Fanfic / War of Remnant: A RWBY Anthology

War of Remnant: A RWBY Anthology is a RWBY fan fiction that functions as a retelling of the canon events of RWBY, though this time characters and story arcs are established much earlier than they were in the show. After being orphaned, Volume 3 was released a year later. The full series can be found here

The fic has three separate main groups that are followed: The Beacon Students (Teams RWBY, JNPR, CFVY, and CARD), Atlas Military (mainly Winter and Penny), and The Happy Huntresses. The Beacon students getting the most focus, Atlas Military the second most, and The Happy Huntresses get the least focus.

The author announced that they were permanently ending the series on February 5th due to increased criticism on the dark setting.

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War of Remnant provides examples of (SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED):

• Abusive Parents:
  • Jacques to Weiss and her siblings, as expected. It started with Gaslighting and eventually turned to full-on physical and verbal abuse.
  • Pyrrha’s mother, Talia Nikos, hit her for disobeying her and wasn’t afraid to assault her father in front of a young Pyrrha.
  • Roman had an abusive father. It’s one of the reasons he hates the world.
  • Fox and his boyfriend Ink’s parents were firm believers in Vacuo’s Might Makes Right mentality, and abused their sons until they were “strong”. Ink had it even worse with his mother raping him.
• Action Girl: This is a RWBY fic, this is a given. Though special mention goes to Winter, who is so capable most criminals are terrified of her.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Most of the major characters get hit with this to some degree. Even those with tragedy in their backstories have them amplified. Winter is subject to the worst of this.
• Adaptational Badass: Though he still snuck his way into Beacon, Jaune is very capable in combat and doesn’t need Pyrrha to train him.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Weiss. As part of her Deconstructed Character Archetype, is much more of a petulant, whiny, spoiled bigoted jerk who none of the Beacon students could stand.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Cinder genuinely cares about Emerald and Mercury, the former especially, considering they’re lovers. When Cinder learns she and Mercury killed Tukson, she gets mad at Roman for wasting their time by having to do his job for him. She comforts Emerald when she breaks down after killing Tukson.
  • Roman’s care for Neo wasn’t revealed until he thinks she was blown off an airship to her death in Volume 3. Here, he’s openly caring towards her, letting her have days off to visit her family and defending her from insults from Damian. It helps that she’s his daughter here.
  • Emerald is more remorseful than in canon. Openly weeping after killing Tukson and being much more put off by Mercury’s sadism.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • While Cinder does genuinely care more, she’s also a lot more violent and ruthless. She butchers the Atlas soldiers guarding the CCT, and is also a Bad Boss who kills failing minions.
  • Mercury is much more violent and sadistic than canon. He also doesn’t care about Emerald at all.
  • Adam and his Lieutenant were bad, but infanticide was not on their list of crimes.
• Affably Evil: Cinder, due to Adaptational Nice Guy, is this. She can even be nice to Roman whenever he isn’t screwing up.
• The Alcoholic: Willow Schnee, like in canon. After the death of her wife and baby, Winter follows suit.
• Alcoholic Parent: Willow Schnee loses herself in alcohol after Jacques reveals he never loved her or their kids in a moment of stress, and this leaves her neglectful of his abuse.
• Bad Boss: Cinder cares very little for Roman and the White Fang, constantly threatening the former and indiscriminately killing the latter for failures.
• Benevolent Boss: Cinder, on the other hand, genuinely cares for Emerald, Mercury, and Neo. Interactions between her and Emerald can be oddly heartwarming.
• Big Bad: Salem takes the reigns after Volume three, taking the role from Watts and Cinder.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Watts and Cinder are the main instigators behind the first three volumes. They both work for Salem and their actions help advance her plans.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Jax Asturias and the Crown as a whole. While a group of loathsome, monstrous bastards, they are ultimately run by a completely delusional child who was only allowed to run around for as long as he did because his sister couldn’t work up the nerve to rat him out. When people become aware of them and have the nerve his sister lacks, they crumble rather quickly.
