#ozpin defense squad

[bestworstcase]

I don’t know what it means but.

Ruby talking with Qrow (I believe) in V7 when she compares herself to Oz, and Qrow saying “No you’re better than him you’re waiting to see who you can trust vs never giving anyone the chance to be trusted”

And now Ruby saying what’s the point of anything if Salem has the relics now and Yang saying “That’s how Ironwood thought. You don’t mean that”

The WAY Oz and Ironwood carried out their plans was Bad but they didn’t start at the deep end. Their thoughts didn’t spawn all of their actions. Ruby having doubts and seeing Oz’s perspective of being wary of who to trust doesn’t mean she’ll turn out like him. Ruby showing she’s upset and mad that things seem to be turning out useless despite their efforts doesn’t mean she regrets saving the people they saved. Or trying to save them.

The way Ruby hasn’t been able to openly doubt herself around others or say things that others see as “thinking like Ironwood” or “you’re better than Oz” is so prominent in episode 7. And I’m not saying she was wrong in anything I’m on her defense squad rn from ppl who are doing what the characters in the show did. They are Hearing her words but they aren’t Listening. WHY is she better than Oz when she thinks she’s doing the same thing. WHAT has caused her to Think like Ironwood. Why can’t she mean what she says why can’t she be negative. Where is the person to lift her up about herself. Not the plan not the team but just Ruby Rose

I don’t think I’m explaining this properly I’m not mad at anyone bc they didn’t know how she felt. I’m just trying to point out connecting things in the show and how “We’ll be better than blank”, in Ruby’s mind, can’t just be something to say when Qrow is mad at Oz (rightfully) or Yang is worried she sounds like Ironwood (the man they just had to save a kingdom from)

V9. Misinformation. Miscommunication. Blinded by your own emotions. Resistant to change. Not listening. It’s felt so Real it’s been so good I hope what I said makes sense it’s just the Be Better Than The Old Mentors vs just bc we won’t do things the same way doesn’t mean we won’t ever feel like they felt or have the same doubts or worry that what they did might’ve been The Best in their mind at the time. Lack of perspective. How you can be the villain to those you’re trying to save. It’s a lot sorry I rambled so much

pushing pause real quick here, anon, the anxiety pouring out of this ask about being misinterpreted as bashing this or that character is really palpable and bc of that i just want to like directly affirm that analytical discussion of character flaw or the narrative construction of a conflict isn’t accusatory or condemnatory of the characters themselves. in this household we go buckwild for characters whose human imperfection is fully and honestly realized by the narrative <3

anyway yeah yeah exactly like

ever since these kids got looped into ozpin’s cult they’ve just been in this emotional vortex of—don’t be negative, don’t spread negativity. salem wants to divide us. we can’t let salem divide us. LOOK at how terrified they were in V8 of not being in unanimous agreement about whether to prioritize a long-term or short-term goal, how much jaune’s proposed compromise scared them. it’s profoundly dysfunctional. they don’t know how to differentiate normal, constructive debate and infighting, or critical self-reflection and harmful negativity, so they are constantly hyper-vigilant constantly monitoring and policing each other for the smallest sign of bad thoughts, bad feelings, because this war they inherited isn’t a war against salem, not really, it’s a war against this nebulous idea of division, of conflict, of negativity, of the bad things that will see humankind condemned to extermination when the gods come back.

and like:

YANG: Okay, Ironwood wants Penny, otherwise Mantle is done for. So, how do we stop him?

BLAKE: Qrow and Robyn are still in his custody, and May said that the Atlas security drones are watching the crater, so they’re trapped too.

OSCAR: And Salem isn’t going to stay gone forever.

RUBY: So then it’s impossible.

EMERALD: See? If Miss Hero with all the answers doesn’t have an answer, then we have ours.

WEISS: Shut up.

YANG: Why don’t you just leave?!

OSCAR: Can we please just give each other a chance? Emerald’s not with Salem anymore, and Ozpin is back. All this doubt and worry and distrust, it isn’t getting us anywhere—

RUBY: Then nothing has CHANGED! We’re in the exact same spot we were yesterday, arguing what to do while the kingdom waits to die.

