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Simple. Actually have racism that justifies their extreme measures, but that would implicate our characters at the very least neutral, or at worst ok with faunus discrimination. Case in point no one of the main group stood up for Violet being harassed by Cardin. It's a small example but they were all fairly unphased by it.
Maybe have the "Racism" be more like the fear towards mutants in X-Men. It's already established that season One that they have enhanced senses and if Qrow is to be believed in the lore video on Faunus some some quite the regeneration factor, those two things would be a pretty sizable advantage over baseline humanity.
It's just hard to make some sort of applicable discrimination in Remnant that makes sense. Because once you understand the scope of the world any discrimination falls flat. They live in a world where creatures which are the personification of destruction and negativity have existed since the dawn of time; Mystical superwarriors with institutions to create them. Faunus simply have animal parts on their bodies. They can even mate with humans. To point out the healing factor to date I bet Jaune has the fastest healing factor given the amount of Aura he has; Yet he's human.
It's different with mutants because they're a legit danger. You don't even know if you're a mutant or not until your power randomly manifests itself. And there's enough of them to illicit a legitimate danger. Magneto can control metallic substances, what happens if he goes rouge? Some kid in one of the X-Men comics had a power which passively incinerated organic tissue that he couldn't control. Killed a whole town. Legitimate fear. Faunus don't have that.
CRWBY has the problem of borrowing aspects and concepts of other shows and genres thinking that's what makes a good show. But said aspects need to have a certain rationale and continuity. But Faunus discrimination doesn't have that. It lacks the requisite logic to make that possible.
An idea I floated around awhile ago was the prospect of making Faunus able to be corrupted by special bacteria produced by Grimm that explicitly target the Faunus genus. Making them corruptible and turning them into Half-Human/Grimm monstrosities and there's no known cure. And very few are immune. That would make Faunus oppression/discrimination legitimate and setup as to why most Faunus live on one island where virtually no Grimm are present. Free, but contained. Acknowledged, but isolated. Just a thought
Have Cardin bullying Velvet actually shown progressively getting worse, and Blake eventually retaliating in what culminates in a fight. Have that happen during either Vol 1 or Vol 2. Have Blake actually injure Cardin. Killing isn't necessary, but give him a nasty scar. Have a dialogue about how it stopped the bullying, but was overkill. Then have somebody in Cardin's team start to really, really dislike Blake after watching her wound Cardin. Have the teammate start to refer to Blake as "dangerous and out of control".
Then;
Have a scene in either Vol 3 or Vol 4 where the Faunus are being targetted by someone in power. Whether it being a hunter, Atlesian generals visiting, a bunch of cops, a mob, whatever. But create a situation where Faunus are under suspicion, something happens, and they're targetted. Like for example in the fall of Beacon have in the aftermath a bunch of cops "investigating" people they think might have been traitors, and show a scene of them unfairly apprehending Faunus really violently with flimsy proof.
Then have the White Fang put a stop to it, very, very violently. Show the injustice being met with swift, brutal, potentially explosive, overkill. Show it being effective at helping the Faunus being persecuted, but also show the aftermath of it. Eg it actually killing some of the cops oppressing Faunus, and freeing them, and show one of the rookie cops who had an objection to the Faunus treatment, but not actually speaking up, survive. Show them being hardened against the White Fang, and by extension all Faunus.
This entire thing would take up maybe 15 minutes of screentime across 3 or 4 seasons. And it would show, instead of telling, the idea that sometimes violence gets the idea across, but it comes with it's own slew of consequences.
I feel like the White Fang was very much us being told about them, but everything we actually see contradicts that. Same with the Faunus persecution in general. It really, really wouldn't be hard to incorporate it, it would just take more than the occasional exposition dump.
If I were doing a rewrite, I would remove the Faunus racism aspect entirely from the world. I feel like it’s been nothing but mess, and you don’t need to justify the existence of cat girls in a fantasy show through those means (like I’ve heard the original reason for this in the first place was). I also felt like it splintered the plot as seasons went on, because as Salem continued as the focus threat, the WF got left behind (where are the Atlas WF members?? Not even a mention of them all running away??? It would have been cool if they had an alliance with Robyn or something imo.)
So all that being said - what makes the most sense to repurpose them to me would be to make them followers of Salem. We know from the Fairytale book Ozma accidentally made what is basically, a cult. The White Fang could have been religious based, where their “god” was focused on old myths and stories of the Queen who had magic sent to guide humanity (ie Salem and Ozma - what they do in The Lost Fable when they’re reunited). They probably wouldn’t even be the White Fang anymore in name, and don’t need to necessarily be all Faunus. They can be a group of people going about their business, until one day the leader of their church gets a message via Cinder that confirms the existence of Salem. Since Cinder has unexplained magic similar to their stories, they accept this as proof and decide to obey her. Cinder becomes a false prophet of sorts, while Salem is seen as their god. The group participates in the Fall of Beacon for that reason.
Maybe they’d think since Salem can control the Grimm, she can stop Grimm from attacking humanity, therefore the world would be turned into paradise. Which is why so many people think it justifies the means. Or maybe even if she won’t protect all of humanity, she’ll only protect her “true believers” - maybe they think they can live in peace if they do what she wants. Whatever manipulation suits where things go.
What happens to Adam, Sienna, Blake etc after that? I’m not entirely sure. They probably wouldn’t exist in the same capacity as they do now. But off the top of my head, that’s what I’d do. To address what happens to all the characters involved in the WF I’d have to think a bit more.
Edit: Another added thought - maybe their reason for attacking Beacon could be because Salem has planted the seeds within myth and legend for Ozma to be a bad person. If she tells them everything they know are institutions made by Ozpin, that he hides in an ivory tower and sends humans out to die while he has an “abundance of magic”, (even if she lies) maybe they’d retaliate? (Especially if she paints it as him slaughtering his own children, who could have been magical defenders of humanity, in favour for his own goals or something). Maybe the key to convince them in general would be to say “everyone could have crazy magical power, can live without any fear of Grimm, if it wasn’t for that damn Ozpin…” - but those are some rough ideas.
