#no Ozpin doesn’t kill him. he essentially just scares the fuck out of him and tells him to run along afterwards

[rwby-necro-au-archive]

Ozpin Week

Day Six: Day Off/In Battle

@ozpinweek

Description: It’s no surprise that running a Necromancer academy can come with issues. Necromancy is outlawed in many parts of the world after all.

One such issue is the equally unsurprising amount of Pursuers that try to sneak into beacon. Good thing that beacon is made for this, by having what is essentially a maze surrounding it’s buildings. The pursuers most times end up getting lost due to this.

Perhaps it’s also good that a certain headmaster watches his academy and students like a hawk in case of such incidents.

“How upsetting, and on such a lovely day like today.” Ozpin sighed. It would seem that he had been swamped with sorrowful reports and countless uninteresting meetings all day. What he had truly wanted was to be outside or at least to be interacting with his students. But it would all have to wait until these reports and paperwork were finished.

Even though today had started off as it normally would, Him getting up, getting ready for the day, and then heading off to the academy, it still felt like it was particularly monotonous and dull. Nothing interesting had happened, hell even the students hadn’t done any of their usual antics today.

He shook his head, it’s not like any of them could anyways, they had term ending exams to study for. Although he couldn’t help but wish someone would’ve done something.

Knock Knock Knock

A gentle but firm knock was heard at the door. He could tell it was Glynda, it was the small, seemingly insignificant details that he focused on when it came to people. Even the way someone knocked on a door could tell you who they were.

“Come in, Glynda.” Ozpin called out cheerily.

The door opened, “I will never understand how it is that you know whose outside your door even before they walk in.” She quipped.

“I always did pay attention to detail did I not?”

“That is true. Anyways, you look like you’ve had the life sucked out of you. How much paperwork?”

Ozpin leaned back in his office chair “What on remnant makes you think that I know? Absolutely nothing interesting has happened today. Such a shame, it’s such a lovely day too, and here I am stuck doing paperwork.”

Glynda gave a sympathetic sigh, “You aren’t the only one. Despite that, that’s not what I’m here for.”

“Right, To the point. Is it something I should be concerned about?”

“Yes actually.”

His face became stern in response, “What is it?”

“A pursuer has decided to go looking for students to harass on premises.” She explained

“Why haven’t you or the other staff gone to handle the situation.”

She gave an eyebrow raise “Why?”

“My apologies but if they haven’t done anything yet then what would be the point in coming to me?”

“Fair. This one has been…..persistent. He refuses to “take the hint” and stay away from the school. He essentially mocks any staff that tries to get rid of him. Figured you’d be in more luck getting him to leave the students alone.”

Ozpin pinched the bridge of his nose. How annoying. Not just a pursuer but a pursuer with the gall to mock his staff and harass innocent students, his students. It’s no wonder she came to him with the issue, she’s most likely more frustrated than he is.

“Also, I figured since you’ve been stuck in here all day that it would be good to give you something interesting to do. Not to mention get some fresh air” Glynda smiled

He smiled back “I appreciate it. Now then, where is he right now?”

“Seemingly lost in the northern wing’s maze.” She said, she handed him a photo taken from security footage.

He thanked her before leaving his office. Sure, pursuers weren’t an uncommon problem at Beacon but that didn’t make their presence any less annoying.

What was more surprising was that none of them whom he himself had dealt with, have had the audacity to actually go to their boss to tell him about his so called “friend” being a necromancer. Although, what pursuer would ever want to admit to their boss that they ran away from a necromancer?

In fact they, to Ozpin’s amusement, started heavily embellishing their stories to the other pursuers about what he was like. Some tales painted him as a terrifying monster, some painted him as a roughed up intimidating man with unspeakable power, and some painted him as a different being entirely.

It had turned into a game for the headmaster, to see what stories the pursuer he was dealing with had heard. At least it made the job of getting rid of those pests more enjoyable.

