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bestworstcase · 4 months

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anyway. something interesting about how the thematic narrative unfolds with regard to the opening narration (and ozpin’s rejoinder)

in her v1 soliloquy salem invokes strength twice—once as an intrinsic quality of mankind and once as a characteristic that emerged "in the shadow’s absence"—and the context in which she goes on to say that "there will be no victory in strength" makes it clear that she means the latter kind of strength; she’s referring to ozpin’s "guardians" and "monuments" and this is reiterated again in her v3 soliloquy and in divide and in her strategic approach to the war generally, in that she strikes at ozpin’s isolated guardians and symbolic monuments because she understands them to be false projections of strength masking his true weakness, which is that he lacks faith in mankind’s intrinsic strength—what salem defines as wisdom, passion, resourcefulness, ingenuity, hope.

ozpin’s retort that victory is found in the "simpler things that [she’s] long forgotten" which "require a smaller, more honest soul" misses her point altogether and is revealed very quickly as a statement of belief in the importance of finding the (correct) chosen one; his "smaller soul" is merely the rhetorical distillation of his guardians, a single heroic figure who achieves true perfection and so inspires the whole world to follow.

salem is correct on all counts—there is nothing special or unique about ruby herself that makes her capable of doing the impossible; she succeeds by banding the world together against a common enemy, which is precisely what salem mocks ozpin for refusing to do—not just in the sense of understanding the story’s themes but also in the more practical strategic sense. you cannot win a real war with symbols and martyrs.

gestures at v7-8.

"victory is in a simple soul" (this will be the day) -> "but through a simple soul, we lie complacent" (until the end).

"strength will not bring victory" (divide) -> "strength’s not victory" (for every life).

the "smaller soul" idea is given the appearance of being the narratively correct position by its inclusion in the first opener, while "no victory in strength" is the villainous—and therefore presumptively wrong—retort. the common trope of evil cannot comprehend good predisposes the audience not to think deeply about this or pay close attention to the specifics of what the villain is really saying.

then in atlas the narrative throws this reversal down like a gauntlet; suddenly we have the heroic voice in agreement that the "smaller soul" engenders complacency and that strength is not victory. how can this be? the villain understood all along that ozpin’s "smaller soul" was nothing more than a belief in salvation through the strength of a single heroic paragon obfuscated by poetic language. "there will be no victory in strength" and "when [your guardians] fail and you turn to your smaller soul, know that you send her to the same pitiful demise" are the same statement, spoken first in salem’s own words and later repeated in ozpin’s.

i’ve made this point before but taken into context with the whole soliloquy, "there will be no victory in strength" implies its own converse: there will be victory in the virtues salem sees innate in mankind, wisdom and passion and resourcefulness and ingenuity and above all, hope.

she reiterates this again more overtly in her v3 soliloquy, naming hope as mankind’s greatest strength and mocking ozpin for his failure to put his money where his mouth is and ACT on his professed faith in mankind. "your faith in mankind was not misplaced," she says, dripping sarcasm. if only you had given the people a common enemy rather than sowing doubt and distrust among even your inner circle by keeping them in the dark.

and on the foundation of this reversal: “balance is not two forces locked in never-ending battle. balance is an ecosystem, an organism, a living, breathing thing; thus, balance cannot be restored by force or calculation. true balance finds its own equilibrium. it only requires love, and the patience to see things through to the end.”

NOW this is where the recontextualization of the "victory in a smaller soul"/"no victory in strength" conceit starts to become really interesting: there is no victory at all.

there is only the state of being in equilibrium, or not. this is a story about balance.

as with salem, the specific language the blacksmith uses here is important (and it helps to have some familiarity with hellenistic philosophy, heraclitus and plato in particular, because that strongly influences rwby’s metaphysics): she doesn’t mean that opposition or strife is antithetical to balance. the first emanations of the tree were darkness and light, given destruction and creation. the central conceit is chiaroscuro. one cannot be without the other.

equilibrium is found in the tension between weight and counterweight and lost whenever these two opposites become unequal, such as (for example) if light decides that darkness should obey him rather than seek compromise with him when they disagree.

that in turn is passed down from the gods to ozlem through ozma’s belief in light’s (false) conception of balance as a state of perfection without strife. within this framework "unity" demands the complete absence of conflict or disagreement and becomes synonymous with obedient submission, and thus salem—who wants nothing but to be free—is rendered as the great evil who must be destroyed.

there is no question that salem understands the narrative themes with respect to humanity and the injustice of the divine narrative; she does. it is absurd and unserious to argue that she does not fundamentally believe the things she says in soliloquy just as it would be absurd and unserious to suggest that ozma doesn’t believe what he says in his.

what is in question and what does have crucial implications for the story’s resolution is whether salem herself seeks victory (to defeat the gods) or equilibrium (to remove herself as the blade held to remnant’s throat by ending the divine mandate); does she intend to win the war or to end it?

