#again it is not clear to what extent salem cares about control vs just being indifferent to tyrian’s behavior

[bestworstcase]

Genuine question, do you call Oz's (or Salems) circle a cult based on the ancient definition (i.e. cult of dionysus) or the modern definition of cult with the BITE model (i.e. Scientology, Manson family, etc)? And can you go into why you think they're cults, if that's okay? I'm very curious :>

generally speaking when i say cult i mean it in the non-pejorative sense of a system of religious veneration toward a particular entity, e.g. salem and ozma received cult as god-rulers back in the day. aside from. tyrian. i wouldn’t characterize salem’s present day operation as a cult because it’s Unclear to me whether the others actually worship her in any sense beyond like smiling and nodding when tyrian starts going on about Our Divine Savior. similarly ozpin’s inner circle is not a cult of him, it’s a cult of light.

In This Sense what makes ozpin’s circle a cult is the explicitly religious nature of the group. which is something a lot of the fandom overlooks because a) rwby is cooking the religious narrative very slowly and b) religion is not taken seriously as character motivation. but like, when qrow brings team RNJR into the loop he leads with "not many people are super religious these days and there’s a lot of Fake Made-Up Gods but ozpin says there’s two who Really Exist. they made us and they left behind four divine relics for us to guard from The Enemy." & it’s not an accident that he frames the situation in these terms, not is it accidental that oz presents himself as someone cursed (ordained) by the gods to stop salem. the organizing principle at the heart of this group is religious in nature—the gods entrusted us with these divine relics we must guard whilst we shepherd humanity toward redemption.

*teams RWBY and JNPR aren’t brought into that second part before ruby explodes ozpin’s whole situation by asking jinn her question, but in fairytales of remnant the story of the two brothers is attributed to qrow and overtly states the divine ultimatum:

“I disagree,” the God of Light said. “And we promised to share in the fate of our joint creation.” He gave a mighty yawn. “Let us rest, and when the time comes, we will see what Humanity has become in our absence. At that point, we will judge them. If they are worthy, we will take their forms and walk among them as equals. If not, we will take back our gifts and start over elsewhere. What do you say?” “Who will decide whether they are worthy?” the God of Darkness said. “Humanity will make it plain. If they come together in unity and find a way to destroy the evil in the world and within themselves, then they are worthy. If not … we will let them burn,” the God of Light said.

which ozpin reiterates in the commentary:

Whether or not you believe in the Brothers, or in this story in particular, the underlying message still holds value: We are burdened with responsibility for our world, and we share a common destiny. Like the twin gods, we are intricately connected with one another, and if we can learn to work and live together, we can create things greater than the sum of their parts. Remnant survived the Great War, but while the four kingdoms now cooperate and coexist, our bond seems tenuous. We have a fragile peace, and in some ways, we are more divided than ever. Even if the gods aren’t real, even if they don’t return to judge us for our deeds, we should act each day as though they are arriving tomorrow. In the end, we will be the arbiters of our fates. We will either create a beautiful, peaceful world and live in harmony together or destroy ourselves and our planet, and the gods will judge what we have chosen.

what this tells us is that a) ozpin’s innermost circle knows that the brothers will some day return for the final judgment and that ozpin is working to prepare for this, and b) the idea of the final judgment itself is not something ozma has kept secret, it’s mainstream brother-cult doctrine that ozpin publicly uses his platform as the headmaster of beacon academy to proselytize. the reason none of the kids reacted at all to the divine mandate/the final judgment is they already knew about it in the same way you’re probably familiar with the rapture in basic terms even if you aren’t a christian.

based on the fairytale anthology, i would also argue that all of this is true not only of the inner circle but of the academies writ large, because in the introduction:

When I became headmaster of Beacon Academy, one of my first goals was to introduce a deeper study of the stories that make up the fabric of our world—after all, I am first and foremost a teacher. […] It may seem self-serving to place this book at the core of a new curriculum at the Huntsmen academies; however, it also has been compiled with these academies especially in mind.

ozpin indicates that once he became headmaster he published this set of stories and commentaries and then made it the CORE of a new curriculum for the four academies; and fairytales of remnant is, again, an overtly religious text that exhorts the reader to believe in and act upon brother-cult doctrine. imagine an anthology of stories that included a hodgepodge of aesop’s fables, grimm fairytales, a couple greek myths, and a synopsis of the gospel with a commentary urging you to accept jesus into your heart. that’s what fairytales of remnant is, in essence, and the whole curriculum of the academies is structured around that. these institutions front as secular but they’re not.

