RWBY General Discussion

(I have got to get better and faster at editing)
At best, the only idea is that neither Light nor Dark are true gods, but more akin to Literal Split Personality. Since the book of Fairy Tales, a book that In-Universe Ozpin compiled himself, tells of how there was originally only a single god, before he decided to split himself into the Brothers. And that there are other realms out there, it's just the original God only came across empty ones for awhile.

Meaning, if they aren't true gods, but just absurdly powerful beings that can be rebelled against as Salem's attempt demonstrated, then it should be possible for them to find a way to Kill the God, it will just take a lot of time, and can't be dependent on something they gave to humanity like magic and possibly aura.

Edited by RebelFalcon on Feb 23rd 2022 at 9:08:02 AM

I've already said how contrived a Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? ending would be. Remember that even the most awesome power in the series right now is just a mere fragment of the power that the Gods themselves bestowed.

And yeah, Salem rebelled. And it failed miserably with no actual damage inflicted on the God of Darkness.

Edited by M84 on Feb 23rd 2022 at 10:10:33 PM

And I've already said how contrived a "Talk-No-Jutsu" ending would be. We disagree on each other's ideas, that's all there is to it, so lets just drop it.

And if you want a story where the Brother Gods are just powerful aliens...well, there's that one Doom crossover fic that has the Brother Gods as Maykrs instead.

Question about the Misaimed Fandom entries for RWBY.

Are the suggested/modified versions made back on the Clean-Up thread good and ready for transfer to the main YMMV?

It would hardly be "the last minute." We're just going into V9, the story's pretty clearly not going to end before V12, we hadn't even heard of the Brothers before V5, and we weren't introduced to their true importance until V6. What's more, what might not seem like foreshadowing now might well in retrospect - we still don't know where Auras and Semblances come from (in particular, where Pyrrha got her creepy little prayer), or the Faunus (or even modern Humans, for that matter), and we don't really know all that much about the Brothers, either, or Summer's mission, and TR might as well have been on a leash held by Walter Koenig. Some of the fairy tales with less obvious meanings may well already be hinting at something out there that can go toe-to-toe with them (maybe even the God of Animals - especially if Summer is a Faunus as some have suspected from the beginning). In any case, I agree with Rebel that it would feel less contrived than Oz sitting them down for a pot of hot cocoa.

Edited by TwinBird on Feb 23rd 2022 at 9:37:35 AM

Who said it would just be Oz giving a speech.

It still feels pretty silly to have the whole conflict resolved by introducing another God to fix everything.

Edited by M84 on Feb 23rd 2022 at 10:39:54 PM

I remember a meme about the Gods being talked to death. Namely that they get annoyed with Ruby's constant speeches that they get annoyed with her and just leave Earth.

One thing I want to point out: for all that talk about Lightbro and Darkbro dominate this thread, or at least do in the absence of new episodes to discuss, the characters barely seem to care about them. All of the characters who actually saw the lost fable barely, if at all mention the two brothers. I really doubt they're being built up as the True Final Boss that's more important than Salem.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that the backstory with the two brothers was inspired by Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn?

"Stalling isnt needed if the other would win, is a tactic that happen to long the game, maybe because you are making time, maybe you want to troll but this what is happeing, Ozma fullil short term wins(well, short for him really)conditions because the main one(uniting humanity) cant be done(that we know anyway).

Let remenber here: the terms are decide by the brothers: united humanity-learn the value of life and death. Salem is creating her own term(wanting the relic to destroy humanity) Ozma is reacting to it by stopin her, this is stalling and all is objecting center around this "stoping salem over and over and over and over and over" until he get tired and she wins or until end of time."

Its not a short term Win, A short term Win would be the victory at Haven in volume 5, undoing a Piece of Salem's plan which is a stepping stone to undoing her Plan later on. The Long term Victory is stopping whatever Salem has planned at the Time.

It isn't stalling because he cant win because he Can Win, he has won, over and over for years. Its just that Salem can try again later.

"Thing is, beating here is not the winning condition, we dont know what would that be and neither does RWBY, they though they could beat her and they lost in volume 8, they need to try something diferent."

They didn't lose to Salem in Volume 8, they lost to Cinder. Oz / Oscar took Salem out of Commission and the Teams plan with the Staff would have allowed for Mantle and Atlas to evacuate and leave Salem alone lacking either of the Relics. The end was Purely Cinders victory.

"She does that by atacking them in their weak spot, Leo have a huge burden of being a faunus in mistrel and being more or less largely alone and with vytal atack she isolated James from Theo(who didnt trust each other to begin with) into no cooperating, in fact she didnt convice James she was unstopbale, she also convinced him that she was better for being ruthless, for being able to cut off with stuff that dosent need like feeling or consequence, all while RWBY hide the truth, kinda like Hazel or Leo and so on."

