She continues to call Oz by Ozma in particular referring to him as ’my Ozma’ like she would have done back when they were together. Salem also lives where the grimm pools are, the place where she both first turned and where Ozpin was revived. It is the place in which she first turned on the brothers before being given her curse.
She uses the imagery of their daughters to hurt Oz and Jinn even says that she has never allowed him to rest peacefully. Salem deliberately goes out of her way to harm and hurt him.
Ozpin on the other hand uses the past as a way of informing the future. He makes mistakes and tries to learn from them, such as his use of talking about fairytales. Oz has changed his name from what it was, and he himself changes all the time whereas Salem looks more or less the same as she has since she was grimmified.
Oz also never brings up Salem as someone he used to be with, he has lived many lives and made bonds with others over his lifetimes while Salem has never made any kind attachment that didn’t have strings or was manipulated.
Oz is weighed by the past but Salem is the one living in it.
The God of Light & The God of Darkness are assholes, I will not be taking critique at this time, or ever.
Will you however consider the following?
The God of Light is the bigger asshole of the pair.
I could be convinced. (Arches eyebrow)
Okay, so I’m basing this heavily on elements we see within The Lost Fable.
Salem comes to Darkness as her last resort, but lies about it to appeal to his loneliness. He readily grants her request, because he’s used to being ignored and/or shunned by his own Creations. Light’s realm has plenty of worshipers and offerings, he’s beloved by humanity in comparison to everyone hating and fearing Darkness.
So when Light shows up, their argument has two elements that stand out to me:
Light’s argument: This is a violation of our agreed-upon order and is not True Creation. How dare you.
Darkness’s argument: You skew the agreement HEAVILY in your favor, and you refuse to share with me.
Notably, Light does not refute or resolve the argument. He COMPLETELY side-steps his brother’s grievances, instead turning things on Salem. He deflects to a grieving human widow, focusing on how she lied to Darkness without bothering to address the complaints Darkness has against HIM. It’s all her fault, so let’s punish her.
So Salem is cursed with Immortality by the Brothers. The central grievance between them is ignored and brushed off, again in Light’s favor.
Humanity rebels and comes to Light’s realm. Darkness arrives to aid him, and they demand to know why this is happening. When they attack the Gods, Darkness is the one to carry out their punishment while Light simply looks away. But he is a participant in this act, and in agreement with Darkness over destroying their experiment and abandoning the world. They do it together, but then we get Light calling Ozma to serve him.
“My brother has done a terrible thing.”
He lays the blame solely on Darkness. CRWBY has confirmed that Light made the Relics on his own, and presents his Task to Ozma as something both Gods want. He states they will destroy humanity 2.0 if Ozma cannot lead them to a perfect world of peace and harmony.
And he uses SALEM to convince Ozma to accept the Task, when he refuses. Sure, he gives a vague warning that actually pursuing her is a bad idea. But he still uses the knowledge that Salem is alive to convince Ozma to accept the Task.
So he sends his agent back to the world, forcing him to possess/merge with Random Dudes. With vague instructions to unite the world and prove Humanity deserves a second chance from the Gods, with the Relics as the tools to accomplish this task.
From all of this, we see one consistent thing from the God of Light.
He constantly either LIES or skews things in his favor. He ignores the grievances of others, he demands unreasonable perfection from imperfect beings, and he punishes them brutally for failing to meet his standards. All while continually blaming his brother for things, when his brother outright expresses how he resents being shunned and denied the worship Light enjoys.
It strikes me how the kingdom of Creation, the one based around his main Relic and concept…..is the harsh, cold, unfeeling Military State that is currently a dictatorship that thinks it’s better than everyone else.
Oooh this was an excellent read and extremely well reasoned, kudos!
The GoD destroying his brothers stuff in the creation myth is a concern admittedly but the actual source there is biased so it may be inaccurate too.
Whatever the case, great insights!
That’s my thought as well. The myths are inherently questionable, since we can’t know how much truth is contained in them and whether the version Ozma knows (and presumably taught to humanity 2.0) carries the inherent bias of “Humanity loves Light and fears Darkness).
They are definitely both Greek-style assholes, but I think between them it’s likely that Light is the less reasonable and kind. Darkness is impulsive and destructive, but he’s also the one that seems to understand PEOPLE more than his brother. Light comes across as very distant and self-righteous, towards humanity and his brother.
I mean, the series loves to twist things and peel away layers to subvert our expectations. The series inherently sets up that Light is Good and Darkness is Bad, with Ozma as Light’s servant and the Relics as his creations and the Silver Eyes tied to him.