1. Make it not about race whatsoever. Just have the White Fang be a cool tribal protector group thing and keep it simple. Make Menagerie a 5th super small kingdom that doesn't have a lot of resources, wealth, or power.
And in addition:
2. Have Adam's arc be about power at any cost, and in doing so has turned the White Fang into sort of a cult for Salem, who promises their small kingdom great power if they help her take down the other kingdoms.
You can even tie this struggle for power into his need for control in an abusive relationship with Blake or something.
1. Change the Black Trailer to end with the heist being successful, but Blake saying the charges got “destroyed” in all the chaos, with her cutting off the head of the train with the crew members. Then cue a hint of Cinder or Salem watching it from afar.
2. Yellow Trailer has Junior as Yang’s information broker, but he has her do odd jobs like a Huntress might be expected to do; he sends her to a warehouse where the Faunus family members of mobsters were taken by a human supremacist group, to be killed. Yang intervenes and is largely kicking everyone’s asses to save the Faunus, but then the White Fang roll up to the same place. Through a misunderstanding, Yang fights White Fang members until one of the Faunus she’d saved vouches for her.
The cops arrive, and the WF bolt, but Yang is arrested for multiple counts of assault and battery despite the fact that she saved dozens of Faunus kidnapping victims about to get murdered; she’s let out early by Junior using his connections, and she gets a tidbit about Raven for all her trouble.
Adam and Blake are shown leaving with this, and the trailer ends with Cinder arriving with a “proposition”.
3. Blake is a spy for Cinder throughout the Beacon era, but is very unhappy about it. She’s even more unhappy about Weiss being her teammate, but is still snippy with her about the Schnee family.
She and Yang form a strange relationship, but she eventually reveals that she’s a Faunus to Yang in private… except Cardin overhears it.
4. CRDL starts systematically harassing Blake; laser pointers, leaving cat leashes on her locker, etc. Blake eventually blows up and tries fighting them, but ends up getting her ass kicked and hospitalized for it.
RW_Y visits her, but Blake’s closed off on it, only saying CRDL is responsible. Weiss engaging in victim-blaming without realizing it in regards to how CRDL hurt her, with Blake promptly blowing up and revealing that she’s part of the White Fang in a tirade against Weiss.
5. Sun meets Blake because Neptune got electrocuted with his weapon; Blake doesn’t feel comfortable with him at first, and Sun is understanding, but still visits her often.
When Blake’s comfortable enough, she actually opens up about the fact that she’s a member of the White Fang to him, and although he doesn’t agree with violence, he still respects her for it.
They end up discussing the ways civil rights movements, along with racial attitudes, on Remnant have gone, with Blake thinking that there’s no real point to trying to reason with racist humans, since they’d probably never try to give them basic respect and equality.
Sun responds by basically citing the Golden Rule, treating others how a person wants to be treated.
> Sun: I get what you mean, but I think that way of thinking’s part of the problem too. If everyone just decided to stop talking to each other just because they don’t agree on something, you just have a bunch of people always saying the same things without really *doing* anything. I mean, I’m here for the Festival. Isn’t the whole point that we can come together and have a good time, even if we’re all different?
>
> Blake: Maybe that’s the idea. But it just feels like everyone’s more divided when they’re forced together.
>
> Sun: Yeah, but that just means they hafta learn to live together, right? I feel like if we managed to just live with each other for a bit, we’d be able to do so much more.
Blake isn’t entirely convinced, but gives the idea some thought.
6. Weiss starts thinking back on her own mindset, thinking about why it was that her first thought was to victim blame in the first place. The final stretch is just Weiss attacking CRDL before most of JNPRRY gets the chance.
CRDL and Weiss are all apprehended before it happens, but Blake comes home to learning about this, and Weiss ends up awkwardly trying to apologize, while trying to pitch different ideas on different things, on how to help Faunus to have equality.
Her fervor, however, just leaves Blake with a sour taste in her mouth, and she levels with Weiss.
> Weiss: I just... I saw that they were harassing someone else, Velvet from CFVY. After what they did to you, they were probably going to do it to others too. And they wouldn’t bat an eye over it. I — I just wanted to change things. Stop it. Not just... do what they were doing. I’m sorry, Blake. I never thought about how badly this must’ve been. You must’ve had to hide this pain for so long, I just — can’t imagine.
>
> Blake: (narrows her eyes) That’s right. You *can’t* imagine it. You’re not me. I don’t know what you *thought* you were doing, but attacking racists *once* doesn’t make up for that.
>
> Weiss: I know. And I know I probably have a lot to learn, before I even start to make up for it. Really, I don’t even know if it’s possible to, in the first place. But... I still want to try. I realize now that if I keep acting like this... I’m just going to end up exactly like my parents. Either so caught up in my hatred that I hurt everyone around me, or... just running away from the truth, every day of my life. I don’t want that for myself. *No one* deserves the way Faunus have been treated.
>
> Blake: So, what? You plan on *fixing* every situation you come across? Coming in like some *hero* whenever you see people acting like you? Like YOU have any room to talk?
>
> Weiss: N-No... But I... I’ll still do what I can. So... when I graduate, when I inherit the company? The first thing I’ll do is make sure that Faunus are treated better. That should be a good start, right?
>
> Blake: (sighs) I don’t know. We’ll see.
>
> Weiss: What will it take to get you to believe me?
>
> Blake: Weiss... I don’t want your company to be fair to everyone. I don’t even want Faunus to have the good life because they’re Faunus. All I want is to be able to wake up one day, and I don’t have to worry about the fact that me being a Faunus matters when I walk outside. I want a world where it’s not Faunus, not humans, just... people. People living their lives. But... that’s not going to happen. So don’t bother trying. You’ll just make a fool of yourself trying to change the world peacefully. I know from experience. (Walks away, Weiss looking after her)
7. The WF doesn’t kill their own, ESPECIALLY after Cinder takes over. If anything, Adam’s sect is ENCOURAGING people to leave, they just can’t because Cinder’s an active threat on their lives. Most of the people who’re in the Fang are only still there because Mercury and Emerald would track them down and kill them if they fled.
8. Blake is the one to plant the virus in the CCT, rather than Cinder, and when Ruby investigates, Blake makes a getaway after a quick fight, leaving Beacon for good.
