans, but everyone is fine with it. She has, however, been bullied in the past for being trans. She has also been misgendered by at least two different characters.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: Taiyang is her step-father, rather than her biological father.

Weiss Schnee

Weiss talking to her hallucination, Mirror

^{Click here for her V 7 appearance} 

• Academic Alpha Bitch: Weiss is haughty and snappy but takes her schoolwork very seriously.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Her initial Fantastic Racism towards Faunus is amped up.
• Adaptational Modesty: Weiss' sleeveless nightgown is given sleeves for plot-related reasons: sleeves hide her scars. Similarly, all other short-sleeved and sleeveless outfits also have been given sleeves.
• Adaptational Sexuality: In canon, Weiss has only shown attraction towards Neptune. In Scars she's explicitly lesbian.
• Beneath the Mask: At first glance, Weiss comes off as uptight and bratty. While she is prideful, much of her base personality is a mask of hiding her more troubling side.
• Big Brother Worship: Weiss adores her older sister Winter, in heavy part because Winter was the most affectionate member of her family growing up.
• Bigot with a Crush: Downplayed. Weiss was raised to hate Faunus, but her love Blake is a Faunus. However, Weiss' crush develops after she learns Blake is a Faunus and after she's already started to become a Former Bigot.
• Covered with Scars: Her arms are covered in scars, she has a scar over one of her eyes, and she gains an abdominal scar after her Interrupted Suicide in Volume 4.
• Cut Himself Shaving: When questioned on her scar, she says that it was due to a fencing accident. She actually gave herself the scar.
• Disabled in the Adaptation:
  • It's shown that her eye injury nearly led to her losing vision in that eye. Even now, she's slightly near-sighted in that eye.
  • Weiss suffers from schizoaffective disorder, with her most prominent symptoms being depression and hallucinations.
• Disease by Any Other Name: The writer clarified in comments that she has schizoaffective disorder (most likely the depressive type). Weiss' symptoms include poor self-esteem, occasional self-starvation, depression, Self-Harm (namely, cutting her arms), auditory and visual hallucinations, anhedonia (feeling empty), and suicidal ideation. Weiss' illness has yet to be diagnosed in-universe due to Weiss not receiving psychiatric help.
• Defrosting the Ice Queen: Going to Beacon defrosts her. Her relationship with her teammates, especially Blake and Yang, helps Weiss to become more open over time.
• Driven to Suicide: She's mentioned feeling depressed and suicidal in the past. Some of her larger wounds might signify Bungled Suicides. In Volume 4, she mortally stabs herself but is saved by her mother.
• Dueling Scar: Subverted. Weiss states that she got her scar in a fencing accident but she really scarred herself.
• Eyes Are Unbreakable: Downplayed. Her eye wasn't permanently damaged due to her injury, but it did receive some damage that necessitated Weiss to wear an eye-patch while recovering. Even several years afterward, Weiss still suffers from slight vision issues.
• Fantastic Racism: At the start of the story, Weiss was discriminatory towards Faunus. Her character arc revolves around her becoming less prejudiced.
• Half-Identical Twins: It's implied that she's identical twins with her brother Whitley.
• Hallucinations: After she received her facial scar, she began hallucinating a version of herself that appears in mirrors. Originally "Mirror" acted as a friend to the lonely Weiss, but by the start of the fic Weiss' hallucinations have become aggressive and demeaning. Mirror just throws Weiss' worries and self-consciousness back at her.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Weiss has blue eyes to go with her winter motif and (seemingly) cold personality.
• Interrupted Suicide: She attempts to kill herself but is saved from bleeding out by her mother.
• Important Haircut: She crops off half of her hair after running away from home in Volume 4.
• Non-Idle Rich: Weiss comes from a very wealthy family but she'd prefer to be out fighting Grimm than sitting in a building all day.
• Passed-Over Inheritance: Weiss is disinherited after her father dubs her too mentally unstable to be the heir.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: She starts off as a heroic character with a bias towards Faunus.
• Promoted to Love Interest:
  • She's Blake's love interest.
  • Yang has unrequited feelings for her.
  • Inverted with Jaune. His crush on her lasts all of one line. He quickly moves on upon realizing she's not interested.
• Religious Bruiser: She's devoutly Dustist. After her depression worsens in Volume 4, she becomes even more religious and begins wearing a jewel (akin to a crucifix).
• Rich Bitch: She does initially have a snide side, but she learns to outgrow it as she experiences the world more.
• The Runaway: Weiss runs away from home a few months after she's forced back home.
• Scars Are Forever: Weiss has various, seemingly permanent, scars, including the one over her eye.
• Self-Harm: She always wears long sleeves because her arms are covered in self-injury scars. She also stabbed herself in the eye, which explains her eye scar.
• Spoiled Brat: Subverted. People think she's a spoiled rich kid, but she's actually not due to her childhood. Weiss sometimes internalizes this feeling towards herself.
• Stepford Smiler: She keeps her troubles internalized.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Zig-zagged. Weiss does come out of her shell and become more open, but she also frequently goes through periods of depression due to her untreated mental illness.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Weiss starts off standoffish and aloof but becomes more friendly and less bigoted as time goes on.
• Turn to Religion: She becomes more religious as her mental health deteriorates after being forced back home.

