I feel like being the stupid person who tries to make sense of the clearly-pulled-out-of-their-asses bullshit in our favourite show, RWBY.

changing that bc it sounds cringey af

HELLO EVERYONE ITS TIME FOR ME TO LIST THE THINGS AND HOPEFULLY ALSO PROVIDE A GOOD DESCRIPTION AND/OR EXPLANATION

Theories and speculations abound! (I swear it’s interesting, go on. Give it a read.)

1. Dust

Dust is a naturally occurring energy resource. Also called ‘nature’s wrath’ because it does crazy elemental shit. It’s like being able to hold and manipulate various natural calamities and scientific concepts. Nobody knows where it comes from, but apparently if you feed it a bit of your soul energy, it will explode. Or freeze. Handle with care, very dangerous. Definitely nothing to sneeze at.

Theory: Moon shards…???

2. Aura/Semblance

Aura is a manifestation of your soul. The soul generates it. Whatever that means. From what we’ve seen, there’s a relatively new branch of science being developed in Atlas called ‘soullogy’, the study of souls.

Aura has two thingys: a passive shield that absorbs damage, but not sensation, and a bonus superpower. Everyone has it, but only some actually train enough to control it enough to get the shield and the superpower.

Aura can be used to augment things, make stuff harder and more resilient, like a body part, or a weapon, or a piece of bread. It can also be used to heal minor injuries.

Semblance is the superpower that comes with being able to control your aura to a degree. There are passive semblances and active semblances, and apparently things as vague as ‘bad luck’ can also be semblances. Someone out there probably has the semblance of ‘cuckold’: their significant others constantly cheat on them with hotter people. Just kidding.

Since semblance is tied to aura and the soul, it’s relatively safe to say that if you use your semblance, you take away a bit of your soul energy (grief seeds, anyone?) anyway, here’s something I theorized:

Aura has two main deposits:

Protection and Use

(Fig. 1: The two deposits of aura)

Protection contains the amount of aura that passively coats the body of the person. When it runs out, the person gets damaged.

Use is the reservoir that trained people can call on to fuel semblances, heal injuries and augment things. The Use also ‘refills’ the Protection deposit if it runs out, after a certain period of time. Use regains aura after a significantly longer amount of time.

If you run out of Use, you will most likely Faint. Or Die.

Some semblances are Fucking OP and need to be nerfed, case in point: the Schnee Glyphs. I don’t even want to start.

Some semblances are kind of hereditary? Something like I Can Do This Thing Like Mom Does But Slightly Different. Except for the Schnee, because apparently they can have Fully Hereditary Semblances.

But there seems to be a particular range where people can Manifest Their Aura And Trigger Their Semblance so there’s that…

Passive semblances for the most part seems to need a particular set of requirements to trigger them, like Getting Hit, or Having Other People Around. I’m just kidding. Qrow’s semblance just seems to increase the probability of generally harmful things happening to those in a specific area around him.

To conclude:

There are four types of semblance: Passive Immediate, Passive Ranged, Active Immediate, Active Ranged.

(Fig. 2: Ms. Rose demonstrating an active immediate semblance and Ms. Xiao Long demonstrating a passive immediate semblance)

(Fig. 3: Ms. Schnee demonstrating an active ranged semblance)

(Fig. 4: Mr. Branwen demonstrating a passive ranged semblance)

3. The Four Maidens

Remnant has four Avatars. These four super strong ladies can control elements and shit without dust, and when they die, their power just goes to the last person they thought of, so long as its a girl.

The Four Maidens are Winter, Summer, Spring, and Fall. No one knows if that’s relevant to what kind of power they can control but eh.

Apparently this power just kind of ups and leaves and attaches to someone else like some kind of parasite. Expanding on my theory about aura earlier, the Maiden Powers could just be another deposit of aura. It’s like attaching a new gun to a ship, or something. It’s a New Thing a girl can use, if she just allocates enough aura to its deposit.

(Fig. 4: Ms. Amber’s soul before and after the Maiden Powers.)

Atlas’ new soullogy research is looking for ways to forcibly detach this power from someone’s soul. But apparently sticking an evil bug on a Maiden’s face works just fine.

Weak to Silver Eyes. (They’re not, Cinder was just half-grimm this entire time lmao)

The only ones able to enter the chamber where the Relics are kept. Winter for Creation, Summer for Destruction, Fall for Choice, and Spring for Knowledge.

4. Grimm

These are soulless creatures of the dark that have been around as a constant pain in the ass for as long as humanity and faunus can remember. They destroy stuff and eat people. They’re attracted to negativity, and when killed, start evaporating. Apparently they don’t even need to eat. They just do it. Kinda sounds like me to be honest. I don’t suppose I’d start evaporating if I get killed though.

