RWBY Spoilers Thread

Anyone else feeling Rapunzel vibes with Salem? Or possibly Rumplestiltskin?

Also I'm wondering if Ozpin somehow stole (or gained legitimately) most of the world's magic and what was left became the basis of semblances.

Edited by CryoJNik on Nov 5th 2018 at 8:38:35 AM

I'll point out Ozpin wanted to go to Atlas before knowing that the vault couldn't be sealed again. Given the number of kies he told this episode I wouldn't be surprised if he has another reason to want to bring the relic there.

So, given that Raven was forced to have Yang on Salem's hit-list at the end of "Haven's Fate" and how Taiyang reacted when he saw that black feather in The Stinger, would they at least get a role in this volume?

No idea. Raven was in the Stinger for volume 2 and didn't appear again until Volume 4.

RWBY Volume 6 Chapter 3 Title, Thumbnail, and Description[1]

Also it might be 26 minutes long but I don't have hard facts on that.

The moon was blown up by the Eclipse Cannon.

Kinda funny how that mystery turned out. No real cataclysmic event involved just a god clipping through the moon. Oh and the whole genocide thing.

Edited by CryoJNik on Nov 10th 2018 at 8:40:28 AM

Haven't seen the ep yet, but going by spoilers on the recap page regarding The Reveal, I think it can cast Raven's and Leonhart's actions in a new light, assuming they knew about it

Edited by sgamer82 on Nov 10th 2018 at 10:29:59 AM

Well, that was definitely a back story. Salem is outright immortal. That's gonna make stopping her a bit hard. Wonder how much their daughters have to do with the maidens. They matched the color scheme of them, but the episode seems to suggest they died during the fight between Oz and Salem.

Also, that moon thing was literally just the gods being too lazy to fly around the moon instead of straight through it.

My headcanon of it being the eclipse cannon is better. :v

So I have to wonder what it is Salem wants the relics for. apparently uniting all four of them will bring the Gods back to Remnant. My guess is that she wants another go at killing them, and considering the last time their creations dared to stand up to them they killed like 99% of the human race and then left Salem alone in an empty world with Complete Immortality, they kind of deserve it, like Jesus Christ those guys are both massive assholes.

Of course, if she fails (again), the Gods will then destroy the world and I would presume her along with it (though given what they did last time she tried this I'd expect them to literally leave her In An Empty Void Forever)

Oh, and I was totally right about Salem having lead a rebellion against the gods.

I also think I know what Salem wanted to ask Jinn: "How can I kill the Gods?"

The answer of course would likely be the same one that Ozpin got "You can't."

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 10th 2018 at 2:14:40 PM

This makes me wonder why people follow Salem if she wants to simply off humanity.

Just watched the episode and... holy crap, the brother gods are the Jerkass Gods trope personified. Hope the series ends with them being summoned and then blasted into oblivion somehow.

I seriously doubt that's her stated goal; I think it's probably "overthrow these bastard gods for real this time." The followers she's amassed along with the grimm she control are whats meant to be the bigger more powerful army she promised the gods she'd return with.

In fact, I think she's convinced herself (probably wrongly) that she's learned from her failure last time, and that she will win in round two against the gods, having come back with a bigger, more powerful army, having united both humanity and the grimm under her iron fisted rule.

Ozpin meanwhile is trying to redeem humanity in the eyes of the gods, and is pretty sure Salem's plan is going to fall and end up dooming everyone. Salem views him as a groveling coward for that, and fair enough, they're the ones who need to be redeemed after they murdered 99% of the world for standing up to them, but her plan to summon and gank the gods is built on magical thinking and self-delusion.

If the gods are indeed going to end up being the final villains (and I think that's very likely at this point), a Heel Realization on her part would come after noticing that she's not especially different from the gods she's raging against. Meanwhile, on Ozpin's part a good realization would be that Salem is right about the Gods being abusive creators undeserving of worship who should be begging humanity for forgiveness rather than the other way around.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 10th 2018 at 2:37:24 PM

Oh good, I love the Xenoblade vibes of this revelation.

Not particularly. If they were Jerkass Gods in truth they would have done a lot more screwing around with humanity than they did (Ex: Zeus). For all intents and purposes they were observers until Salem tried to actively incite rebellion because she couldn't get what she wanted.

The gods were clearly capable of using their power to alleviate human suffering (both of them resurrected Ozpin with no significant exertion), but did absolutely nothing. That's a crime of negligence of monstrous proportions, and is a very good illustration of why the idea of an omnibenevolent God is incompatible with a Omnipotent God; you end up with the Problem of Evil, and so far to me it looks like RWBY is intentionally leaning into that issue in a very gnostic fashion.

Even if there's a nice and cozy afterlife in RWBY (and after what they did with the Gods in this EP, I doubt that's going to be the case), they're still guilty subjecting their creations to all the suffering that defines the human condition in the mean time in order to accomplish what exactly?