Blake Belladonna/Hozuki Blake

Blake, after the Fall

^{Click here for her V 7 appearance} 

• Adaptational Jerkass: Blake starts off as a much darker character than in canon, with a vivid hatred of Weiss to the point where she smiles upon imagining Grimm killing her. She's also much meaner and physically violent.
• Adaptation Name Change: "Belladonna" is an alias that comes from her old moniker ("the Belladonna") as a White Fang member. Her real name is Hozuki Blake.
• The Atoner: Blake regrets her past as a murderous terrorist and wants desperately to make amends.
• Closet Key: Weiss is her's. Prior to her, she'd only been interested in Adam.
• Code Name: Her old code name in the White Fang was "the Belladonna".
• Little Bit Beastly: Blake is a cat Faunus with cat ears.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Ozpin is able to tell that Blake is lying about her name because, even in Remnant, "Belladonna" is an unusual surname.
• Promoted to Love Interest: She's Weiss' love interest.
• Related in the Adaptation: Sienna Khan, the White Fang's leader, is her maternal aunt.
• Religious Bruiser: She worships the Ishvara pantheon and, while she's not open about it due to the fact it's a predominantly Faunus religion, she's quite devout.
• The Runaway: She ran away with Adam at age twelve. For years, she was ashamed and scared to come back home, but it turns out her parents weren't angry at her after all that time.

Xiao Long Yang

Yang, after the Fall

^{Click here for her V 7 appearance} 

• Adaptational Ugliness: Downplayed. Yang's appearance is roughed up to emphasize her tough upbringing, not to make her less attractive. Her nose is crooked and she's missing a few teeth from her years of Fight Clubbing.
• Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. Her name is the same, but it's written in the traditional Chinese "surname first" manner.
• An Arm and a Leg: She loses an arm in the fall of Beacon after it's torn off by an Ursa.
• Big Brother Instinct: She's very attached to her little sister Ruby and would do anything to protect her.
• Broken Pedestal: She always wondered about Raven and wanted to meet her, but she quickly grew to hate her mother upon meeting her. It gets to the point where Yang threatens to kill Raven if they ever meet again.
• Generation Xerox: Like both Raven and Taiyang, she has unrequited feelings towards a female teammate.
• Hollywood Atheist: She stopped believing in gods after Summer died.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: At seventeen she's already fond of alcohol (especially Strawberry Sunrises).
• Out-of-Character Moment: Yang originally slapped Weiss for being the reason Blake ran off after accidentally revealing her Faunus heritage. The writer regrets writing that scene as is because it contradicted later revelations, so they retconned it. In the revised scene, Yang nearly attacks Weiss but is stopped by Ruby before she can get too rough.
• Parental Title Characterization: She usually refers to her step-mom Summer as "Mom" and her deadbeat biological mother Raven by name. When she calls Raven by a title, it's almost always "Mother" (with "Mom" being used rarely).
• Promotion to Parent: After Summer died, Taiyang fell into a depression for several years, forcing Yang to take care of her sister despite only being ten herself. She then got into Fight Clubbing to make money.
• Sir Swears Alot: She curses the most out of the main characters.
• Stepford Smiler: She hides her abandonment issues and volatile temper by seeming jovial.
• Street Smart: Yang became street-savvy after she was forced to become a primary caretaker for her little sister.
• Team Mom: She's the emotional rock of Team RWBY and watches out for the others.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: Downplayed. Her and Ruby are cousins raised as step-sisters, not half-sisters like they believe.

