History Headscratchers / RWBY

[[folder: How Salem's Curse Works]]
* Many believe that Salem's curse has a built-in win condition i.e. as soon as she enters the right state of mind and appreciates the importance of life and death, it will be lifted; the gods don't have to lift her curse themselves. But hasn't the story, and the underlying logic, effectively disproved that? The first and biggest issue is that, shortly after getting her curse, Salem began trying to kill herself. If she's seeking death, most would say she appreciates its importance. After all, if she'd killed herself as soon as Ozma died, she'd never have turned the gods on each other, and everyone would be happy. But granted it's implicit she was only trying to kill herself to see Ozma again, so one could say she hadn't actually had the needed revelation. But being separated from Ozma was the only reason her immortality was a curse at the start. Could she only win her game if she somehow made herself stop wanting the promised reward? Does she have to realize that the planet would get overcrowded if there was no death? How is only her being immortal going to teach her that? Perhaps the gods have a special awareness of some cosmic reason that almost all beings need to die, but then how is a mere human supposed to learn that reason no matter how long they live? Does she have to realize that living forever simply sucks because you'd get tired? Okay, but if there's an afterlife, either there's a state of existence in which such boredom isn't an issue, or trying to escape such boredom is futile for anyone. Plus, Ozpin claims she wants to kill herself in the present, and it's obviously not to get back with him, so if he's telling the truth, wouldn't her curse have been lifted by now? It seems the gods deliberate actions are the only way Salem's curse can be lifted, and when they said she could die once she appreciated the importance of death, they really meant "convince us you have, and we'll remove your curse" or are we missing something?
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[[folder:Salem’s control over the Grimm]]
* If she can control them well enough to make them attack population centers (I mean how else would Ozma know she had anything to do with it if there wasn’t some kind of change after their falling out) then why couldn’t she just have the Grimm swarm Beacon back when Amber was first hidden there until any resistance was inevitably overwhelmed?
** We've never seen Salem directly control Grimm from across the ocean, only when she's relatively close, and Salem generally doesn't leave her castle until the attack on Atlas. Cinder had to set things up for a massive Grimm swarm because Salem operates from a distance through pawns and doesn't like to do things personally.
*** Then how was she apparently making them attack settlements in a way that Ozma could trace back to her?
*** Jinn's statement that Ozma traced them back to Salem was incredibly vague and referencing a vague event that happened at a vague point in time very long ago. Without any more information there's no way to tell ''how'' he tracked them back to Salem, just that Jinn stated that he did. Most likely he just gathered information over years or decades and followed clues back to Salem.
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* Many believe that Salem's curse has a built-in win condition i.e. as soon as she enters the right state of mind and appreciates the importance of life and death, it will be lifted; the gods don't have to lift her curse themselves. But hasn't the story, and the underlying logic, effectively disproved that? The first and biggest issue is that, shortly after getting her curse, Salem began trying to kill herself. If she's seeking death, most would say she appreciates its importance. After all, if she'd killed herself as soon as Ozma died, she'd never have turned the gods on each other, and everyone would be happy. But granted it's implicit she was only trying to kill herself to see Ozma again, so one could say she hadn't actually had the needed revelation. But being separated from Ozma was the only reason her immortality was a curse at the start. Could she only win her game if she somehow made herself stop wanting the promised reward? Does she have to realize that the planet would get overcrowded if there was no death? How is only her being immortal going to teach her that? Perhaps the gods have a special awareness of some cosmic reason that almost all beings need to die, but then how is a mere human supposed to learn that reason no matter how long they live? Does she have to realize that living forever simply sucks because you'd get tired? Okay, but if there's an afterlife, either there's a state of existence in which such boredom isn't an issue, or trying to escape such boredom is futile for anyone. Plus, Ozpin claims she wants to kill herself in the present, and it's obviously not to get back with him, so if he's telling the truth, wouldn't her curse have been lifted by now? It seems the gods deliberate actions are the only way Salem's curse can be lifted, or are we missing something?

[[folder: Why did Jacques have access to the heating grid?]]
* Someone on the Atlas council I can understand, but when he made his deal with Watts he wasn’t on the council yet.
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*** We know Ozpin wants to summon the Gods from Jinn's visions, but only after humanity is unified (which, as stated, is no garuntee of things improving). The current group of heroes haven't discussed the issue one way or another, so we don't know their thoughts on the matter, but they still might have accepted Ozpin's overarching goal, and not just summoned the Gods yet because humanity isn't yet unified and they've only ever had access to, at most, two relics at a time.

