Tobiekn

after chipping away at this one for a few months i'm weirdly anxious to post it, but here’s the longest i've spent on a piece of fanart! put in a lot of detail so there’s some close-ups with a speed paint under the cut. i'll be trying to figure out prints for it as well :)

team avia you're the best

I don't often post my daily studies. They're usually just very rough sketches or comps I never finish, and I don't like presenting unfinished work, but today I'll make an exception.

The Lost Fable more like The Lost Yuri aha #💀

Weird enough, I do recall one post before V8 when someone said that she wished that Salem was cutted up and tortured for eternity and I remember feeling disgusted at that. I also felt similarly when one person said that Ozpin should be “sealed” away for eternity too.

ahh i see

well, a couple points of clarification regarding my position:

in the specific context of his marriage with salem, ozma did a lot more wrong by salem than the reverse. because of the way ruby asks her question ("what is ozpin hiding from us?"), we know that oz already knew every piece of information revealed in the lost fable, including salem's rebellion (ozpin can't hide things he doesn't know). we also know that oz never used the lamp to find out more of salem's history and that he hasn't spoken to salem since the night of the duel (if either of these things happened, it would have been important enough to at least mention in passing.) 

it follows that oz knows about salem's rebellion (and other things that notionally make her look bad, like that she yelled and lashed out at the brothers before they made her immortal) because salem told him. in jinn's narration, she implies salem lied to him to make herself look better ("each withheld parts of their story: salem, fearing ozma would reject her, blamed the end of the world on the gods"), but this is not in fact true—for one, blaming the gods for ending the world is objectively correct, and for two, certainly salem may have skimmed over a lot of detail, but she did tell ozma the whole story.

(i also argue, on the basis of 'fairytales of remnant,' that ozpin has a vested interest in covering up salem's rebellion because he, uh, stands with his cancelled wife. and not having a plan to defeat salem doesn't mean he has no plan at all!)

in contrast, ozma didn't tell salem anything for what had to have been at least a decade. he returned to life as a servant of the gods who butchered the whole planet and tortured salem for millions of years and not only didn't tell her that, he presented the task he'd been given his personal ambition in order to get her to help him, all while knowing that salem would never willingly agree to bring the old gods back. 

that's a horrific betrayal of trust and i think ozma is painfully, inescapably aware of that and feels tortured by his guilt. 'until the end' hints pretty overtly that what ozma wants most, in his heart of hearts, is for salem to forgive him ("in waves of shame/we're desperate to make amends" <- not the words of a man who feels wronged).

the insurmountable obstacle, for ozma, is that he hates himself so much that he can't conceive of the possibility that anyone could forgive him for anything, let alone such a devastating betrayal. 

this is where the atonement arc he has in v6-8 vis-a-vis the kids comes in: oz makes the same mistake with his inner circle that he did with salem. he keeps secrets and uses lies and half-truths to manipulate their choices, which ultimately hurts them and destroys their trust in him. oz then spends several months reflecting on all of this and returns at the end of v7 feeling an inkling of hope, or at least will to try again. 

then, in v8, after mending his bridges with oscar, he apologizes to the kids. but he doesn't say "i'm sorry" or "it's my fault" (as he has done habitually in the past whenever he feels guilty). instead he states what he did wrong (lied and ran away when the truth came out) and asks them to give him another chance. for a character like oz, who sees himself as unforgivable, this is a crucial step and emotional breakthrough because in order to get here oz had to first accept the possibility that he can be forgiven. 

now the lies he told and secrets he kept from his inner circle were much smaller in scale, caused way less harm, and have not been left festering for centuries. but oz asking to be forgiven for the same kind of mistake lays the narrative groundwork for oz to finally acknowledge and act on his desire to make amends with salem.

(who will forgive him, i think, quite easily once she gets her answer to "why do you keep coming back?" because salem does not currently know that ozma's curse is a curse.)

their catastrophic duel and the deaths of their daughters in the crossfires traumatized them both and they both hate themselves for it and--well, we see ozma tightening his grip on his staff and salem startling at his motion right before she strikes and ozma does attack in the same instant. i think they were both so on edge in that moment that they both physically tensed and startled each other and snapped at the same instant.

separate from the interpersonal relationship between salem and ozma, salem is presently waging a brutal war for the relics and has to date wiped two kingdoms off the map. this is, obviously, not ozma's fault and she is the aggressor in the present. she has quite a bit more to atone for than does ozma. 