But when we actually see the dude in flashback, he’s cold and distant and inflexible. He demands unreasonable things, and doesn’t seem capable of actually comprehending his own creations.
In comparison, Darkness is impulsive and does violent things but he’s also flexible and listens to people. (Both Salem and his brother.)
One is absolutely sure he is right and correct.
The other is willing to accept mistakes, and change.
One thing I want to add, is that a lot of people, and TV Tropes, assume that the God of Light is responsible for Humanity 2.0. But the thing is, the show does not actually say or show how2.0 came to be. Here’s how the course of events go;
Darkness wipes out humanity Mark 1, leaves Salem alive. The Brothers leave. Salem is alone on an empty planet devoid of people.
Cut to the white void that apparently is between life and death. Light appears to Ozma, and says, “…In time, your kind will grow to walk its face again.” and convinces Ozma to become the Oz spirit guide of mankind.
Light does not actually say he’s going to bring back humanity. Just, they’ll be back “in time”. On RWBY, exact words can be very misleading, both in-universe and out. Sure, it could be assumed that Light is telling Ozma that he’s going to bring humans back in a roundabout way, but the it’s just as possible that humanity is going to come back some other way, either through natural evolution (Which would put Salem’s physical age in the millions) or just a result of Salem screwing with her magic in an attempt to ease her solitude.
Point I’m saying is, maybe the Brothers createdahuman race. But maybe they didn’t create the current one.
I have heard of theories that Faunus either evolved alongside humankind, or were created from the still remaining animals by Salem. I dont possess all the information, but these were the basic run-downs on those theories.
I just thought it would be an interesting thing to add.
· In the scene where Oz finally talks to the team once again, they made sure to have Emerald in the shot a lot, since both Oz and Emerald are seeking apologies. They’re not quite part of the group yet.
I think this clarification from the V8 commentary is extremely important, and emphasizes that both Emerald and Oz will have character development and redemption in future volumes, having the buildup in V8, which leads to the beginning of those arcs in Vacuo during OLVE’s POVs and then continuing and possibly coming to something of a conclusion when RWBYJ(N?) return from the Island.
I agree. I wasn’t too happy with Team Protag suddenly accepting Oz back, especially after the way he manipulated them throughout the series and then it seemed like they were agreeing that said manipulations were right. They weren’t. And I’m rather neutral on Emerald’s redemption. While I’m glad she’s trying, we can’t forget that she not only caused the Fall of Beacon, but her first scene was committing murder with Mercury. Both she and Oz have a lot of work to do to make things right.
Ruby, Weiss and Blake all sharemoon imagery, while Yang is associated to the sun. This is an interesting choice because this sun/moon motif is mostly used in the series to convey complementarity. So, it would have made sense to have 2 characters linked to the sun and 2 to the moon.
However, this is not the case and this may have to do with ships, as @hamliet touches on here.
That said, this quick post is really not about romantic couples, but rather how this celestial imagery is used in different ways when it comes to our 4 protagonists and how it comments their arcs.
Yang is the only sun character among the girls and this is immediately used to contrast her with Ruby:
The yellow trailer ends with the reveal that Ruby and Yang are related and this frame strengthens theis moon/sun symbolism, which was already shown in their respective fights.
At the same time, Yang’s sun motif makes her complementary to Blake with her shadowsymbolism:
I would not be surprised if Yang’s sun motif illustrates her journey from Ruby’s big sister always ready to protect her to Blake’s partner that protects and is protected:
In order for it to work, though, Blake herself must grow into her own person. From a fragmented moon tainted in red(Adam):
Througha golden twilight(Yang):
To a moon that can be full even if broken:
Speaking of a cracked moon:
Weiss’s moon rises and reveals its imperfectionand its charm together with our scarred mirror queen:
Weiss’s moon is woundedandfragmented:
But also asymmetricalandbeautiful:
Its fragments are the pieces Jacques splits his daughter in, but also the mirror Weiss shatters to free herself:
I’m shattering the mirror that kept me split in pieces That stood between my mind and my heart This is where I’ll start
Finally, we have Ruby, who starts as full:
Only to slowly reveal the wounds behind her unbroken side. A kid that scattersin an attempt to help others:
And there it is! One burning sun and three broken moons all going through a journey to be wholedespite the hurt. Despite them only being remnants.
A lot of people on social media have claimed that Adam Taurus was “Retconned” into being an abusive ex, and that he was “meant to be” a freedom fighter and an anti-hero.
In this post, we’ll look into Adam’s actions and words throughout the show, and discuss instead how Miles and Kerry remained consistent with Adam’s character.
