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38 – Volume 6, Episodes 2 and 3 | Table of Contents | 40 – Volume 6, Episodes 5, 6 and 7
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Alternate Title: That one. The one I warned you about.
Please be warned that this episode involves a rape, an in-depth discussion of that rape, and a bunch of other completely unpleasant shit including child abuse, child death, suicide attempts...it's real bad.
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*still in shock*
*opens and closes mouth a few times, closes eyes*
You know, I thought about bringing Shinjiro in here. A guest sporker to really help me get through things here. But I have to face facts—he’s completely unprepared for this. Yes, even having been through the Nyx nightmare. Because as batshit insane as the plot of Persona 3 was, with its insistence that the apocalypse was coming because humanity wanted it, it somehow still never entered the utterly ghastly level of victim-blaming we’re about to get into. And that’s not even the worst part.
I wish we could start off easy, but we can’t. The last thing that happened, halfway through Episode 3 of Volume 6, was just that fucked up.
That being Salem, back in the Before Time, raising a pathetically small army of warriors and spellcasters just small enough to fit into the god of light’s spring to make him and his jackass brother pay for killing her lover and making her immortal. The god of darkness responded to this laughably ineffective force by wiping out every last human on the planet save for Salem.
Which they then blamed Salem for.
Fauxminism: 35
And you know what that’s for? That’s for something truly scary—the fact that we’re not supposed to think they’re wrong to do so. You can disbelieve that if you will, but it will be more than clear before we’re done that we, too, are supposed to blame Salem for leading humanity to extinction.
Before we can properly proceed, though, we also need to talk about the very last revelation dropped in the last post—that being, how the moon got its broken shape.
This having happened because the god of darkness, rather than just vanish into light particles like his older brother, chose to leave the planet by turning into a gigantic beam of darkness that then blasts straight through the moon, shattering it.
That’s all.
I’m not kidding, that’s how it happened.
Look, guys. How the moon got broken is not something Rooster Teeth necessarily teased. The moon has been totally unimportant except as a visual metaphor, its rotation and changing faces aligning with the ‘broken-ness’ of the characters. But nonetheless, it was a motif, and pretty much everyone in the fandom, from the time RWBY’s four original trailers were coming out, was wondering how it got that way. It was expected to be some big reveal near the end of the series. People went as far as to theorize that the climactic finale of the show would take place on the moon, a la Majora’s Mask or Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. While it wasn’t necessarily teased nor hyped, the exact question of how the moon got the way it did was in the back of many minds and it was something people expected to be integrated into the background of the world in some clever way.
That did not happen, because Rooster Teeth did not know how the moon got broken.
You will never, ever convince me that ‘a god of darkness turned into a huge laser and shattered the moon while yeeting himself off the planet’ was the intended backstory of the moon’s shattering. I would call anyone who bought that story a clown and a fool. This was something MKG pulled out of their asses, because as long as they were going back into the Before Time, why not? The sad truth we all need to accept is that this is another one of those proofs that Monty didn’t really leave as much of a plan as Rooster Teeth wanted us to believe, and that before now, they had had to just start making things up on the fly to keep the series going.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 32
Road to Nowhere: 18
Because that’s one of the worst examples I’ve ever seen of hastily, lazily resolving a ‘plot point’ – one that, truthfully, they didn’t even need to resolve.
But anyway, back to Episode 3. Salem is now alone on the planet, no human life except for her, who shall wander forever as an undying widow. It’s just her, the wildlife, and the Grimm now.
J: Once again, Salem was alone.
How sad.
J: She cursed the gods. She cursed the universe. She cursed everyone. Everything but herself.
*swelling*
SALEM DOES NOT HOLD ANY BLAME FOR THE EXTINCTION OF HUMANITY BECAUSE A SUPREMELY PETTY AND VENGEFUL GOD WIPED THEM OUT OVER HER RATHER UNDERSTANDABLE REBELLION.
Fauxminism: 36
As Jinn describes, Salem wandered the earth for a time, until returning to the pool of darkness that had once been the resting place of the evil-ass god that wiped her people out. Imagining that this, if nothing else, might finally be able to kill her, she dove right in.
This, Jinn states, turned Salem not into black goo and then atoms, but a still-immortal being that now craved the destruction of everything.
*dully* So, yeah, that’s how Salem became evil. Not out of any particular motivational backstory, or the trauma of her endless life. She jumped into a pool of Evil Juice and became Evil.
Road to Nowhere: 19
Is there even a point to this backstory episode by now? Oh, wait, of course there is—misogyny and victim blaming.
J: And in time, she would find her adversary.
Who? Everybody else died. That’s what y’all wrote three minutes ago.
But then, we see Ozma floating in a blank void. Before him appears the god of light, first in dragon form and then in deer-horned human form. When Ozma asks where they are, the GoL says they’re “between realms”, and then says this:
GoL: I’m afraid a…tragedy has befallen your home, at the hands of my brother. We’ve chosen to depart this world, but, in our absence, I would like to offer you the chance to return to it.