Without fail though, every pursuer who had heard about him was surprised to see him in person. The man they had heard was a terrifying monster, a roughed up untouchable man, or a different being entirely, was in reality a dapper, polite, and well kept 6’8 man with a northern Atlesian accent and a love and protectiveness for children.

He quickly walked out the main buildings doors and searched around for the northern entrance into the maze. Once found, he set off towards it. As he walked through the crowd he was greeted by students, all of whom were most likely on their way out of the school, he gave a quick hello and wished them well on their way home.

“Of course a pursuer would choose a time like this. Easy targets.” He mentally noted.

Once he entered the maze, the rest was muscle memory. He knew every corner, every corridor, every alley, every brick, stone, and piece of concrete of beacon like the back of his hand. Knowing where everything was at Beacon was as easy as walking itself for the headmaster.

As he walked he also listened. Listening was important in a situation such as this one. Eventually, what he had been listening for was heard. A yell. He picked up his pace and followed what he presumed was a female students yell.

As he listened further, it wasn’t just the one student, it was a group of them, most likely friends, who this pursuer had decided to go after.

This pursuer seemed to be a real colorful one too, throwing slurs and disgusting innuendos at the girls. There were 3 things Ozpin specifically hated, Pursuers, Those who aim to hurt children, and Creeps. Unfortunately for this pursuer, he was checking all the boxes.

He reached a corner and peered behind it. There stood 5 female students, backed into a wall by this disgusting excuse for a man.

“I bet the guards will have some real fun with you bunch once you get to atlas.” The pursuer sneered.

Ozpin appeared out from behind the corner, standing behind and over the pursuer, “Well that’s not very nice, now is it?” He spoke cooly.

The pursuer jumped and turned around. Eyes widening in realization as he looked up at who was standing in front of him.

“Y-you’re the monster all of the pursuers were talkin’ about.”

“Why yes! That is me!” He said cheerily

“I-I ain’t scared of you! You aren’t anything like they make you out to be. You’re just some guy, I can take you!” The man yelled.

“Tch tch tch, none of you ever learn from one another, do you?”

“The fuck you talkin’ about?!”

Ozpin smiled and looked towards the students, “Now students, here are 2 lessons for you all. Looks can be quite deceiving, take this man here for example. He may look threatening, but in reality, he is weak. He is weak because he is letting his anger get the best of him, which is not a wise decision if you are going to engage in combat.

When you are angry during combat, you stop thinking about how to hit your enemy, and instead just think about hitting your enemy anywhere in general. This leaves you vulnerable.”

“Fuck you!”

“Oh dear, and it seems we have quite a vulgar man as well.”

“Why are you bein’ so polite? I thought you were supposed to scary.” The pursuer snickered

Ozpin laughed, a cold, merciless, and wheezy sound, no doubt from his smoking habit. “Well, my friend, What kind of an example would I be setting if I wasn’t polite? I’m the head councilman of a country, a headmaster, and a professor! It’s my job to make sure I’m setting a good example on how to deal with pests such as yourself.”

He looked over at the pursuer, “show time.” He thought. In a simple blink his eye colored changed from a warm, caring hazelnut brown to a cold and soul destroying green.

“Besides, I am a merciful man. I wouldn’t want to make more of a fool of you when you’ve already done most of the work yourself.”

The pursuer visibly froze, he mentally laughed “Everytime, without fail. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of it.”

Ozpin turned back to the students and told them to go home. He had business with this pursuer that he needed to attend to. Who was backed against the wall and helpless now?

The pursuer continued to yell slurs and insults at the headmaster. Eventually, he took out a blade an managed to slice Ozpin across the cheek, causing the headmaster to stumbled back some.

Okay, maybe not helpless. But he surely was backed against a wall in a maze with him.