Team JNPR

Jaune Arc

• Battle Couple: He becomes the boyfriend of his teammate Pyrrha in Volume 2.
• Death by Adaptation: He's killed by Cinder in Volume 3.
• Death by Irony: Joan of Arc was executed by being burned at the stake — similarly, Jaune Arc dies being set on fire by Cinder.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In Volume 3, Jaune is burned alive by Cinder when he tries to protect Pyrrha.
• I Just Want to Be Special: His reason for running away from home was that he wanted to prove to his family (and especially his father) that he could become a hunter.
• Important Haircut: He cut off his ponytail before joining Beacon.
• Jeanne d'Archétype: He's a blond teenage boy who dreams of being a hero, so he runs away from home to achieve his dream. He also was once named "Joan" and died a martyr's death by being burned alive saving his girlfriend.
• The Lost Lenore: He's this to Pyrrha post-Volume 3. She misses him and has Survivor's Guilt over him.
• The Runaway: He ran away from home to join Beacon.
• Sobriquet Sex Switch: He changed his name from Joan to Jaune.
• Trans Tribulations: Subverted. He worries that his family will react badly but they easily accept him.

Nora Valkyrie

• Battle Couple: She fights on the same team as her boyfriend Ren.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Nora met her boyfriend Ren when she was a child.
• Hollywood Atheist: Due to her childhood as a hungry orphan whose village was destroyed, Nora stopped believing in gods years ago.
• Parental Abandonment: She's been an orphan since childhood.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Nora and Ren are a couple from the start.

Pyrrha Nikos

Pyrrha, after the Fall

^{Click here for her V 7 appearance} 

• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Her mother is an emotionally abusive Sports Mom. Though she doesn't reflect upon it much, Pyrrha doesn't believe her mother truly loves her, and this troubles her. She joined Beacon specifically to avoid her mother's torment.
  • Pyrrha receives a massive angst upgrade after the fall of Beacon, becoming much more withdrawn and sullen from all the trauma she received. There's no equivalent in canon because she died in Volume 3.
• Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. Her full name is "Pyrrha Diana Nikos", giving her a middle name that she lacks in canon.
• Battle Couple: She's teammates with Jaune and the two become a couple in Volume 2.
• Covered with Scars: She gets a large scar on her face from her fight with Cinder. Nora notes in Volume 4 that Pyrrha has a large number of scars covering her body, due to her newfound recklessness in combat.
• Death Seeker: Implied in Volume 4. In her depressed and troubled state, she's more reckless than before.
• Disappeared Dad: Her father is never mentioned.
• Eye Scream: Lose her left eye due to her recklessness in battle.
• Important Haircut: She cuts her hair similarly to Jaune's after his Heroic Sacrifice.
• Promoted to Love Interest:
  • Instead of crushing on Weiss, Jaune has feelings for Pyrrha but is too self-conscious to tell her.
  • Downplayed with Weiss. Upon meeting, Weiss shows attraction towards Pyrrha, however she apparently moved on afterwards as it isn't mentioned again.
• Spared by the Adaptation: She survives Volume 3, but she ends up mentally and physically scarred.
• Survivor's Guilt: After Jaune's death, she asks Ruby why he died and not her.
• That Man Is Dead: Her personality takes a 180 in Volume 4 after Jaune's death and the fall of Beacon. When a fan asks her if she's Pyrrha, Pyrrha dismisses them by saying he's mistaking her for someone else and that Pyrrha died with Beacon.

Lie Ren

• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: He holds more obvious childhood trauma than in canon.
• Battle Couple: He fights on the same team as his girlfriend Nora.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Ren became friends with Nora when they were children and eventually began dating.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: He shows PTSD symptoms due to his Dark and Troubled Past.
• Parental Abandonment: Ren's parents died in a Grimm attack when he was younger.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Nora and Ren are a couple from the start.