And? My point is that her main tactic is appearing more unstoppable then she truly is, none of that refutes that.

They don't mention them by name, but they do often allude to the fact that they have to stop Salem from bringing the Relics together, and they now know that the return of the Brothers and the consequent destruction of Remnant is the reason why. For the story to end without permanently solving that problem would feel like kicking the can down the road, and I'm not sure how it would make sense to do that without a confrontation with them. (Even if the Relics were destroyed, they'd still be out there, somewhere, having shown their willingness to wipe Remnant out in a moment's pique.)

Yes but only Oz namedrops them in V8 when he's uses talk no jutsu on Hazel. Every one else just alludes to the Gods as a code red scenario to avoid.

None of the characters want to bring the Gods back and if they find a way to deal with Salem without bringing them back they will.

Cause at the end of the day Salem is their BigBad not the brothers

It's telling that Yang has No Sympathy in regards to the witch's tragic backstory.

Not helped by Salem casually dismissing her killing of Summer.

Not even just casual dismissal — more like amusement.

For whatever reason, Salem seems to have taken great satisfaction in killing Summer Rose.

Edited by M84 on Feb 24th 2022 at 9:15:38 PM

From what we know now, she did more then just kill her

Summer must have really pissed Salem off somehow

Summer kept raining silver eyed blasts down on Salem.

Straight up kikohoing that witch

Edited by FKJ10 on Feb 24th 2022 at 8:54:28 AM

Okay, just to confirm what we're doing with MisaimedFandom.RWBY (see the discussion on the RWBY clean-up thread):

My understanding is that these four entries are going to be kept, put onto the YMMV page, and the Misaimed Fandom page sent to the Cut List because there aren't quite enough examples.

Is that right?

(Note: I've just done a slight grammar/wordcruft clean-up of all four entries. The only significant change I've made is removing Put on a Bus from the Ozpin entry because he's not removed from the story, he goes into an Heroic BSoD).

• Many regard Team RWBY as the only main characters and feel that Team JNPR, Oscar and Qrow are a Spotlight-Stealing Squad, resulting in a backlash when these characters take centre stage, such as their focus during Volumes 7-8, or Jaune's arc in Volume 1. They desire the others to be Put on a Bus so that Team RWBY receives sole focus, and dislike Jaune joining Team RWBY in the Void Between the Worlds. The show itself is clear that there is an ensemble cast; Team JNPR have been deuteragonists since the beginning, even though marketing usually focusses on Team RWBY. The writers' have confirmed that the show was almost called "Remnant" instead of "RWBY", as there was never an intention to focus solely on just one team.
• The subplot revolving around the heroes shaming Ozpin was meant to serve as a stepping stone for the group learning to make their own decisions without the mentor's help. However, the way in which Ozpin is displaced rubbed fans the wrong way; the heroes' reactions to Ozpin, and lashing out at Oscar, indirectly proved Ozpin's point about keeping secrets from others. It's not helped by how fans believed that their decision to lie to Ironwood had little to no prompting, which — while meant to be seen as them learning why Ozpin kept secrets — came off to some fans as a moment of hypocrisy.
• A significant part of the fandom is sympathetic to authority figures who uphold the law, which generated controversy during Volume 6's Cordovin arc. Fans perceived Cordovin to be reasonable, just doing her job, and that actions such as deploying a Mecha against trained Huntsmen were necessary; they were shocked and angry at the protagonists stealing a military airship, blaming them for consequences such as the Grimm attack on Argus. The writers portrayed Cordovin as petty, prideful and vindictive, so were surprised by the controversy; they wanted a fun, straight-forward climax without moral ambiguity to counter Adam's darker sub-plot, and revealed that the Atlesian military considered Cordovin annoying and assigned her to Argus because they thought she couldn't bother anyone there.
• Ironwood has a devoted fanbase who see him as a strong military leader who can make the tough choices when his allies cannot, and who dislike the protagonists as naïve heroes endangering lives with their idealism. They feel Volumes 7-8 portrayed Ironwood as being the only person with a plan to save some lives in contrast to Team RWBY, who wanted to endanger everyone's lives due to having no plan to save anyone and no will to make the tough call to guarantee the salvation of some. They therefore believe that Ironwood was derailed into the role of a ruthless, impotent villain in favour of Protagonist-Centred Morality. The backlash was so strong that the writers pointed out that Ironwood had been portrayed as a deeply flawed individual from the beginning, and that he was meant to be regarded as unambiguously villainous by the end of Volume 7.

Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Feb 24th 2022 at 7:17:42 PM

I think they all fit.

Looks good but do we have a source from the writers saying RWBY's alternate name was Remnant?

