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Snoketrope Barb / Temporary Kylo from California Since: Oct, 2020 Relationship Status: Waiting for Prince Charming
Barb / Temporary Kylo
#3901: Dec 16th 2020 at 1:19:07 PM

@Captain

I initially sort of got that impression as well, but one of the sisters says 'We found something!'. Indicating that what happned was they discovered Cinders sword and confronted her about it.

And....I dont think either of those comparisons work completely, If there was a classmate that made one of the students a servant and would Torture them for upsetting them at anytime. Or if the 'Workplace' was some place that practiced slave labour with them as the slave.....Well, in those instances I'm not sure if the person killing the others would be too unjustified in that scenario.

I feel like it's very much worth talking about that the Madame and her daughter's weren't just like, douchebags. What they were doing was downright Atrocious.

Bow to the Prototype
harostar Since: Feb, 2010
#3902: Dec 16th 2020 at 2:31:50 PM

Ultimately, Cinder is responsible for the choices she made going forward in her life. But we can understand how she became the woman she is now, and the influences in her life that she's been imitating all these years. She imitated Madame because that was her understanding of what it meant to be Powerful and Feared, and then she started to imitate Salem because her abusers are the people she's been trying to become.

She snapped in one terrible moment, but once again things come down to Choice. Rhodes chose to try to arrest Cinder, and Cinder chose to kill to protect herself. And since then, she's basically been running and desperately trying to hoard power in the hope it make her feel safe.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#3903: Dec 16th 2020 at 2:53:11 PM

[up][up] The stepmom yes, the stepsisters...Well I’d consider that somewhat complicated; they’re also minors and given the shit their mom was doing really should have been removed from her custody along with Cinder if Child Protection Services were a thing in this world. Considering they were 17 or so when Cinder finally snapped, I find it doubtful that they would have grown out of their bullying, but I also place more responsibility on the part of their guardian for allowing it to happen.


Anyway, it does seem like it started with her evil stepmom trying to confiscate the sword.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 16th 2020 at 6:51:11 AM

Guy01 Since: Mar, 2015
#3904: Dec 16th 2020 at 4:06:09 PM

Weiss Evergarden Fan Art: https://imgur.com/DOdSOok

Ok, who let Light Yagami in here?
Wyldchyld (Old as dirt)
#3905: Dec 16th 2020 at 4:20:43 PM

I really cannot see this series ending with the Gods mission being fulfilled.

Oh, I think it's safe to say that's the one ending we can rule out. But my point wasn't about how this show is going to end. It's about assuming that telling Hazel the truth about the Relics will make him want to oppose her. When you're dealing with a fatalist, telling him the truth about the Relics might actually make things worse — which is a theme this show has been willing to explore to at least some extent (that telling the truth can make things better, but doesn't automatically do so).

The absolute best case scenario for the human race is that the relics are never united...

    Stalemate 

Which is clearly the position Oz has been fighting. He can't kill her, he can't defeat her, but he can keep the Relics out of her hands, and he can keep them separated.

I nearly used this analogy in my post, but it was getting far too long. I've mentioned this analogy years ago, back when I was arguing that Ozpin seems to be fighting for a stalemate strategy — years before we ever found out about Jinn and her vision.

In the TNG episode Peak Performance, the renowned strategist Sirna Kolrami is undefeated at the game Strategema. The crew end up pitting him against Commanda Data, assuming that even Kolrami can't defeat an android. He does. Easily.

At the end of the episode, Data has a rematch against Kolrami and effectively 'wins' when Kolrami rage-quits the game in disgust, which has broken the record of how many levels were played before he quits the game.

Data accepted the fact he couldn't defeat Kolrami so decided to go for a stalemate strategy instead. He was able to prevent Kolrami winning the game by changing his goal from 'victory' to 'stalemate'. Kolrami was utterly disgusted by the strategy which is why he quit the game — if you're not fighting for outright victory, you're just trolling.