** Ozpin indeed believes Salem wants to destroy the world by summoning the Gods before humannity is united, believing they will finally kill her afterwards, and he freely volunteers this info to Hazel and Emerald, so we can assume he said the same things to the heroes.

*** As for the ExactWords issue; Jinn also told Cinder exactly what she wanted to know when Cinder asked about what RWBY's planned; she didn't show them a past plan or one step of their larger plan. Not a huge sample size, sure, but in two out of three cases Jinn has been a BenevolentGenie despite the questions being vague enough to invite innumerable unhelpful or misleading answers, one is inconclusive, so she's not being written as a LiteralGenie.

*** As for the ExactWords issue; Jinn also told Cinder exactly what she wanted to know when Cinder asked about what RWBY's planned; she didn't show them a past plan or one step of their larger plan. Not a huge sample size, sure, but in two out of three cases Jinn has been a BenevolentGenie, one is inconclusive, so she's not being written as a LiteralGenie.

** Where was it implied that Rhodes was friends with Madam? Sure, he frequented the place, but it's a hotel. And outside of the FridgeLogic of Rhodes not doing more to help Cinder, how is it implied he's not a good person? Onscreen, he only ever shows compassion by helping Cinder then turning on her when she kills three people. And again, Madam doesn't seem that powerful; she runs a single upscale hotel; not a chain of them (despite MegaCorps like SDC existing in Remnant), works the desk later hours herself, and appears to have no real employees. And to help Cinder, Rhodes didn't necessarily need to get Madam convicted; just make keeping Cinder more trouble than its worth.

** Agree to disagree as to whether we can or should extrapolate that from a character not taking a never-mentioned alternative in a fictional world. Several other people found online came to the "corrupt Atlas" or "it was legal" conclusion. Also, and this is largely semantics, but Rhodes did help her by training her in secret for years; she just wouldn't see the benefits of the training until she was eighteen. And from a storytelling perspective, Rhodes not being the hero would seem to undermine the themes. If he was a genuinely good person, Cinder's story is that she grew up abused, but when morality and kindness did show its face, she squandered the chance it gave her by stooping to her abuser's level, solidifying that FruedianExcuseIsNoExcuse and helping to explain Cinder's hatred for Huntsmen and other ostensibly moral authorities. If Rhodes was a friend to slavery who showed some compassion, but turned on her when she helped herself more than he did by killing her abusers, the story just feels less impactful or complete.

** Somebody read my (now removed) entry on NobodyPoops. You could ask the same question about the cells Robin, Jacques, Qrow and Watts are stuck in for at least a few days. The simple fact is that adding toilets, bedding, a sink etc makes a set, digital or live-action, more trouble to create. The best explanation is that that's just his cell for sleeping, and they take him out to another part of the ship to use the bathroom, shower, (change clothes?), and maybe interact with other prisoners. Or maybe a toilet folds out of the wall, they feed him through a slot, don't give a shit about his mental health (and he's hard-assed enough to endure it) and humans on Remnant (or at least those with their auras unlocked) don't grow body hair or sweat profusely unless they want to.

** Fair enough. But whether having Salem around is any worse than having the Gods around largely depends on the assumption Salem really is invincible and will keep fighting for eternity (see above or JustEatGilligan), and that the Gods are any more predictable or easier to please than Salem is to keep at bay.

** Pros: Fully functional academy and lots of Huntsmen; a still-functioning Vault; Salem hasn't attacked it yet; it's got space for a kingdom's worth of evacuees to set up.

[[folder:So... ''is'' Alyx the Blacksmith?]]
* We know that Alyx remained behind in the Ever After and ascended into something to "fix what was broken". At this point the Blacksmith causes Jaune to hallucinate a giant Alyx standing where they were. The general implication I got from this was that Alyx got ascended into an avatar of the Tree to guide ascended Afterans into their next life. Is this wrong in some way?
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** I'm pretty sure Cinder was just waiting for an opportunity to off Neo when she was no longer useful and an opportune moment presented itself. After all, RevengeBeforeReason has been a big element of Cinder's personality up until this point. She's only gotten better at suppressing her desire for petty vengeance until she can get away with it. She's willing to put aside grudges until she doesn't need the person she hates. She did it with Watts, and she did it with Neo. Remember that Cinder is, again, a petty and evil bitch and, underneath the veneer of stability, mentally unstable.