Once he regained his footing, Ozpin ungloved one of his hands as he gently touched two fingers to the wound, “Well, I’m impressed, consider yourself lucky. You’re the first pursuer to ever actually land a hit on me. Even if it was a cheap shot.”

The pursuer laughed victoriously, while distracted by his small victory, Ozpin grabbed long memory. Quickly shifting it into its shotgun form.

“Although,” He spoke.

He harshly shoved the pursuer against the brick wall, leaving the man slightly dazed and confused. Ozpin aimed long memory at the wall besides the pursuers head and stared down at the man.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to bring a knife to a gun fight?”

[boy-above]

I didn't know you've seen rwby! your opinions are very interesting (in a good way!) and if you felt comfortable doing this, I would love to hear you talk more in depth about them. I would love to hear you elaborate on some of your more "controversial" opinions

i don't mind at all! i rly would like to talk abt rwby with people more, but i don't want to put myself out there in the fandom because that's a nightmare warzone AHDHDHD

so, i think jaune's highish place on the list would be controversial, and i think an important thing to note with him is that it's based on his Current standing in the series. it's very important to make it clear that i fucking hated jaune for the majority of the series, he was annoying and whiney and full of manpain and took away screentime from the actual main characters. i didn't like him from vols 1-6 lmao. but since the atlas arc started i do like him now. his arc is over and he's actually likable which is something i didn't think they would be able to do.

yang and blake's places on the list would get me death threats had i tagged that list, i'm sure lmao. i just cannot stand yang. everything that made her fun and likable in the first three volumes was taken away, and i understand she went through a traumatic event but she didn't come out of her arc of healing or whatever for the better. vol5 to present yang is insufferable to me. she's mean, judgemental, and a giant hypocrite. (yelling at ozpin for hiding the truth while actively hiding the fact that her mom is the spring maiden anyone???) she's just a ball of negativity now, she does not have a single likable quality to me.

blake got a similar treatment, vol4 and beyond blake became really unlikable as well. the entire menajerie arc was just awful and hard to sit through. it's part of the reason i hated volume 4 so much (and vol5 but that's not an unpopular opinion) she came off as whiney to me in vol4 rather than an eager activist like she was in the previous volumes, the show has never been good at actually putting faunus discrimination Actuallt on display besides no faunus signs and hamfisted remarks from strangers (that they always have weiss respond to rather than blake???) so blake's anger with the whole situation almost doesn't feel justified. this is a problem of the writing of course but it does not do her character any favors. she's higher on the list than yang though because blake has gotten a lot better in the atlas arc, especially her conversation with nora and her recent conversation with ruby about how she's always looked up to her. she might get higher on the list as the atlas arc goes on, who knows. i'm definitely more open to liking her than yang: at this point i think there's no saving yang for me.

nora and ren have been dropping on the list for me ever since their relationship problems started this arc, although even before that they still weren't like top tier for me or anything. ren's angst just isn't hitting it right for me, although maybe i do regret not putting nora a tier higher, her plight about not knowing who she is without ren is very good, so yeah i might have some regrets about that.

this isn't as much as an unpopular opinion as the others, but i think cinder is such a bad villain. she's always been pretty one dimensional, Yes, even after we got her backstory, which by the way was trying Way too hard for me to be tragic, it was honestly kind of hard to take seriously because of how it lacked Any kind of subtlety, it really was trying so hard to make her sympathetic to the point that it was essentially trying to force those feelings into you. but anyway, vol3 cinder was the best cinder's ever been, she was actually intimidating, killed ozpin and pyrrha, and Succeeded At Her Task. she has been nothing but a series of failures since then and her power has been scaled back to significantly, they've made her pathetic now. she Might be looking towards a brighter future soonish though, i hope her character is going towards something more interesting now instead of failing again lol.