The circumstances aren't exactly the same but the key here is the expectation behind the chosen strategy and the end-goal being sought. Oz has clearly ruled out ever being able to 'win' against Salem. But he can't afford to lose either — if he loses, humanity dies.

So, unlike people such as Raven, who can rage-quit whenever they don't like the odds, Oz can't do that. So, Ozma's goalposts have to shift to accommodate his reality: he has to fight, but he can't win, so there's no point wasting time and resource strategising for a victory he can't achieve. Instead, strategise for the things that are achievable: if Salem needs the four Relics to achieve her victory, deny her the four Relics. If he cannot achieve victory, he can at least deny her victory.

It keeps them in a perpetual stalemate, which is its very own special kind of hellish existence that is covered by tropes such as Forever War and Who Wants to Live Forever? but it keeps humanity alive. And that is a win of sorts. Because if Salem's goal is to summon the gods and wipe out existence just so she can die, then every day humanity keeps existing is a victory. It's not the victory Ozma may want, like or need, but it is the victory he can achieve.

The heroes are pretty much coming around to Ozpin's way of looking at the fight against Salem without yet being aware of it — Ruby's reiterated a couple of times now that, even if Salem can't be killed, she can be opposed and she can be defeated. They were so upset that Ozpin wasn't aiming for the goal they thought he was (killing her) that they don't seem to recognise the actual goal he was aiming for; they haven't realised that Ruby's aiming for the same goal as him — at least, not yet. And, if they have, then none of them have acknowledged that out loud yet.

Right now, the only real difference in Ozpin and Ruby's approach to dealing with Salem is the willingness to reveal her existence to Remnant. Everything else is mostly the same.

The 'Out' given too her was....downright Insane, the chance given to her was basically to wait it out through 7 years of horrific abuse and downright torture. That's a horrendous thing to ask or expect from anyone, let alone a child. And she tried to take it, for a long time. She tried to Endure all of it, and it wasn't even a 'Typical' day where she finally snapped, it was one time when they found her Weapon and confronted her about it, giving an extra sort of push that made her finally snap.

    Deleted Scenes 

I completely agree with this. It's because of this that I like the depiction of the scenario she was in. I didn't say her options were good. I said she was given a path — a single path — to a better life.

You're not going to understand why I say that because expanding on this by exploring the nature of the choice she had was one of those things I sacrificed discussing because my post was getting too long. In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have left that bit on the cutting room floor.

The three contexts that I was using:

The first context was this, beginning with the discussion between Yang and Blake in Volume 7, when Blake mentions that it feels like they don't have many good options left, and I kept saying that, what the kids haven't yet realised is that Ozma's true secret — the real Awful Truth — is that there were never any good options in the first place. They think Ozma's secrets have reduced the number of good options they could have had, when what they've really found out is that good options just didn't exist at all. What they have are a range of horrible choices, and trying to figure out what the least worst option is.

There's a nod to this in The Indecisive King, where the King used to think that there's always a good option — sometimes you just have to hunt harder to find it. So, when he was finally confronted by a choice that had no good option, it shook him to his core. He had a complete crisis of faith that only ends when the Widow tells him he needs to accept that sometimes there are no good options.

That's the situation Cinder was in. She was in a shitty situation and her options were:

  • Put up with it
  • Kill the step-family and run

There are options we could think of that the episode doesn't openly acknowledge but, by inference, reject as valid options: running without doing harm to the step-family is one; Rhodes pulling her out of the situation immediately is another. I believe that discussing these inferences is actually a different discussion.

So, those were the two options. Rhodes presented her with a third:

  • Train to become a Huntress so that she can make a clean, legal break with her past.

So, now she has three options, all three of which are shitty options with a massive catch to them:

  • No life, constant torture and enslavement without end or hope until she dies.
  • A life lived constantly on the run — not only from the law, and not only from the torture her life has been, but also from her own actions. In short, she doesn't escape the abuse cycle, she keeps gravitating to it for the rest of her life. In short, Mercury.
  • No life, constant torture and enslavement, but with an end (the age of seventeen) and the hope of an escape to a better life. While this is scenario 1 with both an end and using hope to sustain herself through the torture, that still means she has to endure seven years of torture.