The real cincher is when their creations stood up to them over that, they literally murdered like 99% of humanity, nearly all of whom had nothing to do with Salem's rebellion. If they try to cast these guys as "good and wise all along" at this point, the show will have Jumped The Shark.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 10th 2018 at 2:51:09 PM

I wouldn't be surprised if everything they're doing is at least in part because its part of the rules the god of Light was able to convince his brother to go along with so he doesn't just continue wrecking everything.

I love that Salem isn’t just the result of some fuckup Ozpin made, but rather she’s facing the consequences of her own independent actions. This is the story of Salem and what she did featuring Ozma, not the other way around. When she went to the Dark Gods place it reminded me a lot of Shadow of the Colossus.

Ozpin just got hasty in accepting the god’s deal before hearing the full explanation about Salem, and fucked when trying to get the kids away from her. Then the fight happens and the kids die in the crossfire; Ozpin is more Dumbledore than we realized.

So he snapped at Ruby last episode because he didn’t want to see a replay of him dying, being resurrected and Snapped twice in under a minute, being partially responsible for the deaths of his kids, and - probably what he was most afraid of getting out - Jinn revealing there is nothing he can do to stop Salem. If Raven and Leo learned about that little factoid, That starts to explain some things.

Of course, the catch is that he asked what he could do. Not what could be done. “Victory lies in a simple soul.”

Also a neat detail about dust and mankind’s origins: if Salem is all that was left of humanity, where did the species come back from? “Mankind, born from dust”. So where did dust come from? My money is on the moon fragments that fell to Remnant after the Gods clipped it on their way out. Dust can’t leave the atmosphere because it isn’t meant to exist, and when the Gods realized what happened they made it so nobody could follow them to the next planet.

Edited by TheAirman on Nov 10th 2018 at 2:04:48 PM

He seemed to be pretty chill at first; and was cool resurrecting Ozpin as a favor for the one person willing to pray to him instead of his stuck up brother; fuck, the one time he wants to perform an act of creation, the other guy gets on his case for violating the ground rules they set up, even though the whole reason for those ground rules were because he wasn't a fan of creating stuff. That's a completely Lawful Stupid justification.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 10th 2018 at 3:00:00 PM

It brings the whole fairness thing into question, though, doesn't it? If one person taken before their time gets to come back, why not everyone? If everyone gets to not die early, why die at all? Where's the free will, the choice, the value of life?

Besides, the god of darkness obliterated humanity, and apparently magic was also his doing in their creation. I think the god of light's only real Lawful Stupid action was not bringing back at least the humans that did not actively take part in the rebellion, since the god of darkness went overkill with that. Though apparently the afterlife is a pretty chill place, and since everyone is dead there's no issue with loved ones left behind, so maybe it's not a big deal? I dunno.

Also apparently humans, or at least a race extremely closely resembling the original humans, were able to evolve back from nothing? Either that or there was a remnant of humanity left that rebuilt and repopulated.

Edited by danime91 on Nov 10th 2018 at 12:25:40 PM

And that was the whole point of Salem's initial rebellion against the gods; people rallied behind her because she was pointing out the rampant unfairness and hypocrisy of their actions; they arbitrary broke their rule against resurrecting people (which doesn't even have a good reason for existing in the first place), made someone immortal to prevent her from being reunited with her loved ones in the afterlife, and then destroyed the world after their creations rose up against them.

We are absolutely headed into gnostic territory, and I definitely think the gods are set to be the final villains of the series.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 10th 2018 at 3:27:32 PM

Again, I'm pretty sure the rules against bringing back the dead are there for the purpose I specified. The god of darkness just wanted an excuse to break the rules and Salem stroked his ego by pretending to have come to him first. And Salem's curse of immortality can be broken if she is able to realize the value of life and death. Which I think may be the key to defeating her at the end of all this, but basically her initial mistake of wanting to defy death is what keeps her from reuniting with her loved one. If she is able to learn from that mistake and accept death as a natural part of the cycle of things, she gets to die and be with Ozma again.

Besides, we just saw the god of darkness No-Sell an entire army of warriors who are theoretically in the same ballpark of power as Ozma was. How exactly are a few ragtag groups of kids supposed to take them on? Which isn't even considering the issue that if they do show up again, it will be to judge the world, and the world hasn't exactly improved much.

Edited by danime91 on Nov 10th 2018 at 12:30:30 PM

Yes, and the purpose specified is stupid and pointlessly cruel if the god of darkness is happy to resurrect someone if they pray to him; the whole reason suffering exists is in a setting is because the gods allow it to happen.

As far as how a bunch of ragtag kids are supposed to take them on, probably the same way it happens in every JRPG with a gnosticism influenced plot that ends with said ragtag kids fighting the Abrahamic God or an Expy thereof.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Nov 10th 2018 at 3:33:31 PM

Unfairness and hypocrisy? She pulled an "Ask mom cause Dad said No" on a pair of Gods. And after she got caught instead of learning anything after being punished she in essence threw a temper tantrum.

If anything the god of light could have explained why exactly it would be a bad idea to bring him back to life...then again how likely would it be that would she have listened?

Edited by CryoJNik on Nov 10th 2018 at 12:36:30 PM