• Bungled Suicide: Winter was about to kill herself in her second arc, and was only saved by her gun being empty.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • The Shopkeeper is a badass who shows no fear when held at gunpoint and jumps at the first opportunity to help Ruby after she saves him. He also sticks up for her when Glynda is about to scold her, and later gives Yang free engagement rings and some friendly advice when she does the same.
  • Jack is a friend of the Happy Huntresses who provides them with their hideout and a place to hold their rallies.
  • Hector Blaze is an older Patch police officer who moonlights as a vigilante. When in one of Carter Pillar's drug labs, he effortlessly fights off the workers in there without even breaking a sweat.
• Crusading Widow: Robyn’s wife was killed in an assassination bombing orchestrated by Jacques, and the first thing she does before running against him in the Atlas election is tear apart his criminal empire.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Cinder and co absolutely annihilate Team CARD to the point it wasn’t even funny. Cinder had hacked into the Vytal Tournament’s match setup and picked her crew to fight them knowing they wouldn’t be able to take them.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Though Team SSSN was pretty soundly defeated by CFVY, Sun actually managed to subdue Velvet and was only stopped by the untimely arrival of Yatsuhashi.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Winter losing her family is her’s. She had actually managed to walk away from her childhood very well adjusted, but their gruesome murders turned her into the bitter, snarky, alcoholic woman who neglects her suffering siblings and is very hostile to anyone not named James Ironwood.
• Dark Action Girl: Many of the women on the villains' side can fight just as well as the heroic women. Cinder is the most physically capable of the bunch, expertly taking down several Atlas guards while slaughtering her way through the CCT.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Almost everyone had something bad happen in their past. Whether it’s Abusive Parents, lost loved ones, or any number of tragedies.
• Death of a Child: Winter’s backstory is made of this. She failed to save her wife, Daisy, and baby, Tulip, despite being so close to saving them. The latter’s death has especially had an effect on her, as a lot of her PTSD attacks involve hearing her crying.
• Death Seeker: Though she occasionally has suicidal thoughts and has attempted to kill herself, Winter is more content with getting herself killed than doing the deed on her own.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Weiss deconstructs a lot of her character from canon. She’s called out much more often whenever she acts like a jerk, and Blake absolutely annihilates her attempts at being a Tragic Bigot.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Both Weiss and Winter, respectively. Though both needed some serious dressing-downs before either of their processes start.
• Dirty Cop: Commander Blade and the entirety of his SWAT force are a group of murderous bastards, with Blade himself selling insider information to Watts despite knowing it will get Atlas soldiers killed, all for money.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Adam killed Winter’s wife and baby because she called him a coward.
  • Yang beats Mercury in a fight, so he drops Sapphire to her brutal death by the Grimm in front of her.
• The Ditz: Adrian is stupid to a lethal degree. Apparently, it's In the Blood, as seen with his and Canvas' parents, and he reveals in a moment of lucidity that Canvas' bloodline has been watching over Church's since Atlas was founded.
• Domestic Abuse:
  • Jacques is as verbally abusive and manipulative to Willow as he is to their children.
  • Pyrrha’s mother, Talia, isn’t afraid to assault her husband in front of Pyrrha.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Winter claims she was doing this for Penny to toughen her up, but it becomes increasingly clear she’s trying to drag her down to her miserable level. Penny calls her out on this and Winter softens up accordingly.
• Dysfunction Junction: As mentioned above in Dark and Troubled Past, pretty much every single character is traumatized by something in their past, leaving them with severe issues. Some of them deal with their issues better than others.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Cinder and Roman care about Emerald and Neo respectively. Cinder is a much more Benevolent Boss toward Mercury and Neo, as well.
• Evil Is Petty: Adam killed Winter’s wife and infant daughter because she called him a coward, and later immature.
• Face Death with Dignity:
  • Disturbingly deconstructed with Winter. The reasons she’s so dignified in moments of near-death are because she's a Death Seeker, and being so stoic is presented as a part of her suicidal depression and most certainly not a good or noble quality.