But, that's it. Those are her three options: torture until she dies, a life on the run as a wanted murderer, or seven years of torture and then an escape to the Huntsmen Academies and a powerful, respected career.

Rhodes seemed to think that Cinder had only two routes of escape from the life she was in:

  • End it immediately, but spend her life running — the implication being that she'd be running from herself — and therefore she'd never truly escape no matter how much it seems like she has, and her options would become even worse in the long-run than what she was currently enduring.
  • Endure it for seven more years, then walk away the day the woman's legal power over her evaporates into a career option that could set her up for life and make her a respected member of society.

Rhodes thought she understood why he stopped her that day when she was ten years old and stole his sword, why he decided to train her, why he kept telling her to hold on to how much closer her dream was getting but, when she killed them and looked at him with that expression, saying that she didn't have to run any more, he realised she hadn't understood at all.

There's also a flip-side. When he asked her if she wanted to become a Huntress, he thought he understood why. She'd effectively told him: she didn't want to be told what to do, she wanted to go where she pleased. That's what she admired about Huntsmen. She didn't want to be a Huntress, she wanted to be free. She merely thought that a Huntsman defined freedom and so she was willing to go that route to obtain freedom. Rhodes didn't really hear her. He didn't understand that. I think he truly believed, or at least convinced himself to believe, that she truly did want to become a Huntress and that she wasn't simply using it as a stepping stone for what she really wanted.

The second context is based on what we saw:

We don't know the exact details in the moments before Rhodes burst through the door, but we do know what the trigger was: the step-sisters had found the sword. We also don't know how the step-sisters found out about the sword, that's another piece of the story we're missing.

It's fairly safe for us to assume that they were not going to let her keep that sword, but we don't know what else went down or what else was intended (for example, would they make it impossible for her to interact with Rhodes again), so that's a different discussion for me.

Somewhere in that detail, a decision was made: a choice occurred to Cinder that, from whatever options she had available to her (it might have been none), the decision she was going to make was to kill them all. And another decision was made: she was not going to kill the Wicked Step-Mother quickly — she was going to display her strength first and then kill her.

Now, she doesn't appear to have used the sword for the actual kills. There's no blood on the daughters and she breaks the Wicked Step-Mother's neck. Nor was her choice a swift one in which a series of events happened too quickly for thought. She took her time with the Wicked Step-Mother, to throw her words back into her face, to show her that she could — she would — rise above the torture and be stronger than her — by standing there, not just standing upright while the torture device was continually activated, but by holding her by the neck off the ground while it was happening, by her being the last one alive. It was only after showing the Wicked Step-Mother all this that Cinder killed her.

The exact situation and its timing was not planned, it occurred on the fly in the sense that the step-sisters found the sword that triggered the events that followed, and which took 20 minutes to conclude. But Cinder had planned vengeance since the age of ten. It's what triggered Rhodes into teaching her to become a Huntress — to try and give her an alternative option to vengeance. He couldn't change the person that she was, and possibly didn't even fully understand her enough to realise he wasn't properly addressing her issues. He had the hope of giving her a better future and seemed to believe that she shared that hope, or at least saw that hope in the same way he did.

In the end, what she truly understood was that she had wanted to be free for years and that she had wanted to revenge for years, and at this moment in time she was suddenly strong enough to achieve both right there and then. Since becoming a Huntress wasn't her end-goal (it was just the means to the end), she took the first opportunity that was presented to her to achieve that end-goal. Or, more accurately, what she thought was her end-goal.

That's the realisation we see on both their faces: his when he realised that he had failed to change the path he'd spotted her being on at the age ten; and her realising that he could not — would not — understand the choice she had just made and why she had made it.

The third context is what she said.