Okay, number one, clearly we see where Ozpin gets his habit of blatant misrepresenting of situations from—as well as shifting blame, because I don’t see the GoL accepting any responsibility for not stopping his brother, nor simply resurrecting the whole of humanity, which is surely a simple task for him and his infinite power.
Hypocrisy: 27
Yeah, “balance of life and death” is oh-so-important until someone decides to just throw the game board and commit omnicide on humanity. Or until someone decides to fuck with Salem by bringing back her lover ages after that little issue had run its course for the worse.
GoL: Mankind is no more. Yet, your world remains. And in time, your kind will grow to walk its face once again.
Come again? How? The story thus far has been that humanity arose from you and your jackass brother working together to create them! Do you have some extra prototype humans in the cooler or something? Or are you saying they’re going to evolve into place? From monkeys or fish or microbes or some shit?
We get no clarification. The GoL appoints Ozma as a protector of humanity and leaves on planet Remnant the four Relics of Creation, Knowledge, Destruction, and Choice, for Reasons. I think he’s being an ass, because as if a humanity that sprouted out of the earth could amount to anything without help from himself, but who really knows at this point?
The GoL says that the unification of these four relics will summon himself and the GoD back to their world, who will then bring about judgement on humanity.
GoL: If your kind has learned to live in harmony with one another, and set aside their differences, then we shall once again live among you, and humanity will be made whole again. But if your kind is unchanged, if you demand our blessings while still fighting amongst yourselves, then man will be found irredeemable, and your world will be wiped from existence. Until your task is complete, you will reincarnate, but in a manner that ensures you are never alone.
First off, yeah, there goes that bit from Ozpin in Volume 5 about how his reincarnation was a curse from the gods for failing to stop Salem, since he’s been dead up until now. As of now, it’s a benefit granted to him to make sure he can do so. “Planned from the beginning” my ass.
Second, Any blind idiot can see that this is something to be avoided, because welcoming back the grade-A motherfuckers who wiped humanity out the first time is hardly a goal to be achieved. Not to mention another misrepresentation, since the brother gods never judged humanity for warring among themselves—they only got pissed off when a hilariously small amount of them tried to rebel against them. They’re the problem, not humans.
But don’t sigh and say “That’s the point, Chris” just yet.
Ozma laments that he cannot accept life if Salem isn’t there, leading the GoL to let him in on Salem’s continued existence, and also that she’s Evil Now.
J: And so, Ozma was reborn.
Ozma wakes up in some other dude’s body in the midst of a Grimm attack on a human village. We have zero idea how long has passed since Salem’s sludge bath and absolutely nothing is made of how humanity came to populate the planet once more. It’s completely skipped.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 33
I might expand that into a general shitty writing count, because this is just supremely lazy.
Ozma saves some dude, and Oscar, one of the many characters looking on, realizes that Ozma has no idea who the dude he’s inhabiting is.
J: Ozma had found himself in a world completely unfamiliar to him. Cities looked different, creatures known as faunus bore fangs and claws and were locked away in cages.
RSVP: 59 (+10)
Because the plight of that people, in addition to how they even came to be, in a form noticeably different than the standard human, is completely fucking skipped. They don’t even approach the idea of explaining their origins or addressing the faunus’ literal enslavement.
J: And without the blessing of the gods, no one could perform magic like mankind was once capable of.
This is said while Ozma in his new meat suit is gazing at a collection of dust crystals in a market stall. I suppose we're supposed to pretend those are just pretty colored rocks.
The Lovegood Fallacy: 12
Ozma can still use magic, of course, as can Salem, who is now known as “the witch” and lives in a big creepy house in a dark forest.
Might should’ve added a SLEDGEHAMMER OF SUBTLETY count.
Ozma decides to go pay Salem a visit for himself.
J: Call it magic, or call it something stronger. But in that moment, the two of them knew exactly who stood before them.
Translation: we didn’t feel like explaining how they recognized each other despite the fact that they look nothing like their former selves.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 34
So they chat each other up. No, I’m not kidding.
J: As Salem and Ozma recounted the events which had brought them back together, each withheld parts of their story. Salem, fearing Ozma would reject her, blamed the end of the world on the gods.
YOU MEAN THE EXACT JACKHOLES WHO ARE, IN FACT, RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT? ARE WE STILL TRYING TO BLAME SALEM FOR THAT?!
Fauxminism: 37
J: Ozma, still unsure of where the truth lay, kept his task and the relics a secret. Though time passed, and all seemed well, Ozma’s conversation with the god of light still lingered in his mind.
Salem and Ozma are shown heading into Salem’s house.
J: He had found happiness, but humanity seemed more divided than ever before.
As far as I can tell, they weren’t divided before. They were, in fact, united against a common enemy! Who then blasted them back to the stone ages! And yeah, I notice we’re still not going to touch on what humanity are even like, how they got to repopulate the world as a civilized people again from total extinction, or anything else.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 35
I hate y’all for that.