Though being generally weak as shit, the grimm have the ability to learn from past mistakes, an ability that humans apparently lack, since these stupid cunts managed to forget all about the Martial Law and now they’ve gone and buried Ferdinand fucking Marcos in the Graveyard of Heroes, anyway. The grimm learn and apparently their size and the amount of spikes and armor they have is an indication of how old they are, and the older and bigger, the more dangerous.

There are various types of grimm, and among them is a dragon type that shits out other types of grimm. Grimm apparently just pop out of a dark, tar-like pond full grown and ready to wreck havoc. They don’t seem to have reproductive systems, aside from this one.

The grimm are not only physical, as a certain type has been shown to be able to possess objects. What the fuck.

Weak to silver eyes.

5. Faunus

These biological clusterfucks have been discriminated against for the longest time. They have night vision and superior senses. They show animal traits, but when two faunus of different kinds of animals do the do, their progeny suddenly just becomes a faunus of some random animal? Clearly no one has told Remnant how to biology. Their genes basically just go through some kind of blender, like an octopus.

Was NOT present during the Magic Era.

6. The Relics

The gods of Light and Dark have gifted humanity with Knowledge, Creation, Destruction, and Choice. If you collect all four, you can get a free coupon for one (1) customized world of your choice. you call back the gods for judgement day.

Super powerful things. ‘Nuff said.

Kept in chambers only certain Maidens can enter.

Knowledge: A lantern that holds Jinn, a being created by the God of Light. She answers any question, providing its not something about a future happening. She can answer only three questions per hundred years. Can pause time for the one who calls her name. She won’t appreciate it though.

7. The Silver Eyed Warriors

Usually called the Silver Eyed Witches, or simply, Claymores, because of the huge blade they- oh, sorry. Wrong anime. The Silver Eyes in RWBY are a race of warriors said to be feared by the grimm themselves. They have silver eyes and that’s basically all we know about them.

Theory:

This kind of power attaches to the soul the same way Maiden Powers do, except that the Silver Eyes are a born-with-it and die-with-it kinda thing. It doesn’t leave and seek out a new host. It just dies.

(Fig. 5: The Silver-Eyed power within Ms. Rose)

They have superior battle skills and can produce white flame from their eyes that freeze/blind/kill any nearby dragon grimm and mute and blind any nearby Maiden.

8. The Bird Tribe (Tentative name) The Branwen Tribe Magic

The tribe Raven Branwen leads. Has some kind of relationship to grimm. Can turn into birds. Bandits that kill people.

Changing this entry to magic, because turns out, it wasn’t the tribe that was special, it’s just that Qrow and Raven have been given bird powers by Ozpin.

So, magic: its…. it’s pretty vague, tbh. It grants you elemental powers, among other things, and allows you to perform feats of power without the aid of dust or semblances. A long time ago, everyone could use them. Until the God of Dark killed everyone and destroyed the moon.

Can only be used by Ozpin and Salem.

9. Ozpin’s Curse

Is apparently a Maiden-like soul phenomenon that transfers consciousness instead of powers. Haunts young boys “like-minded souls”.

Theory: (ITS NOT A THEORY ANYMORE ITS FUCKIN CONFRIMED BITCH YASSS)

Ozpin is living like Voldemort in Professor Quirrel: his soul is latching on to Oscar’s like a parasite. Why Ozpin’s soul does this is unknown, but Ozpin was cursed by the Gods for failing to stop Salem some long time ago given a task by the God of Light to achieve world peace or get annihilated, so now his soul goes to “the body of a like-minded soul”. We do know that Ozpin was once haunted by a similar soul when he was a young boy.

It can be hypothesized (not hypothesized anymore cuz its CONFIRMED, BITCH, YEEEEEEEEEEEE-) that over time, Ozpin’s soul, and they other guy’s merged together, and became one. Following this, Oscar’s and Ozpin’s souls will eventually also become one. And in the event of their death, they will proceed to haunt more young boys “like-minded souls”.

(Fig. 6: Speculation CON-FUCKING-FIRMED ARTISTIC RENDITION on the whole Oscar/Ozpin debacle)

Canon explanation: Ozma (D’ Original Ozpin) was given a task, and he will “reincarnate” so long as his task is incomplete. His soul joins with someone voiced by either Aaron Dismuke or Shannon McCormick a like-minded individual.

10. Salem

Needs more sunlight. And moisturizing cream. Some sort of Grimm Queen.



A human woman from the days of magic who was cursed with immortality by the Gods for asking for her dead husband back. Gained violent tendencies after trying to kill herself by jumping into the Grimm Pools. Sociopathic liar.

Can use magic and has over the time mastered the Dark Art of Grimm-related Majiykks.