It's a little ambiguous as to whether 'but because of you I am everything' is something the Wicked Step-Mother forced her to say as part of the phrase we knew she'd forced on her. It's either that or a phrase Cinder thought of and longed to say to her. While it's ambiguous, I lean towards it being the full phrase the Wicked Step-Mother forced on her and we just aren't allowed to see the second half until the right moment.

Either way, the words Cinder spoke and how she did so, go beyond being overcome in the moment and reflect a choice that was made in that room during that moment.

While she snapped because of torture, she didn't simply kill to be free of torture. When she snapped, she became something else, something that savours the moment, something that relished the power and strength she felt in that moment, something that gave that second phrase a very personal meaning: one of triumph over her tormentor. It wasn't enough for her to simply kill her way out of her plight. She wanted her torturer to feel a fraction of what she had been made to feel, and when she did so, when she saw the results, she found something in that moment that she made a choice to embrace — and, ever since then, she's been modelling herself on — and even surpassing — the very woman she was originally so desperate to escape.

In conclusion:

Do I blame Cinder for snapping after years of torture? No. It's a wonder she didn't snap sooner. Indeed, she almost did, when she was ten. Rhodes intervened and staved it off — for good, he hoped, but only for a couple of years in the end. However, I wasn't talking about her snapping. Snapping from abuse isn't a choice, but there are choices that can come in the wake of snapping, and some did for Cinder. It's the decisions I'm discussing. Not the snapping. I also didn't discuss in detail whether I found her decisions to be understandable (I still haven't in this post either, I've mentioned in both posts that I think it's understandable, but haven't expanded).

She had no good options. Even the closest thing to a good option that she had would only be good at some future date after she'd turned seventeen — and if she passed the entrance exam. Rhodes was expecting her to survive on the hope of a good outcome that was somewhere in the future, beyond all the torture of today and tomorrow and next week and next month and next year.

What she did have was a scale of options that were not equal in awfulness. Rhodes gave her an extra option that was less awful, but still came with a price. During the fateful 20 minutes, she also had certain options that were not equal in awfulness. Rhodes' original fear was that if she got revenge and went on the run, that's all she'd be for the rest of her life. What happened at the end of those 20 minutes, however, was not what Rhodes had feared. It was actually an even worse scenario: Cinder didn't simply kill, she revelled. Instead of just killing the monster, she became the monster. If it meant giving her the strength and power to be free, she was willing to embrace the monster to achieve it. And she's still making that exact same choice now: Raven was wrong to think the Grimm arm was Cinder's decision to become a monster for power — she made that decision the day she decided to prolong Wicked Step-Mother's death; and when Cinder shot back that Raven was one to talk, it's because the decision Raven had made (about Spring) resembled the decision Cinder had made the day she killed her torturer.

When I put it together with this thread's discussion about Atlas citizens not rocking the boat, it felt like something clicked. It feels like there's this unwritten agreement among (most) Atlas citizens that certain things are just accepted, no matter how wrong they might be, and to deviate from them, no matter how morally right would be, is considered wrong instead.

That's how I've been approaching this as well, which is why I cut certain things from my post (like the above). Within the context of how Atlas functions, Rhodes expecting Cinder to endure more torture for seven years before getting out of her situation isn't insane. It should be. But it isn't. Because that's how the system works. It's a taste of what Robyn said in V7 about the law not always being fair, and what Marrow was saying about the system being deliberately designed to keep people like the Faunus at the bottom, then dropping the subject because he didn't want to discuss systemic societal changes. They key thing here being systemic.

Cinder's backstory is the society Robyn and Marrow are talking about, a society that needs to be overhauled in its entirety.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Dec 16th 2020 at 1:03:27 PM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
harostar Since: Feb, 2010
#3906: Dec 16th 2020 at 5:18:47 PM

[up]And THAT is exactly why Cinder's backstory had to wait until Volume 8. Because her story illustrates the themes of the Atlas Arc, but we needed to wait until the glamour had already been torn away through Ironwood and the Ace-Ops turning on the protagonists.