S: Are you surprised? This world is quite literally godless. These humans have no one to guide them. Perhaps that’s all they need.
Salem believes that she and Ozma should set themselves up as gods, and create the paradise for humanity that they couldn’t have before. Ozma is noticeably troubled by that.
J: The hearts of men are easily swayed.
Meaning, Ozma went along with it anyway. Thanks, Oz. Like, wow.
You know, some time from now, Ironwood’s going to re-enter the picture, and with him is going to come the bad leadership angle this show loves so much. But this particular bit is going to be very noticeably ignored later. I have to wonder what Ironwood, or Glynda, or even Lionheart would think if they knew Ozpin, quite literally, just fucked off with Salem and decided to become the overlords of humanity with her.
Reliable Leaders: 37
A Nevermore attacking a village is shown being paralyzed mid-air and brutally compressed via some magical means. Ozma and Salem, glowing with magical power, are shown floating above the populace as their saviors and benefactors. The humans bow before them. In short, we are shown Ozma and Salem literally taking over as gods.
J: The two amassed a following. That following grew into a prosperous kingdom. And at the head of that kingdom blossomed…a family.
*stunned into silence*
*frozen for several minutes.*
Uhh… Run that by me again?
J: And at the head of that kingdom blossomed…a family.
*face wide-eyed and mouth ajar* Thanks, Jinn.
*Pyscho Strings starting up*
Aww! H-How cute… Look! Ozpin and Salem, a daddy and a mommy! *baring teeth and face twisting into a smile* Look…how…happy…they…are… They’ve even got little kids! Little Ozlings, for crying out loud and OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT IN THE NAME OF JESUS HALLELUJAH CHRIST IS GOING ON HERE?!?!?!
They… They had kids. Four kids. Ozpin fucked Salem.
OZPIN FUCKED SALEM AT LEAST FOUR TIMES.
No, no, let me just remind you of how this works:
OZMA, AKA OZPIN, FUCKED SALEM, A DARK SORCERESS MADE OF EVIL, AT LEAST FOUR TIMES…IN ANOTHER MAN’S BODY.
What in the name of hell??? I…
*slowly sliding hands down face* Let’s just give everyone a reminder: Ozma exists as a symbiote-parasite now, an eternal soul that binds to a new person each time the old one dies. He has to move into another man’s body whenever the previous one bites it. He has no body of his own, and any autonomy he has comes at the cost of the same privilege for whoever the body originally belonged to.
Remember: per Oscar’s clarification, he’s not just ‘out’ whenever Ozpin has control. He’s still aware and still present, able to react to things inside his own head, just not able to control his body. Per the logistics of how Ozpin’s soul-hopping works, Ozpin raped his host.
There’s zero question about consent. It’s not even brought up, not even mentioned. And even if it had been—would anyone really buy it? Come on, what realistic scenario is there where this unnamed dude, who had a voice in his head pop up out of nowhere one day and take over his body, would willingly allow Ozpin the use of his body to knock up Salem???
‘Aw yeah dude, it’s totally cool, here, just have at it!’ NO!!! No way in hell!!!
Which means the only alternative here is that this poor man, who doesn’t even get a name nor any legacy of his own, was held captive in his own head, powerless to stop Ozpin from using his body as a means for his own pleasure and sexuality, probably screaming in his own skull the entire time. And Ozpin went through with it. Ozpin violated this man in a way most people couldn’t even dream of, took control of his body for his own perverse pursuits, and that little tidbit gets absolutely zero goddamn thoughts. We are not even supposed to imagine that this was anything but cute and domestic, but it was everything but. This was rape.
*darkly* Unless you want to picture the other route this could’ve gone. Because there really is only one other route. We have so far been following Ozpin’s journey via Oscar’s body for two volumes and spare change now, but absolutely nothing has been said as to what will eventually happen to Oscar. Later on, it’s going to be given a little blanket cover-your-ass by repeatedly referring to Oscar’s fate as “fusing” with Ozpin rather than being taken over by him, but this is a completely negligible difference meant less to imply Oscar will still exist in some form than to clear Ozma of any responsibility for him eventually exiting the plot—even though that’s the only real logical endpoint. You can’t have it both ways—either the original host is still a distinct enough personality that they can make their own decisions, in which case this is rape, or they “fuse” and Ozpin is the only one left making decisions.
Even now, given the behaviors of Ozpin in the first three volumes, it isn’t difficult to infer. The Shannon McCormack host we were used to never displayed anything in the way of his own will, and obviously the most likely conclusion that we can come to is that Oscar won’t be Oscar forever, and that Ozma’s/Ozpin’s hosts eventually fade away—meaning, they die—and leave him as the sole possessor of the body they once called their own, with any remnant of their original consciousnesses clearly not making enough noise to be worth mentioning.