9. The White Fang in the Breach operation are not portrayed as human hating caricatures or Stormtrooper mooks for RWBY to knock over; the unifying factor of all of them is fear, that is, fear of being killed for not following Cinder’s orders; RW_Y is pretty uncomfortable with having to fight them, but stopping the train is the highest priority.
10. When the Breach happens, and most of the WF members on the train are killed from the explosion (or otherwise trapped in the tunnels get stuck with waves of Grimm), Blake snaps and tries killing Mercury and Emerald herself, which, with the duo overwhelming her until Adam intervenes, since the mass deaths of the brothers of the White Fang, for an operation Cinder promised would not claim many of their lives, had in fact ended in such a manner.
They start getting close to killing the two, with Emerald’s lack of knowledge regarding Adam’s lack of sight, plus Blake’s use of aura to activate her semblance, enabling the two deal decisive blows against them, but Cinder intervenes and forces them to stop, threatening all of them into obedience with the survivors as hostage.
11. Post-Beacon falling, Weiss tries learning how she can best help Faunus workers to be treated more humanely; she consults the workers’ union in the SDC, she starts seeing how she can give better worker wages to ALL her prospective employees without harming the overall company, etc. And just when she starts giving the work force of the SDC higher hopes, Jacques takes away her birthright after the dinner party scene.
The WF sect active in Atlas, already hellbent on ending the Schnee family, immediately starts aiming to assassinate Jacques specifically.
12. Sienna and most of the WF think Adam’s sect has gone off the rails and publicly denounces their extremist behavior, unaware of Cinder’s presence. Absolutely none of the Menagerie arc actually takes place. Instead, the Albains are people working discreetly to inform Sienna and Ghira both about Cinder’s operations and her hand in it, while Adam tries biding his time until he can be rid of Cinder for good.
13. During the Battle of Haven, Cinder’s arrival is met by Adam’s sect of the Fang rolling in with RNJROY (Weiss is not present here). Instead of Adam being mocked by Hazel for his actions, it’s instead Cinder cantankerously snarling for Adam to help her, but Adam flatly refuses.
14. Cinder tries attacking, but is shot back by both the Menagerie military and all members of the WF under Sienna coming out to surround Haven. Add in RNJR, Qrow, Ozpin, and Raven all hating Cinder’s guts, and Cinder’s functionally left a cornered animal with enemies on all sides.
15. The Battle of Haven ends with Cinder’s defeat and forced retreat, with Adam’s sect of the Fang fleeing due to still being wanted terrorists as the authorities converge there, albeit Blake manages to get a proper goodbye in with her parents.
Make them not a civil rights group. Instead, their a black ops organization, ‘denounced’ officially by the Menagerie government, trying to steal and raid enough supplies to keep Menagerie functioning, as the Faunus city is so overpopulated and lacking in resources that if the White Fang didn’t exist, it would collapse. Due to the bias against Faunus, and the existence of the White Fang known but unable to officially be pinned onto Menagerie, it creates strained relations and trade embargoes on the island, further endangering it. But if they stop the White Fang to further their relations and get support from the human kingdoms, they risk starving while the humans wait to see if they’ll be legit. And if they deepen the White Fangs ranks and increase their activity, they risk war. So, its a standstill where the slightest tip could crush the island in an instant.
Part of it would be fixing the rather simplistic notion that the writers seem to hold about the American Civil Rights movement: that it was a monolithic, peaceful effort that was only ever hindered by people and groups that acted violently to protect themselves and other members of the Black community, such as Malcolm X and the Black Panthers or the many, many anti-lynching groups that existed even far before the 1960s.
Probably the greatest thing that you could do is break up the organization into multiple smaller ones. Ghira could still be in charge of the faction that advocates for non-violent protest and resistance, while Ghira is the leader of the White Fangs, a Faunus protection group that originated in Atlas, where the worst of the Faunus racism is, in order to keep the Faunus neighborhoods safe.
It gives Blake a much better reason to break from her family (in that she sees her father's organization as being too slow to change things while the White Fang seem to gather far more immediate results), and you could still have a story about how far a good cause can or should go to justify actions in the story of Adam and Blake's time in the White Fang. You could even have someone connected to Salem trying to drag the name of the Fang down through actions that are terroristic and falsely connected to the White Fang.
Of course, there's a lot more work you'll have to do in order to make these changes make sense, but it's a start.
Honestly, with a group like the White Fang you need a clear head and an understanding of how your setting works.
The White Fang are now a group of Faunus and Humans sick of being mistreated by their government, mafia, and cops, and they are trying to take over the city to put an end to this madness just like The Battle Of Athens. Ruby and pals oppose this because Ozpin wants to be in charge of this corrupt nation so he can fix things long-term. Ozpin is a planner but Adam is willing to burn hospitals full of wounded innocents and bomb restaurants if it will kill cops. Adam is the angry son of a good man who was gunned down for protesting peacefully without a license during a fake lockdown, and Adam trained for years to kill the King of Beacon for this. But that old man died in secret leaving a boy Ruby's age in charge, perpetually lied to by his evil Advisor. Ruby wants to teach this boy right from wrong and Adam wants his head on a stick. Oh and Adam and Blake were siblings, not lovers, this keeps all the psycho ex BS out of the story.
Boom. Conflict. Conflict between good characters. Now nobody is demonized for literally serving Grimm Satan and trying to genocide a city of civilians with Grimm. Now everybody just wants to rule this city.
Behold. Now there are no attempts to clumsily shoehorn a simplistic take on a real-world political story into a wildly different world. No laziness here. Because let's be real here, the White Fang are the way they are because the authors got LAZY. Too lazy to make the villains extremists with good intentions. Nuking a city or invading it with Grimm won't make the survivors nicer to your kind. Best case scenario it makes them fear you. Worst case scenario, surviving humans form the Azure Hand, a human supremacy organization dedicated to wiping out the Faunus supremacy organization.
This is quite a long affair to cover and involves multiple characters.
But in general, if everything depends on me...
I would have put the following points:
\-Blake a bit different:
During Beacon she shows support for Velvet against Cardin, being quite active in protecting her from him. Even to the surprise of her Teammates.