We needed to learn how the system is designed to benefit the most powerful and the Huntsmen tasked with protecting the people are Lawful instead of Good. (Hence Qrow dismissively calling them "sell-out" in the past.)

Ilia, Adam, and Cinder are all products of that system. People that suffered in a system that was designed to not protect them.

FergardStratoavis A Fluff Ringer from Bellveins (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: A gay little love melody
A Fluff Ringer
#3907: Dec 16th 2020 at 6:19:33 PM

[up][up] Something that I forgot to mention when writing that post: that's also why Whitley still puts up a facade of being Jacques Jr., even despite the fact that his father is behind bars, most of the staff left, and there's a giant Grimm whale just about to beach in Atlas. That's what he's expected to do.

That's why Pyrrha chose to become a lone hero in the end, too: she might not have been Atlas-born, but she came from Argus, a city that's all but Atlesian. She was expected to become a lone hero. All of our other protagonists are from Vale, with the exception of Weiss (who I kinda want to include, because it feels like she too is only learning how deep this rabbit hole is together with the rest) and Oscar (who, as a farmhand, had comparatively little experience with the city glamour) - I count Ren and Nora among the Valorans mostly because that's where they ended up, in the end.

Vale is normal. Compared to the other three kingdoms, it's astonishingly normal. There is nothing otherwise off about it. With all the rot Atlas hides, Vacuo's "survival of the fittest" mentality, and Mistral's more general Faunus racism and rampant crime network, I dread to fear what we might find about its history once we do return there.

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Dec 16th 2020 at 3:25:59 PM

Psyga315 Since: Jan, 2001
#3908: Dec 16th 2020 at 6:48:27 PM

[up] That or Vale's normalcy is its hat.

unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#3909: Dec 16th 2020 at 7:04:22 PM

Cap: I think the problem is the whole test to begin with, after all not matter how bad salem was, it was them who engage in global genocide and it was god of light who create this damn test to beging with, putting Salem and Ozma against each other in remament worst divorce case ever.

Why humanity have to united to satisfaced whatever damn sense of two overpower douchebags? why they have to go along with their petty strugle of cosmic proportion?. so far the series havent touch that but eventually it have, otherwise any ending will ring hollow.

Overthrow and kill gods is what im saying.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
gjjones Musician/Composer from South Wales, New York Since: Jul, 2016
Musician/Composer
#3910: Dec 16th 2020 at 9:20:33 PM

You know, I've got a feeling about something. If the Grimm destroys everything in Atlas and Mantle, the citizens (including the Schnees and Ironwood) will no longer call their place home and have to look for a new home somewhere in Remnant. Thoughts?

Edited by gjjones on Dec 16th 2020 at 12:21:08 PM

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.
FOFD Since: Apr, 2013
#3911: Dec 16th 2020 at 10:24:17 PM

And THAT is exactly why Cinder's backstory had to wait until Volume 8. Because her story illustrates the themes of the Atlas Arc, but we needed to wait until the glamour had already been torn away through Ironwood and the Ace-Ops turning on the protagonists.

Bump that. Cinder's backstory should have, and would have been fine, in Volume 5 or 6.

Ohmknight _(o)_ from the End Since: Jul, 2020 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
_(o)_
#3913: Dec 17th 2020 at 5:25:38 AM

[up]That is pretty funny.

The Final Name
Snoketrope Barb / Temporary Kylo from California Since: Oct, 2020 Relationship Status: Waiting for Prince Charming
Barb / Temporary Kylo
#3914: Dec 17th 2020 at 9:41:51 AM

@Wyld

Aww, thanks for explaining more

This is part of my belief that the gods aren't flat out malevolent or cruel as some speculate, but I have a theory the whole test the God of Light gives is fake, And its some sort of test for Ozma.

It's been pointed out that if Light is wanting some perfect Utopia where Evil is erased it would require the end of Free Will. But according to fairy tales of remnant he was the one who gave Humanity free will to start with.