  • Subverted with Summer; while recounting her death, Raven tells Ruby that she died taking a fatal hit for Raven and proclaiming her love for her children with her dying breath. In reality, Summer died in terrified agony, crying that she didn't want to die and that she was scared.
• Fantastic Racism: Both sides have issues with this. On the human side of things, Jacques and Carter regularly abduct, torture, and murder Faunus. While the White Fang is no better, with most slaughtering humans out of no more than sadistic bigotry.
• For the Evulz:
  • Mercury is prone to doing things to hurt people just because he likes it.
  • Watts causes trafficking accidents in Mistral just because.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Salem has been mentioned as superior to Cinder and Watts.
  • Watts himself is this for the Atlas arcs, as the Arc Villains were sent by him.
  • Finally, Abyss is this for the series at large, as Salem serves him.
• Hidden Depths: As sadistic as he is about killing, Mercury shows a surprising amount of serious professionalism when out on a hit.
• Human Traffickers: A three-way network between Jax, Carter Pillar, and Jacques Schnee. Jax abducts Faunus from Vacuo and ships them over to Patch so Carter can Mind Rape them, then he ships them over to Jacques so he can force the mindless slaves to work in the dust mines.
• Ice Queen: Winter has this as a nickname instead of Weiss. Helps that the former is genuinely cold while the latter is more of a whiny bigoted brat, which is why her nickname here is Princess.
• Immaturity Insult: When Mercury starts misbehaving after being upset about losing to Yang, he starts throwing tantrums in public and Cinder has to reprimand him. When he says that he doesn't like her using "mom mode", she replies by saying it wouldn't be necessary if he wasn't acting like a child.
• Interrupted Suicide: Unintentional example. In the "Yellow" arc Yang attempts to kill herself, but is interrupted by a knock on the door by a postal worker, which she decides to answer instead of going through with it because she thinks it’s important.
• Ironic Echo: After Penny falls in line with Winter's Drill Sergeant Nasty attitude, she condescendingly says, "At least you're smart." After Penny chews out Winter and threatens her for attempting to report Pietro for allowing Penny to not blindly follow orders, Winter fearfully complies and Penny throws the line back in her face.
• Jerkass:
  • Damian is not only an immoral terrorist funder, but he’s also just a massive jackass who can’t hold a single one-on-one conversation with someone without insulting them.
  • Jacques is a complete bastard to everyone who knows him, including his wife and children.
  • Watts is a smug, arrogant man who openly believes he’s better than everyone he talks to.
  • Mercury, when greeted by CARD, wordlessly flips them off. This is the most recent example of his dickishness.
  • Team CRDL are the local bullies, and they take every chance they can to belittle others. Sky and Russel end up getting beat up by Ciel singlehandedly for mocking her and her scar.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Deconstructed Trope. Blake agrees with Weiss that the White Fang is bad, but also tears into her for the gall of comparing an entire race to a single supremacy movement, especially when none of the Faunus do that to humans despite Jacques’ actions against them.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Deconstructed with almost every single character who fits.
  • Weiss is the most blatant example, coming off as more cruel, petulant, and bigoted despite keeping her noble goal from canon. She gets a series of very vicious The Reason You Suck Speeches before facing the fact she'll need to become nicer.
  • Winter's Freudian Excuse is treated much more sympathetically than Weiss', but her Drill Sergeant Nasty treatment of Penny isn't presented as justified in any way, and she deserved "The Reason You Suck" Speech Penny dishes out to her after reaching her Rage Breaking Point.
  • Fox is constantly scolded for his snarky and rude behavior and gets a dose of Laser-Guided Karma in the "Scary Stories" one-shot when he goes too far in mocking the others and ends up ridiculed to point that he needed to leave the room.
