RWBY General Discussion

Administrivia.Handling Spoilers says we do not spoiler tag trope names in examples.

I mean, we're not supposed to do that either, but if literally everything except the name is spoilered, it doesn't work as an example either.

I believe the reasoning being if you have to actually look to see if you want to know, it's already failed as a spoiler and example.

Edited by LSBK on Nov 16th 2018 at 8:28:39 AM

That makes perfect sense. After all, examples are meant to exactly that: examples. Not an exhaustive list of all tropes that can apply.

Yes, but there's some examples that are very important to the characters that are very hard to write without either breaking it up with a bunch of spoiler tags or tagging the entire thing.

By "breaking it up with a bunch of spoiler tags", do you mean that the example will consist of lots of "blocks" of whited-out text connected by prepositions and other sentence connectors that typically cannot act as spoilers? Because that's perfectly fine. Just find the keywords and key phrases that definitely are spoilers in and of themselves.

Since we're talking about the character sheets, has anyone considered my earlier suggestion for Ilia? Or is already implemented?

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 16th 2018 at 6:20:56 PM

Regarding spoiler-tagging. Remember that Administrivia advises not to spoiler-tag 100% of an example because it defeats the point of spoiler-tagging in the first place. The untagged information is what clues in people to know whether or not to risk reading behind the spoiler tags. But if you spoiler tag the entire entry, there's no way to know except by uncovering the spoiler tag.

If an entry needs to be 100% spoiler tagged, it shouldn't be on the page.

That's the general advice on Administrivia when it comes to writing examples. That need spoiler tags. The other advice is not to swiss-cheese entries with tags that are covering every other word or sentence (Marq's suggestion is swiss-cheesing). Anything that makes an entry hard or ugly to read if you don't 'show spoiler tags' shouldn't be encouraged. I think that's on the How to Write an Example instead of the Handling Spoilers.

Well, right now, they're focussed on whether or not Ozpin can be trusted. They're trying to figure out how dangerous to them he really is. I don't think that's worst-case scenario thinking.

I certainly don't think focussing on whatever Salem's full plan for humanity is, is the worst-case scenario either — even if it's as simple as it seems and she really does just want to wipe out humanity (bear in mind that Captain Capsase has been adamant for the past few years that he believes Salem's actually on a Rage Against the Heavens bender, so killing humanity would be a step in the plan and not the plan's end-goal), that's not the worst-case scenario.

For me, the worst-case scenario is that Raven and Leo are right — that Salem cannot be stopped. That is what is what they have both claimed. It's strongly indicated to be the reason they've turned their backs on Ozpin. So, the 'worst case scenario' is that this is what Ozpin is hiding — Salem can't be stopped, he knows it, and he's getting people killed trying to stop her anyway.

If so, it does make sense why some people will choose to walk away from Ozpin, like Raven has done. Or why people decide that they may as well support her side in the hopes that they'll live a bit longer than they would have if they'd opposed her (both Leo and Roman came to that conclusion — although it's strongly indicated that they did so for different reasons). If she can't be stopped, then there's nothing you can do to stop her from destroying humanity.

Now, some people might conclude that you may as well keep fighting her anyway — you've got nothing to lose that you weren't already going to lose by not fighting her (she'll destroy humanity either way).

But that's going to be down to personality, the kind of character a person is. And, for me, when you look at the kids as they currently are, the only one likely to decide to keep fighting because there's nothing to lose either way, is Ruby. And the others are the kind of people that won't let Ruby do that alone. So they'd continue — but for Ruby, not Ozpin.

So, for me, it depends on what Ozpin is hiding and how the kids react to it. But I do think there are a range of possible scenarios here — from continuing the fight (and probably surprising Ozpin in the process), keeping their promise to get the Relic to its location but leaving after that, or not being able to agree as a group on what decision to make in the long run. The key will be what Ruby decides to do.

Yes and no. There is the option that what Jinn shows is something the kids interpret in the worst possible light about Ozpin. But they could still learn something about Ozpin they can sympathise with but if it's overridden by greater truth that outweighs the sympathy, then that could become the driving factor in the decisions they make. It's not a zero-sum game. It doesn't have to be either-or.

Yes. But that doesn't mean characters can jump from A to Z; they might need a journey first.

Assuming that Oscar can keep doing that, and assuming that we don't have the possibility of the Goa'uld fake-out scenario occurring (Goa'uld could pretend the host was speaking and making the decisions when it's really the Goa'uld in control all along).