And we both don't see the god of darkness in the scene where Ozma gets his misison, and it has now been confirmed that the God of Light created all the Relics....but That's odd isn't it? If it was something between the 2 of them why wouldn't they both make the Relics from there respective gifts?

It would also be a good subversive take, as one would expect the more 'Devilish' of the 2 to be the 'Schemer'.

Bow to the Prototype
SilentLyfe Since: Apr, 2020
#3915: Dec 17th 2020 at 12:46:09 PM

You know I realized, how come Penny’s the only one who’s powers look different?

Every other Maiden when using elements look normal, yet her lightning is green and her fire blue.

Wyldchyld (Old as dirt)
#3916: Dec 17th 2020 at 12:48:00 PM

Vale is normal. Compared to the other three kingdoms, it's astonishingly normal. There is nothing otherwise off about it. With all the rot Atlas hides, Vacuo's "survival of the fittest" mentality, and Mistral's more general Faunus racism and rampant crime network, I dread to fear what we might find about its history once we do return there.

I think Mountain Glenn is the big red flag there. A decision was made to save the people of Vale by effectively 'burying people alive'. That's how the people of Mountain Glenn died — they tried to find safety in the tunnels, but were instead locked in them and left to die. Because, otherwise, Vale would have been destroyed, too.

This is another context for Ironwood's stance: A city has been sacrificed before to save another city. Ren said that Oniyuri was Mistral's Mountain Glenn, but that analogy didn't even work at the time Ren mentioned it. The Mountain Glenn analogy is playing out right in front of our eyes: Mantle is Mountain Glenn.

The Atlas Arc is Mountain Glenn's story, but it's currently in the process of flipping on its head: for the moment, the Atlas Arc is facing the possibility of what would happen if it was Mountain Glenn that was saved and Vale that fell.

When the decision was made to sacrifice Mountain Glenn to save Vale, did anyone turn on the leaders who took the decision on behalf of Mountain Glenn? Did anyone try to save Mountain Glenn the way the heroes have tried to save Mantle? Who was Vale's General Ironwood? Ozma? Someone else? We don't know. What we do know is that, in the ruins of Mountain Glenn, Oobleck told Team RWBY that he tries to learn from the past to empower his students for the future. And now those very same kids are in Atlas, trying to prevent another Mountain Glenn from happening.

Either way, Mountain Glenn is a visible clue that Vale has its own skeletons to uncover.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Dec 17th 2020 at 8:50:56 PM

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Snoketrope Barb / Temporary Kylo from California Since: Oct, 2020 Relationship Status: Waiting for Prince Charming
Barb / Temporary Kylo
#3917: Dec 17th 2020 at 1:32:18 PM

@Wyld

"Who was Vale's General Ironwood? Ozma? Someone else?"

It seems to have happened around Ozpins time, the Glenn Incident was caused by Dr.Merlot, who was an Associate of Ozpins.

Also, that's a really interesting connection in Regards to the Atlas arc and Glenn with the 'Learn from the Past' bit, I've always taken that in regards to the General in the Faunas war as foreshadowing James arc.

I was also thinking Vale had its own issues we haven't heard of yet, in world of remnant during the part saying how the other Kingdoms attacked Vacuo, we can see what appears to be Vale participating.

Bow to the Prototype
Gaogaigar54 Since: Jan, 2020
#3918: Dec 17th 2020 at 2:07:42 PM

Here's an interesting issue with the gods, would they even share the same definition of worthy?

The God of Darkness made things of chaos and destruction, surely he wouldn't like the whole peace and harmony deal?

Unless it's only the god of light who's going to do the judging, then surely it would be impossible to be worthy even if one could somehow unite humanity. Maybe it's just a plot hole, or inconsistent character writing on the god's part.

Anyway I can see the situation being resolved Kamen Rider Agito style, were the Gods are ultimately convinced, that while humanity aren't exactly what they wanted, they aren't pets or their property either and humanity should allowed to grow and exist on their own, without the gods.

