RWBY Spoilers Thread

She's a tiny old lady who casually sticks around the fight with a bunch of eldritch abominations. That alone should speak volumes. Then she just casually took in stride the fact humanity had a total party wipe while getting everyone to focus on more immediate concerns and effortlessly helped Oscar up using her cane. And now its suggested she somehow lost her eyes and yet still waltzes around without a single fuck to give.

Maria Caldavera is a walking, talking, wrecking-ball of badass just by existing, and I pity the fool who dares to fuck with grandma.

Edited by TheAirman on Dec 1st 2018 at 8:31:45 AM

PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/They

Hmm... we've all been assuming that Summer was the silver-eyed warrior Hazel "dealt with," but taking out a silver-eyed warrior's eyes rather than kill her - that sounds exactly like something he'd do, doesn't it?

My posts make considerably more sense read in the voice of John Ratzenberger.

"We've dealt with their kind before." Was the line he said, implying them as the group.

Besides that, I don't think SWTH were responsible for Maria's condition. They all seem too young (Salem excluded) to have dealt with granny. Her condition might have come from overuse of her eyes. Would be a reasonable caveat for a grimm killing Optic Blast.

But hypothetically speaking, if one of them were to go about removing eyes I'd pin that on Watts before I would Hazel. I don't trust anyone that walks around with that Moustache.

Edited by CryoJNik on Dec 2nd 2018 at 9:41:17 AM

If you can't handle being outed by a signature, that's on you.

Is SWTH pronounced as "swath"?

And yeah, while Hazel is one to avoid unnecessary deaths, a Silver Eyes would probably be a necessary one.

Edited by sgamer82 on Dec 2nd 2018 at 12:00:22 PM

It's the only thing I could think of that makes sense.

Those four letters don't make up any color word I'm familliar with. At least it's better than Cinder Emerald Mercury Neo. Or CEMN.

And while that is true, Hazel isn't the delicate work type from what's been shown. Especially in Dust Roids mode. At the most he'd knock them unconscious and take them back to Spooksville.

Edited by CryoJNik on Dec 2nd 2018 at 4:34:10 AM

If you can't handle being outed by a signature, that's on you.

Preview for Episode 7.

Geez, Cinder. Your murder boner is gonna get you killed.

Mileena Madness

Actually, here we have Cinder acknowledging that she's not actually allowed to kill Ruby, because Salem wants her alive, while filling Neo in on the whole secret war going on behind the scenes, and possibly giving her Salem's version of the story we were told by Jinn.

I'm kind of thinking Cinder will end up succeeding, capturing Ruby and the Relic, and bringing both to Salem. We need Ruby and Salem to have at least some level of interaction for it to seem reasonable that Ruby would be able to talk her down, and atm that seems like the most likely endgame, at least as far as Salem is concerned. Perhaps Ruby realizes that the only way to defeat Salem is Talking the Monster to Death and "defects" in order to gain the opportunity to attempt that. Or maybe that theory of mine about why Salem wants Ruby alive is right, and we're going to get a broken Ruby arc in a spectacular way.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 3rd 2018 at 6:57:00 AM

I think chances are higher Ruby goes on her own terms and not with the relic because I don't think Cinder will keep her Ruby murder boner under control.

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

Or Neo betrays her.

Mileena Madness

I mean, idk. Cinder may have actually learned her lesson this time around after she got burned by trying to go against Salem's wishes and take the Spring Maiden's powers for herself.

We have no idea what Neo thinks of all of this; if Salem's told her followers that she plans to seize the Gods powers and will use it to raise the dead (either everyone who has ever died if she wants to push the whole Dark Messiah angle or just her fallen followers and their loved ones), then Neo now has a reason to join Salem in earnest. Presumably the same reason Hazel is working for her.