(two brothers is also not the only story in the anthology that references the final judgment: the ‘circle’ depicted in the infinite man is explicitly working to “make ready for the final judgment” before they’re put to the sword by adversaries who presumably didn’t like the sound of that. so ozma’s been doing this with varying degrees of subtlety for a good long while.)

ALL THAT SAID,

ozpin’s inner circle is absolutely also a high-control group (which is what people typically mean when they say "cult"). let’s walk through the BITE model real quick ->

behavioral control.

in reality this dimension involves various practices e.g. sleep deprivation, corporal punishment, social isolation, financial control that serve to establish and maintain direct power over group members such that they become physically and/or psychologically dependent on the group and therefore unable to leave. within the world of rwby and the specific context of ozpin’s inner circle, this is Not Necessary because all ozpin has to do is invoke the dangers of mass hysteria and the grimm. we mustn’t cause a panic or the grimm will come and there will be chaos and the world will go to war.

combine this constant drumbeat (“old ozpin would always put his foot down. ‘we can't cause a panic.’ heh, can't tell you how many times i’ve heard that…”) with the reality that huntsmen work is grueling in and of itself, and that we know from 9.10 that ozpin made it a regular practice to call individual members of team STRQ away on hush-hush urgent missions with no advance warning in the middle of the night. on its own, that isn’t inherently problematic (hunting monsters is a dangerous and difficult profession, duh)

but think about what it says about how ozpin operates that working for him means being on call at all hours for top secret dead-of-night emergencies that regularly turned out to just be “routine patrols.” this speaks to his paranoia but—do you want a group of people who are permanently stressed-out and exhausted? this is how you get that, by refusing to stay organized and just set up a schedule for routine patrols such that emergency becomes routine. if nothing else this is a horrible working environment. and this sort of thing is what the dimension of behavioral control is really about, because people who are stressed out and tired all the time are more susceptible to disinformation and manipulation.

the final piece is the inner circle’s perception of ozpin as the one who must guide them because, as glynda tells ironwood, he “has experience the rest of [them] lack.” again, taken in isolation this seems innocuous until to you consider that a) ozpin does not have the experience he claims to posses—he hasn’t been fighting salem for any significant length of time because salem has been Ignoring Him—and b) ozpin does things like LEAPING to the conclusion that lionheart is a traitor on the grounds of the mistral council overruling him, and getting first verbally forceful and then physically violent when the girls start to defy him. what first appears as ozpin taking the lead because he has the most experience turns into, well, lunging at ruby because she disobeyed him

✅ sleep deprivation + fostering an artificially high-stress environment ✅ encouraging groupthink ("we can’t cause panic") ✅ cultivating dependence on the group leader ✅ threats of punishment/dire consequences for failure (the grimm) used to guide behavior

information control.

this dimension. doesn’t need elaborating. lol

✅ deception (in all forms: withholding information, distorting the facts, & systematic lies) ✅ restricting access to unsanctioned sources of information (by keeping everyone too busy to investigate or ask questions, on this see also the way oz frames raven’s decision to leave) ✅ compartmentalization of information (information is heavily controlled, different levels of information provided at different levels of commitment to the group, "we can fill you in on the details once we know you’re with us," ozpin decides who needs to know and when) ✅ encourage spying/monitoring within the group (qrow accuses ironwood of "turning his back on oz," winter + ironwood accuse him of being compromised, summer and raven both feeling isolated/unable to trust others in the group, general high levels of distrust between group members)

thought control.

also very straightforward.