It hasn’t been spelled out, but you could easily go with that if you thought it made the situation better. Does it? …Because that would mean that, instead of Ozpin repeatedly raping a man via his sex life with Salem, it would mean that Ozpin repeatedly fucked Salem with a corpse, turning a hideous abuse of another person into a disgusting necrophiliac misadventure. Which one is preferable?
Don’t try to find a right answer here, because there isn’t one. Once you reach ‘rape vs. corpsefucking’, you’ve gone too far to bother.
But we’re also not done—because we haven’t explored Salem’s side of things. Given what Jinn said, I highly doubt that Ozma told Salem the exact details of his reincarnation. Sure, maybe he did, but I imagine that would fall under the “kept his task and the relics a secret” business, which is pretty relevant to it. Just like there’s very little chance Nameless Homie consented to doing the nasty with some dark witch in the woods, I very much doubt Salem consented to that, either. Salem would’ve consented to sex with Ozma, not Ozma and Ozma’s plus-one.
If Salem knew, that means she was a participant in that rape. If she didn’t know, it means Ozma raped her, too, by misleading her about the circumstances of their sexual activities.
This is so goddamn creepy and unsettling—and it’s worse because all of this is the logical conclusion in line with what we’ve been shown so far…but it doesn’t get remarked on at all.
Nobody noticed this. Nobody at Rooster Teeth said ‘Hold up a minute, this is kind of extremely fucked’. This somehow made it past the cutting room floor and into the published world without anyone stopping to remember that Ozpin basically cannot have anything but extremely freaky and most likely nonconsensual sex.
And you know what? I don’t think many people in the fandom noticed this, either, which is even scarier. No, not even the part of the fandom openly critical of RWBY at this point and willing to drag its every plot point. I think people were too caught up in the way the narrative kept blaming Salem for the extinction of humanity, but even with that front and center in my mind, I didn’t miss this.
I have tried occasionally to reintroduce this topic, once even quite recently. What I received in response was the idea that the Ozma that screws babies into Salem’s guts was a Brand New Body with no prior consciousness in it just for Ozma alone—which is an extrapolation in clear violation of what’s shown onscreen, with the god of light saying outright that is not what he’s giving Oz, and Oscar pointing out he didn’t know who the body he was in belonged to. Another alternative I was given was that full “fusion” had already taken place and so it was just Ozma in that body—which I already outlined was horrific in its own right.
*holding head in hands* I don’t get it. I don’t. I don’t understand who thought of this, or how we got this far. How did we get ‘Ozpin the rapist’ as an unmentioned aside?
*hollow stare* We still have about three minutes of episode left.
We are shown humans warring with one another, and Salem’s endorsement of this—their ascension as gods is not accepted by all, and so they gather armies to force worship of themselves on those who hold out. Ozma is made uncomfortable by this.
Then Ozma looks in a window, and his reflection speaks to him.
???: What are we doing?
I think that was Shannon McCormack’s voice, so it seems like that’s Ozpinma questioning the path he’s going down with Salem. But I’m going to choose to believe it’s the last vestiges of Nameless Homie trying to assert his own will.
But even if it was Ozpamin’s own self questioning the scene, it’d still piss me off. See? He feels bad about being a conquering, warmongering god-emperor, so that means it’s okay that he did it! And if it still isn't okay, it's still okay, because you can just blame it on Salem!
*livid*
Ozmapin’s muttering that this ‘isn’t what he asked’ of him, and Salem’s raised brow regarding that, are interrupted by one of Ozmanpain’s little Ozlings bursting into their study and showing off magic powers. Jinn’s voiceover says that this little miracle is marred by Ozpeen telling Salem the truth regarding the relics and his mission.
Salem is not impressed with Ozpenis’ sacred mission, although we have to make sure everyone knows she’s evil about it, because she’d rather just guide humankind herself. Ozprick is so disturbed by Salem’s intentions of godhood that he decides to take the Ozlings and run, sneaking out at night. However, they are discovered.
Her fury is felt, and she and Ozpiss get into a magic fight so destructive it turns the smoke from their collapsing castle into 2D animation.
The Ozlings do not survive, and Ozma is quite wounded by the end.
She kills him.
So Ozmanpain reincarnates, and spends several lives drinking away his sorrows and thinking about his sacred task.
J: And as the centuries went on, Ozma began to learn the importance of living with the souls with which he had been paired.
Basically outright confirming that Ozmonster’s first host, and who knows how many others, were not factors in Ozpin’s sex life, their bodily autonomy be damned. We’re shown Ozpus’ ‘learning the importance’ via his latest host cooking for a family. Again, whether the family came with the host or was a later addition is unremarked on. Let’s not think too hard about it.
But Ozpin couldn’t just ignore Salem. Ruby finishes Jinn’s latest sentence for her, saying that he realized he had to destroy Salem.
J: Knowing he could not rid the world of her through any mortal means, Ozma sought out the relics. Armed with my knowledge, he believed he could fulfill his promise to the god of light.
Ozma is shown asking three questions with the lamp in a past reincarnation:
Oz: Where are the other relics?
