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I hope I’m not weird or offensive for thinking this that Oz and the GoL relationship has abuse undertones. I go as far as it reminding me of sexual violence. The violation of bodily autonomy, lack of informed consent, using someone else’s body for one’s personal use, sense of domination from the perpetrator, the victim having a fucked sense of self and self-hatred. The GoL is also Salem’s abuser who violated her autonomy and consent so it’s not out of character for him. RWBY has handled similar topics like Adam and Blake so it’s not like uncharted territory. I even seen ppl claim that the Curious Cat has similar undertones considering what they did to Neo.

"undertones"--even in the extremely biased narration of the lost fable, jinn, telling the story as ozpin understands it, draws an overt equivalency between the god of light and SALEM'S FATHER. you know,

What more could a man want? Just one thing: a son and heir. When his wife became pregnant, the whole castle rejoiced. But soon the lord’s fortune reversed. His beloved fell ill, gave birth to a baby girl, and lost her own life in the process. The lord locked his daughter in the highest tower of the castle and retreated to his chambers to grieve. Only he and the girl’s nanny were allowed in or out of her tower room, on punishment of death. Many weeks passed before the lord visited his baby girl for the first time, and he refused to hold her no matter how much the nanny encouraged or even begged him to. Over the years, his daily visits grew shorter. Then they became visits two or three times a week. By his daughter’s eleventh birthday, he was visiting only once a week. “Why must I stay in this tower?” the girl would ask him. “I am protecting you from anything or anyone that might harm you. You are the most precious thing in the world to me. I could not bear to lose you.” He brought her food and presents: dresses and hairpins, brushes and dolls, but nothing that she could use against him or to take her own life. [...] Meanwhile, miserable and alone, the lord’s sorrow gradually twisted into resentment. He raged against the unfairness of the gods and took out his anger on his staff. He became obsessed with increasing his wealth, as if money could replace the love of his life, increasing land taxes on his tenants and cutting his staff’s wages. Paranoid about losing all he cherished, he dismissed half of his servants and replaced them with trained soldiers to protect his riches and defend his castle. By the girl’s sixteenth birthday, the king was visiting only once a month, whenever the whole moon was visible from her tower window. “This was your mother’s favorite place in the castle,” he told the girl. “She loved gazing out that window.” “And now it is my prison,” the girl said. “You aren’t my prisoner. You’re my daughter.” “Then let me go,” she begged. “I cannot. Someone would abduct you and demand a ransom,” the lord said. “Or worse.” But the girl realized that the lord did not love her as a parent loves a child. Rather, he thought of her as just one of his treasures, to be jealously hoarded like his gold and jewels. […] “What is it?” the knight asked. “What else would make you happy, my dear?” Freedom, she thought. But she bit back the word, for that kind of talk made him angry and violent.

the man who was so viciously abusive that this is how ozpin depicted him in a sanitized fairytale account of what happened.

note, for emphasis, that by the time salem was eleven she was so actively suicidal that her father had to vet every object that went into her room against the risk that she might try to kill herself with it, and he didn't care.

ozma modeled beacon academy after salem's father's castle and put the headmaster's office at the top of the tower—in her cell. whether or not he could actually articulate this feeling consciously, deep down he regards the god of light as an abusive parent too powerful to defeat or escape. and we have seen, with light, that he becomes angry and violent whenever something doesn't go his way and that his immediate, first reaction to one of his creations doing anything he doesn't approve is brutal murder. he tears jabber apart, incinerates ozma, bites salem, shrugs when his brother vaporizes mankind. his ultimatum for remnant is "obey me or die." there's no undertones he is explicitly abusive toward everyone he comes into contact with including his brother.

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[Same anon who was talking about when Salem will find out the truth abt Ozmas curse] yknow, thinking of the Ozma-Salem reconciliation, I'm curious about what will happen when everything is over. Specifically I'm curious on if they'll stay immortal or if they'll choose to become mortal again? Being honest, I could see Salem choosing to stay immortal, probably turning what was used to harm her into something she owns (if she hasn't already tbh). I'm... less sure about Oz? I could see him wanting to, but how he reincarnates is... definitely a problem considering it's identity issues if it were a form of immortality lmfao.