Family & Friends

Xiao Long Taiyang

• Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. His surname is written first, but his name hasn't changed.
• Incompatible Orientation: It's implied that Raven was gay and only tolerated Taiyang because they had a kid together through a drunken one-night stand.
• Struggling Single Mother: A Gender-Inverted example. Taiyang tries his best to take care of his kids but it's a struggle. He also fell into a depression and lost his job after Summer died.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: He's Ruby's step-father, not her biological father.

Summer Rose

• High-School Sweethearts: She began dating Qrow in Beacon and they stayed together into adulthood, but they eventually broke up.
• Missing Mom:
  • She died eight years prior to the story, leaving her two daughters motherless.
  • Summer's own mother was killed when she was a child. She was left in the custody of her maternal aunt growing up.
• Posthumous Character: She died long before the story began.
• Religious Bruiser: She was a devout follower of the Brothers Church. After dying, she inspired Qrow to convert.
• Second Love: To Taiyang after his relationship with Raven didn't work out.
• Son of a Whore: She was raised by her prostitute aunt, Ivory. Ivory was a decent, if depressed, caretaker but her troubled upbringing led Summer to avoid her aunt upon moving out.
• The Tragic Rose: Summer had a harsh life and died at an early age at the hands of her former lover.

Raven Branwen

• But to Me, It Was Tuesday: Raven claims not to remember slaughtering Cinder's village and selling her into slavery because she's done that more than once.
• Cain and Abel: Raven hates her twin brother Qrow because Summer loved him instead of her. She goes as far as to plot to kill Qrow and his daughter Ruby.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Part of her disdain towards Qrow and Ruby comes from Summer loving tbem more than she loved Raven.
• Incompatible Orientation: She was in love with Summer, but she was turned down because Summer was straight and dating her brother.
• Missing Mom: After her mother died, Raven abandoned her infant daughter Yang to go back home and become leader of her tribe.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: She's a cruel Social Darwinist who's also transphobic and purposedly misgenders her niece Ruby.

Ivory Rose

• Canon Foreigner: Ivory is an original character that acts as extended family of Summer's.
• Honorary Uncle: She's not biologically related to Yang, but Yang sees her as her aunt anyway.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: She's a genuinely nice, if troubled, person. When she was younger, she used to prostitute.
• Introverted Cat Person: Ivory doesn't have any friends besides her niece Summer and her cats.
• Nephewism: She raised her niece Summer after Summer's mother was murdered.
• Long-Lost Relative: To Ruby. Summer never talked about Ivory, so Ruby didn't know about Ivory until she was near adulthood.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Ivory raised Summer herself. She didn't know that Summer had died until Ruby told her when they met.
• Pen Name: She writes erotic novels under the name "Patty Berdioler".
• Shout-Out: Ivory is partially inspired by Satou's aunt in Happy Sugar Life.
• Single Mom Stripper: She became a prostitute in large part to help raise her niece Summer.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She shares the black-and-red hair of her niece Summer.

Winter Schnee

• Adaptational Nice Guy: Winter is less strict towards Weiss than in canon.
• Age Lift: Winter is 28 instead of 23.
• Ascended Extra: Winter has a larger role and has more appearances than in canon.
• Big Brother Instinct: She tries to protect Weiss to the best of her abilities and even goes as far as to threaten her father with violence when he tries to take Weiss back home by force.
• Religious Bruiser: She's wears her Dustist gem even while in her military uniform.

Jacques Schnee

• Abusive Parents: It's shown that he has emotionally and physically abused all three of his children.
• Death by Adaptation: His son Whitley kills him after Jacques formally declares him his heir.
• Domestic Abuse: It's implied he's emotionally abusive towards Willow.
• Fantastic Racism: He views Faunus as sub-human.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He's abusive towards his family, is vehemently speciesist towards Faunus, and misgenders his transgender son behind his back. He also reacts dismissively to Weiss coming out to him by saying that marrying his friend will "fix" her.

