The Tale of a Cat Most Curious
and Remnant Timeline.
Take everything listed here for a grain of salt:
A Lighter Shade Of Black: The Tale Of A Cat Most Curious (
link
): The
Curious Cat is portrayed by the author as the least despicable and most sympathetic main character from
RWBY Volume 9, short of Little, and they're in opposition to RWBY/J and Neopolitan in this "vent fic." Despite the Cat's bitter feelings toward humans and ruthlessness in pursuing their goals, they have a much lower body count than Neo or RWBY/J do after the Fall of Atlas. The Cat's tragic backstory and lack of agency over their madness and desperation are pointed out and played for pathos, as is the fact they aren't actively threatening the Ever After or Remnant at large. Neopolitan pointedly has more moral agency over her evil actions and a much less compelling excuse than the Cat. Yet, she's more needlessly vicious and callous than them when endangering Atlas-Mantle and the Ever After and when torturing Ruby. RWBY/J are characterized as delusional, hypocritical, self-absorbed, and petty
knights templar who accelerated James Ironwood's
sanity slippage at the worst possible time for Atlas-Mantle, creating an even worse situation at the end of the Atlas arc than if they'd done nothing, have caused far more harm than they've prevented in the war against Salem on Remnant, and are liable to keep doing the same things to the rest of Remnant if they ever make it back out of the Ever After because most of them are more or less incapable of acknowledging that they were ever in the wrong and internalizing anything from their mistakes.
Anti-Villain: Downplayed by the
Curious Cat. They're an embittered, ruthless desperate, self-serving entity willing to turn to psychological manipulation and murder if it helps them, and they despise humans due to their bad experiences involving Alyx, Lewis, and Jaune Arc. However, many of the Cat's unintentionally sympathetic traits and redeeming qualities from their canon portrayal are highlighted or confirmed in this fic. The Cat has tragic and traumatic reasons which they have almost no agency over for turning into what they are now, they have some internal regrets over murdering Alyx (an act they committed in a blind rage which afterward traumatized them), and they don't seriously harm or kill non-Remnantians if it doesn't get them closer to their goals. While the Cat is sadistic towards Remnantians due to the Remnantian-shaped chip on their shoulder, the Cat holds no ill will towards the other Afterans and won't hurt or endanger any of them very lightly. The Cat isn't disrupting either Remnant or the Ever After at large — in fact, the Cat is aware that their causing the end of
Team RWBY in pursuit of their host might incidentally
save Remnant's inhabitants from even more Fall of Atlas-esque catastrophes.
Knight Templar: RWBY/J see themselves as heroes doing what's right and trying to save the world, but this portrayal takes their most criticized and
unintentionally unsympathetic traits and actions from the show, and it runs with them. In truth, RWBY/J are incredibly destructive, self-absorbed, delusional, hypocritical, and petty manchildren who have created far more problems than they've solved in the war against Salem, are callous to others and even each other at times, and most of them avoid acknowledging, much less internalizing, their mistakes like the plague. RWBY/J functions as the antagonist to the
Curious Cat's
protagonist.
Villain Protagonist: The Curious Cat, the final main antagonist of
RWBY Volume 9, is the protagonist. They never redeem themself, but they're depicted as
A Lighter Shade of Black compared to Neopolitan and RWBY/J.
Obfuscating Stupidity: The Curious Cat isn't as distractible as they appear to be. At the Garden, they deliberately feign getting distracted by a flower when they're supposed to be gathering ingredients for the Growgurt Parfait, so that Ruby's teammates, seeing this, will accompany the Cat and aim to keep them on track instead of staying with Ruby, making Ruby feel even more neglected by her teammates.