Of course, this depends on them getting that choice in the first place, but I feel like it wouldn't be satisfying if they didn't, though i have no idea how they would get it (i doubt Light would budge, Darkness is probably Ascended, and i theorize Light will ascend and become human, sooo...), unless the Tree has that ability? No idea. I do think Oz will Ascend so maybe that'll be addressed then if that happens (note: if he Ascends, I personally think it'd be fun if he came out a faunus/snake faunus. It's not really a theory, just smth I'd do if I were writing RWBY, and the chances of that happening are pretty slim, IF he ascends at all lol. So it's more a self indulgent thought than a real theory).

Do you have any thoughts on whether or not they'll stay immortal, or both become mortal? It's pure speculation, but that's what makes it fun :P

(BTW I wanted to see if you were doing okay, if you're willing to answer? You disappear sometimes and idk if that's normal or not. Hope you're doing good!)

-🌙 <- for if I decide to send more asks

(yeah i'm doing fine. just busy irl)

anyway—prior to v9 i would have said definitely they both wind up mortal again, but then v9 threw its curveball of overtly questioning the premise that everything must die. immortality for ozlem has hitherto been framed strictly as a curse, because ozma sees it that way; i think it remains to be seen whether salem feels the same, because:

a) "if she were to turn humanity against Light and Darkness, she could rid herself of their curse, or at the very least… she could make them suffer." <- even before her rebellion, salem had begun to accept the possibility that she might never be able to make herself mortal again if she defied the brothers, and she made a deliberate decision to fight back anyway.

b) it has been so long that i have to imagine it is hard for her to even conceive of dying as a real possibility anymore? so even if she theoretically would welcome the chance to die i'm skeptical that it's more than a "what if the world was made of pudding?" type of nonsense hypothetical in her mind. 

and c) everything points to "salem wants to change the world" being the correct view, with salem herself envisioning a "new world"—and in the event that is true, salem isn't suicidal full stop.

the thing that makes her immortality a curse has always been isolation and exile, neither of which are innately because she's immortal. indeed the very first thing salem used her immortality to do once she decided to live was connect with people and build a coalition. the reason for her exile in the present is not her immortality per se but the fairytale narrative construing her as the Great Evil. becoming mortal again won't materially change those circumstances. 

ozma is in a different boat because, as you note, his form of immortality is bad per se—fatal to his hosts and torturous for him. we have however seen that a living soul without a body will just manifest a new body, both on remnant (penny) and in the ever after (ruby isn't just magically healed in the tree—her whole self is remade, hence the burning rose returns to her in the end—she's disembodied and remakes herself). so the immediate concern with oscar and ozma is to divide their souls, and i think there are a few of possibilities as to how:

literal ascension via the tree

the sword of destruction

silver eyes as the mirror revealing what is true (two, not one)

salem

some combination of 2-4.

from that point the crucial question is whether separating ozma and restoring him to his own body oncedoes or doesn't break his cursed reincarnation forever. if it doesn't (or if he isn't willing to take the risk that it doesn't) then… frankly the simplest and surest way to put an end to ozma reincarnating as a parasite forever is to make him immortal the way salem is immortal. if his soul can't die, he can't be bound to another by light's curse. it is death that empowers his curse. 

so to take away what gives light power over ozma, give ozma infinite life. right? 

which… i mean, the well of creation gave salem infinite life; she hoped that the pool of grimm would take it away; take from an infinite quantity, an infinite quantity remains; this force of pure destruction could not destroy, so it created… it's possible for two souls to be bound together as one and it's possible for one soul to be divided into two. the possibility of salem dividing her infinite life in order to share it with ozma isn't exactly a leap.

certainly i wouldn't rule out a straightforward ascension through the tree being the answer—it is kind of the obvious course—but i've been rolling dark's parting words to salem around in my mind a lot since v9. "still making demands of your creators?"