while i don't like ironwood as a person, i do Love how he was written. i think he's a very well written antagonist, i don't frequent the tags very much so idk if that's a popular opinion or not. jacques does his job as an antag, i don't think he's as well written as ironwood but he does his job. hazel and adam however are both bad as people And horribly written villains imo. i could never put myself in blake and yang's shoes of how traumatized and scared they were of adam because he was never once truly intimidating to me. he was just a loser. and while yes, abusers are pathetic and he was eventually outed as pathetic and that's the point, they were still so scared of him even after he ran away like a coward and i just could not relate because he just wasn't a scary villain, he was a boring loser who never actually lived up to the fear the other characters had of him.

and hazel is just such a baffling character. his whole motivation is that he hates seeing children being trained to be sent off to war, especially a war that is impossible to win, but then he relentlessly beats the shit out of a child with no regret. calling ozpin a coward because he's "letting the boy suffer" instead of taking over the body, even though he's the one beating a child in the first place, it's not ozpin's fault oscar is getting beaten buddy, it's your fists!! and it's not like even if ozpin Was in control of the body the whole time that oscar wouldn't be affected anyway, it's his body, he can still feel all the pain. what a fucking idiot.

ANYWAY UH this got really long sorry. those are some of my roobles opinions lol

[inflammatoryfandomblog]

honestly, ozpin is kind of annoying. he’s not an idealist, he literally has his head so far up his ass that it’s in the clouds. sure he talks about trust and ideals and how that’s needed to stop the grimm, but he has no qualms about using the threat of the grimm as a cudgel (”it will cause panic!”) in order to stomp any disagreement with him or distrust of him... i wonder where ironwood learned all that from lolz. 

he manages to be a hypocrite and at the same time somehow only think of the world in terms of hollow symbolism. that’s it. like the braindead idea to create atlas (and thus directly contributing to the increasing stratification of mantle) was his. because apparently the people of mantle needed to look up to something, and the only way that could happen is if you literally used the relic of creation to build a new ... settlement... filled with rich people.. that is a direct security threat to the people below it because salem is after that relic you dumbass. good job! 

i mean, there are things like this littered through the entire series. his hollow speeches aside, ozpin is implied to be the mind behind things like the color naming scheme, but also... he routinely allies himself with people who he realllly shouldn’t be allied with because... uh... well, the systems that people are knee-deep in doesn’t matter, ironwood is a Good Guy With Good Intentions, so it’s all good, right?

and i think this points to a larger issue wherein rwby is reallllly scared to talk about systems and structures in any good way. it talks about vague ideas and has no idea where to go with them. the show as-written doesn’t put the blame on atlas’s fall on ironwood being corrupt or being part of a corrupt system (one the the arc villains is the only guy who was an actual threat to his power and wanted to reduce it! jacques! fucking jacques!!!), it’s because he’s toxically masculine and he’s a military guy or whatever. if he were only a better person who listened to team rwby and trusted people! all of this could have been resolved!

you see something like this in the conclusion to the white fang arc, which is essentially something like “oh! structural racism didn’t matter, the real problem was this Bad Guy adam taurus who was really just casting us all in a bad light, if we’re really nice to the humans you guys and police ourselves, surely the humans will like us!” essentially blake’s speech in menagerie. no matter how many throwaway lines about structural racism they make marrow spit out, it will not erase the conclusion of the major arc of one of the main characters.

in rwby, authority is inherently good and just, even when they include story elements that contradict it. ozpin’s role in maintaining it has never been questioned (and is justified post-hoc via salem--which magically doesn’t work as a justification when ironwood is in the picture and forces the viewer to think about what that means--if rwby were a smart show, they’d show ironwood and ozpin being two reflections of each other but uhhh) and in fact can’t be questioned if he must remain the Good Guy.

