#( or some solution to keep what precious things he has literally forever so he won't be hurt again. )

[erabundus]

there are so many thinly veiled cries for help in ren's lashing out and it makes me very sad.

[justlurkingintheshadows]

The true evil of RWBY

We all know Salem is meant to be the big bad and Ozpin (who we now know as Ozma but will be referred to as Oz to make like easier) is the one meant to be the good guy, tasked with destroying her, however I find him to be questionable, in fact volume 5 kept lowering my opinion of him ever further. My friend and I like to roleplay and make more of a character out of characters, you'd expect us to have Oz as a good guy and Salem as a bad guy but actually it's quite the opposite, Salem is generally our favourite character, she's a fierce beauty and we know barely anything about her (or at least before V6 we knew nothing but hooray for lore) we've come up with our own headcanons, we usually see her as a fair boss or loving mom, and Ozpin barely has a second thought, maybe sometimes we've thought of him as an ex love, or the opposite side to her but really we don't think about him much, reason being because we don't particularly like him, don't get me wrong he has a great character but like I said, I find him questionable and I'll tell you why in just a moment. Chapter 3 of Volume 6 showed us exactly what happened over a thousand years ago with the Gods of Light and Darkness and Salem and Ozma and answered a lot of our questions, but it got me thinking about who the real villian is, of course it's Salem but when you break down the four characters you begin to realise it's not all black and white...

The Gods

So we finally got to meet the brothers we've heard of only in stories by a campfire. The God of Light (GoL) and the God of Darkness (GoD) are two new interesting characters we had the misfortune of meeting, and yes it is misfortune. Good ol' GoL denied Salem of her love, refusing to bring him back, that's fair, and GoD brought him back but later destroyed him when he found out he was Salem's second choice after his brother, that's also fair, except he brought him back without question in the first place, likely appreciating that someone actually came to see him (but I won't get into the precious GoD headcanon). For her actions Salem was cursed by GoL with immortality, and told she must learn the importance of life, and this turned out to be the biggest mistake he ever made and you'll see why in a bit.

Upon Salem's betrayal GoD destroys THE ENTIRE planet, instead of simply taking away all magic (Salem's too), or condemning Salem to external purgatory, or literally anything else, instead he just decides to effectively Thanos snap the entire planet because one bitch did a thing, thousands of completely innocent lives, gallant warriors, and dutiful worshippers gone in a second, and GoL just let's it happen like yep this is completely acceptable. I understand the idea was to punish Salem with a failure so big that there is no possible way she would ever be able to undo it but they still kept Salem there... With hope that she could change and see the importance of life... But if there is no life how can she learn it's importance...

And then there's the fact they just up and abandoned that entire planet, then destroyed the moon as a f*** you, because there was no need for that really.

If you thought the world was a lost cause why not wipe the slate clean and start anew, why would you ever trust humans to set aside their differences and unite themselves, humans are incapable I mean look at our Earth for example, there will always be something they find to cause conflict, and everyone will never get along, it's impossible, and how can there be any good without the bad to balance it, there was likely conflict even with the Gods there so what hope is there without them... Well actually I believe that hope was Oz and Salem...

Salem

Now sure Salem was an arrogant demanding bitch when Ozma died and she called the Gods monsters for taking him away from her again and again even though they were probably just trying to keep the natural balance of life and death in check, and I know she kinda rallied the humans to try to take down the Gods but really... It's not that bad. I know that sounds insane but hear me out, her punishment could have been a lot worse, and she could have found another way, I mean she could certainly take her time to come up with a plan that's for sure. She got punished with eternal life, now for some that would be a blessing, getting to live forever, never having to fear death, and of course watching everyone you've ever loved fade away around you as their lives come to an end and yours keeps on going... doesn't sound too fun actually... But this was her punishment for betraying the Gods, and she had to learn her lesson, learn the importance of life, you'd think with eternal life that would be a synch... WRONG, the worst thing you could ask of an immortal being is to learn about the importance of life, what does life mean to someone who never dies? It means that no matter what mortals will come and go but you will stay forever as you are, you're guaranteed to outlive anyone and everyone you meet, losing people constantly, it makes you bitter, so you isolate yourself to avoid getting attached and losing them as you know you will again and again, and you become detached, mortal beings have no place in your life because they can never match you, especially when you have magic and they have nothing, why should you care about them when you are in every way superior, you even control their deepest fears (since Salem is basically Queen Grimm thanks to GoD's Grimm pits), and Ozma's own curse makes learning her lesson even worse, he's the only person she loved, and he is cursed to die and be reborn, into a different body, the only death she would care about is his, and if he keeps coming back even as a different person death eventually doesn't bother her, Oz will always come back, and that's a constant so why should mortal death matter when it's not the person she loves. On top of that she is definitely affected by the Grimm desire to destroy things, so she can never be 100% held accountable for her actions after she fell into the pit.

But the biggest point is - Salem was right.

Her suggestion that they forget about the Gods and become their own Gods was sound, sure the gods helped them but it's not like people knew of that now, the Gods abandoned them when their experiment failed and left the saving of the planet to the guy who knew the person to spark all this... Oz and Salem were beings of infinite potential, one can never die, the other will always be ressurected, and both have magic, a thing which no one possesses anymore, following them would be wise, they could have led the humans to a new kind of salvation. Now of course destroying those who don't comply is a little extreme but if Oz talked to her then he could have let her see that there was no need, why force people to follow you when they'll do so of their own accord, and if they don't believe then that's their loss, it's not like they could actually DO anything about it... They couldn't take the two out, they'd always exist, and they have superior power and displayed mastery over using their gifts to destroy Grimm, seriously why wouldn't you want to join their side!