that rebellion ended in crushing defeat because they tried to fight back with the gifts the brothers gave them—power that did not in truth belong to humanity, because those gifts were not freely given. this is a lesson salem took to heart, hence her insinuation (in WOR) of aura/semblances being much greaterthan mere magic, cinder using grimm (a kind of power salem claimed for herself after the brothers abandoned it) to mediate her inheritance of the fall maiden (a mere remnant of god-given power bequeathed to modern humans by light's champion, which salem has repeatedly warned cinder to be cautious of), and her recent experiment with combining silver eyes with grimm. 

presuming salem is involved in the separation and breaking of ozma's curse at all, i think it's deeply unlikely she would be willing to trust the tree to just fix everything; i think there's a not-insignificant possibility that she has met the blacksmith herself before and may be factoring what she knows about the tree and/or the brothers' history into her plans, but if so it would be more on the level of knowing the brothers are finite and broken, not expecting the tree to save her. 

(sidebar: there's an expectation across a lot of the fandom now that the brothers can/will be 'defeated' by tagging in the blacksmith to scold them for being naughty, and that is just… not going to happen. lol. the blacksmith makes it crystal clear that neither she nor the tree can or will intervene, and while the brothers need to ascend and that's the obvious outcome the narrative is moving toward now, convincing light [and dark if he's still around] to do it is a problem remnant's people are going to need to figure out for themselves. also the fandom-wide treatment of the brothers as spoiled little boys who just need mom to scold them is both inane and, frankly, misogynistic—because "well, the brothers are petty assholes but salem is just a spoiled bitch throwing a tantrum because they didn't give her what she wanted, and actually all her problems are self-inflicted" is an outrageous position to hold about a woman hating the genocidal monsters who murdered an entire planet to spite her. and then the cherry on top is anticipating that the conflict will be solved by way of "mommy" swooping in to clean up the mess her silly boys made. come the fuck on.) 

anyway, i figure salem will be stridently in the camp of "no, we need to forge our own path." ozma, likewise, i can only imagine feeling extremely dubious of just putting his life into the hands of any god after what light did to him—let alone a god who is completely unknown to him. if he and salem think there is even the smallest chance that the two of them can break his curse by working together without divine intervention, i… think that will be Plan A for sure. after all, THIS is how ozpin closes out 'fairytales of remnant':

One interpretation of this story focuses on the fact that the people caused the problem in the first place. But in my view, it is only natural for us to want to bring more light into the world and “reach for the sun.” And on the brighter side, if you’ll excuse the pun, people were also part of the solution. They not only replaced the sun, a celestial gift from the all-powerful God of Light, but also improved upon it through their own ingenuity. Most importantly, they could not have accomplished this magnificent, godly feat without uniting for a common purpose in a way they never had before. The world once was divided between day and night, light and darkness, but by coming together, and overcoming their inherent jealousy and resentment, people made the darkness just a little bit brighter for all.

a parable about humanity claiming the powers of their creators to perfect their own design; a parable about the world coming together to replace their divine gifts, and in doing so create a better world in divinity's absence. like i'm always saying, ozma's zealotry is grounded in fear—in his terrified certainty that the brothers are all-powerful forces of nature who cannot be fought—but the world salem aspires to create is the one he dreams of too, in his heart of hearts. 

as for oz becoming a faunus—i honestly would not be surprised if he did? both thematically (the faunus in the myth are liberated through transformation into their true inner selves -> ozma must be liberated from oscar through transformation into his true self; the faunus mythically participate in their own creation and in doing so free themselves to choose their own destinies, making faunus the symbolic if not literal triumph of salem's rebellion) and, if i'm correct about faunus having been created by salem's transformation in the pool of grimm, also mechanically (in that event she would be the literal god of animals and manifestation of animal-like features representing the inner self follows the metamorphic pattern she created, so if it's predominately her magic mediating ozma's transformation/restoration then it would follow for him to become a faunus.)

but if he does, i think what he'll end up with is an avian trait—like trust love ("if you could only open up a door/spread your wings and fly away from here/write yourself into a fairytale/all your problems would just disappear") and sacrifice ("born an angel, heaven-sent/falls from grace are never elegant") both pretty explicitly, in opposite ways, equate wings with ozma's freedom. (hi @st-whalefall i see you.) and then there's the way ozma describes the branwens' bird forms: "Using this power, I was able to gift the Branwen twins the ability to "see" more, to move freely and be unburdened by their natural bodies. I... well... gave them the ability to turn into birds." <- freedom, unburdening, and clearer sight. IF ozma becoming a faunus through breaking his curse is in the cards, i would think this is pretty blunt foreshadowing. 