In the black trailer we see Adam working Blake. Right now this doesn’t really imply anything on their relationship .Just that they are working together. The initial plan seems to just be to steal the cargo on the train. When Adam says he will set the charges Blake shows concern about civilian passengers and crew being caught in the explosion. Adam says “What about them?” This shows he doesn’t care about any bystanders as long as he finishes what he is set out to do. At this point we still don’t know what that is. It also shows that Blake had no clue about the explosives. If the plan was to always blow up the train then Blake wouldn’t need to express concern for passengers if she knew it was always going to be demolished. Adam also used Blake as a distraction for him to destroy the spider tank which we never see again.
In volume one I don’t believe Adam is even mentioned. I could be wrong. Blake just talks about the WF but not Adam himself. Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong.
In volume two Blake mentions how Adam started the trend of wearing Grimm masks to ‘dawn the faces of monsters that some people make them out to be.’ Then she talks about him at the campfire and actually name drops him here. She explains how his vision of a perfect world isn’t the perfect world for others. This shows where Blake started to distrust him and puts Adam in the perception of possibly being misunderstood in his goals. Then she drops the line of ‘When I found out my oldest partner had turned into a monster I ran!’. At this point Adam has did some very ill moral things according to Blake. The train heist was the last straw when he was willing to kill people there who had nothing to do with faunus oppression. Then we finally see Adam at the very end of the volume. Here he shows no remorse for any of his brothers in arms and simply states that the group will continue to listen to him. This paints his goal as fighting for faunus rights extremely questionable.
In volume 3 we have a flashback to when Cinder tries to recruit him. At first he refuses to work for any human regardless of what they could offer him. We learn this is before the train heist were Blake runs. Then we see after the heist where Adam says not to worry about Blake and that they need to return to Mistral. Most likely to report back to Sienna about the train heist. At this point he only lost control of Blake but is still in control of the WF Vale branch. He isn’t obsessed with her. Cinder then returns after getting half the maiden power and decimates his camp. She then offer’s him dust and lien in payment for his services. Adam does not turn down her offer. He is now compromising his own convictions by working with a human he refused earlier. If he was truly the revolutionary that a lot of people paint him as at this point then he would have fought Cinder and never partner with her. It doesn’t matter that he would have been outmatched he would have died a martyr with his convictions intact. Later on the volume Blake talks about Adam again, not naming him this time. Saying that she got close to him and how he slowly changed and how he kept making excuses for getting more and more violent. This is where the abuse starts to become more apparent. Just because Blake called Adam a mentor in V2 does not mean she also wasn’t romantically involved with him. Being one doesn’t make the other impossible. She also trusts her team a lot more to divulge something incredibly personal to her. Then we have the fall of Beacon. Adam was not hunting down Blake. They just happened to run into each other. Adams goal was never to hunt down Blake, but when she showed up he took the opportunity. Adam lays on thick how much her betrayal actually hurt him. And declares that he will take that pain and direct back at Blake buy killing everything she loves and holds dear. Then Yang attacks and loses her arm because lost her cool and launched and extremely telegraphed attack that Adam took advantage of. Blake used her semblance to escape with Yang and Adam continued to kill the people around him, and some Grimm, since that is what he was paid for. He was less of a revolutionary here and more of a mercenary for Cinder in my opinion.
So, from what I’ve seen Adam’s character didn’t really change. We hear what Adam said he was for, but then we see him act differently by ignoring his convictions to his cause and pulling in people that would help him kill humans, or blow up more schools. From here on he craved more control and since Sienna didn’t agree with how the WF should proceed he decided to take over. Nothing about this character screams ‘ruined’ character to me. He wanted the Belladonnas killed because they were getting in his way. He killed Sienna for getting in his way.
Blake took away his control and his image. He chased her for revenge. He wanted to make her suffer for his loss. “Why can’t you leave me alone?” was more of him saying “Why do you keep standing in my way?”
Could they have gone a different route with him? Sure. But the same could be said for every other character. Since shopkeeper isn’t some Vale underground info broker who uses a dust shop as as front I guess he could be a ‘ruined’ character to since that is also very interesting. People need to let people have their opinions. Some people don’t like how Adam turned out, and that’s fine. Other’s like how he was a foil to Blake and then to Yang. That’s fine too. But don’t attack people for liking/not liking the other’s opinion. And don’t attack the writers saying they can’t write a good character. They just didn’t write what you wanted in character. This does not make them bad writers. It just means they didn’t write something that you prefer. Everything is subjective. That’s the nuance of story telling. Some people will enjoy the story shown while others won’t. Doesn’t make the story bad. It just means it didn’t appeal to one of the groups.