  • Qrow is a far bigger jackass when it came to starting his fight with Winter, assaulting two Atlas soldiers and hitting Weiss over the head to provoke Winger. The Curb-Stomp Battle and subsequent scolding from allies with not even a word of negativity tossed in Winter's direction is thoroughly earned.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Owing to the fic being canceled for a year, most of the villains initially got away with their crimes completely, and when it was revived they continued to still do so for the time being. Volume 5 finally sees that change in some cases, with Damian Void and Mercury Black both getting killed while Adam Taurus gets bloodily beaten by Ghira and loses a hand courtesy of Kali.
• Knight of Cerebus: Adam Taurus, despite not being very present in the first two volumes, causes a lot of pain in Winter’s life, causing her to be cynical and jaded.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Once Volume 3 of the story came out, a few characters comment on things as if they were gone for a long time. The series had been on a hiatus for over a year, and Yang mentions how she feels like she's been waiting for the next fight for that long despite it being a few days in-universe.
• Like Mother, Like Daughter: Winter is painfully aware she’s become the same alcoholic mess as her mother.
• Mama Bear: Joanna is an unfortunate posthumous example to her daughter, Maple. Though she still shot a White Fang member who had attacked them both before her death.
• Manchild: Oobleck can be rather immature for a teacher, when he realized Cinder’s team was Team CMEN he was about to point out he thought it was pronounced some other way before Port interrupted him.
  Professor Port: Be an adult, please!
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": When Adrian throws his food at Yatsuhashi, everyone else has this reaction. Even Fox catches on to what happens when he hears things go silent.
• Mercy Kill: Glynda killed her wife, Gannet, by smothering her with a pillow after her neck was broken by White Fang members during the Fall.
• Never My Fault: Weiss believes everyone hates her because of her father, but Blake bluntly spells out to her that no one cares about her dad and hates her because of the person she is.
• Noodle Incident: Glynda lists numerous examples of why Qrow shouldn’t be allowed at public gatherings, the most prominent being him streaking.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Turns out there is something lurking in Sapphire’s dreams. Despite her dream-weaving abilities, she can never get rid of it no matter how blatantly she kills it and doesn’t want it to come back. The description of this entity is very similar to that of the Jabberwocky. It also speaks cryptically:
  Creature: I’ll always be here.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Adam, of course. Winter flat-out calls out how he’s only using the claim of fighting for Faunus rights to cover for the fact he’s using it as an excuse to kill people.
• Parental Neglect: Ruby and Yang suffered from this due to Taiyang shutting down after Summer’s death.
• Parental Substitute: Klein to the Schnee kids, like in canon, though Ironwood is very fatherly towards Winter, as well.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Not only is Team CRDL prejudiced against Faunus, Russel goes out of his way to make a joke about Ciel's skin color.
• Professional Killer: Lurker and Cheshire are a pair of contract killers who usually perform wet work for Jacques. Lurker specializes in silenced pistols while Cheshire prefers to blow up his targets, and anyone in their vicinity, to smithereens.
• Psycho for Hire: Lurker and Cheshire are also sadistic bastards who enjoy their work. This is seen best in their depraved side businesses, with Lurker running Snuff Film rings and Cheshire abducting innocents and live-streaming them fighting to the death.
• Psychopathic Manchild:
  • Winter calls Adam out on this when he calls her up to petulantly demand she takes back calling him a coward. He proves her correct in the worst way imaginable by killing her family when she refuses to take it back.
  • Mercury has shades of this at the start of Volume 3 when he starts throwing a tantrum about losing to Yang.
  • Jax Asturias is called out on his childishness by his sister constantly.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • When Penny hits her Rage Breaking Point after Winter threatens to have Pietro reported, she openly chastises her for her hostile Ice Queen behavior and unpleasant attitude and states that she still put up with it because she thought they could eventually be friends.
  • Weiss is on the receiving end of three different ones before she finally ends up improving her behavior.
    • The first is when Ruby has to put her in line for acting like a spoiled brat because Ozpin chose Ruby as team leader instead of her. She tells Weiss that while Ruby has been doing what she can to be the best leader possible even despite the fact that she still feels in over her head, Weiss has done nothing but demean and belittle others rather than even attempt to be a cohesive team member. And even though she calls Ruby immature, Ruby correctly points out that Weiss isn't a bastion of maturity herself for how she has been behaving.