^ she ran away then, too. and yang went after her thinking that ruby needed a pep talk, needed to be told that sure things are bad and risks don’t always pay off, but the mom who abandoned them both for the world’s sake is still her hero—when what ruby actually, desperately needed to hear, what she’s PLEADING for now, is for someone to tell her it’s okay to feel bad, it’s okay to have doubts, it’s okay to just be overwhelmed. that it ISN’T FAIR for the fate of the world to sit on her shoulders and that the world will not end if she admits that it’s too fucking heavy, if she asks for help, if she puts it down.

and that’s what makes it sting so much when her doubts and fears and frustration get brushed off like those feelings don’t matter or aren’t true or, worse, like it’s wrong for her to feel this way at all—it’s a manifestation of this, like, existential terror of Innate Badness that lurks in the heart of ozpin’s cult, don’t feel bad don’t think bad thoughts or else—or else what? “salem will divide us” but it’s so easy for that line of thinking to shade into “only bad people have bad thoughts,” because feeling bad IS bad in and of itself, right. like fundamentally this is how the strict ideological delineation between hero, villain, and passive narrative object enforces itself: the villains surrender to negativity and so become themselves agents of this Badness while the heroes stand as beacons of hope and inspiration to the defenseless masses—who otherwise would of course succumb to negativity (“panic”) and be obliterated. baked into the cult’s ideology is an unspoken but perilously thin line between feeling bad and being bad.

you don’t mean that. that’s how ironwood thought. (you can’t mean that. only bad people think that way.)

and the real world just doesn’t fucking work that way—the world of remnant does not work that way—so this is an emotional poison, it’s toxic, they’re swimming around in a noxious soup of unspoken ideas that seeped into all of them to varying depth but percolated right down into the very bedrock of who ruby is—and while it killed them slowly it ate ruby alive. and now the bones of her are poking through the cracks and she has nothing left to give so the only way to move forward is to claw herself out of the soup!! (<- this metaphor ran away from me a bit.)

which somewhat ironically given what the first layer of her crisis is about, means ruby is going to lead the way out of this festering mess of a fairytale cult. by way of the desolate howl that this way of thinking is dehumanizing and inhumane

[daggerpawstudios]

The Hero, The Liar, and The Redeemer: The Redeemer Pt. 3

Oscar is a normal farmhand living on the outskirts of Haven. Yes, he wants to be more than a farmhand, but being picked to be the next OZ is too much for him to handle initially. But why was he chosen? At first, the answer is hard to see since he was in the background for most of volume 4 to volume 6. But then, it becomes pretty clear to see why he was chosen. Oscar has the same soul as Ozma.

In Volume 7, Oscar is one of the few people to call out Ruby's decision to lie to Ironwood. Mind you. Ruby lied to him because she felt uneasy about the situation in Atlas, and here is Oscar vouching for Ironwood to know the truth. Even throughout the volume, when Ironwood was teetering on the edge of insanity, Oscar was the voice of reason—reminding him to have faith in others and not shoulder the world's burden alone. A lesson he learned from watching Ozpin's secrets becoming exposed.

Oscar continues to trust James Ironwood to the end. Even as our loveable heroic girl, Ruby Rose, gives up on Ironwood. He still goes to reason with him and sees what we could do together. Oscar's faith in others is a similar trait to Ozma. Seeing the good in others and believing the words of other people even despite everything they have done is a trait a righteous man would have.

Even with Ozpin, Oscar still has faith in Ozpin as they are in the clutches of Salem's hands. So, Oscar rekindles his mentor relationship with Ozpin. Oscar reconnects with the man who withheld information and manipulated him to go on this journey. As Oscar is in Monstra, he talks to Hazel, even despite Hazel beating and abusing him. Oscar sees the good in Hazel despite his nihilistic facade, and he tells Hazel the truth. After learning the truth, Emerald, already unsure of Salem's plan, is swayed by Hazel to leave with Oscar. Everyone distrusts her for a good reason since she is one of the people involved in The Fall of Beacon; However, Oscar welcomes Emerald.

This idea of Ozcarination being tied to someone who has a like-minded soul ties back to the goodness in Ozma's heart and his faith in humanity. Oscar is not the next OZ for no reason. He is restoring the faith in humanity that Ozma himself lost because he lived so many lives. Yes, Ruby is also heroic and believes in the goodness of others, but even her kindness can be shaky.

She deceives Ironwood because, at the time, it seems like the right thing to do.  Ruby bottles up her emotions and doesn't let anything out because she feels she NEEDS to be a leader. Everyone around her is losing faith and she feels she needs to be the one that continues to inspire even in the darkest times.