now, i'm… really skeptical of oz's paranoid belief that every grimm attack he's faced in all his lives is because salem, like, obsessively stalks him and sends grimm to hunt him down, because:

salem's control over grimm seems to be limited to the ones she creates (and oscar in v8 explicitly differentiates between salem's forces and the wild grimm prowling mantle),

wild grimm attack people because that is what grimm… do,

the ONE instance of salem hunting someone down we know of with 100% certainty was a legendary grimm-slayer not associated with oz,

oz being paranoid and prone to false alarms is something summer and tai joked about behind his back before summer joined met salem, and

it is obvious by now that oz is not equipped whatsoever to fight an actual war with salem and had no clue what she was really capable of. he wasn't prepared at all.

so i think the whole centuries-long shadow war existed almost entirely in oz's imagination; he kept blaming her for ordinary grimm behaviors and human conflicts she had nothing to do with, while salem largely just… avoided him. 

ergo i do not think she has a centuries-long laundry list of atrocities to atone for. certainly i don't believe she's been hellbent on tormenting him in every life and we know they hadn't met face-to-face since That Night prior to his capture in atlas. (it's also telling that salem delegated the torture-interrogation to hazel. even when she had him in her clutches for hours, she spent maybe ten minutes altogether in his presence and only about half that was directly focused on him. like, she seems to just want him to not be in her life.)

<- i also think oz is, on some level, aware of this. it does not make sense to me that he would be longing to make amends if he genuinely, truly believed salem has spent centuries doggedly hunting him for sport. in his hear of hearts i think he knows that's a lie he tells himself, because it's easier to cope with the evil in the world if he can pretend it's all her doing. 

so what salem's atonement arc will be about is The Apocalyptic War She Started That Is Happening Right Now, and what ozma's atonement arc is about is Just Stop Lying To People, Man. the scale is quite different, but both are atonement arcs in that the characters did wrong and caused harm for which they need to make amends. 

these arcs are intertwined with each other because salem's motivations are rational: she has every reason to believe that oz is still a loyal servant of the gods, still dedicated to bringing them back, she knows that remnant will be annihilated if the gods come back because the brothers already murdered their world just to spite her once before and she certainly doesn't hate them any less now, and oz made a lot of moves after the great war that look very much like preparations to summon the gods for the final judgment (uniting the world, tightening security around the relics, proselytizing in his book etc.)

salem is moving now because as far as she knows, she's out of time. she does not want to live through apocalypse 2: electric boogaloo or find out how the gods will torture her forever after blowing up the planet. the stakes for her are higher than for anyone else on remnant because she is not going to die no matter what happens and she knows it. the worst case scenario for everyone else is death. salem's worst case scenario is eternal torture after everyone else dies. she's desperate to get those relics away from the man who (as far as she knows) wants the gods to come back to Murder Everyone Except Her, Whom They Will Torture Forever.

that is to say, she is not going to stop until ozma tells her he's come around to her view that the gods are evil tyrants who must not under any circumstances be invited back to end the world again. in order for this to happen, ozma and salem need to talk; for them to talk, ozma needs to have a shred of hope that maybe it is possible to make amends. his arc in v7-8 is building narrative momentum for him to take that plunge.

i think salem's strategic calculations will change drastically once this happens. we've already seen that salem is very quick to adjust and improvise in response to new information and as circumstances change, and this would, uh… certainly qualify. the fulcrum of the whole conflict changes from zealot-vs-apostate to remnant-vs-gods. this is (again) interconnected with but separate from a personal reconciliation with ozma. 

TL;DR here is that ozma's atonement arc (which concerns his relationships with his inner circle, begins in v6, and is mostly resolved by the end of v8) is the prelude to the ozlem reconciliation, which is salem's atonement arc and ozma's apostasy arc.

regarding ozma being anti-theme… well, he is—he says all the right things but it's clear from his actions that he didn't believe them until he found a spark of hope again at the end of v7. this is something both salem (in v3, mockingly) and ruby (in v6, earnestly) directly point out. his fearful inability to trust even the people closest to him is harmful and self-defeating; but then in v7-8 when he begins to open up and finds the courage to be honest and vulnerable he's narratively rewarded for it immediately. rwby is not a punitive narrative. oz is forgiven for lying and running away and granted the second chance he asks for as soon as he asks for it and the kids empathize with him, they understand why he did it.

being anti-theme doesn't make a character a villain. an anti-theme heroic character like oz will just have a character arc that hinges on finding and embracing the themes (e.g., oz rekindling his long-extinguished hope and faith in humanity) versus reaffirming the themes (e.g., ruby's idealism being proven right over and over again no matter how much she struggles to hold on to it). theme/anti-theme isn't a moral value judgment, it's a very zoomed-out, big-picture lens for looking out how character arcs are built.

