Thinking About RWBY

Like lil dude is fifteen, he’s got the world on his shoulders but it’s okay because he’s got all these friends who also have the world on their shoulders.

In the span of 2-3 days he’s kidnapped, tortured, sees the entire Kingdom of Atlas be destroyed, and six of his friends die for nothing because Salem gets the Relics anyway.

And he’s the one every one would look to. Ren and Nora are nobody’s from the middle of nowhere, Emerald was an enemy until a day ago, but he’s the one with the soul of a false god.

Canon: "Ozpin is flawed but means well, and is trying to do everything he can to protect humanity. He kept secrets from his allies out of the belief that the truth would break them just as it broke him. He is, however, willing to admit when he's wrong and take steps to correct his behavior."

Fanon: "Ozpin is a baby-stealing cultist who's responsible for every bad thing Salem has ever done! She is but a blameless victim of his constant abuse! Everything he has EVER said is a lie! HE IS PURE EVIL WITH NO REDEEMING QUALITIES!"

I find it amazing how people can say this and then get shocked when I ask them to tag their Ozpin bashing.

Besides, Hazel was murdering innocent people just to get back at Ozpin, over something his twin sister he constantly infantalizes chose to do.

Like, yes, Ozpin is a self-loathing wreck who blames himself for everything that's gone wrong, but in the end he didn't say ANYTHING about Salem he didn't believe was true.

Remember, what Salem said was: "Why redeem these humans when we can simply replace them with what they can never be?" meaning she was either plotting eugenics and genocide or had horrible grammar. Given that Salem's shown to be EXTREMELY careful and deliberate with her word choice, I'm going to assume it was the former, because it would be REALLY frustrating for the entire conflict of the show to be based on bad grammar.

But NO!!! We need Ozma to be an evil baby-stealing monster who tried to kidnap Salem's children because she wasn't religious enough! Even though, y'know, one of the first things Oz did after coming back to life was disobey Light by seeking out Salem.

But sure! It TOTALLY isn't bashing Ozpin to suggest he just tried to kidnap his daughter's from Salem, let's just ignore the ACTUAL grammatical structure behind Salem's words to make Oz look as evil as possible!

And besides, even if Ozpin DID lie to Hazel, SALEM WAS COMMITTING GENOCIDE IN ATLAS!!! She was siccing her Grimm on civilians at that point! And Hazel was complicit in it, and blaming Ozpin for his choices, claiming it was all in the honor of someone Salem had killed for trying to oppose the "Grimm eating children" party. But sure! Let's erase Hazel's misogyny in order to paint HIM as a poor, helpless victim of Ozpin's manipulations when he desecrated his sister's memory by helping the monster she died fighting destroy even more families!

"No more Gretchens, boy!" said the man who robbed a child of her mother JUST to "stick it to Ozpin", and has left countless Gretchens in his own wake.

Hazel even ADMITS that the only reason he's going after Ozpin is that he can't hurt Salem! So I don't think the show is going to be resolved by Team RWBY deciding "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" when it comes to the whole "How do we deal with Salem?" thing, because every character who's done that has been treated as being IN THE WRONG with no exceptions!

And let's not ignore the fact that, y'know, Oz had just gone through an entire character arc about being more open and honest. Him lying to Hazel to get him to dance to his whims would, from a narrative standpoint, be like if Ilia had joined forces with Salem to get back at Atlas. It would have rendered all of his prior development a waste of time!

So, rather than Salem plotting against the gods, i just think she's learned she CAN'T hurt them and so is doing what so many people (such as Hazel) have chosen to do when coming face-to-face with her, lash out at the people she CAN hurt because she thinks fighting the Brothers is a fruitless endeavor. The show isn't going to close out on vindicating Salem's methods, and she's not a fucking "anti-hero" as I've seen some people unironically call her: She's an unrepentant villain who lashes out at people she believes have no chance of fighting back, because she can't hurt the people who actually wronged her. That is what makes her Ruby's evil counterpart: She gave up while Ruby is still looking for a new solution!

But sure, let's just ignore the structure of the narrative and paint Ozma as a baby-stealing monster who abused his wife for religious reasons and drove her to villainy. Even though, y'know, his rhetoric is completely antithetical to Light's idea of a perfect world and he went out of his way to disobey him at the first opportunity he had.

The narrative has laid out who Oz and Salem are countless times now: Oz is a flawed-yet-well-intentioned man who blames himself for all of the world's ills (regardless of how responsible for them he actually is), and Salem an unrepentant monster who lashes out at the world around her due to being unable to harm those who actually wronged her.

"oz has a definite method to his madness. like a bunch of people were like "he just leaves so much up to chance." but there's… i think he kinda believes in that because, y'know, the whole world is filled with people that you may or may not get along with. but, whether or not you like somebody, doesn't really matter, if we don't work together, we're all kinda screwed as a people."

Like, just... no? That wasn't my idea at all? I've been beating the "Jaune is not a main character" drum since I got into RWBY. I literally have all the RWBY/Jaune ship tags blocked because I despise fanon inflation of his character that much.

As someone who loves both Oscar as a character I do think it’s an interesting writing/thought exercise. I just hate that people are using it as an excuse to bash on Oscar.

Let me preface this. I think having Ozpin merge with a younger and new character in Oscar worked out well since it gave Oz less control in managing the team since he was now in a host who is literally younger, weaker, and more innocent than them as well as a stranger. You could just tell that for the whole of V5 that Oz’s reins were slipping on keeping a mentor facade because it was especially easy to interrogate him as a new face (despite everyone’s trust of Oscar). There’s also some interesting narrative foils between Oscar and Pyhrra that make things fun: Oscar became the youngest member of JNPR now in need of training (while Pyhrra was a nearly adult prodigy); forcefully merged with an ancient soul (while she agreed to do that with the Fall Maiden but it didn’t work out); and they are some of the sweeter/more idealistic and self-sacraficing characters in the cast (I would say Pyhrra and Ruby were most similar between JNPR and RWBY before her death and Oscar and Ruby are now the most similar also not to say Jaune isn’t self-sacraficing he just approaches being a hero with more bravado than those three do). Having the new Oz as Oscar fill in Pyhrra’s spot on JNPR rather than just merge with Jaune also feels pretty narratively powerful no? I also think part of Oz’s arc has been learning to handover leadership reins which would have been difficult to write with Jaune’s steady growth as a leader. Oz is certainly still a strong force in the show in his own right, but handing things over to Oscar and learning to fully trust newer generations as leaders does seem to be a theme for him (also RWBY Beyond seems to imply is merge with Oscar is inevitably pushing him back to the front). Lastly, while I’m very convinced Miles Luna would have done an amazing job voice acting the merge, Aaron Dismuke absolutely slays at it and I’m glad we get to hear him.

However - The interesting advantage of having Ozpin merge with Jaune instead is the fact that they probably could have reached the point of being able to interrogate him faster given that Jaune already had more of a reason to question things and delve into Oz’s memories for justifications of Pyhrra’s death. There’s a lot of great angst and dramatic potential there. Another advantage would be to explain the mechanics of magic and aura more efficiently. We’ve been stuck wondering what’s Oscar’s semblance for a while now and I wonder if narrative they aren’t revealing it because it’s hard to fit into so many character arcs. Discovering Jaune’s healing semblance and then later on Oz’s magic could have been very cool. I think a merge between Jaune and Oz would have been a different flavor of tragic than between Oscar and Oz as well. Given we get Jaune at a low place and disillusioned by his hero’s journey in V4 post-Pyhrra’s death while Oscar is more innocently starting his and leaving his home there would have likely been darker places to go. Very fun concepts for a fic.