Willow Schnee

• Adaptational Backstory Change: Willow in canon began drinking when her middle child Weiss was ten. Willow in Scars has been an alcoholic since before her oldest child was even born. This is because her alcoholism stems from self-medication instead of just trying to block out her loveless, abusive relationship.
• Alcoholic Parent: She's been an alcoholic for at least thirty years (and her oldest is only in her late-twenties) in order to numb the pain of her abusive home life and deal with her hallucinations. However, she decides to quit after Weiss' Interrupted Suicide shows her the greater effects of her alcoholism.
• Ascended Extra: Willow was given characterization much earlier than in canon.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Willow is schizophrenic. Her alcoholism partially stems from self-medicating.
• Doesn't Know Their Own Child: She has trouble remembering basic facts about her kids, such as Weiss' Comfort Food, because she spends so little time with them.
• Internalized Categorism: She feels self-hatred because of her schizophrenia and worries that her genes are why Weiss developed a similar disorder.
• Parental Neglect: She's barely a presence in her children's lives. She spends most of her time drinking in seclusion.
• Named by the Adaptation: The name "Willow" appeared on an internal document for the series before being fully canonized in volume 7. When Scars began Weiss' mother was still unnamed in canon.

Whitley Schnee

• Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed. He isn't as obviously cruel and manipulative as his canonical version. While he is aloof, it is shown that he cares for Weiss and every sketchy-seeming thing he does is actually for her own good. This includes inadvertently coaxing Jacques into naming him heir, because he realizes Weiss would be better off elsewhere. On the other hand, he behaves in an ambiguous manner towards people besides Weiss.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Instead of being Weiss' younger brother by a few years, he's Weiss' younger twin.
• Ambiguously Evil: He killed his father after he was deemed heir and is a side villain. His intentions, however, are vague because he acts in an ambiguous manner towards most people.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Whitley is written as someone who has an anti-social personality disorder.
• Disease by Any Other Name: He's clinical, manipulative, and violent for his age. According to Word of God, he has anti-social personality disorder.
• Gender-Blender Name: His name was "Whitley" even before he transitioned.
• Half-Identical Twins: It's implied that he's identical to Weiss. In this case, it's justified because he's a trans boy.
• Morality Pet: Whitley is closest to his twin sister Weiss. He's morally ambiguous and stoic towards everyone but her. He even admits to his mother that he'd likely kill her if it wasn't that Weiss would be saddened by her death.
• Patricide: As soon as Jacques appoints Whitley his heir, Whitely stabs him to death.
• The Sociopath: According to Word of God, he has an undiagnosed case of anti-social personality disorder.

Hozuki Ghira

• Adaptation Name Change: His surname is "Hozuki", not "Belladonna".
• Little Bit Beastly: He's a cat Faunus with retractable cat claws.

Hozuki Kali

• Adaptation Name Change: Her surname is "Hozuki", not "Belladonna".
• Little Bit Beastly: She's a cat Faunus with cat ears.
• Related in the Adaptation: Sienna is her sister.

Coco Adel

• Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. Her full name is given as "Coco Puphs Adel" in the story.
• Ascended Extra: She appears as a reoccuring side character.
• The Alcoholic: She initially comes off as a Hard-Drinking Party Girl but it swiftly changes into alcoholism. Her teammates coax her into therapy because they dislike her heavy drinking and smoking.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: Coco smokes when stressed.
• Death by Adaptation: Adam kills her in Volume 3.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Coco's diagnosed with PTSD partway through. It's also mentioned that she suffers from leg pains due to an injury.
• Early-Bird Cameo: She appears at the Beacon initiation giving new students their parachutes.
• Hallucinations: Subverted. She's encouraged to get therapy because it's thought that she's seeing things, but it was actually Emerald's illusionist semblance at work.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Coco and Velvet are girlfriends.

Fox Alistair

• Ascended Extra: While not as prominent as Coco and Velvet, he's given more screentime than in canon.
• Adaptation Species Change: Instead of being human, he's a fox Faunus.
• An Arm and a Leg: He loses an arm when Adam kills him.
• Death by Adaptation: He's killed by Adam in Volume 3.
• Disabled Badass: He's blind but is a capable fighter nevertheless.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: He's explictly blind. He was later confirmed blind in canon, but it was ambiguous when RWBY: Scars began.

Velvet Scarlatina

• Ascended Extra: She appears throughout the first three volumes and briefly reappears in Volume 4.
• Little Bit Beastly: She's a rabbit Faunus with rabbit ears.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Coco and Velvet are girlfriends.
• Tragic Keepsake: She begins wearing Coco's hat after her death.