Oz: What powers do they possess?
Oz: How do I destroy Salem?
Jinn drops the bomb:
J: You can’t.
The girls of RWBY, standing in the void in which they started Jinn’s story, are shown shocked and disillusioned by this information, as Ozma kneels in sorrow. The episode ends.
As you may have noticed, the YouTube account uploading RWBY in 4K, as well as its cache of episodes offsite, has been taken down. So we're back to ever-diligent KickAssAnime.
There’s still stuff we need to say about this episode—we need to tackle everything Jinn told us, but we’ll have to do it with the context of the other characters’ reactions to it. So I’ll hold off until Episode 4 is at least partly over with.
So, fresh off the backstory episode, how do our heroes react? Yang’s voice opens the episode as Jinn’s constructed reality dissipates.
Y: Salem can’t be killed… You all heard her, too, right?
That is not what Jinn said, and Rooster Teeth thinking they can fool me with an easy-mode red herring is mighty presumptuous. I knew the second the words left Jinn’s mouth that her exact answer meant that Ozpin couldn’t destroy Salem, but someone else could. But for now, let’s go along with what the characters are taking Jinn’s words to mean.
Ozpin, kneeling in the snow, looks up with tears running down his face, and is accosted by RWBY for all the things he’s withheld. Ruby asks the million dollar question: What is Ozpin’s plan to defeat Salem?
Ozpin, and Rooster Teeth through him, answers:
Oz: I…don’t have one.
Bum bum bummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 36
Qrow is especially broken by hearing this. Please pay attention to what happens next:
He whacks Ozpin—meaning Oscar, too—hard enough to launch him into a tree. And then makes it about himself.
Qrow: No one wanted me… I was cursed… I gave my life to you because you gave me a place in this world. I thought I was finally doin’ some good!
Oz: But, you are—!
Qrow: Meeting you…was the worst luck of my life.
This response pierces Ozpin, who finally relinquishes control of Oscar’s body. Oscar brings a hand up to his cheek in pain from where Qrow whacked him in the goddamn face.
*clears throat*
CAN WE PLEASE STOP PUNCHING PEOPLE IN THE FACE?!? It feels like someone’s getting the shit beat out of them every ten seconds in this goddamn show!
I don’t care what Qrow’s feelings about all this are, I don’t care about his manpain about his father figure or whatever the hell turning out to be an idiot with no plan whatsoever. Oscar is a kid and Qrow, a grown man, just took out his rage on Ozpin without the slightest concern that Oscar was in the way!
*baffled* Why does nobody in this story give a crap about Oscar? Why is there never even a single thought spared for Ozpin’s hosts?!
You know what…? Despite the fact that this doesn’t involve any women, I’m still giving it a Fauxminism point. Know why?
Fauxminism: 38
Because when a story lets a dude get away with hurting other people because of his feelings, his emotions, it tends to say a lot. Salem’s rage was clearly no reason for her to attack Ozpin, and in the process kill her own children—but cut to the next episode, and Qrow punching Oscar ten feet is glossed over because of how much pain Qrow is in.
This tends to be the season where the writers finally picked up on the fact that Qrow was not a universally popular character and a growing amount of people did not like him, which is why I’m not rallying for a Qrow count to go alongside the Jaune count. However, the fact that more of this nonsense recurs later—and you’ll never guess who the perpetrator is—makes it pretty clear that in this specific instance, Qrow is not being cast as in the wrong for it.
Now, back to the story—Ruby asks what’s happened. Oscar says that Ozpin is “gone” and Yang, enraged, demands he return and face his malcontents. But Oscar clarifies that Ozpin hasn’t just retreated, he’s gone. Not there anymore. Before I can take this for the scary thoughts it engenders, Oscar further clarifies that Ozpin found some hidey-hole inside his head and isn’t coming out to play, and would seem to be unaware of happenings around Oscar.
Oscar, grabbing his head, yells that he hates this and wants it to stop. No one pays him any mind, too caught up in indignation that Ozpin not only has been leading them on a foolish mission he’s making up as he goes along, but that he’s just run away with his tail tucked. Calm is brought about by one Maria Calavera, who everybody else seemed to have forgotten.
M: Enough! We need to get a move on. It’ll be dark before you know it, and every single one of you is spewing negativity!
Helping Oscar up, she directs the team to a trail nearby that might lead to shelter. Yang tries to bow up, but Maria will have none of it. She lampshades how bizarre it is that this is “humanity’s second time around”,
Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 27
and assumes control like the abuela she is. Ruby agrees with her course of action, and everyone grabs what they can carry—Yang rolling Bumblebee with Maria sitting astride it—and drags it through the snow. Hanging back, Ruby tries to present a distraught Oscar with Ozpin’s cane.
Os: …I’m just going to be another one of his lives, aren’t I?
R: Of course not. You’re your own person—
Q: [walking past, throwing back his flask] Don’t lie to him, Ruby. We’re better than that.
