RWBY General Discussion

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but does anyone feel that the Salem backstory shares some similarities with the anime Saga of Tanya the Evil?

@The Lovecraftian: I'd be down for a story where we have the creators coming to terms with the fact that they are flawed and fallible, and also share the bulk of the blame with what happened. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

But as much as it's overused in anime and JRPGs, the whole God Is Evil story can make for a great story when its done right.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 18th 2018 at 10:52:49 AM

I'd be okay with RWBY fighting the gods. You've gotta have some kinda villain.

I mean, they have Salem? Now granted, they've basically set it up so Talking the Monster to Death is the only option, which might not be a terribly satisfying way to conclude a show.

@Wyldchyld: As far as the whole thing about silver eyes being able to purify Salem thing goes, I don't think that's the case, and in fact the exchange between Ozpin and Salem took place before the start of the series, with the "smaller soul" that Ozpin was talking about wasn't Ruby, but rather Summer Rose, and that course of action was already tried. As it turns out, not only did it not work, Salem doesn't count as a Grimm for the purposes of the powers in the same way the God of Darkness didn't, and was completely unaffected by it. Thus leading to Summer's demise courtesy of a Salem conjured doombolt to the face. The reason this wasn't shown in Jinn's "What is Ozpin hiding from us?" question is that the phrasing made Jinn tell them what was being hidden from all the people present, and Qrow already knows what happened to Summer.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 18th 2018 at 11:35:22 AM

Huh. That was underwhelming. Pretty much absolved Oz of any wrongdoing other than his general secrecy, which doesn't exactly mesh with his "more mistakes" shpeal. Salem just sort of happened to herself and then Oz was trapped to try and unf*ck her mess. This basically just reinforced the idea that Salem's a Bad Person made of Bad who does Bad Things because she's Bad, and Oz is a dude who fights her.

Also, I'm surprised that Salem's just generically immortal. Setting aside the tortured logic of this being her punishment for transgressing against the gods, that's way easier to deal with than Oz's reincarnation deal. Generic immortals are overrated; cut her head off, stick it in a safe, and let her be immortal at the bottom of the ocean. Boom, problem solved forever.

Even the origin of the moon's destruction felt completely gratuitous. Like it was just a checklist item they had to hit; half the moon was blown off by sheer circumstantial coincidence, because it happened to be above the gods when they left.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 18th 2018 at 11:29:57 AM

That's only if you assume "immortality" just means "can't die" and not "lives forever and can't be permanently hurt". The flashback demonstrated multiple times that Salem is the latter.

Edited by LSBK on Nov 18th 2018 at 12:29:59 PM

The flashback demonstrates that she can be momentarily hurt. When she runs herself through with a sword, the blade pierces her flesh. It does not bounce harmlessly off an invulnerable hide.

Momentary harm is all you need to cut someone's head off and stick it in a box too small to house an entire human body. Just because someone can't be killed doesn't mean they can't be removed from the world for the foreseeable future. Generic immortality is Awesome, but Impractical.

Oz's immortality shpeal is a lot stronger because if you cut his head off, he sprouts back up in a new person. As a body-surfing spirit, he can never be permanently eliminated without first eradicating all humanity.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 18th 2018 at 11:32:59 AM

I mean, then either she just breaks out of the box, or her head just grows back. It just sounds like you're greatly underestimating the actual powers at work here.

Not to mention Salem's own powers which, even without the Grimm are probably greater than anyone else's on the planet.

Edited by LSBK on Nov 18th 2018 at 12:36:20 PM

@Tobias: Your suggestion might have been an option Oz gave most of his magic away to four random people who reminded him of his daughters, but now there's no one in the world powerful enough to have a hope of putting her down long enough to try some sort of means of sealing her away.

If her head grows back, then it would just mean she doesn't regenerate from the head.

Neat. So you find the part she does regenerate from and put that in the box. Sure, there's some trial and error involved, but when you're an infinitely-respawning body-surfing spirit who can literally make an infinite number of attempts and trials, that's not really a problem.

This episode pretty much definitively proved that Raven is wrong. Salem can totally be stopped. She can't be killed, but she has the weakest possible form of immortality. All they need to do is figure out what part of her she regenerates from and get rid of it. Bottom of the ocean, chuck it into space, drop it in a volcano, bury it three miles down under crushing earth, whatever keeps her from continuing to be a presence on Remnant.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 18th 2018 at 11:37:16 AM

I agree wholeheartedly about the Moon. A part of me still finds it hilarious that after all that theorizing, the moon is broken because the God of Darkness kinda bumped into it when he was leaving, but they put so much into making the thing seem important that it feels kinda like a waste.

I also agree about Ozpin and Salem. He's had almost everything cleared, with his only real slight being dishonesty, and everything else being "well,I don't personally forgive myself for what happened". Meanwhile, Salem was just kind of a dick from the start. She didn't turn, she didn't have something she was fighting for. She was jsut very childish, and had that exacerbated through an interaction with an alien perspective. It's not bad, but it feels weak for what it could have been.