Penny Polendina

• Adaptational Backstory Change: In canon her aura and soul comes from her father Pietro giving some of his aura to a robot. Jn Scars, it comes from Penny having the soul of Ironwood's daughter Penelope.
• Astro Clone: RWBY Scars adds onto what Astro Clone traits Penny has in canon. Penny is a Flying Brick Robot Girl who wants be seen as human. She has two father figures, her creator and James Ironwood. It's later shown that Ironwood is literally Penny's dad. Penny is the Replacement Goldfish for Ironwood's daughter Penelope Ironwood, who had her soul transferred into a robot. Penny, however, only has brief memories of her past life and has an existential Heroic BSoD upon being told the truth.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: She dies in the same scene but Pyrrha stabs her, cuts off her leg, and beheads her due to believing she's a Beowolf, rather than Pyrrha accidentally causing her to be crushed by her own weapons because she saw more weapons than their actually were.
• Do Androids Dream?: Penny's humanity is called into questions more than once. She has a soul, acts like a human, and dreams (of sheep), so is she essentiallly human? This is added onto after it's revealed Penny contains the soul of a human girl.
• The Lost Lenore: She becomes this to Ruby. To make it worse, Ruby has a video from Penny on her phone that Penny made for Ruby's birthday. In it, Penny leaves a message in case they're separated.
• Off with His Head!: She dies when Pyrrha beheads her.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Penny begins dating Ruby halfway through Volume 1.
• Related in the Adaptation: She's Ironwood's daughter. Or more precisely, she contains the amnesiac soul of Ironwood's dying daughter Penelope.
• Robo Speak: Penny has a stilted way of talking.
• Robot Girl: Penny is a robotic teenage girl.

Wukong Sun

• Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. His name is written in the traditional Chinese manner.
• Adaptational Job Change: Scars expands upon Sun sneaking onto a boat in Volume 1 by having him be a traveler rather than a hunter student.
• Little Bit Beastly: He's a monkey Faunus with a monkey's tail.
• Promoted to Love Interest: He and Neptune are a couple.

Neptune Vasilias

• Adaptational Job Change: He's a homeless traveler instead of a hunter-in-training.
• Ascended Extra: He's introduced in Volume 1 and is treated as a reoccuring character. He also appears in Volume 4 when he joins Sun and Blake on their trip
• Promoted to Love Interest: Sun is his boyfriend.

Ozpin's Faction

Ozpin

Oscar Pine

Qrow Branwen

• The Alcoholic: He's a heavy drinker. His drinking became worse after he killed his exe Summer.
• Half-Identical Twins: He looks like a male version of his twin Raven.
• High-School Sweethearts: He and Summer began dating in Beacon, but he pushed her away in his twenties.
• Honorary Uncle: He's Yang's biological uncle but unrelated to his other niece Ruby (or so she thinks).
• Kill the Ones You Love: He killed Summer in order to not throw off his disguise as a spy for Salem.
• The Mole: He acts as an inside agent of Salem's Faction for Ozpin.
• Religious Bruiser: He converted to the Brothers Church after Summer's death. This explains his cross necklace.
• Related in the Adaptation: Instead of being Ruby's Honorary Uncle, he's secretly her biological father.

Salem's Faction

Salem

• Adaptation Species Change: In canon, she's a human (or at least, she was born one). In Scars, she's the last remaining member of a humanoid precursor to Grimm.

Tyrian Callows

• Gender Flip: Tyrian is changed into a girl.
• Little Bit Beastly: She's a scorpion Faunus with a scorpion tail.

Cinder Fall

• Dark and Troubled Past: She had a Wicked Stepmother growing up. As a young teen, her village was massacred by bandits and the survivors sold into slavery. Cinder was then forced to live as a Sex Slave for several years, until her semblance unlocked and she murdered her abuser.
• Important Haircut: Cinder cut her long hair after escaping slavery.
• Meaningful Rename: Cinder's name was originally Chujo and renamed herself after unlocking her semblance.
• Parental Abandonment: She grew up with an Evil Stepmother named Murasaki.

Emerald Sustrai

• Promoted to Love Interest: Canon suggests that Emerald views Cinder as a mother figure. In Scars, she's attracted to her.