I've gone digging and I can't find any source for that. How about this as a rewrite (source: RWBY Companion):

• Many regard Team RWBY as the only main characters and feel that Team JNPR, Oscar and Qrow are a Spotlight-Stealing Squad, resulting in a backlash when these characters take centre stage, such as their focus during Volumes 7-8, or Jaune's arc in Volume 1. They desire the others to be Put on a Bus so that Team RWBY receives sole focus, and dislike Jaune joining Team RWBY in the Void Between the Worlds. The show itself is clear that there is an ensemble cast; Team JNPR have been deuteragonists since the beginning, even though marketing usually focusses on Team RWBY. The writers' confirmed in the supplementary RWBY: Companion that it was always intended to be a larger story, they just couldn't introduce that world until Volume 4.

Bringing the gods into it wouldn't be about convincing Salem, it would be about dealing with The Day of Reckoning — the point of saving Salem might be to use her to demonstrate the gods are making mistakes, too. We know they do, and we know Light has acknowledged that. Whether they can learn from their mistakes is another matter. But a big part of this story is about people being fallible — even people you think are the font of all wisdom don't have all the answers. They're not perfect. That includes the gods. Light said the Brothers needed to reflect on their mistakes. The Day of Reckoning challenge suggests they've made a whole set of new ones.

The behaviour of humans has made them reflect on their actions — not necessarily to the benefit of humanity, but we did see in Jinn's visions that being confronted by an army of humans led by Salem did make them rethink their entire experiment. It made Light openly admit that the Brothers had made mistakes of their own. So, it's definitely not impossible for humans to challenge the fallibility of the gods. The issue is doing it in a way that makes the gods learn a genuine lesson rather than annihilating everything and starting anew.

That's exactly the point. The mistake they keep making is to try to force this creation they don't understand to be something they do, and throwing a fit when it doesn't work. What they need to do is accept the creation they have and standing back to let that creation develop itself. After all, they deliberately imbued humanity with the power to choose. When you give someone the power to make their own choices, you're accepting the risk that this person may make choices you don't like or don't understand. That's what the gods need to learn. They gave humanity Choice. Now they need to understand — and accept — that the price for doing so is to let humanity make their own choices.

All the scenarios I discuss start from the view that Oz has to be saved first before Salem can be saved — that's because Ozma needs to be brought around to an idea like this. It's not something he'll have ever considered because he is as trapped in a cycle of pain as Salem. When he told Hazel that all Salem wanted was release, death, he was saying that's what he wants, too. That is not the kind of place from which a person can seriously consider the idea of saving someone they think is utterly broken (because they know how broken they are). Either he's never considered it, or he's never allowed himself to hope for the possibility of it — we have to remember that his real secret is that his attempts to protect everyone else's hope is hiding the fact he's lost all hope for himself and, by extension, the unification of humanity. He almost admitted it in Volume 8, when mentioning that he was becoming increasingly concerned about how hard it is.

Two people are trapped in an endless cycle of pain that neither one of them can break. Outsiders have to be the ones to do it — they need to recognise it first, and then do it. Saving Salem cannot start with Salem (because of her Never My Fault attitude). It has to start with Ozma. What that means is that the key to saving Salem lies with first saving Ozma.

I think Volume 9 is going to give us a clue about this situation. The realm has so many allusions to Alice that it's almost inevitable that we're going to end up with some kind of "Jabberwock", and my theory is because life and death apparently exist in a delicate balance, Salem's Complete Immortality on life's side, requires some kind of counterweight elsewhere. The longer Salem continues to exist, the more powerful this counterweight becomes. It will be Salem — the cosmic weight of the deaths that are denied her. Each time she fails to die, this counterweight is empowered. And that is why that scream sounded throughout the realm when Salem is supposedly in the world of the living. It means that, somehow, she partially isn't. That scream is a sign that "something" exists — something connected to Ambrosius' warning. And that will be Salem's counterweight. Or, as we would consider it, the "Jabberwock analogue". But see my next point below.

Oh, there's definitely something we haven't been introduced to, and I think it maybe Remnant itself. I've been convinced of this since Jinn's visions. When she showed us the manifestation of magic, it consisted of a rainbow of "comets" circling four orbs. Two of the orbs were quickly confirmed as being connected to Light (gold-tinted silver; I call it the gold orb) and Dark (Purple-tinted black; I call it the purple orb). We then received a hint that the third Orb was "humanity" — the creation of the four Relics, symbolising the gifts that created humanity, formed the third orb in Light's hand when he was talking to Ozma (yellow, but with a white centre; I call it the yellow orb). In Volume 8, when people were travelling through the gates, they were streaking like comets — orbs of the same colour as the Relic orb in Jinn's vision. And the floating globules in the Volume 9 sneak peak that Ruby pokes as they seem to come from her as much as elsewhere, are also the same colour. We also saw Penny's Aura turn to gold as she transferred the Maiden power to Winter. Neither Penny nor Winter have golden Auras. And we also see gold whenever the soul-switch happens in Oscar's body, and whenever he mystically activates the cane. And, when the Ozpin, Oscar and Penny all made the screen fade to white (Volumes 3 & 8), that wasn't pure white — it was yellow/gold tinted.