Before killing Ozpin the first time her whole body regenerated from being a smear on the ground. I don't really think there's any specific bit you can just seal away, and even then you've still got to beat her in a straight fight which Ozpin barely managed before his magic declined over time.

Edited by doineedaname on Nov 18th 2018 at 1:45:03 PM

Well, if the Moon being broken is what allowed humanity (and Faunus) to reappear along with Dust, that seems fairly important. Honestly, expecting something more than seems kind of weird to me.

As far as Salem goes, I do find it kind of weird you keep going "she was just a dick from the start", given her life. Like, she had been kept a virtual a prisoner her entire life, and then the one person she actually cares about dies because sickness. People tend to react badly when faced with terrible situations.

It's not an excuse but I find it a pretty believable explanation given her actual life and the world she was in.

Edited by LSBK on Nov 18th 2018 at 12:44:08 PM

Yeah, but was it the smear where her head used to be, the smear where her torso was, the smear of her left pinkie, etc.?

In effect, the question is: if you cut her in half, which half grows back into Salem? She doesn't grow into two Salems; one piece heals, the other is chunky salsa. Okay, now try cutting her in quarters? Tenths? It doesn't matter if it's a specific atom she regrows from, it just matters which atom.

All you need to do is cut her down into a piece too small to actually function, put that piece in a container strong enough to house a growing flesh blob, and then put that container somewhere it will never be found, preferably one where natural physics such as crushing ocean depths will help to keep it sealed.

I question her ability to even use her magic as a kidney with a few pieces of intestine stuck to it.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 18th 2018 at 11:46:53 AM

I question you trying to apply some sort of consistent logic to something that clearly and intentionally is meant to defy it.

I see no reason to assume there's any set "rules" here, besides "Salem will always recover unharmed". And if there are things in the way of that recovery, it's safer to assume those things will give way before she does.

Edited by LSBK on Nov 18th 2018 at 12:47:20 PM

You make it sound easy like the heroes could just go and do that.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 18th 2018 at 1:50:41 PM

See, there's a major flaw in your logic. You're operating under the assumption that Salem is a regenerator when we haven't seen anything to indicate such. When we saw her come back from being vaporized, she didn't grow out of a single cell, she just completely respawned like she was a video game character. You're assuming that her immortality works a certain way for no reason other than because it makes your argument work.

Easy? No. But within the realm of possibility for an infinitely-respawning ultimate-warrior with centuries of experience and magic equivalent to her own (before he created the Maidens)?

If you roll the dice an infinite number of times, you're going to hit a 20 eventually. Ozpin only has to beat her once, but she can never truly stop Ozpin from trying over and over and over again until he finally hits on something that works.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 18th 2018 at 11:48:55 AM

Like, when we see her drowning she magically returned to the surface. That could of been the gods doing that directly, but given other things in the episode I wouldn't be surprised if her immortality just brought her back to the surface to breath or something.

I think some people have gotten so used to immortality being subverted that it's hard to accept that there really just are no loopholes in some situations.

Edited by LSBK on Nov 18th 2018 at 12:51:00 PM

Ozpin did win once. Then a few seconds later Salem was fine while he was still bleeding out on the ground.

There's quite a leap in going from "I got stuck on a tower for most of my life, so I'm not dealing with this loss well" to "The gods owe me this person's life because I want it back" and then to "Well, if I've been punished for not understanding the point of life, so I'll just lie to everyone and destroy the gods for this". She was just kind of immature at first, acting as if the God of Light owed her something, but manipulating the second god and then deciding to ignore her punishment and kill the gods just for not getting what she wants is a bit too much, innit?

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Nov 18th 2018 at 4:52:03 PM

Yes but it sounds every bit as impossible as achieving world peace so the Gods don't genocide humanity against with Malificent-Kratos trying to sabotage you every step of the way.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 18th 2018 at 2:00:08 PM

That wasn't "winning once", because she was standing at the end of it and he wasn't. You're missing the point. Ozpin has an infinite number of chances to find something that will contain Salem. Salem, meanwhile, has no such ability to stop Oz from just coming back and trying again. Even if the odds are 1 in a million, Oz will hit them because he can perform infinite recursions.

Salem's defeat is guaranteed by the different mechanics of Oz and Salem's abilities. She can't actually win. Her immortality only delays the inevitability of Oz finding a way to beat her.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 18th 2018 at 11:53:54 AM

Again, you're assuming that Salem's immortality works in a certain way even though nothing indicates that it does.

Also, why are you assuming it's possible for Ozpin to find a way to cheat Salem's immortality, but it's not possible for her to find a way to cheat his reincarnation?

Why does it apparently not go both ways, even though under this logic Salem would obviously be in the better position, seeing as she'd never have to train a new body, her magic doesn't run out, etc. all things that Ozpin does have to deal with.

I mean, I don't personally think either is possible, but if you do, then...

Edited by LSBK on Nov 18th 2018 at 12:59:18 PM