If Ozpin really can do that, that really would put him into genuinely dodgy territory. But it's a thought.

I got the impression that he convinced the Council to go along with this. Which is still a sign of the power he wields over the Council, but isn't yet the same thing as circumventing the Council entirely (the operative word there being 'yet').

When Ozpin was talking to the Vale Council, there were three shadow people. Given that the headmaster takes the fourth seat, that does suggest that the Kingdom councils are made up of four members. That would certainly fit in with Ozpin's obsession with the number 4, but make things horrendous should a tie-breaker ever be needed. As you mention, there the implications of the WoR episodes (an odd number does make more sense for tie-breaking purposes), but I didn't want to discuss it before because we don't know for absolute certain (and we don't know if different kingdoms have different numbers).

Edited by Wyldchyld on Nov 17th 2018 at 3:10:23 PM

It's here. The lore.

• Salem was locked in a castle by her father. A great warrior known as Ozma conquered the obstacles of said castle and busted her out. They fell in love.
• It was a time when humans held incredible magic, Salem included. Ozma's weapon was even a magician's staff. Lowkey elementbending seemed to be the norm.
• Ozma passed away to a simple sickness. Salem did not find it right or fair, and went to the God of Light - both Gods were living amongst men in secluded shrines at the time - to plead for his resurrection.
• No such thing happened. To do so would pervert the natural cycle of life and death. Salem is not discouraged and goes to the God of Darkness - who's got them creepy Nuckelavee moves - to ask the same. She does not mention that she visited his brother beforehand.
• He heeds her request and Ozma is brought back, obviously freaked out. God of Light shows up at the dark shrine and obliterates him. God of Darkness brings him back. They very nearly come to blows. God of Darkness in particular is upset because it is not fair how one woman finally showing up to pray to him and to ask for assistance is regarded as bad.
• Sensing something's amiss, God of Light explains that Salem previously visited him. Ozma is killed, again, and Salem is brought before the brothers, cursed with immortality.
• Having tried every method of suicide - we see a shadow of her turning a blade on herself, spooking Ruby out - she decides to turn the gods' creation against each other. She travels the world, telling people how she stole the immortality from gods, arising an army to go and beat them up.
• That plan doesn't work. God of Darkness decides to obliterate not just the party Salem gathered, but the entiriety of humankind but Salem. They then depart, leaving her on her own. On his way out, God of Darkness smashes the moon in pieces.
• God of Light seems to have second doubts about the idea and meets Ozma in the plane between worlds, explaining the situation at hand; he will bestow the Relics - a lamp, a sword, a crown and a trident - upon the world as fractions of their power. Once all four are gathered, the gods will return to judge humanity. Should it be proven adequate, they will return to live amongst them. Else, mankind would be wiped out again.
• Ozma has moral hangups about it, initially wanting to go back to the afterlife to spend his time with Salem, which is obviously impossible. God of Light cautions him that the woman he loved is long gone even if Salem herself lives.
• Ozma - or rather, Ozma's consciousness shoved into a random dude - wakes up to the modern world of Remnant. He finds it a brand new place. Faunus and the Dust show up then, though the reasons for that are unexplained. In fact, how the new world rose from the ashes of the old one is kind of skipped.
• Ozma hears of a Witch living deep in the woods and wielding incredible power. That's Salem. The two of them reconcile. Salem tells him that it was the gods who are at fault for the cataclysm - which is technically true - while Ozma does not tell her of his mission.
• Salem observes that they could very well become the new gods of the world. Ozma follows the idea. Soon they're revered across the land and have four daughters - who are most likely the original Maidens.
• The world is still very much divided. Ozma's not happy about it. Salem's cheerfully indifferent. He finally spills the beans about his secret mission. She thinks it doesn't matter now - and it very well could not, since the only way for the gods to return is to gather all four relics together - but he's not convinced and tries to smuggle the daughters out. She notices.
• They fight. The kids are implied to become collateral. Ozma dies and is reincarnated into a body after a body, slowly building up the web of precautions and backup plans for the future. He asks Jinn a question "how do I defeat Salem", only to hear "you can't".