Mercury Black

• Abusive Parents: His father was physically and emotionally abusive.
• Self-Made Orphan: He killed his abusive father prior to the story.

Neo Politan

• Adaptation Species Change: She's a human-passing reptile Faunus (implied to be a chameleon Faunus), rather than a human.
• Adaptation Name Change: Her name is "Neo Politan" instead of "Neopolitan". This is an alternate spelling used in some official media.
• Ascended Extra: She's given more screentime. There's an entire chapter dedicated to her and Roman's backstory.
• Creepy Child: Her own mother called her a monster because she was violent as a kid.
• Daddy's Little Villain: She's Roman's precious daughter and they work together, alongside Cinder.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Neo being mute in Scars predates the canonization of her muteness in canon. The story shows that she was born mute and that she communicates mainly through sign language.
• Evil Counterpart: To Ruby. They're both young women whose huntress mother's died when they were younger and they both have overprotective dads. Both Ruby and Neo also look near-identical to their mothers.
• Family Theme Naming: "Neo" matches her mother Eon's name.
• Little Bit Beastly: She's a reptile Faunus. Her Faunus trait is her forked tongue.
• Missing Mom: Her mother was a huntress who died on a mission when she was a child.
• Psychopathic Man Child: She monologues in a childish tone despite being at a minimum a teenager. She's also brutally violent when she wants to be.
• Rape as Backstory: Rape is a major element of her Start of Darkness. She was assaulted as a teenager, which led to her killing the perpetrator in revenge.
  • Ambiguous Start of Darkness: However she was still violent as a child, making it unclear if this made her evil and those acts were retaliation for Fantastic Racism, or if she was already disturbed and the rape made her worse.
• Rape and Revenge: After a peer assaulted Neo, Roman kidnapped the boy and allowed Neo to torture him to death. The two were hiding out from the boy's father when they met Cinder.
• Related in the Adaptation: She's the biological daughter of Roman and an old classmate of his named Eon. Their relationship is ambiguous in canon, but it's suggested that Neo and Roman are not biologically related.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She's described as looking like a younger version of her mother Eon, down to the forked tongue.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: As a little kid, she stabbed a classmate and liked to throw rocks at animals.

Roman Torchwick

• Blackmail: He only works with Cinder because she threatened to hurt Neo if he refused.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: It's implied that he dislikes Neo's violent, criminal behavior and wishes that'd she would stay safe as a civilian.
• Foil:
  • He was once a bright-eyed hunter-in-training like Ruby, but after he was unjustly kicked out of Beacon and arrested for a crime he didn't commit, he lost his way. While in jail, he was asked to be involved in a crime and that's how he got involved with the illegal dust trade.
  • He's similar to Taiyang in that he's a single father who just wants to protect his daughter. His wife was a huntress who died on a mission when his daughter was young.
• High-School Sweethearts: Downplayed with him and his wife Eon. They were on a team at Beacon together, but Roman was kicked out shortly afterward. The two met again years afterward and hooked up.
• Parental Abandonment: He was raised in an orphanage.
• Precious Photo: He carries around two cherished photos: one of a newborn Neo and another of his old team at Beacon.
• Rape as Backstory: A variant. Roman stopped an Attempted Rape as a Beacon student, but Ozpin kicked him out because Roman was accused of being the rapist. This led to Roman's Start of Darkness when he met a man in jail who got him into the crime life.
• Related in the Adaptation: Canon suggests that he has a father-like relationship with Neo. In Scars, he's literally her father.
• Spared by the Adaptation: He's not killed at the end of Volume 3.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: He was optimistic and much like Ruby when he was younger, but he's grown into a jaded individual due to experiences in his life.

White Fang

Adam Taurus

• Adaptational Jerkass: The story removes Adam's Characterization Marches On by making him Blake's human loathing, abusive boyfriend from his introduction.
• Domestic Abuse: He has a history of being manipulative and emotionally abusive towards Blake, made worse by their age gap. It's also implied he sexually abused her as well. Blake's last straw was when Adam slapped her during the "Black" trailer scenes.
• Fantastic Racism: He loathes all humans and thinks that Faunus are superior to them.
• Little Bit Beastly: He's a bull Faunus with horns.