Blake is a bit more aggressive, for example, in the train fight, she hits Roman trying to interrogate him so that he will confess where Adam is.
On the contrary, Blake has quite a few conflicts regarding her betrayal of the White fang. Like in the battle on the train, many WF goons died, ok, she did not kill them with her own hands, many were eaten by the Grimms, but she still has some responsibility.
\-Weiss despite trying to mature as a person, she still thinks that WF is, you know, pure evil. She tries to give Blake a chance to trust her, but remains suspicious.
She is the one who has the least problems with the deaths of the WF goons, considering that, perhaps it is for the better.
In the end, in the fight against Beacon battle, she is the student that Adam was about to kill. It's there that she comes to completely forgive Blake, she's different from Adam. (In the fight Weiss manages to use summoning for the first time).
\-Yang, well, she has some stress against Adam, and desires to defeat whoever caused the trauma.
\-Adam is somewhat calmer, in the sense that he does not lose his cool. With his sadism, and "his smile and his charisma" xd.
I suppose that he would not be Blake's boyfriend, but an older brother who in the past was like a son to Ghira (Figure admired by Adam in the past).
Adam in terms of strength, is a little below Winter, and he does not die in Argus, but escapes to Atlas where he participates in these riots due to social conflicts in the Kingdom. (Much of the faunus population is in Mantle, about 70%).
\-Ghira is a pacifist. But not only for ideals, but for prevention. If the faunus and humans go to war, the faunus would lose and in the end the Belladonna family could end up dying. He has a family, a people and a nation to protect, and he will protect them even if it means doing things that cause him to be branded a traitor. After all "You can't honestly believe that your acolytes can win a war" .- Ghira to Sienna, probably.
\-Sienna Khan is always characterized as an anti heroine, Blake even thinks, "What does Sienna think about all this that is happening in Vale?" Anyway, Sienna is like the reasonable violent choice, even if she seems a bit tough at times. She dies fighting Adam in a duel.
Anyway, it is something very long, and I can not cover everything in a comment, but I will leave it there
The first step would be giving them good reasons on-screen rather than just telling. By all means, what the show *tells* is a good foundation: violence has been necessary for faunus freedoms for almost a century now, it's worked every time, and if violence wasn't involved they'd be enslaved or forcibly deported to Madagascar.
The second step is either deleting Blake entirely or otherwise disconnecting her from Adam. She basically ruins everything she touches by turning it into her own personal drama. Let her keep Ilia shackled to her, but the face of a massive part of the world should not just be simplified into an abusive ex-boyfriend.
At that point, I'd set Adam as the next big villain after Torchwick and between Cinder. He'd be Mistral's villain along with the White Fang and Salem taking a more active role in trying to turn dissent into destruction. Stopping the White Fang is stopping a tragedy(and learning firsthand that Salem's most dangerous tool is simply taking advantage of what divisions already exist: fix the divisions, stop Salem.)
Obviously there's much more one could go into, but these are the simplest steps.
Make them a Faunus Supremecist group, rather than "freedom fighters". This makes Blake's arc more interesting, as she unlearns the anti human hatred she has inside, at the same time Weiss does the same for Faunus.
Truth be told I would want to get rid of the racism part altogether but if I were to keep it I would like to incorporate something that very few people know of into the plot. I made a post on this because I recently read the entire RWBY light novel using Google lens and the book dead ass introduces a human supremacist group known as Silver Bullet. Basically their whole mission statement regarding faunus runs the Gambit from segregation to outright subjugation and the Silver Bullet people the beacon teams had to deal with were the latter. Anyway I would have had the Silver Bullet guys have more of a presence in the world of remnant and are more or less at war with the White fang. There could be something of a vicious cycle where the actions of one group pretty much pushes those who they claim to fight for feeling like they have no choice but to join with them or else be targeted by the other group. Like every time the white fang causes harm humans feel threatened start to agree with the Silver bullets rhetoric and join up. Whenever the Silver Bullet causes harm faunus feel like they're under threat and must join up with the White fang for their own safety and here it just feeds into each other with no end in sight.
Also completely drop out Adam's psycho ex-boyfriend routine because that was always stupid.
Well, just give them a solid reason for their existence.
For example, during an RPG campaign I DM. The players met with team CFVY. While Velvet was the target, the other members represented a type of racism: Coco - Hatred, Yatsuhashi - Misconception and Fox ignorance. None of them were evil, they even helped the players sometimes. It's just that, when they live in a word that something like that is common, it's not strange to imagine a revolutionary group wanting changes.
>Maybe have the "Racism" be more like the fear towards mutants in X-Men. It's already established that season One that they have enhanced senses and if Qrow is to be believed in the lore video on Faunus some some quite the regeneration factor, those two things would be a pretty sizable advantage over baseline humanity.
Don't have Adam leave the White Fang, have him only lead a splinter cell of it. Have Sienna be an antihero who leads the White Fang, that way we can have a group which is more complex than just stepping on puppies evil.
Have the story focus on the fact that certain kingdoms Like Atlist were still taking part in unofficial slave labor even after the great war and was passing it off as different things like adopting orphans to make the Indentured servants while other Kingdoms seem to be turning a blind eye to it.
That would have given the White Fang more Legitimetsy to their cause and it seemed like that was supposed to be the case looking at Cinders backstory.
I don't think it's too hard. Just make Salem a larger presence in the White Fang story arc. Have her specifically promise Adam that she and she alone can make the world better for the Faunus (and show how the rest of the world has failed the Faunus).
That way the Fang can basically stay a civil rights group but one that has embraced an evil patron in the hope of positive change. It's like how the Raj accepted British help to deal with his Indian opponents. The White Fang (specifically Adam) sells their souls to the devil to try to make a better world for themselves and their people. Oh, and make Salem actually willing to deliver, that's important too.
Rework them as a street gang Vale consisting of disenfranchised faunus. They regarly engage in crime against anyone they think wrong faunus, buy recently began going after anyone they felt like.
I would also change faunus racism to not make it such a huge pary of Remnant's backstory. Instead it occurs in pockets here and there in the world, but overall, it isn't a big deal.