(a reasonable response to this is point right back at ironwood and robyn as an example of how rwby doesn’t imply that authority is inherently good. fair enough, but i don’t think that’s sufficient for me with all the other elements of the show taken together. for example, i would like to point to this contrast: ironwood, the major authority figure, is conceived and portrayed to be far more sympathetic than another “fallen” villain, adam taurus, who represents (no, sienna showed up to be killed off by him for one scene to bolster his “power level,” she’s never functionally the leader of anything) the white fang, a rebel faction and like, this isn’t me wanting to cancel ironwood’s portrayal, i have no problems with it taken alone, but the contrast is really telling about rwby’s implicit ideas.)

and like! it’s too late to go for a theme like that! they tried tackling complex issues like racial prejudice as explicitly morally gray since volume 1! if you wanted to create a world where people can just hold hands and sing kumbaya and defeat the evil without thinking about it too much, you shouldn’t have put problems that can’t be solved by singing and banding together and trusting love uwu.

[itsclydebitches]

what are your thoughts nikosarc(.)tumblr(.)com/post/180209390472

In all honesty this is mostly just a reiteration of what I’ve been saying for about a week now, so sorry about that. But to summarize:

Is Ozpin keeping Salem’s immortality a secret “huge”? It depends entirely on what you consider most important: the morals themselves or how they change depending on the situation. Yang is someone who prizes the truth: all truth, right now, no matter the consequences. This is what she claims is important to her (and yes, that distinction is worth noting considering the secret she’s keeping - her core ethics right now are compromised) and, as stated previously, it’s a very black and white view of the world. A kid’s view. People keep secrets—big and small—for a whole variety of reasons and pretending that not telling the truth is an automatic blight on your character reads as incredibly simplistic to me.

I always favor context and try to acknowledge the complexity of an individual’s situation. If someone lies then they believe they have a reason for doing so, so what are Ozpin’s reasons here? Perhaps we don’t agree with them in the end, but acknowledging his thought process helps undermine the assumption that he’s lying solely because he’s manipulative. Or cowardly. Or just plain evil.

Since a lot of this is repetition I might as well just chuck it into list form. Reasons we know/can theorize that Ozpin kept his secret include:

The fact that knowing Salem is immortal doesn’t change the need to fight her/the grimm or that this group agreed to protect the world long before they knew about her. Their mission has not changed just because they’ve learned it’s harder than they originally thought.

The fact that knowing Salem is immortal does change their mental state and will make them panic. Like knowing about the relic attracting grimm, there’s only downsides to learning this information—especially when the monsters you’re dealing with are attracted to negative emotions.  

The fact that Ozpin knows from experience that telling people about Salem makes them give up the fight completely. Not only that, but these people then started actively working against him and were responsible for destroying decades of work. He’s not in a position to risk that again right after it all happened. 

The fact that Ozpin admits these reservations to the group and they dismiss his (justified) fears with absolutely no consideration, further demonstrating their lack of maturity when it comes to these matters. I’m not blaming the girls for their trauma, but they haven’t worked through it yet and that means they’re not in the right mindset to deal with such a complicated matter right now.

The fact that Ozpin is a human being who isn’t relaying dry facts but a mythic amount of trauma from his own past. Getting into Salem’s immortality means also explaining lifetimes’ worth of personal information. Take a second to think about the one thing you most regret, or the most devastating moment in your life. Now take another moment to imagine someone screaming, “Just tell me about it already!” It’s not that easy, is it? Even if the information is deemed important, that doesn’t change your emotional attachment to it. 

The fact that it would be practically and emotionally difficult to info-dump all this to a big group (especially without the help of a magic HD flashback from Jinn). 

The fact that Ozpin has had much bigger fish to fry lately: like adapting to another time he was murdered and then reincarnated, learning that an old friend betrayed him, getting his ass kicked in a battle, and dealing with a relic that’s now out in the open. On the list of “things we need to deal with right now,” informing everyone about Salem is nowhere near the top of the list.

The fact that he’s only just reincarnated with Oscar and probably doesn’t want to scare the kid senseless. We see in Volume 4 that Ozpin was as patient and caring towards Oscar as he could be and we see now in Volume 6 that he’s still having a crisis about his new lot in life. Chucking “Oh btw, our enemy is immortal” into the kid’s lap before he’s processed all this other stuff is kind of cruel.  