so to… summarize:

oz has an atonement arc in v6-8 that begins with the lost fable shattering everyone's trust in him and ends with him earning back their trust, asking for, and receiving forgiveness by the end of v8.

this atonement arc narratively sets up for the apology he owes salem for the secrets he kept and manipulative lies he told while they were married, because oz desperately wants to make amends but has convinced himself it's impossible; the v6-8 atonement arc gives oz a reason to question his belief that salem can never forgive him. 

salem is unaware that ozma's curse forces him to come back or that he's come to believe she's right about the gods, so she is acting on her fear that he is still dutifully trying to bring the world-destroyers back to torture her. she's waging a desperate war to avoid this fate and will not stop until she learns that ozma is now on the same page re: the gods are evil tyrants.

therefore salem and ozma having an actual substantive conversation is a prerequisite for salem to stop waging war, which will be a key part of salem's atonement arc…

(…but not the inciting beat thereof, because that's already happened.)

ozma wronged salem with his dishonesty and manipulation while they were married; this does not diminish the atrocities she's committing in the present. their personal reconciliation goes in one direction (ozma apologizes to salem, who forgives him) and her villain-to-hero arc goes in the other (salem stops her war on the academies and tries to atone for the apocalyptic destruction she caused).

It’s still always missing RWBY hours… Here’s a Volume 10 Ruby Rose Vacuo outfit idea for her I drew and posted the other day on Instagram and BlueSky…🌹

ok 1. forgiving someone who has abused you is fine and having a story where a fictional character does that is also fine, and i think the fandom habit of slapping the "abuser" label on Every Fucking Villain is infantile and deeply annoying,

and 2. no she isn't. 

or rather, to be more precise, salem abuses her associates. she's not an abuser in relation to the heroes; the word you're looking for here is enemy. salem abusing her associates has sweet fuck all to do with whether the heroic characters can or will forgive her war.

and--i've said it before and i'll say it again!--salem is not the one who's shown to act abusively in the lost fable. ozma is. lying and keeping his true intentions a secret from her for years to manipulate her into serving a tyrannical and genocidal god (who hates her personally) after she made her opposition to that god crystal clear was abusive. it's appalling that this even needs to be said. 

what we see in the lost fable is salem giving ozma enthusiastic, unconditional support in what he told her he wanted until he dropped the bomb that he's secretly been working to bring back the gods who KILLED EVERYONE AND TORTURED HER FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS AND HE WANTS HER TO HELP HIM DO THIS whereupon salem, like, asks him to not do that. and then he just walks out. like! it is bonkers to read the lost fable as a story about salem abusing ozma. 

but even if that weren't true, it would not?? be the heroes' place to forgive or not forgive her for that; it's between her and ozma, and ozma has [in songs] textually expressed a desire to make amends with her. it is, frankly, rude as fuck to make somebody else's reconciliation with a person who's hurt them in the past all about yourself. (relatedly, "blake will hate raven and not want yang to forgive her" is not going to happen lmao.)

and again. neo psychologically tortured ruby into attempting suicide, ruby chose to forgive her, and WBYJ followed her lead. without hesitation. would they have been warier if neo wanted to go back to remnant with them? yeah, probably. but on the other hand, these kids warmed up to emerald within like. literally an hour.

rwby declared its stance on forgiveness in completely unambiguous terms in v5

BLAKE: Let her come.

SABER: Huh!? You're just going to forgive her? After everything she did?!

BLAKE: I am.

SABER: [to Ghira] What does she think she's doing?

GHIRA: She's learned a lesson that evaded me until I was much older: that there is strength in forgiveness.

it's not subtle. whatsoever.

the thing is it's not so much "hopepunk" as it is pragmatism. ghira isn't just talking about inner strength, there, he's seeing that his daughter turned an enemy into a friend and in doing so inspired a whole lot of people to care about stopping adam. blake forgave ilia because she wanted to, but it was also strategically advantageous to do so. similarly, ren speaks up for emerald because he can see how scared she is, but oscar invites her to stick around because he knows what she's capable of and they need all the allies they can get.

it's enemy-of-my-enemy. as of v8, these kids have made a deliberate strategic choice to accept former enemies as allies.

that is why they're going to give salem a chance, fundamentally. because this story doesn't end with a ceasefire, it ends with taking down the brothers, and they've seen what salem can do--they know what she's capable of--and if they're going to beat the gods, they could really fucking use her help.

do they like her? do they trust her? are they particularly happy to have her around? no. but for remnant's sake, they'll grit their teeth and deal with it…

…and, like. once she becomes their ally, once she stops being this distant unknowable inhuman adversary and becomes a person they know who's working with them against a common enemy… like. look at how these kids react to her throughout the lost fable; they empathized with her. if they felt moved to sympathy in the lost fable i don't see why they wouldn't, in the event they joined forces with her to defeat the gods, warm up to her just as they did emerald.

this mindset:

You have to accept that people change and are trying to be decent people but not like want them in your life or even vicinity. It’s too black and white thinking for me you know. It’s different than wanting to hang out with them and being friends.