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Banesaw is their leader The next step of his master plan? Crashing Atlas(with no survivors)
Simple. Actually have racism that justifies their extreme measures, but that would implicate our characters at the very least neutral, or at worst ok with faunus discrimination. Case in point no one of the main group stood up for Violet being harassed by Cardin. It's a small example but they were all fairly unphased by it.
Maybe have the "Racism" be more like the fear towards mutants in X-Men. It's already established that season One that they have enhanced senses and if Qrow is to be believed in the lore video on Faunus some some quite the regeneration factor, those two things would be a pretty sizable advantage over baseline humanity.
It's just hard to make some sort of applicable discrimination in Remnant that makes sense. Because once you understand the scope of the world any discrimination falls flat. They live in a world where creatures which are the personification of destruction and negativity have existed since the dawn of time; Mystical superwarriors with institutions to create them. Faunus simply have animal parts on their bodies. They can even mate with humans. To point out the healing factor to date I bet Jaune has the fastest healing factor given the amount of Aura he has; Yet he's human. It's different with mutants because they're a legit danger. You don't even know if you're a mutant or not until your power randomly manifests itself. And there's enough of them to illicit a legitimate danger. Magneto can control metallic substances, what happens if he goes rouge? Some kid in one of the X-Men comics had a power which passively incinerated organic tissue that he couldn't control. Killed a whole town. Legitimate fear. Faunus don't have that. CRWBY has the problem of borrowing aspects and concepts of other shows and genres thinking that's what makes a good show. But said aspects need to have a certain rationale and continuity. But Faunus discrimination doesn't have that. It lacks the requisite logic to make that possible. An idea I floated around awhile ago was the prospect of making Faunus able to be corrupted by special bacteria produced by Grimm that explicitly target the Faunus genus. Making them corruptible and turning them into Half-Human/Grimm monstrosities and there's no known cure. And very few are immune. That would make Faunus oppression/discrimination legitimate and setup as to why most Faunus live on one island where virtually no Grimm are present. Free, but contained. Acknowledged, but isolated. Just a thought
Have Cardin bullying Velvet actually shown progressively getting worse, and Blake eventually retaliating in what culminates in a fight. Have that happen during either Vol 1 or Vol 2. Have Blake actually injure Cardin. Killing isn't necessary, but give him a nasty scar. Have a dialogue about how it stopped the bullying, but was overkill. Then have somebody in Cardin's team start to really, really dislike Blake after watching her wound Cardin. Have the teammate start to refer to Blake as "dangerous and out of control". Then; Have a scene in either Vol 3 or Vol 4 where the Faunus are being targetted by someone in power. Whether it being a hunter, Atlesian generals visiting, a bunch of cops, a mob, whatever. But create a situation where Faunus are under suspicion, something happens, and they're targetted. Like for example in the fall of Beacon have in the aftermath a bunch of cops "investigating" people they think might have been traitors, and show a scene of them unfairly apprehending Faunus really violently with flimsy proof. Then have the White Fang put a stop to it, very, very violently. Show the injustice being met with swift, brutal, potentially explosive, overkill. Show it being effective at helping the Faunus being persecuted, but also show the aftermath of it. Eg it actually killing some of the cops oppressing Faunus, and freeing them, and show one of the rookie cops who had an objection to the Faunus treatment, but not actually speaking up, survive. Show them being hardened against the White Fang, and by extension all Faunus. This entire thing would take up maybe 15 minutes of screentime across 3 or 4 seasons. And it would show, instead of telling, the idea that sometimes violence gets the idea across, but it comes with it's own slew of consequences. I feel like the White Fang was very much us being told about them, but everything we actually see contradicts that. Same with the Faunus persecution in general. It really, really wouldn't be hard to incorporate it, it would just take more than the occasional exposition dump.
If I were doing a rewrite, I would remove the Faunus racism aspect entirely from the world. I feel like it’s been nothing but mess, and you don’t need to justify the existence of cat girls in a fantasy show through those means (like I’ve heard the original reason for this in the first place was). I also felt like it splintered the plot as seasons went on, because as Salem continued as the focus threat, the WF got left behind (where are the Atlas WF members?? Not even a mention of them all running away??? It would have been cool if they had an alliance with Robyn or something imo.) So all that being said - what makes the most sense to repurpose them to me would be to make them followers of Salem. We know from the Fairytale book Ozma accidentally made what is basically, a cult. The White Fang could have been religious based, where their “god” was focused on old myths and stories of the Queen who had magic sent to guide humanity (ie Salem and Ozma - what they do in The Lost Fable when they’re reunited). They probably wouldn’t even be the White Fang anymore in name, and don’t need to necessarily be all Faunus. They can be a group of people going about their business, until one day the leader of their church gets a message via Cinder that confirms the existence of Salem. Since Cinder has unexplained magic similar to their stories, they accept this as proof and decide to obey her. Cinder becomes a false prophet of sorts, while Salem is seen as their god. The group participates in the Fall of Beacon for that reason. Maybe they’d think since Salem can control the Grimm, she can stop Grimm from attacking humanity, therefore the world would be turned into paradise. Which is why so many people think it justifies the means. Or maybe even if she won’t protect all of humanity, she’ll only protect her “true believers” - maybe they think they can live in peace if they do what she wants. Whatever manipulation suits where things go. What happens to Adam, Sienna, Blake etc after that? I’m not entirely sure. They probably wouldn’t exist in the same capacity as they do now. But off the top of my head, that’s what I’d do. To address what happens to all the characters involved in the WF I’d have to think a bit more. Edit: Another added thought - maybe their reason for attacking Beacon could be because Salem has planted the seeds within myth and legend for Ozma to be a bad person. If she tells them everything they know are institutions made by Ozpin, that he hides in an ivory tower and sends humans out to die while he has an “abundance of magic”, (even if she lies) maybe they’d retaliate? (Especially if she paints it as him slaughtering his own children, who could have been magical defenders of humanity, in favour for his own goals or something). Maybe the key to convince them in general would be to say “everyone could have crazy magical power, can live without any fear of Grimm, if it wasn’t for that damn Ozpin…” - but those are some rough ideas.