and if it isn't—well, it's symbolic and might well remain symbolic but another thought i've been rolling around for a while is ozma finding some way of separating himself from oscar as a bird. they're fighting this curse together now; the curse is fighting back, and with the kids returned from the ever after, oscar and oz are going to be hearing about ascension and afteran magic and—maybe, depending on how detailed team rwby is in their account—about "you could just be human, or just a cat, if you wanted." 

in one myth, faunus are created by the combination of sapient animals and human beings—through, it might be said, the merger of two souls into a singular new being. blake, in v1, is reading a novel about a man with two souls, fighting for control over his body. ozma loves stories, myths, fairytales—relies onstories to make sense of himself and his life. his curse is a false, corrupted form of ascension, and when blake looked at herself in the tree's mirror, it asked "are you complete? do you wish to return human-and-animal, separated?"

for blake, that was the tree's gentle way of confronting her with her past self-hatred, to help her see and crystallize how much she's grown from being that terrified girl who secretly wished she could just be human. but think about how oz and oscar might take that story. 

oscar doesn't like using magic because it makes the merge faster. long ago, ozma carved out his divinely-given magic and created the maidens in hope of sparing his hosts, but the magic of his curse remains. he can't sever himself from his hosts, and fighting the curse outright causes it to lash out and hurt them both. but ozma also did *something* to grant the branwens shapeshifting; either he really did draw on his own curse to do that, or else he used the crown of choice to make it so. either way… the curse keeps trying to force him forward. force him to come out. 

in the lost fable, the final outcome of his curse is at least represented by something like a haunting—ozma sees his other-self watching him from outside of himself. this may or may not be literal in the sense of what ozma experiences, but the idea of 'one soul in the body, one soul outside' is narratively in play. and ozma was able to seal himself off from oscar in a way that does seem to have altered the nature of their connection, or at least created room for oscar to reclaim his individuality. 

so what happens if ozma gathers all the magic and throws his will behind the curse's attempts to shove him forward, instead of against, with the specific purpose of manifesting himself in some physical form outside of oscar's head, drawing on old myths about faunus being similarly two-in-one that blake's account of the ever after seems to corroborate as having a kernel of truth? 

like—why not try something weird and out of the box? what have they got to lose? if it doesn't work then they're back to square one of grappling with the curse, and if it does then not only have they figured out a new way to give oscar some room to breathe but ozma emerging as a bird with a psychic connection to oscar would be real fucking helpful for the coalition as a spy/scout. 

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Really enjoying the scritches

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Art by Leah Gardner

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Tbh I can only imagine the rage Salem might feel on Oz's behalf once she finds out Light manipulated and trapped him into the task Light gave him, and that he has no choice in coming back (assuming she doesn't know that it isn't his choice). I think finding out he's essentially been trapped in a prison (the prison being the fucked up cycle of life/death/rebirth and the Mandate) this entire time would give her extra incentive to, presumably (if that's her goal), overthrow the tyrants that are the gods.

And honestly I think that would really show Oz that yes, Salem does still love him and care about him (quietly slides over Would You Fall In Love With Me Again from EPIC the Musical). Ugh I just want them to make uppp they mean everything to me. I need that reconciliation arc sm. And sighs. Salem saving Ozma from his metaphorical tower like how Ozma saved Salem from hers :( i want them to at least be friends again. There's sm they have to talk about and make up for

in all honesty i think her immediate reaction is more likely to be anguished guilt than fury, because the god of light deftlymanipulated her into acting as the lock on ozma's cage. it's been evident since 6.3 that salem already feels an immense burden of self-blame and guilt and in v8 we see, with cinder, salem turn on a dime while articulating a very precise and accurate understanding of why cinder acted as she did in response to the way salem treated her.