✅ instill black and white, us vs them thinking (specifically, "it’s us protecting the Helpless Frightened Masses against them," and reducing every problem to "we can’t let salem divide us" and "how can we kill all these grimm"—contrast how robyn operates, the difference is staggering) ✅ thought-stopping platitudes ("we can’t cause a panic" and "i always prefer discretion" and "we can’t let salem divide us" etc, with the latter note how rwby delivers the "you’re being divisive" rhetoric through jacques first, specifically to illustrate its efficacy as a tool of control) ✅ allowing only correct / good thoughts (because if negativity then salem wins!) ✅ rejection of critical thinking or constructive criticism (this happens every time someone is informed of the first layer of truth and starts asking why it’s secret; inculcating the group rationalizations to shut down this questioning is always step one) ✅ prohibiting questioning of the group leader (in the most extreme example, ozpin lunges at ruby to stop her from using the lamp, but see also his anger when the kids don’t stop questioning his choices) ✅ other belief systems labeled as illegitimate (the brothers are the only True Gods and other religions that exist don’t count except when we use them to justify keeping secrets) or evil (salem’s rejection of the gods is construed as a desire for the world to end, in some cases overtly, and this is explicitly manipulative)

& emotional control.

the grimm do most of the real legwork here. i won’t go into the Whole Thing on how the huntsman model is an, at best, incomplete understanding of the grimm but suffice it to say repressing feelings is, demonstrably, Not Effective at warding away the grimm and small villages outside the kingdoms with no huntsmen protection are demonstrably capable of dealing with grimm outside of extreme situations (bandit raids, giants like the nuckelavee) where huntsmen would be outgunned too. which i want to emphasize because the extremely dysfunctional way ozpin’s inner circle views negative emotions is NOT practical or necessary within the context of the setting, and in fact is arguably counterproductive to the stated goal of minimizing grimm attacks.

anyways,

✅ manipulate and narrow the range of acceptable feelings (all "negative emotion" is undesirable and actively shamed) ✅ inculcate guilt or feelings of inadequacy (in leaders specifically: "if you are not always performing at your absolute best, what reason do you give others to follow you?" + the condemnation of raven and general attitude of "there’s no shame or disgrace in abstaining, only in retreat") ✅ instilling fear of thinking independently (we see the consequences of this play out in v7-9, with the incredible anxiety over disagreement) and of the outside world (grimm, constant drumbeat of inescapable existential danger which can ONLY be avoided by keeping secrets and keeping the general public complacent) ✅ specifically inculcating intense fear of leaving the group (by ostracizing those who leave [raven] and cultivating the mindset that there is never an acceptable reason to leave [it is disgraceful and shameful to retreat, leaving is "abandoning your training/duties"], plus terrible consequences if someone leaves [without the spring maiden we’re all going to die]; with ironwood this escalates to him going to extreme, violent lengths to get penny back under control and punish winter for defying him)

note how:

many of these behaviors continue and/or escalate after ozpin’s death, because the members of the inner circle continue to follow the example he set and because the kids (ruby n yang especially, having been raised from birth by members of the inner circle) were inculcated with the foundational mindset and beliefs in academies that the inner circle a) controls and b) uses as a recruiting ground; and

since v6, the narrative has been developing character arcs that examine the Many Ways this system traumatizes and breaks people. this is of course exacerbated by the fact of the apocalyptic war happening, but the broken old guard—team STRQ, ironwood, ozpin himself, gretchen rainart—are there to make the point that the inner circle was breaking and traumatizing people long before salem went to war. so the abundance of these high-control methods exists in conjunction with the narrative focusing on how harmful and destructive all of it is; the inner circle is intended to be understood as deeply dysfunctional, and the huntsmen academies as failing institutions doomed by the inner circle’s beliefs and methodology.

so whether the Specific Authorial Intention is to depict a high-control group/cult, in the more general sense the inner circle is overtly meant to be Bad News. things like the sinister framing with pyrrha in v3, ozpin physically attacking ruby when she used the lamp, the throughline from things ozpin teaches ruby in v1 to her breakdown in v9, the whole Situation with summer and raven in the past, etc, all of this weaves together to paint a very fucked up picture of how the inner circle functions and the ripples of harm it causes.