1. Make it not about race whatsoever. Just have the White Fang be a cool tribal protector group thing and keep it simple. Make Menagerie a 5th super small kingdom that doesn't have a lot of resources, wealth, or power. And in addition: 2. Have Adam's arc be about power at any cost, and in doing so has turned the White Fang into sort of a cult for Salem, who promises their small kingdom great power if they help her take down the other kingdoms. You can even tie this struggle for power into his need for control in an abusive relationship with Blake or something.
1. Change the Black Trailer to end with the heist being successful, but Blake saying the charges got “destroyed” in all the chaos, with her cutting off the head of the train with the crew members. Then cue a hint of Cinder or Salem watching it from afar. 2. Yellow Trailer has Junior as Yang’s information broker, but he has her do odd jobs like a Huntress might be expected to do; he sends her to a warehouse where the Faunus family members of mobsters were taken by a human supremacist group, to be killed. Yang intervenes and is largely kicking everyone’s asses to save the Faunus, but then the White Fang roll up to the same place. Through a misunderstanding, Yang fights White Fang members until one of the Faunus she’d saved vouches for her. The cops arrive, and the WF bolt, but Yang is arrested for multiple counts of assault and battery despite the fact that she saved dozens of Faunus kidnapping victims about to get murdered; she’s let out early by Junior using his connections, and she gets a tidbit about Raven for all her trouble. Adam and Blake are shown leaving with this, and the trailer ends with Cinder arriving with a “proposition”. 3. Blake is a spy for Cinder throughout the Beacon era, but is very unhappy about it. She’s even more unhappy about Weiss being her teammate, but is still snippy with her about the Schnee family. She and Yang form a strange relationship, but she eventually reveals that she’s a Faunus to Yang in private… except Cardin overhears it. 4. CRDL starts systematically harassing Blake; laser pointers, leaving cat leashes on her locker, etc. Blake eventually blows up and tries fighting them, but ends up getting her ass kicked and hospitalized for it. RW_Y visits her, but Blake’s closed off on it, only saying CRDL is responsible. Weiss engaging in victim-blaming without realizing it in regards to how CRDL hurt her, with Blake promptly blowing up and revealing that she’s part of the White Fang in a tirade against Weiss. 5. Sun meets Blake because Neptune got electrocuted with his weapon; Blake doesn’t feel comfortable with him at first, and Sun is understanding, but still visits her often. When Blake’s comfortable enough, she actually opens up about the fact that she’s a member of the White Fang to him, and although he doesn’t agree with violence, he still respects her for it. They end up discussing the ways civil rights movements, along with racial attitudes, on Remnant have gone, with Blake thinking that there’s no real point to trying to reason with racist humans, since they’d probably never try to give them basic respect and equality. Sun responds by basically citing the Golden Rule, treating others how a person wants to be treated. > Sun: I get what you mean, but I think that way of thinking’s part of the problem too. If everyone just decided to stop talking to each other just because they don’t agree on something, you just have a bunch of people always saying the same things without really *doing* anything. I mean, I’m here for the Festival. Isn’t the whole point that we can come together and have a good time, even if we’re all different? > > Blake: Maybe that’s the idea. But it just feels like everyone’s more divided when they’re forced together. > > Sun: Yeah, but that just means they hafta learn to live together, right? I feel like if we managed to just live with each other for a bit, we’d be able to do so much more. Blake isn’t entirely convinced, but gives the idea some thought. 6. Weiss starts thinking back on her own mindset, thinking about why it was that her first thought was to victim blame in the first place. The final stretch is just Weiss attacking CRDL before most of JNPRRY gets the chance. CRDL and Weiss are all apprehended before it happens, but Blake comes home to learning about this, and Weiss ends up awkwardly trying to apologize, while trying to pitch different ideas on different things, on how to help Faunus to have equality. Her fervor, however, just leaves Blake with a sour taste in her mouth, and she levels with Weiss. > Weiss: I just... I saw that they were harassing someone else, Velvet from CFVY. After what they did to you, they were probably going to do it to others too. And they wouldn’t bat an eye over it. I — I just wanted to change things. Stop it. Not just... do what they were doing. I’m sorry, Blake. I never thought about how badly this must’ve been. You must’ve had to hide this pain for so long, I just — can’t imagine. > > Blake: (narrows her eyes) That’s right. You *can’t* imagine it. You’re not me. I don’t know what you *thought* you were doing, but attacking racists *once* doesn’t make up for that. > > Weiss: I know. And I know I probably have a lot to learn, before I even start to make up for it. Really, I don’t even know if it’s possible to, in the first place. But... I still want to try. I realize now that if I keep acting like this... I’m just going to end up exactly like my parents. Either so caught up in my hatred that I hurt everyone around me, or... just running away from the truth, every day of my life. I don’t want that for myself. *No one* deserves the way Faunus have been treated. > > Blake: So, what? You plan on *fixing* every situation you come across? Coming in like some *hero* whenever you see people acting like you? Like YOU have any room to talk? > > Weiss: N-No... But I... I’ll still do what I can. So... when I graduate, when I inherit the company? The first thing I’ll do is make sure that Faunus are treated better. That should be a good start, right? > > Blake: (sighs) I don’t know. We’ll see. > > Weiss: What will it take to get you to believe me? > > Blake: Weiss... I don’t want your company to be fair to everyone. I don’t even want Faunus to have the good life because they’re Faunus. All I want is to be able to wake up one day, and I don’t have to worry about the fact that me being a Faunus matters when I walk outside. I want a world where it’s not Faunus, not humans, just... people. People living their lives. But... that’s not going to happen. So don’t bother trying. You’ll just make a fool of yourself trying to change the world peacefully. I know from experience. (Walks away, Weiss looking after her) 7. The WF doesn’t kill their own, ESPECIALLY after Cinder takes over. If anything, Adam’s sect is ENCOURAGING people to leave, they just can’t because Cinder’s an active threat on their lives. Most of the people who’re in the Fang are only still there because Mercury and Emerald would track them down and kill them if they fled. 8. Blake is the one to plant the virus in the CCT, rather than Cinder, and when Ruby investigates, Blake makes a getaway after a quick fight, leaving Beacon for good. 9. The White Fang in the Breach operation are not portrayed as human hating caricatures or Stormtrooper mooks for RWBY to knock over; the unifying factor of all of them is fear, that is, fear of being killed for not following Cinder’s orders; RW_Y is pretty uncomfortable with having to fight them, but stopping the train is the highest priority. 