(and i do also think ozma's view that salem is at least partially responsible for what the brothers did to her and to the world may be, ultimately, because she told the story that way: if salem really did hesitate to tell him parts of it at first because she feared ozma would reject her, then it follows she felt ashamed and guilty, and feeling that way would undoubtedly color her account.) 

and in 6.4, the one time in the present we've ever seen salem truly lose her temper, what happens? she sends everyone else out of the room and self-harms. the windows shatter inward—the scene cuts away before we see salem get ripped apart by broken glass, but that is what she's doing. that unbearable uncontrollable rage is for herself. 

so how will she feel when she learns that all this time she spent believing that ozma  cynically took advantage of her trust and love to manipulate her into serving her tormentor, that he willingly bent the knee to tyrannical monsters and never wavered from his obedience—how will she feel when she finds out that actually, all that time, ozma was being tortured and forcibly twisted into an unwilling pawn by a curse he was tricked into accepting?

like. 

look at what she did to herself when she realized her decision to abandon cinder meant leaving cinder to infiltrate atlas and recover the lamp from oz all by herself, with no support, mere weeks after cinder nearly died at haven. and that was harm of a much smaller scale, spanning just a couple weeks. salem fled into exile after that horrible fight and left ozma to suffer alone in a state of inescapable torment for thousands of years. 

i think she's going to be devastated and furious with herself first, and she'll have to navigate that before she can reach being enraged at the god of light for ozma's sake. but yeah once she's had that time to process her hatred of the brothers and conviction that they must be cast down will only deepen. 

for ozma it's far more important that he sees the anguish and grief and guilt clearly. he already knows her rage. he knows she hates the brothers and why. salem is a deeply emotional character but her affect is blunted and notably in the narration of the lost fable, spite and anger at the gods are the only emotions jinn ever describes salem feeling—everything else we see salem feeling in that episode is framed as a manipulative lie, because ozma is terrified that her spiteful anger at the gods might have been the only thing that was real. 

and again i think this is a misconception rooted in the way salem presented herself because in both the kitchen scene and even more so in their last conversation, salem keeps what she wants and what shefeels very tightly locked down. from the instant ozma suggested that he wanted more than their cozy little life in her cabin, salem was one hundred percent focused on giving him what he said he wanted. literally, "whatever we want—what you want!"

salem fearing ozma would reject her didn't begin and end with just flinching before she plucked up the courage to tell him of her rebellion. it also encompassed what she wanted, if he wanted something else, and anything she felt that she feared might upset him. even when he told her the whole truth, she crushed down her own feelings and quoted from a myth—spoke in his language—and tried to reach out to somehow find a compromise because even then she was putting him and what he wanted so far above herself that she couldn't even bring herself to admit that she felt hurt. 

fundamentally what ozma needs is to see her pain, her grief, without any restraint—not just for her sake but also for his own. anger is what he expects. it's the only thing he expects. and i think a lot of the resentment he feels toward salem in the present comes from a place of believing on some level that he's just her excuse for being angry at the gods because he feels so much doubt that she truly loved him. 

which is where the maiden-in-tower allusion becomes salient; when the prince is blinded his sight is healed by her tears. ozma won't be able to see her clearly until he sees her sorrow.

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when u think about his soulful brown eyes…

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protecc

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Ayyyy i got a random question related to your Derg Weiss.. can she magically retract her dragon traits (like her horns, wings and tail) to hide it?

yeah! it's uncomfy for her though!

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Don't believe i ever shared this here, some handsome yang I commissloned from @cometko on twitter !

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The weak die, the strong live. Those are the rules.

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tangential to that rb, the depiction of destruction/creation within the 9.10 lore sequence is sooo so fascinating for how it reflects and recontextualizes the dynamic we saw between the brothers in 6.3

the brothers were made to cultivate the ever after. first, the blacksmith says, they were given the power to destroy, so as to clear the wilderness; and what we’re shown is baby dark eating the overgrowth while baby light kicks a tree to shake down some acorns into a basket.

first observation: baby light doesn’t really participate in the destructive stage. his brother eats weeds, he weaves a basket.