In fact if that's what Salem is offering to her followers, it explains a hell of a lot, and remains perfectly consistent with her story, assuming she's told them a mostly accurate version of what happened with just the right amount of self-serving bias.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 3rd 2018 at 8:33:21 AM

Gotta say, the Neo vs Cinder brawl is my favorite post Monty animated fight due to actually nailing what makes RWBY fights good so hats off.

Neo is always fun so I’m glad she’s back

I like the horror angle they went with and I’m pretty pleased with this episode.

Tbh, about Salem and Ozma, I totally respect the backstory Rooster Teeth made, it absolutely ups the quality of the show imo like the Avatar backstory in Korra

Can’t respect the deities after this, what a perfect fairytale tragedy.

More Greek tragedy IMO, since it ends with basically all the mortals involved getting fucked over.

It’s really good pathos

You have our two leads basically sympathetic but make the wrong choices with their ordeal that brings them misery. Doesn’t help too the gods aren’t what I would view as ideal in how they choose to handle things.

I like too how this revelation makes Raven’s position retroactively more understandable even though she’s still not a good person. Ironically, or so, she may be now someone who’s willing to put in a fight against what seems like the inevitable.

The big emphasis they put on we can’t kill Salem makes me think they’re going for a twist resolution where that part of the conflict is solved by through some method having her actually accept her wrongs.

There Maria life is good speech that not something you hear from a story were the main goal it to kill the big bad.

I expect talking Salem down is in the cards, and Ruby will be the one who does it, but I'm not sure that will be the end of things; while Salem's immortality seemingly has a Curse Escape Clause that can be fulfilled without initiating Judgement Day, Ozpin's immortality explicitly requires him to fulfill his mission to the God of Light, and I doubt the series is going to end with the Gods returning, judging humanity favorably, and everybody being okay with that; that would make them massive Karma Houdinis, and considering how easy it was to provoke them into causing the apocalypse the first time around, I'd be worried how long humanity would continue to live up to their expectations in such a scenario.

That leads me to believe that a confrontation with the Gods is in the cards. It might involve talking them down as well and getting them to leave peacefully, but I'm not expecting a cartoon that best known for its elaborate action setpieces to end without a final climatic battle. Some people don't like the idea of the show Going Cosmic and ending with a battle against the creators of the universe, but I personally think that would be awesome if the artists and animators are up to the task of creating such an epic conclusion.

It crossed my mind that what Maria said is "the value of life and death" that Salem has to learn, but that would be so hilariously hypocritical on the part of the Gods that I kind of discount that.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 5th 2018 at 2:48:29 PM

Why is it hypocritical? There's obviously something important about the cycle of life and death that shouldn't be disrupted. It's why this whole mess got started on the first place, and when the God of Light brought back Ozma the had to utilize Loophole Abuse to avoid a similar disruption.

Plus isn't failure to understand the value of life and death kind of the whole reason Salem got cursed with installed in the first place?

Edited by sgamer82 on Dec 5th 2018 at 1:14:30 PM

If the message is “life is precious, life is beautiful, and it must be protected” rather than “accept that death and loss is inevitable”, then it’s a blatant example of “do as I say, not as I do” from Gods.

Except it isn't. The God of Light's whole thing was that there was a balance. Death is as important as life. I haven't seen the new episode so I don't know Maria's take but the God of Light had been fairly consistent, if vague, here.

There is a balance between life and death. A balance that is delicate enough that it shouldn't be upended lightly. Salem tried to circumvent that and paid the price by being cursed until she did get it. The worst thing the gods did there was underestimate how strongly within Salem Never My Fault ran. All of this is still shown when Ozma is given his reincarnations. He isn't simply brought back to life like the God of Darkness did it, he lives through someone already there on Remnant.

Even without a proper explanation it's clear there's something going on.

Edited by sgamer82 on Dec 5th 2018 at 1:24:20 PM

Yes, but it’s not clear that something would necessarily reflect well on the Gods, ie if it’s just the Light Brother’s aesthetic sensibilities acting up and insisting on a neat and symmetric universe, that’s not a compelling reason for people to suffer and the Gods are neglectful, if the Gods slowly devour the souls of the dead to sustain their immortality and divine power, then they’re monstrous tyrant who deserve to be overthrown. Both of those are consistent with what we’ve seen and heard, more so than any defensible reason for things to be the way that they are.