    • The second is when she belittles Jaune by saying Pyrrha is so much better than him and she shouldn't be hanging out with someone beneath her status. This causes her to slam Weiss against a locker and calls her out as a selfish, elitist sack of garbage who has no business telling her who she can and can't hang out with. Weiss says that he's nothing for Remnant, and Pyrrha retorts by saying "If Jaune is nothing to Remnant, then I can safely say you are to its detriment." This causes Weiss to break into tears.
    • The third and final one is when Blake pulls the Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse card on her. After Blake has to deal with Weiss' blatant racism, she finally has enough. While Weiss tries to claim that no one knows what she's been through, Blake chews her out by saying that she doesn't even bother to understand what anyone else has been through. When Weiss claims that they all hate her because of her father, Blake bluntly tells her that they don't hate her because of who her father is. They hate her because of who she is. She acts spoiled, haughty, and spiteful, but then makes herself a victim to throw a pity party for herself. Blake lets her know that being the victim of suffering doesn't give her the right to hurt others in return. While it doesn't get through to her initially since she still says that Faunus should essentially be treated like slaves, Blake bolting out of there is what makes her start to realize her errors.
• Sane Boss, Psycho Henchmen: Salem's inner circle contains Watts, Tyrian, the Wendigo, and Blackheart, all of which are maniacs in their own ways. Volume 5 adds Cinder thanks to her Sanity Slippage.
• Serial Killer:
  • Nightwalker was this with a nasty blend of Spree Killer.
  • Wendigo is a serial Spree Killer who takes out entire villages before moving on. He keeps trophies of previous villages he slaughtered in a cave.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Dark Knight Trilogy:
    • When the shopkeeper shows no fear to Roman and his men, Roman says he reminds him of his father, who he hated.
    • Winter quotes Ra's “loved ones become poison in your veins” speech, but turns it around on herself instead of wishing Daisy and Tulip never existed.
    • Hector Blaze says that he's going to do a "magic trick" of making a key disappear before slamming the key into a goon's eye.
  • Blake worries that humans will once again turn on the Faunus due to the fear caused by the White Fang. In her words, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering".
  • Winter calls Nightwalker a Myers wannabe.
  • Yang assures Winter that Weiss is no longer a "Bitch-tornado".
  • When Yang is trying to figure out why Hector goes the vigilante route, she asks if it was a girlfriend killed by the mob or a brother carved up by some mugger.
• Stage Mom: Talia Nikos is this to a disturbing, serious degree. She didn’t allow Pyrrha to have a childhood, hitting her for so much as talking to a girl her age about playing, and would hurt her husband, Alamar for sticking up for Pyrrha.
• Take That!: Yang says she doesn’t want Summer’s death to make her like Batman, a brooding, immature jerkass.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Commander Blade is respected enough that Winter, who is considered one of Atlas’ greatest heroes, recognizes him. Despite this recognition, he’s still a greedy, murderous man looking to get paid and Kill the Poor.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Yang’s Establishing Character Moment is her tearing up Junior’s club to save her girlfriend, Sapphire. This isn’t the only time she reacts violently to someone threatening or harming Sapphire.
• Vorpal Pillow: How Glynda Mercy Killed her wife. This is justified as Gannet couldn’t put up much of a struggle due to being paralyzed from the neck down and wanted to die.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • Salem wants to burn Remnant down to build a better one in its place. Cinder and Hazel believe in her cause.
  • Sienna Khan wants to wipe out humans because she believes it’s the only way to protect the Faunus. Ilia and the Albain Brothers agree with her, while the rest of the White Fang, especially Adam, are a bunch of racist sadists killing out of bigotry.
• Would Hurt a Child: Adam and his Lieutenant murdered Winter’s infant daughter because she mildly insulted him.

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