second observation: the destructive act is eating. baby light let his brother do all the hard work, which in practice meant his brother ate and he did not. so from a symbolic/thematic standpoint not partaking in the destruction is fundamentally an act of self-denial—it is the choice to go hungry—it’s asceticism.

third observation: the thorny vines baby dark has been eating are still visible behind baby light and appear to be encroaching on the tree; baby light ignores them entirely. given the overt allusion to the elm and the vine in V8 and the interpersonal dynamic between the brothers in 6.3 it’s hard not to draw a connection with the imagery here to the fir and the bramble, the oak and the reed, and similar tales on the arrogant tree/wise bramble theme. ‘the oak and the reed’ in particular is salient to the brothers: it’s a cautionary fable about how things that cannot bend, break.

carrying on:

after clearing the wilderness, the brothers were given “creativity, to imagine what, and who, could replace the wilderness.” this sequence begins with baby light planting an acorn, which sprouts and blooms into a butterfly. “the brothers built homes for them,” the blacksmith says, and the butterfly’s wings become a mirror: on the right, baby light raises houses; and on the left, baby dark grazes on the weeds. they are facing each other and moving toward the center—reflections of each other.

first observation: there’s a common fantasy trope that ‘evil’ (or darkness or what have you) cannot create, only corrupt, and what rwby is doing with the brothers is a deliberate inversion of that. baby light doesn’t create the butterfly; he plants a seed he was able to harvest only because of his brother having cleared most of the overgrowth, and waits anxiously to see what it will become. then that butterfly becomes the frame for the mirrored images of baby dark eating while his brother builds homes. the portrayal of these different acts as reflections implies that they’re actually the same in some way, and as noted the destructive act is the act of nourishing oneself. so the implication being made here is that baby light cannot create without the nourishment baby dark provides. that it is baby dark who harvests the raw materials and shares the fuel baby light needs to do his work. in rwby’s schema, darkness is not limited to mere corruption, it is what makes creation possible.

second observation: on baby light’s side of the mirror, after he builds a house, we see a tove sprout and blossom from the ground behind him. i do find it sort of interesting that we get this visual contrast between baby light’s houses, which he sort of conjures into being out of thin air, and the organic growth of the tove—and then it’s juxtaposed with baby dark eating the weeds out of an orchard. there’s a degree of this apparent during the destruction, too (grazing/basket). baby light seems to hold himself a little apart from the world around him. he doesn’t eat, he harvests. he doesn’t garden, he constructs. baby dark engages with his world by eating it—digesting it—it’s more primal. he’s part of the ecosystem. baby light shapes the ecosystem but doesn’t partake in it, which is probably the root of his misconception of his role and the nature of balance; he’s trying to garden without ever having tasted fruit.

and skipping ahead just a tad:

eventually the brothers grew curious and decided to test the limits of what they could do by creating new beings on their own, separate from the tree, and this is where it gets really interesting because they’re depicted as breathing life into their creations, and dark breathes fire but light breathes smoke.

first observation: dark is the greater power. without fire, there is no smoke, and smoke is merely particulate released by burning matter. putting this in terms of hellenistic philosophy and the classical elements, refer to the thematic symmetry between rwby and fragments of heraclitus’ writings on the soul, flux, and the harmony of opposites; heraclitus considered fire to be arche (“this world […] ever was and is and will be: everliving fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures” B30) and in what survives of his writings spoke very little of air, although in B76 he describes it as being born from the “death of fire” and this seems at least notionally congruent with the later aristotelean identification of air with smoke. (notionally as in ‘good enough for the elastic way rwby vamps on this stuff’)

extrapolation: this comes right on the heels of our being shown that baby dark ate and baby light did not, and implicitly that baby dark ate to sustain or fuel baby light’s creativity. dark spent their childhood immersed in their world—living in it and with it—while light observed and cultivated it. and upon reaching young adulthood, dark breathes fire, but light only breathes smoke. the math seems… pretty straightforward; if dark is (or was) the greater power it is because his integration with the ever after enriched him, and likewise light’s choice to hold himself at a remove diminished him.

