there is something i find really interesting with regard to the general consensus on salem that seems to have emerged in the year+ since v9 wrapped—namely that salem must be defeated somehow first, and then if she’s still alive in any meaningful sense she may be persuaded to stand with the heroes against the gods and/or heroically sacrifice herself in some way to save the world. it’s a strange amalgamation of entrenched fanon about her (salem disdains modern humans and only wants to die and is a spoiled evil bitch throwing a tantrum) with the now overtly textual point that the god of light is not any kind of cosmic authority, which sits uncomfortably next to the notion that questioning his rules constitutes unforgivable entitlement. eyeroll.
but theories in this vein always leave unanswered the questions of how? why?—akin to the widespread fanon presumption that summer and/or raven asked the lamp’s first question (how did they learn her name? why did they stop at one? why didn’t raven tell yang how to use the lamp, if she knew how? i still have yet to see anyone who takes this theory seriously even attempt to close these gaps). how is salem to be defeated, and why does this lead to her joining the heroes? why do they accept her help at all?
these are not impossible questions to come up with an answer for, but it strikes me as very strange to speculate about what will happen without first considering the how and why. the unspoken presupposition regarding salem’s defeat is perhaps purgation via silver eyes, which is its own can of worms and one that i don’t think holds up to close scrutiny.
overcoming impossible odds is a mainstay of fantasy for a reason, but i don’t think it’s an accident that v9 underscores the “how are we supposed to stop salem?” quandary in the way it does before ending the volume with the blacksmith gently suggesting that kindness, compassion, and patience are the only way to restore balance. it’s a mistake to turn their backs on the cat out of spite rather than reach out in empathy; likewise saving neo and letting her go is the right thing to do.
so the question of how to defeat salem is twofold; first the practical consideration of whether it is even meaningfully possible to force her to stop (all signs suggest ‘no’) and second the even more salient factor of what salem herself wants and what she will do to get it. raze kingdoms and torture a child, certainly, but is she beyond reason?
well, consider it from the perspective of the kids once they return from the ever after. so long as she is not in vacuo, ‘defeating salem’ remains an abstract goal—something they can figure out later, once she’s here, once they’ve dealt with the more immediate problem of the crown, once they have a moment to catch their breath and prepare a counteroffensive… it’s, in a sense, imaginary. but what happens when salem either arrives in vacuo with half a million grimm, or they take that fuckoff huge battleship of theirs to vale for a defiant heroic stand only to watch her, you know, rip it apart like tissue paper?
(remember how important amity the communications satellite was in v7-8? how crucial it was to try to restore the world’s ability to talk to each other? ripping that satellite apart to repurpose it into a really big gun is not going to end well for them. that is, to be blunt, an ironwood move.)
realistically: you cannot ‘stand united’ your way out of an inexhaustible siege against an enemy who is empowered by your fear and fatigue. defenders win sieges when the besieging force can no longer sustain itself—a besieging force with infinite reinforcements that doesn’t have logistical considerations will win. period. game over. (this is one reason i think they’re likely to try a counteroffensive; they have to defeat salem before she attacks vacuo because even if they repel an open assault, all she has to do is encircle the city to starve them into submission.)
and if the counteroffensive fails—which it will; remember what cinder did to amity with a single fireball?—then their fallback measures are 1. the sword of destruction (which they know won’t destroy her, otherwise jinn would have answered ozma’s third question differently) or 2. silver eyes (untested and hitherto unreliable). to use the sword they have to risk taking it out of the vault, and salem is probably counting on them to take that risk; all of them are operating under the assumption that if ruby blasts salem with her eyes and fails, salem will capture and warp her into a monster, which would have a devastating impact on morale.
turning her inner circle against her worked, but 1. it only bought them a little more than an hour of reprieve before she reconstituted and 2. her inner circle has been winnowed of everyone open to persuasion (cinder might stab salem in the back for her own reasons, but she sure as hell is not going to become less of a problem for the heroes if she does and she’s not going to listen to a word they have to say because, as far as she’s concerned, huntsmen and huntresses are just slave-catchers with a superiority complex). so that’s out, as a strategic approach.
what’s… left? realistically?
rwby is first and foremost a hopeful story, and the plain reality of this conflict is that the heroes have no hope of winning, short of a literal deus ex machina; the best ending they can achieve is to force a stalemate, driving salem back into exile or trapping her somewhere—and that’s fucking bleak. "we saved the charred husk of the old status quo by kicking the can down the road hooray" is not by any means a happy ending, and the only way to get rid of salem after doing so is to invite the gods back to be tyrants again.
hopeful story. hopeless unwinnable conflict. what’s the answer? how do you ignite real, incandescent hope in such overwhelming darkness?
you… circle around from a new direction. immovable obstacle -> change course. a river flows around a boulder. you can’t stop salem by force, you can’t destroy her, but can you reach her? persuade her? help her? has anyone ever tried? if you can’t beat 'em—
what do they have to lose, at this point? two kingdoms gone. strictly speaking, the heroes destroyed atlas, not salem, even though she and ironwood together forced their hand: i think this is an important thing to keep in mind, because it creates an opening for understanding. salem is not alone in feeling kingdom-razing levels of desperation. nothing else they’ve tried has worked. why not ask her why she’s doing this? why not at least try?
v9 promises an inflection point toward a happy ending, not that everything will magically start to go their way now. remember that the original plan for this volume was to have this searingly hopeful departure from the ever after slam into the harsh unexpected blow of “and while they were gone, salem utterly destroyed vale.” it’s always darkest before the dawn. you pick yourself up from rock bottom and you’re still standing in a deep hole. v10 is going to feel crushingly bleak because it’s going to be ABOUT rising up again from that brutally crushing blow of how bad things are in vacuo.
v9 is the looking glass; v8 and v10 are reflections. “that’s actually a risk we haven’t considered” is the turning point in v8 and i think it will be the turning point in v10 as well… in v8 it’s opening the vault and using the relic to get everyone to safety, but v8 also made a point of putting another risk on the table that everyone flatly rejected: penny suggests taking salem at her word that she’ll leave in peace if they bring her the staff. that happens at the beginning of v8; i think it will happen again at the end of v10, most likely in the form of either 1. salem revealing she has thousands of people alive but trapped in mountain glenn and promising their release in exchange for the sword, or 2. salem arriving in vacuo with a million grimm and offering the same terms as before.
they can’t just hand over the relic, obviously. but meeting her halfway—risking negotiation, instead of dismissing the possibility out of hand—is the paradigm-shattering hopeful answer they need.
and i think it’s a much stronger narrative choice, because it challenges expectations and services the core themes of the story as opposed to, at best, implying that what the woman who is being actively tortured by genocidal gods really needs is to be curbstomped and taught a lesson. lol
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