The next episode is called "So That's How It Is", which is mildly amusing to me, but can I just say that the gods are very much on the Classical Mythology kind of godhood, i.e. incredibly thin-skinned petty dicks? God of Light tries to make some amends, at the very least, but it still strikes me as disproportionate, killing the entirety of humanity over one woman scorned.

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Nov 17th 2018 at 6:35:30 PM

Yeah, I'm now pretty much convinced I was right and the Gods are the final villains, because they are very close to God Is Evil at this point. Salem shouldn't have told a lie of omission, and shouldn't have misled her followers into thinking she had an actual plan to win rather than just winging it and hoping for the best, but the Gods' response was so monstrous disproportionate that I can't ever see myself like them.

Then there's the matter of the massive hypocrisy on the part of the Gods; "we refuse to interfere with the natural order that we created for some reason even though we can and do easily bring people back from the dead and make them immortal when we feel like it." If Salem was supposed to learn that people have to die, she already did since she immediately became suicidal. If it was "value the life of others", the Gods have no ground to stand on since they literally committed planetary genocide over this. Considering they were easily able to raise the dead, and in fact did so with Ozma, I think it's more about them being mad about their creations presuming to question them.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 17th 2018 at 12:54:36 PM

I have to wonder how Raven and Lionheart learned of the truth. Were they with Ozpin when he asked the pointed question? How come Qrow wasn't around for that if he and Raven were operating as Ozpin's eyes at the same time? Does Ironwood know?

There's a missing question on the relic of knowledge, it should have three but instead it only has two. Suppose that Lionheart and Raven had their doubts about Ozpin, and took the young spring maiden down to the vault and asked about what he was hiding from them. The answers they got lead to the maiden running away in despair, Raven abandoning the cause (and later finding the maiden and taking her in), and Lionheart defecting to Salem's side.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 17th 2018 at 1:27:19 PM

Oh, the episode's out.

Episode 3! Part 1, apparently.

I... ah, goddammit. I kind of like this episode, but... I don't really like it all that much.

So Ozpin and Salem's story is a love story. Sorry, Ozma and Salem. Anyhow. It's not quite the story I would have imagined, I'll admit. Ozma was just a guy, unimportant other than having the luck of running into Salem at one point. It's Salem who starts the whole thing. Now I'll be honest, I have next to no sympathy for Salem here. Grieving over a lost one and trying to get them back, that I understand, but she went way too far for little more than spite and denial. Girl personally got humanity destroyed and made the gods lose faith on everything because she couldn't accept that people just die. If we were supposed to feel bad for her, I think this one missed the spot. The gods fucked things up as well, but I don't think they were all that unreasonable with her.

Ozma is a different matter. First, dick move by the God of Light to revive him after everything had been fucked, even if by that point the balance between life and death was pointless anyway. Second, giving Ozma that mission while knowing about Salem feels a bit jerkish to the poor guy. There had to have been someone better suited for it. Still, I don't see what Ozpin is hiding in this story. Presumably there'll be more next episode, but as it is, Ozma has done literally nothing wrong that needed hiding from others so badly. Shit, he's the freaking victim here, unless I missed something.

Aaaagh! Creepy fucking children! Seriously, what's wrong with the animation on them? Their heads are huge! Ok, more on point, why didn't we get to see Ozma and Salem's magic duel? I presume it was time constraints, because that fight would have been kickass to see.

I do have some questions about the whole matter: why did the Grimm stay behind after the God of Darkness left? How did Salem come into control of them? How did humanity come back from being literally wiped off the face of the planet? And where did the Faunus come from?

Onto the answers: So the Maidens are basically Ozma's children by proxy, I presume. They remind him of his children with Salem. Rough. As for the relics, they are indeed artifacts (and we've had their shapes confirmed: point for Wyldchyld calling almost all of them), and when together, they'll call back the gods. So we have an endgame here. The task seems deceptively simple, though (gather everyone, prove they're goodand nice, point to Salem as the biggest reason for divide amongst them, have her castle glassed by divine power), so presumably there'll be complications. I hope it's not the gods being evil pricks, they seemed rather reasonable for fantasy gods. I liked them a lot.

I wonder how much of the original Ozma is still in there. Ozpin never gave indication that he loved Salem, and Oscar certainly never became aware of that before now. The poor kid seems kinda crushed by what he's learned.