Ultimately, the two obvious mundane explanations for what the “importance of life and death” are meant to be fall flat in the setting. Accepting loss is irrational in a world where death is demonstrably not irreversible or inevitable and seemingly only happens in the first place because two glowing sky men say so, and if there’s a reason beyond that nobody but then seems to know about it. Meanwhile, the Gods absolutely do not respect that value of their creations lives; the God of Light expressed some regret for the failure of their experiment, but not for the lives lost, and fully intends to destroy humanity permanently if they don’t live up to his standards. Not exactly a nurturing paternal authority who values and cherishes individual lives.

Meanwhile there’s some esoteric in-universe reason why the balance of life and death is important (ie raising the dead will eventually cause spiral energy to destroy the universe) that only he and his brother know about, the God of Light is either a moron or gave Salem her punishment solely for the purpose of making her suffer rather than to teach her a lesson, since the only way she could ever conceivably learn that is if one of the Gods told her.

Perhaps that was the point; force her to come back to the Gods and ask what the importance of life and death are, but that makes it seem like the punishment was more about her refusal to accept the Gods’ authority than her lack of respect for the sanctity of life and death.

Now, Salem gor mad and interrupted the God of Lignt mid-explanation, but surely she isn’t the first person to ask for a resurrection, just the first to go to his brother for a second opinion on the matter. If the God of Light was going to provide more than a platitude, surely that in-universe reason for a rule against resurrecting people would be at least somewhat well known after disappointed pilgrims returned empty handed?

In fact why don’t the Gods broadcast the fact if there’s a good, necessary reason for them to be subjecting their creations to all the horrors of the human condition? It’s such an obvious question that literally every philosopher on the planet would be asking in a world where can take a stroll and go chat with God. To me it seems like the Gods are either morons or hiding something.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 5th 2018 at 5:25:37 AM

At the risk of sounding rude, I'm going to be blunt: After you sure you don't have some personal issue mixed in with this? I know I asked this already and you said no but, being honest, I have a sincerely hard time fathoming how you can do consistently write up multiple walls of text on this matter without there being some personal or philosophical belief existing/conflicting with what we see. If so, I won't ask you to say what it is, but if it's there it might be work acknowledging as possibly coloring your viewpoint.

I'm not trying to dodge the question, either. I haven't had a chance to look at your response in detail beyond your first paragraph or so. From what I did see you seem bound and determined to give the God of Light's actions as negative a connotation as possible (the balance is only a matter of his personal aesthetic makes more sense than 'reversing death had consequences?') and to note that it seems less like "death isn't irreversible" and more "death isn't irreversible without cost or consequences", which the gods might very well be right to prevent.

I'll try and look at things closer later to see if there's anything to add.

For all we know they may well have done that. Where there are gods there are teachings of those gods. For all we know Salem knows exactly what they're warning her about when it comes to the balance and all that, but doesn't care because it prevents her getting what she wants.

Yes, that may be a baseless assumption, but it's no more or less baseless than anything else.

I also think it's worth reminding you that, if the Creation Myth Qrow told is at all accurate, the world exists as a compromise between a god of creation and a god of destruction. Something like death very well could be inevitable in that context, reversible or not. And before you point out that said god of destruction was the one doing the reversing, I think we can agree that the God of Darkness is not the type to consider consequences.

Edited by sgamer82 on Dec 5th 2018 at 4:07:20 AM

I severely disagree with the notion that the Gods did nothing wrong but their worst act being not realizing how spiteful Salem could be.

Greek mythology has a very clear and understandable reason on why you shouldn’t resurrect the dead even in any case (though heroes still skirted that rule) beyond don’t disobey Zeus and it is the dead overrunning the world. God of Light and Death doesn’t even explain that beyond fiat of don’t do it because balance we’re not gonna explain because uh ... fuck it, we said so, it’s our rules.