Cause i think it's weird that, even though he is THOUSANDS of years old (that's an absurdly long time, and we don't even know the exact length of his life- that could be like, 5k to like, idk, 80k years), he's never once ended up there and, as far as we know, only thought it was a fairytale (ironic).

Especially since the Blacksmith implied that many other people had ended up in the Ever After beyond Alyx, Lewis, and RWBYJ + Neo. And it's obviously possible to, somehow, accidentally get there from Remnant. Like, statistically, Oz WOULD have gotten there at SOME point, given how long he's been around... but that clearly isn't the case (so far, anyways- that could change but I doubt it).

Like... even Salem has probably ended up there, or at least met the Blacksmith somehow, given the possible evidence and what Miles let slip in one of his cameos.

My current working theory is that Light somehow found out that Salem knew about the Blacksmith or *something-* and added some magic to Ozma's curse that somehow prevented him from ending up in any part of the Ever After, if that's even possible.

I dunno, maybe the idea of the vaults came from it, but that's a really flimsy idea loll.

Idk! It probably doesn't matter, but I thought it was weird. What are your thoughts on it??

-🌙

so here's what little we know:

on the ever after side, the door goes through the tree; "the tree built them a special doorway to a greater beyond where the brothers could try creating worlds of their own…" – ergo, the door is part of the tree.

within the tree, nothing can happen to you except what you want.

in 'the girl who fell through the world,' alyx is depicted as a young girl who "flees the consequences of a choice to a magical place" – because her brother wrote the book to guide her and jaune home, and alyx herself alludes to the white rabbit, i think it's likely that what really happened is alyx ran away and lewis chased her. 

alyx and lewis grew up in pre-war vacuo under mistrali occupation, which is to say there were certainly some big things they might have been running to escape. 

the door would "remain open for the brothers' return and any of their creations," BUT not only can the cat not pass through the door, they're spiritually cut off from the tree altogether until neo's jabber simulacrums devour them.

"for it is in passing we achieve immortality; through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death." <- my dead horse i know i harp on this incessantly but our souls transcend death.

the brothers lacked something – or withheld something whether on purpose or by mistake – and thus: the cat can't commune with the tree, the jabberwalker unmakes whatever he eats, and the mankind of the brothers' make had no magic of their own, only what the brothers deigned to give them. 

salem is twice-drowned: first in the fountain of life, made infinite through her death-and-resurrection; and second in the pool of grimm, which destroyed and recreated her—unbound her. if she does indeed know the blacksmith, it'll be because she found the door in the depths of that abyss. 

as in, when she sought freedom from her unending isolation, she found it. and found the means to remake herself. and remade humanity in her own image—the faunus, and humans with aura and semblances. 

who are, or have the potential to become, in her own words, "much more than just a man." 

…that to say, i think ozma is cut off from the tree in the same way the cat is. it's not a matter of having no attachments to remnant (as the cat believes) but rather of being spiritually bound – or closed off – kept separate. the brothers' mankind persisted after death in a state of unknowing stasis; they were either prevented or unable to join the natural cycle of death and rebirth. 

ozma dies and comes back in the shackles of a curse that molds him to fit light's purpose. he alone of all remnant's people has not been freed, unbound in the way that salem and the humanity who rose from the ashes with her have been unbound. i think if ozma tried to go through the door he'd be bounced, just like the cat.

until, unless remnant's equivalent to the jabberwalker simulacrums—that is, salem—breaks him free. unbinds him. (the allusions to marvelous land of oz and the little prince points in this direction too: freeing ozma and oscar from each other is going to involve deaths-and-resurrection in some form, symbolic or otherwise.)

i also don't think he's ever found the door, because: that world just isn't as dear to me without her. and "as light fills my eyes/i'll picture me beside her/and pray that i inspire/i promise i'll be here until the end." all he's ever wanted is to be with salem, and as long as she walks remnant's face, ozma doesn't want to leave her. deep down, in his heart of hearts: "i promise i'll be here." and in the same stroke he feels no hope of escaping his curse and has become resigned to it.