That leaves the fourth orb: cyan-tinted green. We have seen absolutely no representation of this anywhere else — except once. And that is when Oscar used the magical streamer attack on Salem when she grabbed Emerald and Yang. His streamers were green, but there were cyan tints. And he had huge ghost rainbows forming around him when he used it — like a "remnant" of the rainbow streamers that Salem tortured him with (Salem has very tiny ones, so I don't think this is simply animation special effects giving us "camera lens glare" — it is disproportionately large and noticeable compared to Salem's, so I think it's connected to the loss of his magic over time). But this is the only time I've seen anything coloured in accordance with the fourth orb... of course, he's fighting for Remnant itself, not just humanity, and green has been his colour since his original self. But, my point is that the fourth orb has remained a mystery, is the last part of the equation, and may even be the key to everything — Remnant itself.

After all, we know this: when Qrow told the story in Volume 4, he said that it didn't matter how much of Light's creations Dark destroyed, life always came back. When Dark destroyed humanity, that's all he did. He didn't touch the rest of the world — not plants, not animals, not the planet. And, sure enough, humans came back. However, when Light spoke to Ozma, he said that — this time — they won't just destroy humanity, they'll destroy the planet, too. Ignoring for a moment the fairy tale statement that the gods can't break free of Remnant unless they take back all the essence they gave out, the implication here is that Remnant is the reason why life keeps coming back. As long as Remnant exists, life will keep returning — regardless of whether or not the gods will it. So, if they want to truly end humanity forever, they must destroy Remnant itself. So, what do we have here, conceptually speaking? Mother Earth. At least, a Remnant equivalent. In a sense, Remnant is both a living being and a Relic in her own right. She's the ultimate key to everything.

So, in short, I think the four orbs are: Light (Creation), Dark (Destruction), Humanity (Choice), Remnant (Knowledge).

And this would be why I think Volume 9 is going to be very plot important — now, depending on how crazy it gets, we may need hindsight to realise just how relevant. But I do think there are going to things that are learned in this place that directly impact the ability of the heroes to eventually find a solution to what's happening.

Zwei. The God of Animals is Zwei.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Feb 25th 2022 at 10:37:22 AM

That said, I do not expect Remnant itself to rise up and punch out the Brother Gods.

As for Zwei…yeah I’m fine with that.

Edited by M84 on Feb 24th 2022 at 8:45:37 PM

"The writers' have confirmed that the show was almost called "Remnant" instead of "RWBY", as there was never an intention to focus solely on just one team."

Im with rebel in the show really should have called Remnant, really RWBY and JNPR often give me digidestined vibes, im the only one?.

"Fans perceived Cordovin to be reasonable, just doing her job, and that actions such as deploying a Mecha against trained Huntsmen were necessary"

Does fans think that? I will said for me the whole thing feel contrived a absurd escalation of conflict and feel it was mostly the writer wanting to introduce a mecha fight somehow.

And while I'm mostly certain Wyld was joking about Zwei being a god...I'm not sure I am totally joking.

Mainly because I know of media where the Team Pet actually was a god in disguise. Such as Fou from Fate/Grand Order.

"Its not a short term Win, A short term Win would be the victory at Haven in volume 5, undoing a Piece of Salem's plan which is a stepping stone to undoing her Plan later on. The Long term Victory is stopping whatever Salem has planned at the Time. "

For Salem and Ozpin whatever is happing here it is a small obstacle, you are this as hundred of diferent conflict when it true is the same conflict repeating itself over and over, is clear for Oz that this "I win if I beat her" is not the ideal condition because he cant win, and yes, "Beat her" is not his win condiction because that only make his pain ease for a time, is why Oz have lost hope: he dosent belive mankind can be save and he cant share is pain with anyone because they probably will be killed, deflect or betray him.

"none of that refutes that."

It does because the first think she does to see how she can crack someone, let remenber she want to destroy the tower to incomunicate everyone, is when they are alone that she does the "Im inevitable" shtick, just how everyone find out they have being out manuver in volume 7 when she break James and she did not by saying she was unstopable but by pretty much saying she won because she dosent care and he does(in a way, furthering James separation of everyone).

Apearing unstopable is one of her bag of trick but is not the main one, is finding the weakness of everything, Oz build walls that she tears down, he beat her, both retreat, sense and repeat, is a knife fight were both bleed but neither can die.

It works.

Nah I got similar vibes.

Now im wondering which crest will go to each chararter right now, I wonder if jaune would be hope or not.