As for my opinions on the episode. It was very well animated. There were slip-ups here and there, but nothing really worth mentioning. It's fairytale structure nice and it was very well directed. CRWBY has upped their cameramanship. But... the story is kinda weak. It's certainly passable, mind, but it's not all that good, to my mind. Salem comes across as a spoiled child, deciding to turn the gods against each other and then turn humanity against them and cause an apocalypse in the process because she can't deal with death, attacking Ozma and eventually killing her children because she can't accept that Ozma disagrees with her, etc. Her conflict with Ozma feels a bit forced, since Ozma has done little to earn her (literally) undying hatred, and Ozpin himself only really opposes her because she's being a stubborn ass for no reason. And the gods feel a bit unwise, although that might have been the point. None of this feels like a good reason to cause the centuries-long conflict that drives the whole plot, to be honest.

Now, given how this episode ended, there's certainly more to come next episode, and I might be proven wrong then. Salem's still not locked in her tower (and given how much power she's exhibited, she kinda has to be locked there for the story to work), Ozpin has yet to find all the relics, etc. So I might change my opinion next episode. But so far, I'm unimpressed. This wasn't really worth all the hype of learning the big secret behind Ozpin and Salem, at least not yet. We'll see.

There's certainly a lot more stuff to be seen and discussed in this episode, but I'll cut myself short here and talk about it as other people mention it. I don't want to make a huge post, and I'm sure people like Wyldchyld will analyzed this episode better than I could right now.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Nov 27th 2018 at 11:06:58 AM

Except that won't happen.

The Gods are well-aware who's responsible for the division in mankind. They should have punished Salem and her allies, not wipe out the entire humanity. God of Light's speech to Ozma is not a second chance for mankind either, it's an ultimatum. Once you gather all Relics, you'll either be absolved or destroyed. Now, simply leaving the Relics be would suit Salem of old just fine, but Ozma not only going on with his mission but trying to smuggle the kids out has proven too much, especially if the theory that dropping into the Grimm Pool exacerbated Salem's negative qualities further is right.

That she's trying to gather them now means either of three things: she thinks she can win a fight against Gods now (chancy, but the most likely), she wants to destroy the world to end her own suffering (chancy) or simply wants to keep the Relics away from Ozpin, believing him to be in the wrong.

Yeah, this.

I'm almost 99% sure we're not supposed to like the Gods, and suspect they're going to be the final villains after how brutally they Kicked The Dog in this episode. Salem acted like a spoiled child because...Well she basically was raised locked away in a tower for some reason, and IMO it's not unreasonable to ask two divine entities who are clearly more than capable of raising the dead to do so. They haven't given an actual reason beyond a platitude about the natural order for their refusal to do so or alleviate other forms of suffering from the human condition they created, and the most sensible reason I can think of, that it would cause the dark brother to become upset because he insists on things having to die, is clearly not the case since he didn't give a shit about the rule.

Pardon me, but what's "that" exactly? I said a lot of stuff on my post and I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Undeniably. That's actually my chief question right now: Why did you not strip her of immortality and end her then and there alongside her armies? I can kinda understand "Salem oculd convince all of humanity to turn on us in time", but the answer to that should logically be "kill Salem", not "Kill literally everyone but Salem".

I didn't interpret it as that, but I can see it as a possibility. I understood it more as "We'll give you a chance to fix what your girlfriend fucked up. If we think you didn't get it right either, well hit the reset button and try again with someone else.

As for why Salem is trying to gather the relics... I don't think it's either thing. I'm not sure what it would be, but none of those possibilities strike me as likely for Salem at the moment.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Nov 17th 2018 at 5:09:05 PM

I'm kind of torn, on the one hand, this was a good story, and it did answer a lot of questions (some I had been wondering about, but I don't think other people had been dwelling on), but on the other hand, it doesn't really seem like Ozpin actually did anything wrong that would justify hiding this.

Like, honestly, he seems like the biggest victim here. Also, he said he reincarnates as a punishment for not stopping Salem, but going off of this, that's not what happened, and he really did have a choice.

I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised with the God of Darkness wiping out all of humanity, but the God of Light seemed to be somewhat of a dick too. He really should have told him what had been going on with Salem instead of being vague about her not being the same person Ozma had known.

So overall, good, but I feel kind of disappointed.