Sienna Khan

• Ambiguously Related: Downplayed with Kali. They're sisters but look very different. It's possible that they're either half-siblings or adopted siblings, but they could also be full sisters.
• Little Bit Beastly: She's a tiger Faunus who has tiger ears.
• Related in the Adaptation: She's Kali's sister and Blake's aunt.

Ilia Amitola

• Little Bit Beastly: She's a human-passing Chameleon Faunus. Her Faunus traits look like normal blemishes or freckles.

Miscellaneous

Glynda Goodwitch

• Ascended Extra: She appears past Volume 3 when she decides to visit Taiyang and Yang to see how Yang's doing.

Eon Politan

• Canon Foreigner: It's implied that Roman divorced a wife in canon, but she's never described. Eon is instead an original character created for Scars.
• Foil: To Summer. They're both huntress' who died on a mission. However, Eon feared her daughter and looked down upon her, while Summer was very affectionate towards her daughters.
• High-School Sweethearts: Downplayed. She was on a team with Roman but they went their separate ways after Roman was kicked out of Beacon. They met again years later and got together.
• Little Bit Beastly: She's a human-passing Faunus
• Parental Neglect: It's implied that she wasn't the kindest towards Neo. She didn't like Neo's Creepy Child behavior.
• Posthumous Character: She died on a mission prior to the story.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Her daughter Neo is described as looking identical to her.

Cardin Winchester

• The Bully: He bullies Jaune, but his bullying is less "comedic cartoony bullying" and more "realistic Jerk Jock bullying". He also attempts to bully Velvet, however Coco attacks him for hurting her girlfriend.
• Bully Brutality: He hurts Velvet when he decides to pick on her.
• Death by Adaptation: Adam kills him in the fall of Beacon.
• Fantastic Racism: He has a disdain towards Faunus.
• Demoted to Extra: As Jaune's bullying arc is de-emphasized and predominantly skipped over, Cardin's role is decreased.
• Generation Xerox; It's shown that his father hates Faunus, he went to Beacon, and he tried to rape Velvet's mother. Cardin is also a bully who goes to Beacon and tries to pick on Velvet.
• Incompatible Orientation: He's in love with Weiss but she's gay. Even when she tells him so, he isn't dissuaded much.
• Missing Mom: His mother was killed by Adam and Blake prior to the story.
• Off with His Head!; He dies by being beheaded by Adam.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He's speciesist towards Faunus, bullies Jaune, and calls Weiss a homophobic slur.

Xiong "Junior" Hei

• Ascended Extra: He appears in a few extra scenes when Yang visits his club.
• Parental Substitute: He's implied to be one towards the Malachite twins. He took them in after they ran away from home.

Melanie and Miltia Malachite

• Abusive Parents: They're twins who ran away as teens because their father was physically abusive.
• Ascended Extra: In canon, they don't appear outside the "Yellow" trailer, aside from a cameo in a Volume 2 episode. In Scars, Yang comes across them when she goes to Junior's to drink in Volume 4. They later become more important later on.
• Big Sister Instinct: It's never mentioned who was born first, and being twins it doesn't matter, but Militia has this personality. Melanie took the brunt of their dad's abuse. Since then, Militia has told herself she wouldn't let anyone hurt her sister.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Militia is protective of Melanie and is the more serious of the two. Melanie is more soft and sentimental.
• Foil: To Ruby and Yang. They're sisters where one feels the need to protect the other.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Militia has feelings for Yang.
• The Runaway: They ran away from home when they were younger and have been friends with Junior ever since then.

"Lil' Miss Malachite"

• Adaptation Dye-Job: To emphasize her resemblance to her twins, her blue eyes are green and her blonde hair is black.
• Ascended Extra: Her character appears more than in canon.
• Even Evil Has Standards: She's a criminal but is protective of her daughters, to a degree. Her daughters' father "mysteriously" died after she got wind he was abusing them.
• Named by the Adaptation: Her name is given as "Ianthe".
• Parental Neglect: She hasn't been active in her daughters' life for years. She claims to have looked for them but Melanie doesn't believe her.

Violet Akita

• Canon Foreigner: She's a reoccurring original character.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: She gets torn in half by Grimm during the fall of Beacon.
• Little Bit Beastly: Violet is a dog Faunus who has dog ears.
• Meaningful Name: She's a dog Faunus with purple hair.