OmegaRadiance Since: Jun, 2011
#3919: Dec 17th 2020 at 2:23:36 PM

God of Darkness problem is more despite everything he did for them, people took everything he did for granted and cared nothing for at least thanking him for the gifts he gave them or honoring him for it.

Basically a Greek Hades situation. That magic, the thing he bestowed them, was turned against him, was the final nail in the coffin.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Dec 17th 2020 at 2:23:58 AM

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.
harostar Since: Feb, 2010
#3920: Dec 17th 2020 at 2:40:01 PM

@SilentLyfe, those colors actually do occur in nature. We just don't see them as often, because they're the stronger/purer forms with stronger chemical reactions involved.

So....yeah. Penny's elements are purer and stronger than the ones we see Cinder use. I'm sure that's an intentional visual choice.

Blue flames are hotter, usually seen with propane-fueled flames.

Green lightning normally happens inside the clouds, so we don't see them as much.


@Gaogaigar54, I was thinking along similar lines. That trope seems to be very popular in Japanese media, from what I've observed. If they aren't outright beating the Gods, it's the heroes convincing them that humanity being flawed isn't a bad thing and that people need to be allowed to grow.


Oh man, I think you're right about Mountain Glenn being the thing that informs this arc. A major part of the first three volumes was sowing the seeds, giving us teasing hints of things before the protagonists left the proverbial nest and started really learning about the world.

I would argue a central theme of the series has been the protagonists, as the younger generation, learning from the experiences and more importantly the mistakes of their predecessors.

Edited by harostar on Dec 17th 2020 at 5:47:46 AM

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#3921: Dec 17th 2020 at 8:27:23 PM

It's been pointed out that if Light is wanting some perfect Utopia where Evil is erased it would require the end of Free Will. But according to fairy tales of remnant he was the one who gave Humanity free will to start with.

Cognitive dissonance is a thing; Light wants a perfect Utopia, and for humans to achieve this of their own volition. That those two things are incompatible with one another are precisely what makes his mission impossible, but I don't think he realizes that. I don't think he'd have been happy with the result if Oz had stuck with Salem and they'd pulled some sort of Evils of Free Will situation to force all of humanity to live together in perfect harmony. It's basically the Abrahamic perspective on free will; the ability for humans to choose between good and evil exists so that they can voluntarily choose to relinquish that freedom and submit themselves to God.


Along with his stunning lack of bedside manners that was a major contribution to the whole debacle with Salem and what he ended up doing to Ozma, that he doesn't seem to recognize this inherent contradiction demonstrates a stunningly poor understanding of his creation's desires, motivations and behaviors, which I'm betting is a quality he and his brother share.


This is ultimately why I think humanity will need to make its own path, with or without the blessings of their creators.


[up] One thing I could see happening is that they come back, proclaim humanity has failed them, and then see that basically everyone is united against them once again, and maybe question for once in their existence whether they're the problem.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Dec 17th 2020 at 11:34:12 AM

Ohmknight _(o)_ from the End Since: Jul, 2020 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
_(o)_
#3923: Dec 18th 2020 at 8:16:42 AM

[up]I wouldn't be surprised if this was actually planned. CRWBY has been pretty impressive with their symbolism and hidden meanings.

The Final Name
gjjones Musician/Composer from South Wales, New York Since: Jul, 2016
Musician/Composer
#3924: Dec 18th 2020 at 2:30:38 PM

As some of the Star Wars characters would say about the Grimm finally invading of Atlas at the end of "Midnight", "I have a bad feeling about this."

Edited by gjjones on Dec 18th 2020 at 5:37:01 AM

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.
SilentLyfe Since: Apr, 2020
#3925: Dec 18th 2020 at 5:14:23 PM

https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/kfxns9/volume_8_chapter_7_thumbnail_info/

Are you serious? We’re doing an arrest right now? With what is happening you would think they have bigger priorities.


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