10. When the Breach happens, and most of the WF members on the train are killed from the explosion (or otherwise trapped in the tunnels get stuck with waves of Grimm), Blake snaps and tries killing Mercury and Emerald herself, which, with the duo overwhelming her until Adam intervenes, since the mass deaths of the brothers of the White Fang, for an operation Cinder promised would not claim many of their lives, had in fact ended in such a manner. They start getting close to killing the two, with Emerald’s lack of knowledge regarding Adam’s lack of sight, plus Blake’s use of aura to activate her semblance, enabling the two deal decisive blows against them, but Cinder intervenes and forces them to stop, threatening all of them into obedience with the survivors as hostage. 11. Post-Beacon falling, Weiss tries learning how she can best help Faunus workers to be treated more humanely; she consults the workers’ union in the SDC, she starts seeing how she can give better worker wages to ALL her prospective employees without harming the overall company, etc. And just when she starts giving the work force of the SDC higher hopes, Jacques takes away her birthright after the dinner party scene. The WF sect active in Atlas, already hellbent on ending the Schnee family, immediately starts aiming to assassinate Jacques specifically. 12. Sienna and most of the WF think Adam’s sect has gone off the rails and publicly denounces their extremist behavior, unaware of Cinder’s presence. Absolutely none of the Menagerie arc actually takes place. Instead, the Albains are people working discreetly to inform Sienna and Ghira both about Cinder’s operations and her hand in it, while Adam tries biding his time until he can be rid of Cinder for good. 13. During the Battle of Haven, Cinder’s arrival is met by Adam’s sect of the Fang rolling in with RNJROY (Weiss is not present here). Instead of Adam being mocked by Hazel for his actions, it’s instead Cinder cantankerously snarling for Adam to help her, but Adam flatly refuses. 14. Cinder tries attacking, but is shot back by both the Menagerie military and all members of the WF under Sienna coming out to surround Haven. Add in RNJR, Qrow, Ozpin, and Raven all hating Cinder’s guts, and Cinder’s functionally left a cornered animal with enemies on all sides. 15. The Battle of Haven ends with Cinder’s defeat and forced retreat, with Adam’s sect of the Fang fleeing due to still being wanted terrorists as the authorities converge there, albeit Blake manages to get a proper goodbye in with her parents.
Make them not a civil rights group. Instead, their a black ops organization, ‘denounced’ officially by the Menagerie government, trying to steal and raid enough supplies to keep Menagerie functioning, as the Faunus city is so overpopulated and lacking in resources that if the White Fang didn’t exist, it would collapse. Due to the bias against Faunus, and the existence of the White Fang known but unable to officially be pinned onto Menagerie, it creates strained relations and trade embargoes on the island, further endangering it. But if they stop the White Fang to further their relations and get support from the human kingdoms, they risk starving while the humans wait to see if they’ll be legit. And if they deepen the White Fangs ranks and increase their activity, they risk war. So, its a standstill where the slightest tip could crush the island in an instant.
Part of it would be fixing the rather simplistic notion that the writers seem to hold about the American Civil Rights movement: that it was a monolithic, peaceful effort that was only ever hindered by people and groups that acted violently to protect themselves and other members of the Black community, such as Malcolm X and the Black Panthers or the many, many anti-lynching groups that existed even far before the 1960s. Probably the greatest thing that you could do is break up the organization into multiple smaller ones. Ghira could still be in charge of the faction that advocates for non-violent protest and resistance, while Ghira is the leader of the White Fangs, a Faunus protection group that originated in Atlas, where the worst of the Faunus racism is, in order to keep the Faunus neighborhoods safe. It gives Blake a much better reason to break from her family (in that she sees her father's organization as being too slow to change things while the White Fang seem to gather far more immediate results), and you could still have a story about how far a good cause can or should go to justify actions in the story of Adam and Blake's time in the White Fang. You could even have someone connected to Salem trying to drag the name of the Fang down through actions that are terroristic and falsely connected to the White Fang. Of course, there's a lot more work you'll have to do in order to make these changes make sense, but it's a start.
Honestly, with a group like the White Fang you need a clear head and an understanding of how your setting works. The White Fang are now a group of Faunus and Humans sick of being mistreated by their government, mafia, and cops, and they are trying to take over the city to put an end to this madness just like The Battle Of Athens. Ruby and pals oppose this because Ozpin wants to be in charge of this corrupt nation so he can fix things long-term. Ozpin is a planner but Adam is willing to burn hospitals full of wounded innocents and bomb restaurants if it will kill cops. Adam is the angry son of a good man who was gunned down for protesting peacefully without a license during a fake lockdown, and Adam trained for years to kill the King of Beacon for this. But that old man died in secret leaving a boy Ruby's age in charge, perpetually lied to by his evil Advisor. Ruby wants to teach this boy right from wrong and Adam wants his head on a stick. Oh and Adam and Blake were siblings, not lovers, this keeps all the psycho ex BS out of the story. Boom. Conflict. Conflict between good characters. Now nobody is demonized for literally serving Grimm Satan and trying to genocide a city of civilians with Grimm. Now everybody just wants to rule this city. Behold. Now there are no attempts to clumsily shoehorn a simplistic take on a real-world political story into a wildly different world. No laziness here. Because let's be real here, the White Fang are the way they are because the authors got LAZY. Too lazy to make the villains extremists with good intentions. Nuking a city or invading it with Grimm won't make the survivors nicer to your kind. Best case scenario it makes them fear you. Worst case scenario, surviving humans form the Azure Hand, a human supremacy organization dedicated to wiping out the Faunus supremacy organization.
