#since the canon of this server is that she's currently queen of the constant. and also this way I don't have to squeeze another chest in

[giantkillerjack]

good news everyone I found a quick and easy way to clearly communicate which chest belongs to which character

(The sign in front of Wes's chest is blank because his chest is empty and I am fucking hilarious.)

[sytokun]

So, I have a question I hope that isn't too much of a problem. How do you feel about Salem as a villain? Her character, her plans, and motivations and what the current Volumes have utilized her, how do you feel about what they do with her as a villain?

On paper, I don't have problems with Salem.

Since the beginning of the show, the Grimm are framed as this mysterious, endgame villain that the cast needs to deal with. There were two major ways they could have gone with this and honestly I wouldn't mind either:

They are a force of nature and cannot be resolved easily, just adapted to and lessen their deadly influence over the world

They have a source/leader who leads or coordinates them, and defeating them significantly reduces the Grimm's influence on the world.

Both can be interesting, and both can flow well with RWBY's themes if executed well. We know canon went with the latter, so that's the baseline we'll go with. Back when Salem was revealed in V3, many fans speculated she was a hyper-evolved Grimm that has lived for so long she gained human intelligence.

Now I used to be iffy on this back when this theory was trending, but over time I grew to like the idea, and thought it would have been a really cool way to frame Salem - she is the ultimate result of the arms race between the Hunters and Grimm, locked in an eternal battle to outpace each other. If Salem wasn't stopped, she would destroy everything. But you had to do it right. You had to somehow make it permanent and that the Grimm could never evolve down this path again.

Because if you don't properly deal with what is essentially the equivalent of the Grimm singularity, you've gotten rid of one problem. But the thing that comes after Salem will learn all of her failures, and then the world will be faced with a being that's even worse.

This idea, if you discount Salem's backstory and relation to Ozpin, and observe more her general vibe and tactics, can match pretty decently. Salem gives the vibe of a threat that is always watching and observing, growing in strength and influence. She's a very archetypal villain type: she's like the serpent in the garden, or Sauron from the shadowed corners of Middle Earth.

And clearly, she has a beef with Ozpin too, so that's a constant. Everyone latched onto Oz's "I've made more mistakes than any man, woman or child" line for a reason - it tips off he may be responsible for some really bad shit; he may be the reason for all of it, and has spent all his lifetimes trying to fix them. It's not farfetched to believe the Grimm and Salem are a result of that - his darkest moment.

Now we're getting into the specifics, and that's where I don't really vibe well with the route canon has committed to: the angry ex-wife thing.

Now, I still think Salem being originally human and not an evolved Grimm is fine too. It's basically like Kerrigan from Starcraft - she's the Queen of the Grimm. I don't even mind her being a former lover - I've had discussions with a friend from my server and there's a lot of potential there if you present it a certain way:

While it does seem weird that the fate of the whole world lies on a single relationship between two people - RWBY is technically a very personal story. It's about individuals, about self-expression and the soul. So having the main conflict be focused around a human experience that becomes corrupted can still work - it's a very Star Wars approach to it: the entire film saga is centered around the Skywalkers.

It's likely that both of them, while deeply in love, had different ideas about immortality, about how the world to be, and they were the only two people powerful enough to put those ideals into action, so they came to blows, causing the landslide that created Remnant as we know it.

So really, there is a lot you can do with Salem if you applied yourself to it. But what we got is a vaguely diet Sauron-ish figure sitting in a creepy castle, like we're in a nondescript cookie-cutter JRPG setting.

Some of Salem's scenes do hit well, and I can only really credit the artists and Jen Taylor's solid performance for that, particularly scenes of her exuding a serene and otherworldly, yet intimate and almost motherly presence, like a whisper given form. More a voice than a person, more a presence than a form.

This was the Salem I think could have worked best with canon RWBY if they had stuck to it. Keep her a largely formless being whose mere voice compels madness and ruin, whose invisible hand has moved the pieces towards a single end.

It sort of reminded me of the one Mephala quest from Skyrim, an unassuming, dark voice beckoning from behind a humble, wooden door tucked in a corner most would overlook until one wanders too near, or rather... seeks it out. Another mentioned Xal'atath from WoW, who is an ancient evil bound in a weapon. All three performances sound incredibly similar too.

I sort of like the idea of Salem leaning more into this trope than the fully physical being we see in the show. Have her start out as this ancient influence, whispering in the ears of Hunters promising power, perhaps bestowing weapons cursed with Grimm-like energy that slowly eats away at them. Hey look, cursed weapons, almost like weapons are an important and recognisable aspect of RWBY, and the idea of an ancient evil possessing your rocket-powered katana assault rifle instead of just a sword or dagger would have been a novel take on this familiar trope.

Have her gain power and influence throughout the series, and if you ever feel like making your pale-faced dark lord mommy character to hit your arbitrary waifu quota, you can just justify it as "she's powerful enough to enter the material plane now" and call it done.

I think it's the things Salem creates that should evoke more physical fear. The weapons she's made. The progressively stronger, more vile abominations she can turn Grimm into. The way she can tug a few strings and turn entire nations against each other. Salem doesn't need to appear as more than a very well-performed voice and a wisp of black smoke or a glowing red eye to be scary. Her works can speak more to her power than any fight scene or rainbow beams from her hand possibly can.

Because maybe, Salem is someone you just can't fight. She's not a problem you can solve with violence, but instead of an immortal, super-powerful mage who realistically should have killed Remnant ten times over yet chooses not to, she has a reason to need pawns. Her influence is strong, but she needs vessels to carry out her will, i.e. Grimm and people like Cinder. Why play a game of chess with Ozpin for thousands of years when you could have just flipped the board over any time you wanted? When the only canonical inconvenience was waiting 20 minutes to an hour to regenerate, good as new?

At least with this depowered, more subtle portrayal of Salem, she still had to play by the rules. She still had to be the Black Queen the show loves to symbolise her as. But really, given enough time, Salem will no longer just be the Black Queen. She'll be the whole board. Playing Ozpin's own pieces against him. Adding pieces to herself. Expanding the playing field so she covers everything.

And she'll do all of this one well-placed turn at a time. To me, that sounds more like the kind of game an immortal would play. Not... bringing six or seven dudes to your moonlit villa (most of whom died either betraying you or being betrayed by the same group members), sitting on your throne for the past few centuries when you could have made a few giant whales in advance, marched into each Kingdom at any time and wiped out all opposition through sheer overwhelming brute force alone.

Canon Salem is mishandled in canon because she had all the power, time and Grimm to take the Relics the boring, straightforward way, but thinks she's too cunning and smart to resort to that, so she just... does it the hard, inefficient way instead, because that's what real, mastermind dark lord characters are supposed to do.