They didn’t ruin his character, he was always that way, people just head-canoned him into their edgy abused/neglected power fantasy character and were upset when he ended up going to the logical conclusion of his character arc.
That’s always what his character was. An obsessive self entitled maniac that felt that he deserves the world because he suffered, and everyone else was in the wrong.
He was always that character and wasn’t poorly written for that type of character. He was rather realistic actually. If you wanted him to be a different type of character that’s fine if you’re writing a fanfic, but this is always how his character was.
I believe in keeping with RWBY’s preference for subverting tropes, Adam is an Ill-intentioned extremist version of the “White Male Savior” typically common in anime, tv shows, and movies.
Side note….Adam cut off Yang’s arm…why do people keep saying that Yang had no reason to fight Adam compared to Weiss, when A) Blake was Yang’s partner, B) Yang lost an arm due to Adam, and C) Adam and Yang had similar yet different semblances?
All good points, and I feel something else should be noted as well:
Blake’s arc, as Volume 1 makes clear, is that she is displeased with the extremist direction the White Fang has taken, which led to her defection and becoming a Huntress. She doesn’t view the group as inherently bad; rather, she sees them as “misguided” in their current approach.
And what instigated her defection? Adam’s desire to murder the innocent people aboard the train they were robbing. An extremist act that Blake could not condone.
From the very beginning, Adam was established as the antagonist in Blake’s arc. He was the person who represented the worst of the White Fang, the catalyst for Blake’s resolution to change her path and find a better way to help people.
The real twist to Adam’s character isn’t even the fact that he is a bad person, because his willingness to kill innocent people for no gain and to throw away the lives of the Faunus who followed him showed that all too well.
The real twist of Adam’s character was that he never actually represented the White Fang. The real twist is that Adam is revealed to be someone motivated purely by spite and hatred, anger and wrath. While Blake believed he went as far as he did to further the White Fang’s cause, he’s ultimately revealed to care nothing for his fellow Faunus, only in hurting humans. He doesn’t care if other Faunus live or die. He doesn’t care if Cinder and her minions harm the soldiers under him. Adam didn’t fight for the White Fang’s cause; Adam used the White Fang as a weapon for his own cause, without concern for the damage it suffered as a result.
And the hostility to the role he represents when it comes to the subjects and themes the White Fang arc includes is down to the fact that most of the people who attack the show based on his role are ultimately the exact same kind of people as Adam himself: claiming to be fighting for a cause when in reality they only want to spite and hurt those whom they believe deserve it.
Very true @lilithfairen, and yet for standing against Adam, BLAKE was called a terrorist by people calling themselves writers, and claiming that she was just as bad as Adam
Or that by trying to talk things out with Robyn, Blake was being a “terrorist” and “war criminal?”
The sheer hatred of RWBY Critics towards Blake and their love for toxic male characters is disturbing.
Not adding anything, because I can’t think of anything that hasn’t already been said. Because it very much is a discussion of his character at point A remaining the same as it reached point B.
Yang Xiao Long designed and built shotgun gauntlets that don’t over-encumber her or slow her down, don’t rip her arms off when they fire, and compliment her fighting style, and they collapse down into stylish bracelets while she was at Signal Academy (functionally high school) - compared to other weapons it’s not only less flashy and more subtle, it’s also built around her fighting style, instead of a fighting style built around a weapon. take the weapons away, Yang can still fight and only really loses ranged ability
and then she built a similar gun mechanism into her mechanical arm - we know Ironwood had “Atlas’ top scientists” build Yang that arm, but she’d need to modify it herself to give it a weapon that matches Ember Celica’s functionality and mass so she doesn’t lose balance in a fight, there’s no way they could do that without knowing the exact specifications of Yang’s own fighting style and having EC on hand
the show has lowkey made Yang an engineering genius and i hope that gets capitalised on more
If I might add on, there’s an extra bit of genius in how compact and subtle they are. Unlike everyone else, she doesn’t have to carry around her weapon. As we saw during the battle of Beacon, everyone else had to summon their weapons via locker, while Yang was already armed. She can take them places other huntsman and huntresses can’t because they pass as jewelry and she is much harder to disarm (well, unless you literally disarm her). Yang could’ve made her guantlets big and flashy. Instead, she created a smarter, more practical design that is quite frankly genius.
I think it’s also worth pointing out that any modifications Yang made to her prosthetic were done one-handed.
One-handed with her non-dominant hand might I add.
Yang is probably hands down one of the smartest engineers in the whole series, not only for her knowledge but beacuse also unlike ruby, she doesn’t think in flashy or style, she thinks in necesity and balance on her weapon, and made it that way when compared to literally all the other weapons, hers is the most functional