I'm not excusing things she did I'm just saying she was right, and things would be incredibly different in the present had Ozma just talked to her, which brings me smoothly over to him...

Ozma

The glorious Oz, originally Ozma, we know him best as Ozpin, and now as Ozcar, but of course based off the wizard of Oz who was at the end of the story a big fat fraud... Huh... his roots don't seem to really work in his favour...

"Blessed" by the God of Light to experience death in every form and to join with another's soul to be reborn in a cycle that will last for eternity. Really it's more of a curse, dying over and over and over and over and over again doesn't seem too fun, but boy did he come to learn the importance of life because surprise if you have to experience death and live in another's shoes you really start to appreciate what it means to live. No wonder Salem will never learn her lesson, the Gods didn't do her any favours... the same Gods who abandoned their people because their "experiment" failed... and left the saving of the entirety of mankind to one guy just because he knew the person who basically "caused" everything... Whom the Gods created by providing eternal life... because he died and she wanted back but the Gods wouldn't allow it... and their solution was to have her live forever and eventually bring him back to her anyway and have him always be reborn... Seems they contradict themselves too...

Anyway point being Oz didn't seem to have things in his favour from the start, and it only got worse from there...

Turns out Oz has ALWAYS had that issue about not telling people things, it seems his most constant flaw that even thousands of years of dying and taking host of a new body couldn't fix, I mean I understand him to an extent but right at the beginning he didn't tell Salem about GoL's conversation with him straight away, and when he did he kinda just left it at that and didn't talk any more about it... And Salem didn't even seem to really mind (her eyes white showing she was in control and chill), that is she didn't mind until he tried to leave with their kids (eyes turned black with Grimm anger) and the fact he had to have his weapon didn't help him - I'm still not excusing what Salem did though, but they both killed their kids, caught in the crossfire, fatalities of the destruction they both caused.

Before I skip to Ozpin and Ozcar I have a gentle reminder here for you, this revelation came to me when I saw a post about how Ozpin has made more mistakes than everyone combined and one being the fact he had sex with Salem... A Grimm Salem... Multiple times (the exact wording being "Putting my dick in /that/ for starters") however that appendage wasn't his own, you forget at that point he had been shoved into a random guys body and immediately took over and controlled his every action, we know he had barely any care for his vessel or "host" (if we want to start the whole Oz is a virus rant) at the beginning because Jinn tells us that after his fight with Salem he EVENTUALLY learned to live in harmony with the soul who's body he shared... after ruining the lives of a countless many... we also know or rather assume he only suppresses the other soul rather than takes over completely as learned from Ozcar (and potentially Ozpin too), which means there was a suppressed and confused other soul wondering what was going on and being forced to take a back seat watching Ozma do whatever he wanted in a body that didn't belong to him, I can't imagine him actually being ok with this random and extreme series of events, this man watched as Oz made a family with Salem without even a fleeting thought for the man's own family that he no doubt had... And then Oz got this man killed in an unnecessary battle... what a glorious hero...

Anyway grazing over the numerous lives Oz ruined and all the other sh!t he no doubt did that brings us to Ozpin, though we know fairly little we know enough to say that he has a bad habit of doing things like playing the pronoun game, providing half truths, and of course not telling anyone what they actually need to know - "You have silver eyes" yes she does... What about them? (Hype for getting that answer this volume) - he fails to inform people of what matters, preferring to leave that until later when people have already died (including himself, so he is now Ozcar) and people are desperate... Except oh wait sorry he doesn't even tell you then, he holds back mostly everything with the excuse that you don't need to know, and even when he 'tells you everything' you STILL find out he was holding something back... Classic Oz I guess

Now we're on Ozcar and you see that he has a second bad habit of taking over control forcefully, he hasn't learned harmony with the other soul at all, this given how he's lived for the past thousand or so years shows that he hasn't changed, sure he may be 'better' than he was before but he still very much has not changed. Even when he and Oscar apparently talked about that he took over anyway in an attempt to prevent people learning about something he didn't tell them (shocker) except this time the vessel fought back (something I doubt many if any have done before)

All in all he is an extremely questionable character with even more questionable motives.

But as much as it may seem like I'm dragging him through the dirt I won't deny the achievements he HAS managed, the academies for one major thing, it really helped out the world and there'd be a lot more fear and chaos had he not intervened in such a major way, doesn't explain why he likes to throw kids off of cliffs or any of that but still, I'm sure he has his reasons, don't expect him to tell you them though.

He truly has made more mistakes than any man, woman, and child on the planet...

~~~~~~~~

When you really take a look at everything you begin to realise that the Gods kinda set them both up to fail, whether they knew it or not, imagine how different things would have been had a single thing gone differently, and how easily things could have changed

~~~~~~~~

And thus concludes this post, I hope I didn't miss anything (but if I did then oops)

Now I don't know about you but I would totally go up to Salem and tell her she was right, if Tyrian doesn't murder me the immediate second I show up, I've been leaning towards her side more and more since Oz pulled that sketchy move of controlling Oscar without permission (though I do realise death was a possibility it was still sketch) at least she doesn't build your hopes up only for you to discover they're lies, she seems like she'd tell you what's up. But that's just how I've committed think of her I suppose, she is an amazing and beautiful character, who we still don't know all too much about even with this lore... I really hope this means we get more backstories for more villians, I want to see a baby Tyrian.

But I digress.