Gentleman Thief Au - Tumblr Posts
RWBY Chibi Skit involving Gentleman!Thief!Whitley
It’s in the dark of night when the light-footed Gentleman Thief pads around in the distinguished halls of the Great Vale Museum, in search of their treasured loot, only to encounter the original gentleman thief, Roman Torchwick! And his beloved sidekick, Neo Politan. Whitley: Who the fu#k are you? Roman: Who the fu#k are you? Whitley: I asked you first. Roman: I asked you second. Neo: ... Roman: Well, clearly, one of us has to leave. Whitley: Not me. I was here first. Roman: Weren't you taught to respect your elders? Whitley: Of course. Age before beauty. (bows mockingly) Roman: exCUSE ME? Are you calling me old?!!!!! Neo, holding up a sign: Ooooohhhhhh!!!!!
Thief Whitley Musings
Basically, in the volume 4 commentary, it was said that Whitley was loosely based off of Artemis Fowl. Now to catch you up (and spoil the ending of the first book) Artemis was an extremely intelligent boy who hatched a plan to steal a lot of gold to give funds to his family’s crippling fortune.
Add this in and me stanning Persona 5 Joker, my mind went places and it came to this point.–Whitley becoming the masked phantom thief Midnight(edited)-Basically, Whitley is something of a prodigy tech-head. Given that his family runs the SDC, I guess it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say Whitley may have possibly spent some time around the family + company’s security and SDC machinery to learn how the business work
Naturally, Atlesian society eats up this masked thief. They’re p bored w their lavish lifestyle and need something to talk about and what better than some roguish thief in the night dramatically named Midnight. It’d be a case ‘lock up yo wives, lock up yo daughters’ cuz this boi be stealing hearts
It’s all about duality. Nobody would except the well-groomed and behaved son to be this wild rogue. Whitley feels more free as his alternate persona than he does in real life. People romanticise this wild rogue, saying that he steals from the rich and gives to the poor when really he’s a bored and irritated teenager doing this just to flex about how smart he is and how dumb everybody else is
I really love the Schnees not connecting Whitley at all with his alternate identity. At all. It will be obvious, as plain as day, but yet they will not connect the dots. They will make comical mistakes, saying that the clues must be something else, it can’t be whitley, whitley isn’t cool enough to be Midnight
An interesting concept would be Whitley being able to use his semblance as Midnight, but not as Whitley, linking back to the idea that Semblances are a reflection of people’s souls. Whitley is free as Midnight, unshackled by his father’s rule and is free, but when the mask comes, he’s bound down by abuse and neglect and expectations.
Although I will admit that I do get a kick out of Whitley paying the price for his hubris. This boy is so cocky and arrogant that he inevitably gets caught or is close to it.
If he is caught, I would like for either for Ironwood or Winter to step in, striking up a deal with Jacques (who is #NotHappy) and Whitley. In exchange for Whitley walking free, he has to not only attend Atlas Academy but to also help in taking down grimm approaching Atlas.
If Whitley, however, isn’t caught, I’d like it to be a time of serious introspection for him and starting to question the things around him.
That’s all I got for now but I’m happy to field questions.