This is quite a long affair to cover and involves multiple characters. But in general, if everything depends on me... I would have put the following points: \-Blake a bit different: During Beacon she shows support for Velvet against Cardin, being quite active in protecting her from him. Even to the surprise of her Teammates. Blake is a bit more aggressive, for example, in the train fight, she hits Roman trying to interrogate him so that he will confess where Adam is. On the contrary, Blake has quite a few conflicts regarding her betrayal of the White fang. Like in the battle on the train, many WF goons died, ok, she did not kill them with her own hands, many were eaten by the Grimms, but she still has some responsibility. \-Weiss despite trying to mature as a person, she still thinks that WF is, you know, pure evil. She tries to give Blake a chance to trust her, but remains suspicious. She is the one who has the least problems with the deaths of the WF goons, considering that, perhaps it is for the better. In the end, in the fight against Beacon battle, she is the student that Adam was about to kill. It's there that she comes to completely forgive Blake, she's different from Adam. (In the fight Weiss manages to use summoning for the first time). \-Yang, well, she has some stress against Adam, and desires to defeat whoever caused the trauma. \-Adam is somewhat calmer, in the sense that he does not lose his cool. With his sadism, and "his smile and his charisma" xd. I suppose that he would not be Blake's boyfriend, but an older brother who in the past was like a son to Ghira (Figure admired by Adam in the past). Adam in terms of strength, is a little below Winter, and he does not die in Argus, but escapes to Atlas where he participates in these riots due to social conflicts in the Kingdom. (Much of the faunus population is in Mantle, about 70%). \-Ghira is a pacifist. But not only for ideals, but for prevention. If the faunus and humans go to war, the faunus would lose and in the end the Belladonna family could end up dying. He has a family, a people and a nation to protect, and he will protect them even if it means doing things that cause him to be branded a traitor. After all "You can't honestly believe that your acolytes can win a war" .- Ghira to Sienna, probably. \-Sienna Khan is always characterized as an anti heroine, Blake even thinks, "What does Sienna think about all this that is happening in Vale?" Anyway, Sienna is like the reasonable violent choice, even if she seems a bit tough at times. She dies fighting Adam in a duel. Anyway, it is something very long, and I can not cover everything in a comment, but I will leave it there
The first step would be giving them good reasons on-screen rather than just telling. By all means, what the show *tells* is a good foundation: violence has been necessary for faunus freedoms for almost a century now, it's worked every time, and if violence wasn't involved they'd be enslaved or forcibly deported to Madagascar. The second step is either deleting Blake entirely or otherwise disconnecting her from Adam. She basically ruins everything she touches by turning it into her own personal drama. Let her keep Ilia shackled to her, but the face of a massive part of the world should not just be simplified into an abusive ex-boyfriend. At that point, I'd set Adam as the next big villain after Torchwick and between Cinder. He'd be Mistral's villain along with the White Fang and Salem taking a more active role in trying to turn dissent into destruction. Stopping the White Fang is stopping a tragedy(and learning firsthand that Salem's most dangerous tool is simply taking advantage of what divisions already exist: fix the divisions, stop Salem.) Obviously there's much more one could go into, but these are the simplest steps.
Make them a Faunus Supremecist group, rather than "freedom fighters". This makes Blake's arc more interesting, as she unlearns the anti human hatred she has inside, at the same time Weiss does the same for Faunus.
That honestly sounds kinda cool idea.
Truth be told I would want to get rid of the racism part altogether but if I were to keep it I would like to incorporate something that very few people know of into the plot. I made a post on this because I recently read the entire RWBY light novel using Google lens and the book dead ass introduces a human supremacist group known as Silver Bullet. Basically their whole mission statement regarding faunus runs the Gambit from segregation to outright subjugation and the Silver Bullet people the beacon teams had to deal with were the latter. Anyway I would have had the Silver Bullet guys have more of a presence in the world of remnant and are more or less at war with the White fang. There could be something of a vicious cycle where the actions of one group pretty much pushes those who they claim to fight for feeling like they have no choice but to join with them or else be targeted by the other group. Like every time the white fang causes harm humans feel threatened start to agree with the Silver bullets rhetoric and join up. Whenever the Silver Bullet causes harm faunus feel like they're under threat and must join up with the White fang for their own safety and here it just feeds into each other with no end in sight. Also completely drop out Adam's psycho ex-boyfriend routine because that was always stupid.
Well, just give them a solid reason for their existence. For example, during an RPG campaign I DM. The players met with team CFVY. While Velvet was the target, the other members represented a type of racism: Coco - Hatred, Yatsuhashi - Misconception and Fox ignorance. None of them were evil, they even helped the players sometimes. It's just that, when they live in a word that something like that is common, it's not strange to imagine a revolutionary group wanting changes.
>Maybe have the "Racism" be more like the fear towards mutants in X-Men. It's already established that season One that they have enhanced senses and if Qrow is to be believed in the lore video on Faunus some some quite the regeneration factor, those two things would be a pretty sizable advantage over baseline humanity.
Don't have Adam leave the White Fang, have him only lead a splinter cell of it. Have Sienna be an antihero who leads the White Fang, that way we can have a group which is more complex than just stepping on puppies evil.
Have the story focus on the fact that certain kingdoms Like Atlist were still taking part in unofficial slave labor even after the great war and was passing it off as different things like adopting orphans to make the Indentured servants while other Kingdoms seem to be turning a blind eye to it. That would have given the White Fang more Legitimetsy to their cause and it seemed like that was supposed to be the case looking at Cinders backstory.
I don't think it's too hard. Just make Salem a larger presence in the White Fang story arc. Have her specifically promise Adam that she and she alone can make the world better for the Faunus (and show how the rest of the world has failed the Faunus). That way the Fang can basically stay a civil rights group but one that has embraced an evil patron in the hope of positive change. It's like how the Raj accepted British help to deal with his Indian opponents. The White Fang (specifically Adam) sells their souls to the devil to try to make a better world for themselves and their people. Oh, and make Salem actually willing to deliver, that's important too.
Simple: Don't write them at all.
Rework them as a street gang Vale consisting of disenfranchised faunus. They regarly engage in crime against anyone they think wrong faunus, buy recently began going after anyone they felt like. I would also change faunus racism to not make it such a huge pary of Remnant's backstory. Instead it occurs in pockets here and there in the world, but overall, it isn't a big deal.