The fact that when the gang demanded this information it’s in the middle of nowhere, with grimm nearby, in the presence of a complete stranger. The girls are being beyond reckless right now and it’s not exactly a smart move to hand over sensitive information when tempers are running high.

The fact that he’s known this group (with the exception of Qrow) for about two-three years and has no reason to trust them with the biggest secret in the whole world. Especially when they can’t even demonstrate maturity long enough to speak about the subject calmly and rationally. Again, the kids all have PTSD. That’s not their fault. Them lashing out is expected—but that’s also why you don’t throw even more shit at them that they then need to deal with.

The fact that Ozpin did have a plan for beating Salem (building his schools, uniting humanity through fighting the grimm, presumably then calling back the gods for judgement) and he probably doesn’t want to be forced into the position of admitting that he doesn’t have a plan now. Because that reads as more damning than it actually is… and that is exactly what happened.

The fact that subordinates shouldn’t always have all the information that their leaders do. Sorry, but you don’t win a war by handing out secrets to everyone who demands it from you. Faith is not the same thing as blind faith—and it’s the latter that the girls are asking for.

Say what you want about how “He promised to tell them the truth!” but to me that reads as a blatant simplification of the situation. (Especially since Yang cornered him a bit with that promise. There’s an undercurrent of “If you don’t agree to my terms me and my sister are walking - and we’ll take the rest of your allies with us.”) If I were Ozpin? I wouldn’t have told them either. Not until later when I knew them better, they were older, more experienced, I knew they were committed to the fight, we were in a safe place, I’d found equilibrium with Oscar, and I was emotionally stable enough to divulge my own traumatizing past.  

As for the rest of the post? It’s just another misreading of the canon. We’ve seen them for weeks now.

Ozpin isn’t “throwing shit against a wall to see what sticks”—he’s always had plans. It’s not his fault his former friends betrayed him and helped destroy all that.

He is not sending ignorant people off to their deaths fighting Salem—these are all trained huntsmen who agreed to wage this war before they ever even met Ozpin. The inner circle are volunteers who further agreed to fight the Big Bad. And notably? Ozpin isn’t hunting Raven down, or Leo before his death. When people decide they’re done with the fight he let’s them leave. 

Pyrrha’s arc wasn’t about “saving the world” from Salem—it was about making sure that incredibly powerful magic didn’t fall into the wrong hands. If she’d been able to become the Fall Maiden and decided that she wanted to use that power to just fight grimm and not Salem herself? I have no doubt that Ozpin would have sent her off with pride.

Pyrrha didn’t die because Ozpin told her to save the world—Ozpin told her to leave. He told her not to fight. Pyrrha decided she could take on Cinder alone. I love her, but that was her own mistake. Ozpin encouraged the exact opposite of this.

We have absolutely no evidence that he “did the same to Ruby and Yang’s mom”—That’s Hazel’s logic: if you willingly chose the life of a huntress and you die on duty? Well, that’s somehow solely Ozpin’s fault. 

Absolutely none of what they’ve done is “essentially pointless”—Yes, let’s let grimm take over the world and let Salem have all the relics and give the Maiden powers to all her lackeys. If we can’t kill her that’s obviously the next best plan. Completely foolproof. Ozpin has kept humanity safe for thousands of years, safe enough that they’ve now flourished technologically and reached a point where they experienced an “extraordinary time of peace.” In what way is that pointless? 

Also, even if we don’t like characters, can we please not hope that they get beat on more than they have? Regardless of where you stand on the debate, praying that Jaune “gets a good fucking hit on him” after Ozpin already got it from Qrow—especially when he’s in Oscar’s body—is just plain not good.

But yeah. That got long. And it’s late now. Peace. 💚