Even when she talks to Oscar, during the dojo scene. She is talking about her problems, but at the same time she is trying to inspire Oscar to be brave. 

At the start of the series, Ruby’s dream was to be a hero from the fairytale storybooks and make the world a better place. But her faith in that is starting to shake, and only god knows what will happen now after the Fall of Atlas. In a way, Ruby and Oscar are similar but different. Ruby is breaking under pressure, while Oscar is becoming more stronger underneath it.

[theangelofangst]

If Ozpin was various sounds off of Tik Tok

[greekgeekgoddess]

I call this scene, “The Witch and the Wizard”

This scene is now my favorite scene. Not only with how Salem and Oscar interact with each other. But the way she uses mental warfare to scare and intimidate the boy. Also showing the daughters in that smoke mirage really must have tugged on Ozma’s guilt there. Man... this scene is just... wow.

Edit: Full disclosure no I don’t like this scene because Oscar is getting hurt. This is a child. I mean from a writer’s standpoint I found this scene to be very well executed. It makes the viewer uncomfortable. And there is nothing wrong with that it served it’s purpose.

[nexyra]

I made some gifs out of Ozpin's apology in Risk for a future music post, but I figured I'd share them with you all Ozpin's fans in the meantime

Prepare for a very soft wizard boy

I still would have liked his apology to be reciprocated instead of just a lowkey "it's okay, trust is hard but we'll trust you again" but well

[pinkskull-art]

[starlightreign]

Have a Chibi Oz in theses trying times

[firelxdykatara]

while im still thinking about Things That Bother Me, in RWBY and in the fandom.........im still not over the lost fable, and i don’t think i’ll ever be.

our heroes really watched a man get brutally murdered by his wife--after he (and they) witnessed her killing his children (and no, i don’t care how you think that fight played out, if you think ozma and salem fought and the girls were caught in the crossfire--that is still 100% on salem, just like it would be if ozma were a battered wife trying to sneak away from her husband and he pulled a gun on her, which went off when they struggled over it and killed their child [and im irritated enough rn, im not gonna get into how if ozma’s and salem’s gender’s were reversed, i have a feeling that scene would’ve been received very differently, especially in fandom])--and never showed him a single, solitary ounce of compassion.

not a bit. not even an ‘i’m still angry about the secrets, but that was messed up’. not even an ‘i’m sorry you went through that, and countless more deaths besides over the last thousand years’. not so much as a ‘wow, no wonder you’re so cagey; i would be too’.

i remember at the time (because i hopped into the fandom a few weeks before v7 began, and binged the first six volumes in two days), being assured that ‘they were just angry and scared in the moment, and then the farm/apathy/argus happened, but they’ll have time to think about it later’. well, it’s been two volumes and change (the rest of v6, all of v7, and nearly half of v8 now), and i haven’t heard a single word of sympathy--not even from oscar (who, by the by, qrow never apologized to for punching him in the face cause he was mad at his brain passenger)--for ozpin, let alone the slightest iota of understanding for the position he was in. nothing that even indicates that ruby maybe now gets why he was hesitant to extend complete trust even to his most trusted inner circle, nevermind a few teenagers he barely knew.

and nothing to suggest that these supposedly compassionate human beings even care that they literally witnessed a man trying to save his children from an abusive situation, only to be murdered for it.

i’m not sure what’s worse--the idea that the rwby crew flat forgot what their heroes witnessed (or just what they wrote for ozpin’s backstory), or that the alphabet soup squad genuinely do not care about the thousand years of trauma ozpin suffered for daring to care about the world and trying to find a way to save it.

[edenszerofan33]

So Oscar revealed this ep after Oz suggested using magic to break out, that everytime he and Oz use magic, he can feel then merging even more.

And at the end of the ep, Oscar and Oz use a massive finishing move on Salem. That makes me wonder if the two will be almost completely merged next chapter.

[willofhounds]

Update!

[x-branwen]

Protect Ozpins smile at all costs

(ง'̀-'́)ง

[zacs-of-rwby]

I am clearly not an artist, but I needed something to do so I decided to take a stab at @ozpin-defense-squad's art challenge for the week! The prompt was pj's/lounge wear so here is my best attempt at putting Oz in some cute pj's.

His hands may or may not be in his pockets because idk how to draw hands

Permission to repost: granted.