second observation: light makes the cat by breathing life into an ember he plucks from dark’s campfire; whether dark played a direct role and if so to what degree is somewhat unclear, although the cat’s earlier use of “maker” in the singular would suggest that he did not. in contrast, the jabberwalker is unambiguously a joint creation, begun by dark and finished by light, which makes him the prototypal human. the cat is the product of light’s curiosity (thus, hunger for knowledge); jabber, the product of the brothers’ choice to make something together.

third observation: the brothers had the cat take over one portion of their role (“finding the broken parts of the ever after”) and made jabber to take over another (“finish what the cat started.”) the intention was for the cat to tag things for the jabberwalker to eat. note the tove comforted by the cat is then attacked by the jabberwalker and presumably eaten.

extrapolation: destruction as practiced by dark was neither violent nor annihilative; he merely grazed on thorny brambles that would otherwise grow out of control, and this in turn sustained light’s creativity. almost certainly the brothers expected the jabberwalker’s destruction to be the same—they meant to make a gardener, not an executioner. humans prove that the brothers can make destructive beings that are not annihilative, so it follows that jabber’s annihilative nature was not inevitable. it’s the consequence of a mistake, something that could have been avoided. so: how and why did this happen?

fourth observation: after he kills the toves, jabber breaks a wooden structure—presumably a house?—with a swipe of his claws. this same motion and manner of destruction is then repeated by light, killing jabber with a swiping blow. this is suggestive, to say the least.

hypothesis: the bifurcation of their roles (dark eating/light making) and light’s perception of himself as the custodian of a planned balance rather than one part of an organic ecosystem was the problem. dark intimately understands the destructive side of the cycle; he knows that destruction feeds creation, because he has been feeding his brother all along. (see also, “you may bask in the powers of creation, but you do not own them” and his portrayal in ‘the two brothers’ as a god of cyclical destruction-and-creation. by no means is dark precious about this false dichotomy; and in fact in both the lost fable and the two brothers, dark is explicitly upset when light tries to shove him into the ‘destructive, hateful malice’ box.)

in contrast, we’ve seen that light did not participate in clearing the wilderness even in the very beginning; and if the cat assumed his role in the same way jabber was meant to take over dark’s, that would suggest the closest light ever came to engaging in destruction was pointing his brother at the weeds.

how well did he really understand his brother’s role, when he breathed life into the creature dark designed to replace himself? dark ate the wild and dangerous things and digested them and, through light, gave them new life; inside jabber there’s nothing but void. jabber eats the broken things and… the end. the circle breaks. jabber is destruction as imagined by a god whose hatred of the very concept has blinded him to his fundamental need for it.

fifth observation: oh. oh i see.

THAT’S FINE.

“this woman came to you only after i denied her pleas; pleas that would have disrupted the balance that you and i created, together.”/“then it seems i owe you an apology; allow me to correct my mistake.”

“one brother believed they had disrupted the balance, while the other refused to condemn their creations for their mistakes.”

fuck.

extrapolation: dark didn’t revoke his favor to salem in a fit of pique; he realized that they were having the exact same conflict they’d had over jabber in the exact same way and i think he also recognized that if he didn’t capitulate, they would tear remnant apart exactly like they almost tore the ever after apart. inasmuch as dark ‘won’ that fight, he won it because the tree implicitly sided with him on the matter of jabber getting to live and then kicked both of them out until such time as they achieved a stable equilibrium. the whole point of remnant is to solve the jabber argument. one of them—it probably doesn’t matter which, but my money’s on light for reasons i will lay out in a moment—proposed permadeath as a compromise.

making death fundamentally permanent does not in any way address the underlying problem, but it sidesteps the conflict by flattening the distinction between ‘ascension’ and ‘death.’ the jabber argument hinged on light’s conviction that they had disrupted the natural balance (ascension) by creating death. dark did not disagree with this premise—he agreed that they made a mistake with jabber—his position was that the consequences for that mistake shouldn’t fall on jabber’s shoulders, because jabber was innocent. reading between the lines of the blacksmith’s philosophical conclusion a little, it seems likely to me that dark wanted to let the disruption run its course and settle into a new equilibrium (“the patience to see things through to the end”).