Which would honestly be fine if people at least realize that. Where things really get off the rails is when they genocide humanity and before that curse Salem to an existence that is uh, in hindsight, a pretty sadistic and pretty hard way for her to accept the value of death and life. The point of that was not really rehabilitation, it was straight up punishment and that’s before she went evil and tried to get the collective might of humanity against them.

That’s her bad but when you possess such power you no sell anything they can throw at you, you’ll have to forgive me that I raise some eyebrows at the conclusion being let’s kill them all We don’t know even give Old Testament God a pass on that (hopefully). Especially when we see a good portion of humanity that didn’t even join in on the fight, just doing other shit beyond waging war.

And there is literally nothing special about the first humanity beyond magic and obeying God, that is it. This may seem like an unnecessary tangent but I bring it up because the Gods use that as a justification for why they wiped out humanity and then charge us as being degenerate so we must be judged in the future to meet their standards or else.

I don’t want people to think that Salem or Ozma didn’t do wrong or contribute to this cosmic fuckup. It’s becoming frustrating though that the Gods seem to get a pass from people in thinking they’re justified and righteous when it’s pretty clear that humanity is being punished for being disobedient to their will. And that’s horrifying.

And I can accept that. Honestly, I’m just ranting from the top of my head so this is probably not the best argument for fuck the Gods. I really shouldn’t be upset if people don’t think they’re bad or justifed

I have no particular stake in what side the gods are on. I just have to question what seems to be a campaign to view their actions negatively no matter what. My first point was more about the fact that, by all indications, there are consequences for reversing death. Even if the gods don't elaborate to us, the viewers, their actions say as much. What those consequences are is secondary, really.

The problem with what you're saying is that it requires us to assume the writers are incompetent. I won't say that's an irrational position given the past performance of the show's writing team, and a fair number of youtube critics have jumped to that conclusion, but I don't think there's any way around it; if they intended us to agree with the God of Light about the balance being important, that's a massive breach of Show, Don't Tell, because what we've seen directly suggests the opposite; that the balance doesn't actually matter and/or the the Gods are hiding something about it.

We are told there are consequences for interfering with the cycle of life and death, and not shown anything to justify that. Meanwhile we are shown the Gods raising the dead and making someone immortal without any any readily visible consequences. If Salem already knew why the brothers refuse to raise the dead, the writers failed to establish that at all, either by showing or telling, and creating a ton of Fridge Logic if we're meant to be seeing things that way.

If we are supposed to infer the reason for the balance is because of a compromise between the brothers, they shouldn't have shown the Light Brother being the one who cares about it, and the Dark Brother not giving a shit.

I'm viewing the Gods negatively because I prefer to give writers the benefit of the doubt and assume they fully thought things through rather than jumping to a conclusion and calling Plot Hole; thus I assume the contradiction between what we're being shown and told is intentional, which doesn't lend itself to very charitable interpretations of the Gods.

The Gods actions seem to say the exact opposite; that there aren't consequences to raising that dead that matter to anyone other than them. Maybe that wasn't the writers intentions, but if that's the case it's a failure of Show, Don't Tell.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 5th 2018 at 6:35:53 AM

I beg to differ, though really my point is that all indications are that the consequences do exist, and the God of Light's actions, in the very Show, Don't Tell you claim has been breached, seem to confirm that. He's upset at just resurrecting someone, Salem's punishment is established with the stated intent that she'll learn what she's supposed to and eventually be able to pass on like anyone else, and when the God of Light does pull resurrection, it's via Loophole Abuse. The dangers are there. What they actually are is secondary.

I'm not sure I agree with that, but I don't really have an articulated response as to why so I'll go agree-to-disagree here. I tend to view the gods neutrally. At the very least I don't believe they are "Capital-E-Mermaid-Man-Screaming-In-The-Streets-Of-Bikini-Bottom-Eeeeeeeeeeeeevil!"