[daggerpawstudios]

The Hero, The Liar, and The Redeemer: The Liar Pt.2

Before talking about Oscar, let’s discuss Ozpin. To start the conversation let me ask, “How does Ozma's good nature reflect in Ozpin?”

Ozpin is a morally grey character. But, even despite his grey areas, he also wants to help humanity. 

The problem is that Ozma/Ozpin, at this point, has been alive for so long that he does not have truly faith in humanity to save themselves. The gripe that Hazel has with Ozpin is a testament to that. Hazel's problem is that Ozpin uses human lives like a pawn to win against Salem. As a result, they are dying without fully understanding the cause.  

He has been betrayed repeatedly and has slowly lost faith in trusting others. One example is in the RWBY fairytale book, The Infinite Man. This story tells about one of the many lives of Ozma. His followers are attacked by a group of bandits that want to kill a God. The bandit leader tells him that he will let Ozma's followers live if he can kill Ozma. Of course, this is a blatant lie, but since Ozma at the time still had faith in others even despite all odds, he agrees and lets the man kill him. His whole following, as a result, is slaughtered by the bandits. Ozma returns to life to find his following destroyed and only to be disappointed in himself.

Ozpin can no longer trust others even if people wholeheartedly believe in him. He can no longer fully understand humans because he is above them. He never truly dies and constantly returns. The Infinite Man explains why Ozpin only tells people the half-truth but never the whole truth. Ozpin carefully explains to Pyrrha the rules and gives her a choice. Sadly, she chooses one option where she loses her life.

At his core, Ozpin has a desire to help others, but due to so many years of living, dying, and constant deceit. It is hard for him to place faith in humanity since he is so far removed from it. So here is the start where Oscar comes in.

[theangelofangst]

Baby, oh, I'll make you know, I’ll make you know.

Back at it once more with a song edit, this time it was me listening to Toxic by BoywithUke.

Some of the lyrics just really reminded me a lot of Ozpin when it comes to the scenes during beginning of Volume 6. Like look at my boi Oz literally on his knees crying while these teenage girls invalidate his trauma.

[tsuklns]

(((i miss my boys)))

[nexyra]

RWBY Characters in Song ♦ Oz-carnations

I WAS WRONG - OH HELLOS

I was born, I was born

I was born at the hands of the potter

And I was torn from the start

I was torn between my god and my father

I was born, I was born

I was born at the dawn of our folly

And I was young, and stubborn to the bone

As I took from the tree that was rotting

☼﹥━━━━━━━━━━━﹤☼

I took my chance and bit down deep

The weight of the world was crippling

Now I'll hide my shame with woven leaves

I was wrong... I was wrong,

I was wrong...

And I'm so, so sorry

I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong...

And I'm so, so... I'm so, so sorry

I knew you'd never forgive me

But I was wrong... I was wrong

And I'm so, so sorry

I am sorry...

...

A song that I thought nicely fitted our favorite wizard

➸ "The potter" is another way of calling god in sacred texts. Ozma was brought back to life and given his mission by the God of Light.

➸ Right from the start however, Ozma was torn between the terms of his mission and his desire to see Salem again. Misled by love, he ended up playing god in a misguided attempt to unite humanity. In that instance, Salem can be read as his "god", turning him away from his "Father's" mission.

➸ Salem, or more specifically the Salem we know today, was born at the height of humanity's greatest folly : turning against the gods which prompted their annihilation.

➸ She was young, she was stubborn and determined and she took powers from the gods that revealed themselves to be rotten in the light of day. (Immortality is highly desired but was nothing but a punishment for her)

➸ Ozma was given the chance to come back and see Salem again through a deal with the God of Light, and he jumped at this chance. While this was his choice at the time, the apple he bit into was in truth just as rotten as the gods previous gifts.

➸ We all know how his history with Salem played out. That bridge burned, Ozma has nothing left ahead of him but his task. A daunting task that weighs on him, seemingly impossible because of Salem's existence and her immortality.

➸ And in answer to his loss of hope, the wizard hides away from the world : ashamed and desperate, seeing no end to his fighting... Up until being proven wrong by four young maidens. Four maidens who give him the will to keep trying, for humanity's sake.

➸ The Wizard tries and tries and keeps trying. He struggles and fails and yet still holds on. He has mades mistakes and how he suffers from them. But no matter how many times he might fall, he will always get up, an apology on his lips. Because humanity stays worth fighting for.