Well, the immediate aftermath of Ozpin’s backstory is over and we’re about to cut to a new scene, so now is a good time to take in everything that we just went through.
There are two big ‘bombshells’ dropped in that exposition dump, three if you count the evidently overlooked ‘Ozpin the rapist’ bit. One is that humanity was wiped out in the past, and the other is that Salem can’t be killed.
And I know all of you caught the very insistent bent throughout Jinn’s narration that Salem bore responsibility for humanity’s extinction the first time around. I have zero goddamn clue how anyone could reach that conclusion—if an almighty presence decides to commit omnicide, you cannot convince me that the traumatized woman who irritated him with a pathetically ineffective rebellion is the one to blame for that. There’s a whole fake ‘accountability’ air throughout the story, as though Salem in any fashion should be blamed for it, but she can’t be. No reasonable person would try.
We could assume that this is quite intentional. Maybe Jinn isn’t supposed to be totally reliable as a narrator—she, after all, is the Relic of Knowledge, which was created by the god of light, and so it can be inferred that her version of the ‘truth’ naturally skews the way the GoL would present it as.
But I can’t find it in me to believe that, because none of the present-day cast seems to have any concern about the gods or whether Salem was truly responsible for them nuking the planet. It’s the same principle as trying to say Qrow in Volume Three is supposed to come off as a total unlikeable asshole, when no one in-story calls him out as such and the narrative frames him as totally correct. Drawing no attention whatsoever to the wrong that a character does will naturally provide the audience the idea that it’s not supposed to be wrong.
And thus, more troublesome than that victim-blaming bent is the fact that it seems we are supposed to agree. The heroic cast aren’t just listening to a verbal story, they get to see what happens, and the difference between that and the words Jinn uses. None of them finds any pity for Salem, and the gods don’t even come up in their tirade against Ozpin. So I can only conclude that Jinn really is supposed to be impartial and 100% truthful here, and that as far as this story is concerned, Salem got humanity killed because she didn’t know her place, and tried to obtain justice from an unjust system.
I cannot overstate to you how unsettling that is.
Fauxminism: 48 (+10)
Hypocrisy: 32 (+5)
As usually happens, this caused a shitstorm in fandom, who were utterly gobsmacked that Salem, who up until now had been a being of simple evil to be unquestionably rooted against, had effectively been blamed by the story—and thus, those who write it—for an utterly massive cataclysmic event she had no real power to enact or prevent.
Some choice text posts from days gone by.
What’s chilling about this is that if I connect some very nasty dots, this seems even more intentional than it does heading out the gate. You see, RWBY is now taking a sharp turn with the character of Ozpin, who in Volume Five was lambasted by fandom as being shady as fuck and way too secretive and controlling to be convincingly trustworthy. In the process of this sharp turn, we’ve managed to villainize Salem in an ages-past narrative where she was, up until the last of its events, pretty sympathetic. What seals it for me is this line:
J: She cursed the gods. She cursed the universe. She cursed everyone. Everything but herself.
J: As Salem and Ozma recounted the events which had brought them back together, each withheld parts of their story. Salem, fearing Ozma would reject her, blamed the end of the world on the gods.
Salem is cast as misleading, misconstruing a situation, telling half-truths, etc, etc…, the same thing Ozpin is now wildly guilty of. This might just be an authorial agitation: the idea that if Ozpin has to be rewritten to frame his behaviors the way they honestly came off, then Salem too should be rewritten as having the same flaws. Certainly the big deep-dive into Ozpin's dirty secrets seems to spend way more time fixating on Salem's crimes than his.
Back to the story. The next scene we cut to is the shadowy land where Salem’s hideout is located, with a Mistrali skiff speeding towards it. Hazel, Emerald, and Mercury disembark. At the entrance, they find Tyrian, cackling madly and bearing a metal barb where the end of his tail had previously been.
T: Welcome back, welcome back! I do hope you missed us as much as we missed you!
The three don’t give Tyrian the time of day, and Emerald is just walking past him when he tauntingly asks where Cinder is. Emerald stops short, quickly made furious by Tyrian’s cackling at what must be her obvious failure. When Tyrian mocks Cinder’s fate, Emerald draws her guns and threatens to cut off more than just his tail.
Tyrian decides to get up in Emerald’s face.
T: Careful, little girl. Cinder isn’t here to protect you anymore.
And at this point, I am well and truly pissed off with this.
Tyrian cannot threaten Emerald, guys. She remains the most hilariously overpowered member of an already rather fearsome faction. She can control what Tyrian sees and hears if she wants to. If Tyrian were to try and throw hands, he’d get his ass whooped the same as most anyone else would if they wanted to 1v1 with Emerald. And yet, we are expending all this effort to make Tyrian, someone who has literally done nothing to secure all this scaaaaaaary casting, someone Emerald should evidently fear.