and that is a more difficult question. the fact of her commitment to war does not in and of itself provide an answer because ozma has existed in a perpetual state of (imaginary) war with her for thousands of years, with or without her participation. if she comes into the open and tells people the truth about his mandate and what the huntsmen academies are for, there will be a war. he already knows why she rejected the divine mandate and she has no reason to believe that he will react any differently this time if she appeals to him again, not when he’s had thousands of years to think about it and reaffirmed his commitment to the mandate over and over again.

or she can cut him down and strike at the academies one after the other in quick succession to claim the relics and be done with it before he returned—remember that neither the siege of atlas nor razing vale were part of her original plan, and she intended to leave atlas for last. it is likely that her plans for shade and atlas resembled her minimally-destructive plan for haven.

and even when she panics and commits to open warfare, she exercises a great deal of restraint; it remains to be seen what the exact situation is in vale but razing vale mere weeks after oz decimated hundreds of thousands of not millions of her grimm is in and of itself a demonstration that she’s fully capable of burning the whole world down to get what she wants by brute force. perhaps she felt emboldened once she’d claimed two of the relics but even then the sheer disparity in power between herself and ozpin is so vast that it is becoming absurd to believe that her restraint is motivated by "caution" alone.

she rips a continent open and uses the liquid core of the planet as a siege weapon. oz explodes every grimm for miles around with a blast of magical energy that took lifetimes to accumulate and that slows her down for maybe two hours. salem knows that humanity is strong when banded together in common cause but she also knows that didn’t stop the gods from wiping them out in the blink of an eye, and the difference in power between herself and modern humans is in that ballpark.

"in pursuit of a new world, no cost is too great," she says… in praise of cinder’s restraint. i couldn’t stop them from evacuating the city, i couldn’t stop them from using the last question, i couldn’t stop the maiden from escaping without putting the relics in jeopardy—you’ve done well.

so in salem’s view, for the sake of a new world, allowing thousands of innocents to evacuate to safety and laying aside personal grudges or ambitions is worthwhile. conceding a partial victory to one’s opponents is a fair price to pay in pursuit of a new world. what does this tell us about how salem thinks?

gestures, also, at witch. what does it say about salem that upon learning one of her five hostages is her general’s daughter, she gave up on recovering the lamp and lost a fight on purpose to let all of them go?

"there will be no victory in strength," she says. the rest of her soliloquy implies the converse that victory is found in human virtue and hope. in her second soliloquy she gloats about dedicating all her power to extinguishing ozpin’s hope; two volumes later she cautions cinder against relying on power to "take what [she] wants by force" because power comes with a cost but the "usefulness of others" cannot be overstated; three volumes after that she’s all smiles when ruby reveals her to the world as a rallying cry for hope and tells cinder that sparing lives is a worthy price for a new world. she intends to gather the four relics—that is her game to win, as she puts it to cinder—but what’s her plan?

is it to summon the gods for another confrontation? because there any number of things that salem could do, or try to do, with the relics in hand in pursuit of a new world: destroy the relics, end ozma’s curse to prevent him from coming back, release the imprisoned spirits, use the relics to carve open a doorway to a literal new world where the brothers can’t follow—she’s had millions of years to research and thousands to consider a way to escape the final judgment—use the crown to force ozma to stop, if it works like the golden cap. or even tell the world what will happen if anyone brings the relics together and use the implied threat of her having all four as leverage in negotiations, much as ozma did after the great war.

if salem believes she can beat the brothers and is dead set upon using the rest of the world as bait to lure them back, that makes her more dangerous and more difficult to persuade to talk—it’s what i’ve been anticipating on the grounds that it is the most straightforward way to keep the narrative stakes high.

but the other way ’round is also compelling—salem having a specific minimal-risk plan to dispose of the relics and/or ozma or otherwise end the mandate by making it impossible to summon the gods, and team rwby hitting upon the idea of bringing the relics together in the ever after to persuade the god of light to ascend—and seems more in line with salem’s characterization whenever she isn’t venting her rage at ozma; risk-averse, restrained, pragmatic, willing to compromise. if her most important priority is to end the eternal crusade against her and she doesn’t care about the brothers as long as they don’t ever come back, and these children get it into their heads to confront the brothers face to face… well it makes the negotiations crunchier, that’s for sure.

#there’s also the possibility that salem might be moving from column A to column B for She Cannot Lose Cinder reasons #which will be fun if it leads to a complete reversal on who wants to confront the brothers and who wants to prevent their return #in any case the end game is definitely a showdown with light in the brothers’ acre. ''oh! you’re back!'' & all.#cordovin. the cat. they try to talk -> he gets violent -> ruby ''kills'' him -> his true vulnerable self is revealed.#the smaller soul you might say. 😐

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