the light god and the prime directive
i've seen some posts going on in the rwby tag where fans are just assuming that the light god won the propaganda war against the dark god. but from a star trek lens, the perception of the two gods is perfectly logical. the understanding of them works too going by human standards as well. it's comical to understand this and come to any conclusion where the light god would ever be perceived as anything other than the 'good' god.
look, the prime directive gets a lot of flack for its non-interventionist ideology and its 'let nature takes its course' attitude. but the why of its existence is very important to consider- it was a critique of american intervention abroad and at home. america with its whole manifest destiny and colonialism have trampled on 'less developed' societies all over the world, have driven societies all over to eradication and enslaved whole ass countries.
this is, by and large, not a good thing.
the federation, in contrast, does not do that. it gives technologically less advanced species the space they need to develop their technology, before inviting them to participate in a larger space-faring society.
in that sense, they are a nearly godlike society careful not to trample on others.
the light god attempts to do the same thing. his hands off approach to the humans of pre-remnant (whole?entirety?) was him attempting to give these children a chance to grow and develop in whatever way they want or are inclined to be.
however, the dark god's interventionist attitude, stunts humanity's growth and development. look at how the society and even technological development is when comparing remnant vs the flashback of salem's story. pre-remnant's society was still all monarchies and castles. it looked like a dungeons and dragons society.
the technology gap is insane too. remnant has airships, mecha, guns (so many guns) and freakin' penny. socially, it's much more developed as well. no more kings, there's democracy (counsels being voted on) and everything.
this might be an assumption on my part, but i think the source of this discrepancy is because the dark god gifted humanity with magic. remnant humans didn't have the crutch that is magic to lean on, so they had to adapt to the cruelty of the world of remnant by developing tool use (technology). they had to build sturdier walls because everyone can't cast fire3 or blizz3 to make short work of the grimm.
but on to why the dark would be perceived as the evil god. it's because he grants humanity's prayers.
look, let's let the revival of ozma happen. heroes in the society that salem lived in probably served a king and had accomplishments and accolades from battlefield achievements. this means he helped in conquering some people or land. which means there are probably people who wanted him dead.
salem getting her way, means other people did not get their way. somebody would wish death on ozma for his past crimes.
look, the dark god granting wishes is a bad thing. imagine humanity with access to a wish granting machine. i, for one, would not trust us with such power. we'd kill ourselves by accident. especially with a capricious wish granting god.
who we would probably annoy and then incite them to anger. which would lead to our smiting.
which is what happened- in show. if you don't think the dark god did what he did on a smaller scale to wipe out a village/town/city because humans petitioned him with some asinine request that offended his sensibilities- then i don't know how to convince you when the show kinda lays it out for you. salem offends the dark god and the dark god smites humanity. that literally happened.
there were skeletons leading up to the dark god's altar- i'm pretty sure they were petitioners with offensive requests that got smote.
look, are we going to look at the greek pantheon and call those gods good? i'll be real with you all, if a god exists, the only good god would be a non-interventionist god that erases all trace of themselves.
just consider how contrary humans are. we do not like to be told what to do. if someone comes down claiming to be god and telling us to live a certain way, there would be rebels and resistance all over the world.
there is no world where a god exists where you can feel safe and secure, unless the god explicitly doesn't do shit. you'll be living under the sword of damocles- you don't know what would set off a god-sword to come crashing down on you. a god could say 'hey, i'm only gonna kill the unjust' but who is the unjust? what can even bind a god to his word besides god? you have a being who could wipe a planet of life itself and you try to petition it for favors??
being so real right now, but that's dumb and desperate.
but yeah, non-interventionist gods get called good because they don't do shit to humanity. humans would attribute good things happening to him automatically because we do that ourselves. we attribute good to god and we don't even have concrete proof of a god's existence. interventionist gods get labelled bad, because a god who entertains a human's request will undoubtedly entertain some idiot's poorly thought out wish and fuck us up. it's inevitable. the maths math.