Y.A.S. Queen: 14
And what’s pissing me off even more is the way Tyrian gets up near her—getting close enough that she bends back away from him, and actually rubbing himself along her blade, while grinning lecherously and reminding her her protector is not present. This is creepy, if nothing else than for the fact that it looks like he’s ready to molest her if no one stops him.
Fauxminism: 49
And I don’t care if that’s the intention, if you think I’m letting that go after the blatant disregard for peoples’ consent we’ve been shown thus far, you’re out of your mind.
*holding heads* I try not to cast aspersions too wildly, but my god—the guys in charge of this show weird me out. The way this shit gets written makes me feel like women shouldn’t be left alone at parties with the pens behind all this.
And that didn’t help, either.
Tyrian backs off when Mercury gets involved, saying he fears for those who have failed Salem. A very annoyed Hazel and a freaked-out Emerald and Mercury leave Tyrian to his tiresome cackling.
In the meeting chamber, Salem does not take kindly to Hazel’s news that Volume Five’s last few episodes resulted in the most bullshit win ever achieved by the heroes thus far.
S: I would like you to explain to me how it is that you failed so spectacularly.
Long story short, Salem: the writers stopped caring. Hazel doesn’t get very far into his explanation before a very pissed Salem cuts to the chase: who caused this? Hazel again tries to speak, claiming full responsibility, but Salem will have none of that, either.
In the kind of ‘accidental bondage’ display that would be very hilarious had I not become very over-sensitive to the topics of consent and sexuality given these recent episodes, Salem pulls Hazel to the floor in a mess of Grimm hands grasping out of the ground, having cast the table (and Tyrian, the jackass) aside. She turns her attention on Emerald, and despite herself, Emerald is forced to give the answer Salem wants: Cinder fucked all this up.
Salem knows Cinder is alive, and will hear of no talk about retrieving her, as she must understand helplessness and redeem herself. Still holding Hazel in her death grip, Salem says the team has lost sight of what drives them: love, justice, reverence. But she wants it made clear those come second to her own desires, obviously thinking of Cinder’s smug and arrogant desires for power.
She releases Hazel, which is immediately repaid when Hazel interrupts her, claiming he has more to report, which goes about as well as you’d expect. But she relents when he says that Qrow and RWBYJNPR have taken the lamp to Atlas, and their leader is Ozpin. This last bit of information makes Salem so visibly pissed that everyone quails in fear, and the windows start to crack. Everyone else leaves, so that Salem’s rage can bring the walls down without catching them in its path.
Meanwhile, the forested tundra of northern Anima is taking some time to cross. Every member of RWBY besides Yang has got to be wishing they’d worn thicker clothing here. Qrow, who is leading the pack and radiating depression, comments on the snowfall. Ruby shushes everyone, drawing their attention to a creaking noise somewhere nearby.
An abandoned farmstead bearing the name “Brunswick” will be the group’s temporary shelter, it seems.
This will be where we leave off. I’m sorry for taking two posts to get through two episodes, but there was a lot that needed to be talked about. I’ll try to fit more into the next post.
Counts:
- Jaune: 52
- It Was Right There: 19
- Fauxminism: 49
- Hypocrisy: 32
- Reliable Leaders: 37 + 15
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 15
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 15
- Threatening Enemies: 23
- Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 75
- Your Fight Scene Sucks: 92 + 30
- Evisceration Evasion: 33
- Evisceration Evasion: 33
- Ill Logic: 102
- Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 36 + 40
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 27
- Band-Aid Brigade: 14
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 27
- RSVP: 59
- Road to Nowhere: 19
- Y.A.S. Queen: 14
- Rooster Tease: 19
- LuLaRwe: 16
- The Lovegood Fallacy: 12
- How to Piss Off Gay People: 15
- Invisembl: 7
- Broke-Ass Clowns: 8
____________________
38 – Volume 6, Episodes 2 and 3 | Table of Contents | 40 – Volume 6, Episodes 5, 6, and 7
- fandom: original,
- fandom: rwby,
- fic type: multi-chapter (4 or more),
- series: rwby,
- spork type: anime/manga,
- sporker: surgeworks,
- status: in progress,
- status: incomplete,
- victim-blaming,
- warning: abuse,
- warning: child abuse,
- warning: death/possible death,
- warning: do not want,
- warning: rape,
- warning: rape (mentioned),
- warning: sexism,
- warning: slavery (mentioned),
- warning: suicide/attempted suicide,
- warning: violence
no subject
Date: 2023-07-14 02:37 am (UTC)From:And ugh. Qrow. Just -- honestly, him punching Oscar across the snow really makes me wonder why the hell anyone likes this guy. Like, big deal, Qrow; you have a bad luck semblance -- that doesn't mean that it's Oscar's fault that your life is broken! Hell, given that they never explicitly say why Ozpin somehow fucked up Qrow's life, Qrow might as well be whining for no reason. Then again, it's like -- Qrow is basically a walking personification of toxic masculinity given how goddamn angry he is all the time for no reason and how getting compassion from him is, a lot of the time, like getting water from a stone (to paraphrase KOTOR II).