You claim you're giving the writers the benefit of the doubt, but nothing in the scenes those same writers have written seemed to me to indicate the gods were to be viewed with the level of negativity you think makes the most sense. Even if they weren't necessarily in the right about anything they did, Salem was never shown to be, either, so it doesn't seem all that black and white.

I made an analogy a while back about the gods caring about humanity the same way human scientists care about lab mice. I'm increasingly coming to think it's apt. For starters, the God of Light himself referred to the world/humanity as an "experiment", presumably to see if he and his brother could create something worthwhile. The whole "balance of life and death" could very well be an issue of keeping that experiment in a specific condition. Keeping a clean/sterile environment, if you will. Even the God of Darkness's genocide of humanity fits into this. Humanity took the gifts he is explicitly stated to have given them and tried to kill him with them. That's practically a non-robotic Turned Against Their Masters scenario. The God of Darkness declared the experiment a failure, put down the lab mice, and went on to whatever next project he and/or his brother had going.

Short version: They did care about humanity, but not so much that it wasn't expendable if things went too far in the wrong direction, which is exactly what happened with Salem's rebellion. It's horrible, primarily, I think, because we're looking at it from the perspective of the people the God of Darkness genocided, but in that context I'm not sure it's truly evil, or even that monstrous from their perspective. Hell, if I could I'd almost call it Genre Savvy, given how many horror movies revolve around experiments gone awry or not fully destroyed when halted.

Heh, and there's Salem's survival fitting into the analogy. There may really be something here...

Edited by sgamer82 on Dec 5th 2018 at 5:01:19 AM

Note that I am not claiming the Gods are evil from their own perspective. But that's an academic question of no practical value. From a humanistic perspective, it doesn't really change anything if they have Blue-and-Orange Morality or are Above Good and Evil; we can only ever see the world from a human perpsective.

But I'm afraid I'm going to have to derail things a bit because some of what you said actually did strike a nerve. I am a scientist (in training, a graduate student), and I think you have a fairly rudimentary understanding of bioethics and the ethical considerations that go into research in general, along with a perspective of what scientists are doing somewhat distorted by the typical Hollywood portrayal of scientists. On some level it's kind of funny that a large number of people think we're Playing with Syringes and torturing animals just to see what happens, but the typical monster movie scenario where some scientist accidentally unleashes a Zombie Apocalypse is grossly inaccurate. Even though I sometimes joke about that stuff with colleagues (the joke being how absurd it is), I find the comparison kind of insulting. PIs can be somewhat egotistical, but the vast majority of people in the scientific community do not have a god complex or see themselves as an Übermensch; even when researchers are doing things that many people regard as "playing God" (embryonic stem cell research for example), we rely heavily on consensus and rational discourse with the public to come to conclusions about ethics.

When we are running experiments on lab animals that are likely to result in suffering, there are fairly stringent ethical considerations being made; to to simplify things you have to establish first that it's necessary for the animal to suffer for you to get the results you are trying to get, second that it is not reasonably possible to gain this information through studies on in vitro systems, and thirdly that the value of the results justifies the suffering you are inflicting on the animals. Meanwhile, if your subjects are something capable of consenting (aka if you're doing tests on humans), you absolutely must acquire informed consent from them, and you are expected to regularly consult with what's called an IRB (Institutional Review Board) to ensure your actions remain consistent with accepted scientific ethics.

These ethical considerations are one of the reasons chimpanzees are being phased out of biological research incidentally. The NIH isn't planning on euthanizing the remaining stock of laboratory chimps, nor is it normal practice to euthanize higher animals after the trial they're being used for is complete (even if it fails to live up to expectations) unless their quality of life is sufficiently bad.

I suppose you could say my personal beliefs are influencing this, but I don't think I'm wrong to take issue with that comparison.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 5th 2018 at 7:23:46 AM