@TheLovecraftian: I'd be dissapointed to if I shared your interpretation, but as I said, I think the Gods are intended to be the bad guys her. Salem's manipulative tactics to rally humanity against the Gods were bad, and it was wrong of her to go against the Gods without any idea of whether they could actually be beaten, but at the end of the day the Gods are the ones that committed planetary genocide after their creations united against them, which says a lot about how much they value their creations. Then The God of Light (rather than both of them) tasks Ozma with uniting humanity in order to gain their forgiveness. I think they did this on purpose once they realized humanity had come back from dust or whatever ended up happening.

Everything about this story works so much better if you assume it's going to end in true JRPG fashion with our heroes killing the Gods, and seeing as the show started off with a reference to His Dark Materials'', I think I'm on the same page as the writers.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 17th 2018 at 2:10:22 PM

I dunno, I can kind of empathize with them. The God of Light was patient and and honest with Salem, and only chided her when she refused to accept what he said. The God of Darkness seemed elated to finally have someone going to him for help, and angry that his brother was, in his point of view, trying to stop that. They managed to settle their argument without a big fight after they noticed she was lying to Darkness, and they punished her and only her. They then went massively overboard with punishing literally every human for Salem's errors, but as it stands, I can empathize with them more than I can with Salem's actions. The gods were certainly massive dicks, but I can't really see them as villains as it is.

Is committing genocide not cause to call them villainous? That's what they did. Salem's rebellion was wrong because of the manipulative tactics she used to rally support for it, and she deserves some of the blame for the end of the original human race, but saying humanity got what was coming to them sounds uncomfortably close to victim blaming survivors of real life genocides; I don't understand how calling them Gods gives them the right to kill literally the entire human population as collective punishment.

I think what's going on her is that elements of this story are clearly intended to parallel Abrahamic mythology, and that makes people raised with those values systems uncomfortable about criticizing aspects of those belief systems, so people tend assume when a story creates parallels to the fucked up elements of that mythology, it's going to descend into the usual apologetics. Sorry if that's kind of an OTC thing to say, but the show kind of went there.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 17th 2018 at 2:20:05 PM

On a godly sense, I've seen worse, for pettier reasons, without one of them going "Ok, we might be able to get this running if we try again" right after. I mean, in the bible itself, God floods the world and leaves one guy alive to try and get the next go to be better (And you mentioned that just as I wrote this myself). I don't see these two, whose only error until said genocide was giving Salem a curse that ended up being a gift, as properly villainous.

Mostly though, I'm disappointed because I found the story underwhelming. It just kind of happened because Salem was a petty, vindictive child, and then then the gods decided to be world-scale petty dicks. And Ozma was barely involved in that at all. That, and the fact that the moon getting destroyed was just inserted into the whole thing as an afterthought. I guess I just expected something a little deeper and more meaningful than what we got. Maybe next episode will give me that.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Nov 17th 2018 at 5:20:35 PM

Am I horrible person for finding them bringing Ozma back to life, and killing him repeatedly funny?

Edited by LSBK on Nov 17th 2018 at 1:21:52 PM

Salem was definitely vindictive and childish, but I disagree with petty; you have to think a bit more critically about the sort of world a religion with a supposedly all-powerful creator (or at least one powerful enough to prevent such things who created the world, which is clearly the case here) proposes we live in. One in which they deliberately created humanity to wither away and die with time from aging and disease, and deliberately created all the diseases we suffer from. Yet despite supposedly being benevolent, the creator(s) decree that the world must be this way and humanity must suffer because they made it to be so. That's the problem of evil, and that's the reason why many fictional settings where the Gods are meant to be sympathetic specifically prevent them from raising the dead without some horrible drawback, and/or don't make them the creators of life, the universe, and everything so they aren't actively responsible for the human condition, because the mental gymnastics you need to engage in to justify that kind of behavior from a God that did create everything, is able to alleviate suffering without much effort, and is supposed to be benevolent end up taking over the entire story and turning it into veiled apologetica ala Narnia.

It's darkly hilarious to me as well.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 17th 2018 at 2:37:30 PM

Yeah, I laught as well, in fact it was kinda narmy for a moment.

It was kind of narmy, but it also makes the Gods look like even bigger hypocrites when they demand humanity unite in harmony or be destroyed when they're doing that whole "life/death/life/death/life/death" thing from Spongebob and arguing over Ozma's life like a pair of petulant children fighting over a TV remote. Salem was childish, but they don't seem very mature either.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 17th 2018 at 2:58:16 PM

Yeah but I can said this right now:

Ozpin is Kenny.