Describing The Series Via References

Coverart by erughostcat

Describing The Series Via References is a RWBY comedy fic written by Masterweaver.

The plot begins when a robot delivers Team RWBY a message that informs them they are now partaking in a "Multiple Universe Sociological Experiment", and are given information on their series to allow them to determine and alter the future.

The caveat? The information they have to sort through is their show's many internet memes.

Needless to say, Hilarity Ensues.

The thread on SpaceBattles.com can be found here and also has numerous omakes and side stories that can also be found here and here.

Describing The Series Via References provides examples of:

• Abusive Parent: Discussed. Weiss brings up how her father made her fight an Arma Gigas as a test, which resulted in the scar on her left eye. As Ruby and Penny both point out, making Weiss fight against an Arma Gigas is both illegal and wrong.
• Adaptation Deviation: Thanks to overhearing everything Team RWBY and Penny learned, Cinder opts to change her plan for the Vytal Festival. Instead of having Yang be the subject of the Frame-Up, she has Velvet be the one to face Mercury and be framed for brutality. And while she wanted Penny to be the one killed in the final round still so as to make Atlas worse looking, she has to settle for using Sun, pairing him against Cardin, while instead making Atlas seem incompetent for losing its tech to Roman and the White Fang. While she planned on having Sun be killed by Cardin, Emerald having a minor Heel Realization results in Sun only losing his tail, Cinder having to adjust her plan on the fly to focus more on the racial tension aspects rather than solely making Ozpin out to be training brutish killers.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: While she’s still closest to Ruby, the rest of Team RWBY also become friends with Penny in short order and learn of her nature at the same time; canon, in contrast, has WBY more as acquaintances, even in Volume 7 after they’re in the know regarding Penny's true nature, this only changing slightly in Volume 8 where they all express concern for her and work to save her life from Arthur Watts' virus.
• Blatant Lies: When she cuts in to dance, Penny apologizes to Cinder for stepping on her foot. Her hiccup after the fact confirms that she very much intended to do that.
• Cast Full of Gay: Discussed when the meme "The idea that the world of Remnant is populated entirely by homosexuals" comes up in Chapter 1.
  Ruby: Hey now! That's asexual erasure!
  Blake: And bisexual erasure.
  Yang: And pansexual erasure.
  Weiss: What about straight people?
  Yang: I've yet to meet any.
• Cerebus Syndrome: While still comedic, the story becomes more serious as the events of canon begin to alter. Most notably, once Cinder learns of the memes, she starts trying to use them to her advantage as much as the heroes do.
• Culture Clash: Numerous things the memes joke about as remarkable or bizarre are mundane to the characters ^Examplesaura, mechashift weaponry, combat skirts, while numerous things the memes refer to as assumed common knowledge are lost on the Remnant-native characters ^Examplesthe Titanic, the Gregorian calendar's dating system, Canada and Mexico, racial discrimination and need for diversity considerations among humans.
• Everyone Can See It: Weiss, along with the rest of Team RWBY, invoke this trope with the chemistry between Jaune and Pyrrha, pretending to mistake them for already dating. Ironically, while Weiss did it only to get him to stop asking her out, it actually does result in Pyrrha and Jaune getting together.
• Fantastic Racism: Unsurprisingly, anti-Faunus prejudice and how Faunus in general and Blake in particular deal with it is a major part of the plot.
• From Bad to Worse: Invoked by Cinder in regard to the Vytal Festival, thanks to overhearing what Team RWBY and Penny knew and deciding to embrace her role as the "Villain". Despite having a general idea of what would happen and managing to warn Pyrrha, Team RWBY and Pyrrha are ambushed by Neo before they can try and stop Cinder's attempt at causing chaos, being knocked unconscious with a toxic gas that will slowly kill them. Cinder then modifies her plan by having Velvet be the subject of the Frame-Up from facing Mercury, and the final round before her broadcast being Sun vs. Cardin. While Jaune and Penny manage to find the girls and save them thanks to Jaune unlocking his Semblance, and Emerald has earlier signs of her Heel Realization and spares Sun's life but still mutilating him by having him lose his tail, Cinder still manages to fan the flames of war and descend Beacon into chaos. It's made even worse not only by her preying on the racial tensions between Faunus and Humans by making it seem like a race war is on the horizon, but making Haven Academy seem incompetent by suggesting Sun got by on good looks alone, while Beacon was training it's students to be brutes and butchers thanks to framing Velvet and Cardin, with Ozpin being framed as too incompetent to address his students actual issues while recklessly sending them into the world of Huntsmen.