It's like, I don't have any problems with the idea of angsty characters who can be unlikeable (of any gender), but you have to at least, in my opinion, (a) give them redeeming qualities and/or hints they don't like what they've turned into, and (b) at least give them a reason that makes sense as to why they're such an asshole even if it doesn't excuse it. And if that's not applicable, at least have the decency to make them hilarious/entertaining with what a dick they are; I know that characters I'd ordinarily hate who have little to redeem themselves with do at least win me over if they make me laugh. Qrow really is none of these things. He's just boring. I mean, maybe, just maybe, there's some epic tragic backstory that hasn't been revealed yet, but so far, he feels like an underwritten character as well as a punchable one.
And then, flipping it back, Salem, who pretty much has every in-universe reason to be shown sympathy, including the Fridge Horror you pointed out about Ozpin raping her as well as his host (and honestly, it doesn't excuse what Ozpin did, but given that the Brother Gods thought it was a proportionate response to Salem wanting her then-beloved back, they're pretty much responsible too. Like, just think about it: the Brother Gods basically were willing to add putting-innocent-people-through-rape-via-Ozpin just to punish Salem. I mean, even if she had somehow crossed a line prior to this, the Brother Gods are still assholes, to put it mildly), doesn't really get shown sympathy at all. It does feel at times like Miles and Kerry have some author favoritism under their belts.
Hell, maybe I should apologize to Revenge of the Sith regarding that scene where Obi-Wan leaves Anakin to burn, because as much as I did not like Obi-Wan for that, even he and Yoda never stooped to the same levels the Brother Gods did here, and at least Obi-Wan had the decency to be completely rattled by what happened to his former apprentice. I mean, Obi-Wan can be a preachy, self-righteous idiot at times, but at least he doesn't enjoy cruelty. And at least with Anakin's fall, Lucas did try to establish where he was crossing the line -- i.e. killing innocent people and inadvertently causing Padme's death -- and Obi-Wan did, burning alive incident aside, try to act like a Jedi would. I mean, for all the Force is considered a cruel entity in Star Wars to the point of one antagonist's motivation being to outright destroy it (in other words, starting the Star Wars version of the apocalypse), I'd take the Force over the Brother Gods any day.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-14 12:07 pm (UTC)From:To this day I remain shocked that Miles and Kerry could pen something so atrocious seemingly without realizing it. The dude Ozma indwelled just didn't matter to them, at all.
Naahhhhh man, you're supposed to like him because he's cool and doesn't gaf and hides his paaaaaainn from the world. There is no tragic backstory, by the way. Just "misfortune". Very woe-is-me for someone that still has all of his limbs and bodily autonomy. Overhyped asshole.
That's the thing though, they're not. It doesn't make them any more likable, but just because Ozpin's in a bad situation doesn't mean he can't choose to respect the autonomy of his hosts. The God of Light is, at best, guilty of choosing an overly-convoluted and hazardous means of making Ozma immortal given that Salem got a no-refunds eternal wellspring of life just with a dip in the GoL's spring.
Really, Ozpin being a parasitic soul fusion is another evidence of MK's writing away from the intended plot. Ozpin was clearly supposed to die at the end of Volume 3, but they wanted him back, and couldn't pull a traditional "never found the body" because his failure to beat Cinder was immediately followed by her killing Pyrrha, which would've made a standard reveal of him actually being alive very awkward and unwelcome.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-14 12:15 pm (UTC)From:Well, shit. That’s all they have for Qrow? Just misfortune? That’s just a really lazy backstory. Actually, that’s an insult to the concept of backstories, now that I think of it. They really didn’t put any effort into him at all, did they?
Yeah, good point. I guess I was still pretty angry at the Brother Gods, but yeah, it doesn’t mean that Ozpin can just disregard the wishes of his host.
And that does sound like an interesting idea that really, sadly enough, explains a lot, regarding Ozpin being intended to die. So unfortunately, we’ve got this situation.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-14 09:17 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2023-07-14 10:59 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2023-11-20 08:11 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2023-11-20 08:41 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2023-11-20 11:22 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2024-03-04 04:48 pm (UTC)From:> “gee, rose, isn’t it kinda creepy that you were trying to court nepeta in a sneaky and dishonest fashion?? btw, i know it makes you uncomfortable, but have you considered incest?? you should consider incest. brb i’m gonna go sexually assault my ex-girlfriend. i mean, she has zero memory of the relationship since she’s an iteration from a different timeline… and i’m not even technically her ex, i’m a totally different person (and you need to respect that)! but i’m within my rights to kiss her without consent, because i have non-mutual memories of dating a version of her once. it doesn’t matter that we broke up, or that i claim i’m not the person who dated her to begin with, i still get to kiss her without asking or warning. but i’m not the creepy one here!!!”
no subject
Date: 2024-03-11 10:01 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2024-03-11 11:33 pm (UTC)From: