RWBY General Discussion

I've been saying this for ages, and it's one of the reasons why I expect Vacuo to be so significant.

Ozpin's behaviour in Volumes 1-3 is exactly like the King of Vale's behaviour in the Great War: under massive pressure to act aggressively in the face of a growing threat, but he (inexplicably to those around him) resists the pressure until his hand is finally forced.

In the Great War, the pressure to act militarily was coming from Vale and the threat to take military action against was coming from Mistral. In Volumes 1-3, the pressure to act militarily was coming from Atlas and the threat to take military action against was coming from the White Fang.

I've also been pointing out something else: in The Story of the Seasons, we hear that the Old Wizard has become such a recluse that he's also The Shut-In. He sits by the window, watching the world go by, never stepping outside his door.

In Volumes 1-3, we see Ozpin doing the exact same thing. Every time a troubling situation is unfolding, Ozpin can be found in his office, gazing out of the window. Even when the attack on Vale final starts in earnest in Volume 3, he's watching it unfold from his office — initially from the window, later on surveillance feeds.

I suspect, given the other similarities, that the King of Vale was doing the same thing.

The four sisters may have done a lot of good for the Old Wizard, but they didn't fix everything. Even now, we see that Ozma has a tendency to retreat into The Shut-In-style state when things are getting difficult.

I see what happened in Volume 6 as an extension of this instinct. When the truth comes out, the heroes turn against him, and the audience finally sees just how fragile Ozma's emotional state really is, what does he do? He instinctively regresses back to being The Shut-In. This time, inside Oscar's mind. And, again, we receive some hints along the way that, just as the Old Wizard did in the past, and Ozpin did in Volumes 1-3, he's watching the world from his shut-in status, with his 'window' this time being Oscar.

In Volume 5, Ozpin said to the heroes that the only dishonourable act was retreat. I said then that probably means we'll see Ozpin retreat at some point because it's an odd thing to say: there is such a thing as a strategic retreat, where retreat is exactly the right thing to do; this suggests that Ozpin had a personal reason for disliking the concept of retreat and that this might be a flaw that bites the heroes in the arse at some point — especially since he turned away from them to say that, as if he didn't want them to see his face (the audience does see his face; he looks unhappy).

Now, Ozpin did retreat in Volume 6, and we don't know if his absence made the Cordovin situation and Volume 7 more difficult than it could have been with him helping them. However, we do see that Ozma has had the instinct to retreat in the face of emotional stress ever since the fall-out from his first reincarnation's life and death. He's again the opposite of Salem: he retreats into himself; she lashes out. But, it's a sign of Ozma's wider problem of taking all the burden for himself and sharing none of that weight with others: exactly what the God of Light warned he should never do.

Related to this, when we were discussing the preview information of the Fairy Tales of Remnant, I was looking at The Indecisive King through this lens. My theory about the story is that we'll find the Crown has given him a vision of a future without clear 'better' options, and therefore cannot help him make a clear good decision. That paralyses him because he doesn't know how to make a good decision without the Crown's help. The skeleton on the throne is therefore a symbol of a man who has stopped living (and, who indeed, wants to die because he knows too much and is paralysed by that). That's why I thought that this fairy tale may end up giving us an idea about one of the big reasons why Ozpin is so afraid to share too much information with his friends and allies. He's still haunted by the downsides of having too much information... because that's exactly how we see Leo and Raven behave: they're haunted by the knowledge they have, and to some extent paralysed by it into becoming shadows (skeletons, to push the analogy) of the people they once were.

I therefore suspect we'll see in that fairy tale the elements of what I've been talking about here: his retreat, in this story, will be to the Crown. He will be behaving as The Shut-In, but in his own head, where the window he looks out of will be the window the Crown has created for him. And the Widow is playing the part of the four sisters: the excerpt indicates she's found peace (Winter), she's rejuvenating his spent (mental) resources (Spring), encouraging him to step outside the door (Summer), and imparting the wisdom of his situation and what he needs to truly embrace (Fall).

The repeating theme we're starting to see being that Ozma's every reincarnation always needs that external 'Four Sisters' support to get him through that life: the true mistake he made in his first reincarnation was thinking that was Salem. She was the 'false Maiden', if you like. Ever since then, he's needed the 'real thing' to help him stay on his true course. This is what the God of Light intimated: Ozma will not be able to do his task alone. Trying to do that is both his biggest mistake, and the one mistake he hasn't fully come to grips with yet.

It's part of a wider issue. Just like we need to consider the build-up to Ruby's position in Volume 7, we need to consider the build-up to the Ozpin confrontation in Volume 6: he's been infiltrated by Salem, betrayed by Ironwood, lost Beacon, lost his life, initially struggled to get Oscar on board at all, was confronted by a Yang who had clearly been primed by Raven to at least some extent, and then discovered that Leo (who was implied to have been one of Ozpin's oldest friends) had betrayed him to Salem — and not recently, either, but for years.

Just as the heroes in Volume 7 are still reeling from the a loss of faith in the adults who are meant to guide them (Ozpin, Qrow, Leo), Ozpin was himself reeling from a series of emotional hits when the heroes confront him in Volume 6. We have hints in that argument of just how hard Leo's betrayal's hit him in the way he lets rip against Yang for sounding exactly like Leo.

It was bad timing for everyone. And that seems to be the story of dealing with Salem really: everything just ends up being bad timing.

That's why I've been saying that perhaps the key to the solution of Salem here is just how early Ruby has learned the truth about Salem. We know the adults, and especially Ozpin, regard the heroes as 'children' — even at the age of 18, they're still just 'kids'. Ozpin's been characterised from the beginning of show as wanting to shelter kids from their future responsibilities so that they can be kids for just a while longer (a red flag I spotted at the time, but which we've since had confirmed: Ozpin and Oscar both lost their childhood because of Ozma's reincarnation, and we've learned Spring was extremely young when she became a Maiden). Oscar also confirms in V7 that Ozpin's effectively been sheltering the adults, too (his 'he was afraid you would lose hope' line).

The pattern of people learning the truth about Salem appears to be that they get hit with this reality in adulthood, once all their flaws and any negatives from certain life experiences have become bedded in and help shape the way they handle (or fail to handle) this truth.

Most of the heroes actually don't have that baggage yet. They obviously have some life experience, but they don't have enough to have become completely worn by the world the way most of the adults seem to be.

More importantly, because the information has come from Jinn, I think the heroes have seen much more than anyone else who knew the 'full' truth has ever known: they may not yet be looking at the full context of what Jinn said, but they've been given a sizeable chunk of it (clearly not everything, so they're still missing some context — and very significant context, at that, I suspect), but they've been given more than I think people like Raven and Leo ever knew.

So, I think, after all these thousands of years, that this is the one thing Ozma has never tried — and it's possibly never even occurred to him to try this: he doesn't pull in his 'simple soul' early because his instinct is to shelter and protect, not to expose. Not just his closest allies and friends, but the entire world, too (he's sheltering the world from Salem, something we've been discussing the negatives of for years).

So, Ruby's been exposed very early to a fuller truth and context than adults like Raven and Leo ever encountered. And, while this may be something Ozma has never wanted to try, this may turn out to be the right key, after all, because Ruby has actually got some time to absorb this information in a semi-sheltered way. I know that sounds like an odd thing to say given how little actual time they've all had but the sheltering aspect comes from the fact that the primary burden still rests initially on the adults: so, while the heroes are being thrust into situation after situation without pause, they're also still not shouldering the full burden yet. They have the benefit of knowing a lot of the wider truth while seeing the adults make all the mistakes around them.

This creates a 'sheltering' effect where they can cross off ideas and options, while processing the information, in preparation for the day when they're the ones who are fully exposed to Salem with no more adults standing between her and them (which is what the show is building towards).

I don't think any of Ozma's past friends and allies have ever been in that position before, and I think it may turn out to be a blessing in the long run. Because this, finally, is the burden sharing that the God of Light originally wanted Ozma to do.

I think the show's going for a middle ground: the heroes needed to listen to Ozpin when he was telling them that the truth doesn't magically fix things, sometimes the truth has to be hidden, sometimes the truth makes things worse.

However, Ozpin also needs to learn that telling the truth sometimes needs to happen and that never revealing the truth can be worse than sometimes telling the truth.

The skill both the heroes and Ozpin are missing is when to withhold the truth and when to tell the truth. The heroes, being young, still have quite a black-and-white attitude towards truth and lying (lying is always bad, truth is always good). Ozma has been so worn down by betrayal and dealing with the fallout of people who can't handle the truth that he thinks it's best to not put people in that position: we even know how he perceives it. It's not that he doesn't trust people in an insidious way, it's that he's afraid that people lose their resilience when told the truth: they lose all hope, they give into fear. They cross the Despair Event Horizon.

As the V7 monologue suggests, Ozpin isn't a case of 'fearing fear itself', he's a case of fearing how people cope with fear when they've lost hope. He is so terrified of becoming the Hope Crusher that he's paralysed himself from telling the truth at all.

Just above, I mention that people have to remember the build-up on Ozpin's side as well as the heroes side, and how the truth coming out has been a constant case of bad timing. V7 isn't simply about the heroes having the problem of lying. The problem is also about when the right time is to reveal the truth.

People can agree with Qrow and say that the difference between Ruby and Ozma is that Ruby wants people to earn that trust and Oz doesn't trust anyone, but V7 shows us that Qrow is wrong: someone can 'earn it' in one moment, only for new information to come along later that changes the situation completely. Qrow, like the kids, seems to think that, once the truth has been earned and told, everything's fine. But it's not. Earning the truth is only the act of a single moment. New circumstances in the future can change the situation completely. It can even undo that previously 'earned' moment. That's something Qrow and the kids never considered — it never even occurred to them to consider it because they don't have the experience to.

It's that very 'what happens later' scenario that has paralysed Oz — when we look at what he says in V6, we see that this is what he's trying to tell them, but nobody really understands what he's saying; Qrow's assessment to Ruby about the differences between them in V7 shows that they still don't understand at that point. However, Ruby is clearly not reassured by Qrow's words and I think it's because her instincts are starting to niggle at that point, she's starting to become aware (at least subconsciously) that Ozpin's issue may not quite be what Qrow thinks it is.

The rest of V7 bears that out: although they all castigate Ozpin for not knowing when to lie and when to tell the truth — when to trust and when to mistrust — their learning curve in V7 is that this skill is almost impossible for anyone to truly possess without having knowledge of the future to know in advance both how people will react to the truth, and how people will then go on to cope with future events once burdened with that truth. That sounds like an ability that might be nice to have, except we have the Indecisive King as a cautionary tale about how even that isn't a solution and can be problematic in its own right.

We therefore have the heroes coming from a position of 'lying is always bad: tell the truth' and Ozpin coming from a position 'telling the truth is always bad: I have to lie'. Between them, they will find that middle ground, where they all accept that sometimes the truth must be told and sometimes the truth must be hidden.

The key is that no one person is ever going to have the ability to know exactly when to lie and when to tell the truth. Therefore, the solution is that a single person shouldn't make that decision alone without help. Have a support circle. A group where you can discuss the options and work through the problems of your own reasoning so that you can make an informed decision on a case-by-case basis.

That is the true difference between Ruby and Ozma. While Ruby, as the group's leader, ultimately makes the decision alone, she has a support circle, who gives input and different ideas and thoughts and concerns and positives. All of this can help her in her decision-making. Ozma doesn't have any of that. Oscar is the only one of all the heroes who zeroes in on this core problem in V7 and he points this out to Ironwood as the key problem the first time he's brought to the Vault of the Winter Maiden. The others, especially Qrow, don't show signs of having realised this is the true difference between Ruby and Ozma — but I think Ruby's doubt over Qrow's assessment is a good sign that she's probably going to think along similar lines to Oscar.

I therefore believe it's Oscar, not Qrow, who has identified the real difference between Ruby and Ozma: and this will be the balance that the show is aiming for us to end up with.

Or, as I've put it in the past: Ozma's true role is to be humanity's guide, not its leader.

That's another reason why I think Qrow isn't quite right in V7. In Volume 3, it's Qrow who reveals to the audience that Ozpin's inner circle never wanted Ironwood included in it from the beginning. Ozpin actually overrode their feelings to include Ironwood. Qrow's comments and anger are quite stark when he reveals that: in other words, people like Qrow actually wanted to keep more secrets from Ironwood than Ozpin did.

In V7, it's like he's forgotten that was ever the case. He's forgotten that he had real concerns about Ironwood being told anything about Salem at all, that he spent most of Volume 3 expressing serious concerns about how Ironwood was handling what little information he did know about Salem.

Now, I'm not castigating Qrow here. His Undying Loyalty has been shattered and we can see that's the greater part of his emotional idiocy with Clover in that fight. He's absolutely horrified by Clover's Undying Loyalty to Ironwood. Of course he is. He's still reeling from the fallout of his Undying Loyalty to Ozpin.

To extend what you're saying here, it's not just the audience who needs to remember that Ironwood's flaws have been on display from the beginning; Qrow needs to remember that his own mistrust of Ironwood did not begin with entering Mantle in V7. It began long ago, back when the Ozluminati didn't want Ozpin to tell Ironwood anything at all, how vocal he was in V3 that Ironwood's behaviour was already proving those fears right, and that V3 reveals that Ozpin actually had more trust and faith in Ironwood than Qrow ever did.

While it's natural for Qrow's attitude to have completely changed, especially if he's still reeling over Ozpin, it is still interesting (and illuminating) to observe how differently Qrow is feeling about telling Ironwood the truth in V7 compared to V3... and to analyse exactly why he might be feeling that way.