• From Beyond the Fourth Wall: The entire plot begins when a list of real-world memes is thrust into Team RWBY's hands.
• Fun with Acronyms: Team RWBY was selected to be part of a Multiple Universal Sociological Experiment by the Prolific Research and Outrageous Sciences Enterprises.
• Innocently Insensitive: When Team RWBY (plus Penny) goes on break during an interlude, Taiyang jokes about Yang and Blake sleeping together; he backtracks and apologizes when he learns the latter just got out of a difficult relationship and isn’t eager to date again too soon.
• It Makes Sense in Context: A lot of the comedy comes from Team RWBY being isolated from the memes' context; for instance, they're quite bemused by the prophetic Dishwasher because they don't know that Dishwasher1910 is the screen name of a RWBY fan artist known for how his works seem to predict plot twists.
• Limited Wardrobe: Loosely referred to - reference is made to how having "multiple outfits" is considered to be not just vain but ostentatious.
• Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!: Well, internet memes to be more precise, but the reaction is mostly the same.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: This shows up several times, usually about, but by no means limited to, memes about Taiyang Xiao Long.
• Prophecy Twist: The memes effectively form a set of extremely cryptic prophesies in need of interpretation to discern meaning, something the characters remark on. Unfortunately, said meaning is quite often only obvious in retrospect.
• Punny Name: The researcher who explains the experiment to Team RWBY is named Jonerik P. Lot deVize, which sounds a lot like "Generic Plot Device".
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: The team figures out that Beacon will fall - due to completely misinterpreting the '#RelightTheTorch' meme that actually references Roman Torchwick's death.
• Sixth Ranger: Penny, due to her death being referenced in the memes, is brought into the know by Team RWBY; after helping out at the docks, she’s henceforth an honorary fifth teammate for them and a permanent fixture in the reading sessions.
• Tempting Fate: Weiss remarks early on that Team RWBY shouldn't waste too much time on the memes, and that "it’s not like anything serious has cropped up". The very next meme they get indirectly outs Blake as a Faunus.
• Troll: Discussed with the memes regarding Ozpin as this. Team RWBY don't consider him one but do acknowledge that some of his actions can certainly give off the impression.
• The Unreveal: At the end of the interlude “Entire Team Genes”, Yang and Ruby’s questioning the nature of Team STRQ’s relationship has Taiyang sigh and admit they deserve to know the truth… and then in Chapter 19, they walk in where WBP are waiting, saying they need time to process what they learned before they’re ready to talk about it.
• What Is Evil?: When Emerald begins having doubts about things since, if Team RWBY are the heroes of their show in another dimension, it would make Cinder's group the villains, Mercury ultimately responds with a played with form of this. He says the only reason they are the "villains" is because they oppose Team RWBY, the "heroes", and that "stories" need to divide people into terms like that so they can be interesting. That if the show followed Team SSSN, then Blake would just be the "mean girl" for putting down Sun. That if it followed Team ABRN, none of them would even be relevant to ABRN's story. But that ultimately, they're not a story, they're just people on opposing sides, and what Emerald should be asking is if this is the side she wants to be on.
  Mercury: We aren't the good guys, or the bad guys. We’re just... people. Making our way through life. No weirdos from other realities are going to change that.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Mercury's What Is Evil? talk with Emerald would hold a lot more weight if the conflict was one of Grey-and-Gray Morality, with him under the impression that this is the case. However, what he doesn't know is that Cinder's boss is Salem, who's trying to cause The End of the World as We Know It. Something like that would be considered evil regardless of terms like "Hero" or "Villain" and is something his canon self only goes along with because it's the only thing he knows.