i think—and this is why my money’s on the permadeath compromise being light’s idea—the nuance of dark’s position was probably lost on light, because light isn’t familiar or comfortable with destruction; he fears it and disdains it as the enemy of creation rather than the force which inspires it. in trying to make sense of his brother’s acceptance of jabber i think he probably would have come to the conclusion that dark wanted things to die and enjoyed jabber’s brutality; and if he viewed the conflict as being, in essence, about order vs malice, then building a new system from scratch with death as a keystone is a fairly reasonable compromise. the problem is that dark does not actually have any investment in making things die, and in fact made not condemning jabber to death his hill to die on, and very much seems to have chafed at being perceived this way.

add in however many thousands of years of humans extolling light while hating and fearing dark. then introduce a grieving young woman who pours out her sorrows to him and asks him to reunite her with her dead lover—in one stroke answering his loneliness and providing a chance for him to gently reopen the jabber argument with an act of kindness. if they’ve been at an impasse all this time because light thinks dark insisted on keeping jabber around because he liked jabber’s brutality, then perhaps dark can get the ball rolling again by bringing this anguished woman’s pure-hearted noble hero of a lover back from the dead, no strings attached. he could not have arranged a more perfect demonstration of his willingness to embrace life and creation if he’d tried.

except light isn’t all that fussed about death vs rebirth either, he cares about preserving the original balance unchanged forever and thus makes no distinction between introducing death into a system of eternal rebirth and introducing rebirth into a system of permanent death. both are disruptive and disruption is not allowed.

the instant light accuses salem of “com[ing] here with the aim to control you” and “disrupt[ing] the balance we created,” dark backs the fuck off and lowers his head—he doesn’t look at salem, although the angle of the shot when she looks up at him kind of makes it seem that way; she and ozma are pretty well off to his left and he looks straight down, and while his eye sockets are set into the sides of his skull he’s animated as if he has binocular vision throughout the scene—and then. “i owe you an apology. allow me to correct my mistake.”

he returns ozma to death to appease his brother, but he refutes light’s accusation of salem by taking the blame for the disruption fully onto himself, and he spares salem.

“the other refused to condemn their creation for their mistakes.”

sixth observation: dark’s capitulation is not enough. light decides (unilaterally—dark is entirely cut out of the frame) to punish salem, continuing the blow-by-blow repetition of the conflict dark tried to avert:

and then it cuts to black. salem wakes up falling from the sky into the fountain of life and creation—she sinks, and drowns—and wakes up hitting the surface of the water again, now a reflecting pool only an inch or two deep. something weird happened here—the sequence is deliberately and conspicuously disjointed and salem’s fall into the fountain is the only time in nine volumes rwby has used this technique, so it’s meant to really stand out and that is probably because it’s important.

seventh observation: we do not see jabber get put back together again after light bites him. the blacksmith says her piece about balance, and from there the tale jumps forward to the brothers standing on the threshold, leaving the ever after because it “could no longer bear [their] experiments.” dark is standing in almost the exact same posture as in the scene where he and light explain salem’s immortality—the sole difference is that in 9.10 he has his elbows tucked in.

eighth observation: i’m going insane. i give up.

either something broke in dark when light lunged for salem or he’s playing chess on a dimension i cannot fathom. either way i’m convinced he left remnant to return home and ascend. and became the relic spirits probably

[10gallon]

Loved your recent Light & Dark meta, but I am curious, how would you rationalize Dark's decision to fuck up the moon when he left, seemingly just to be a dick?

well it’s less about rationalizing (<- in the common sense of constructing a moral justification) than it is trying to tease out whether and to what degree dark may have intended for humankind to be reborn from the ashes—or in other words if he was primarily motivated by emotional reaction to salem/light/the rebellion or else playing the long game to get his brother to leave with him.

the… for lack of a better phrase, ‘lightest grey’ reading here is that dark let his brother curse salem, vaporized millions of people, and left the whole planet in flames behind him as a gambit to liberate humanity from himself and his brother, because he no longer believed that compromise was possible. that’s interesting from a character perspective but by no means does it make him ‘good’ or ‘right’—and in the broader sense of rationalization as simply explaining why he does things, it probably bears repeating again that dark is an emotional being who is clearly very, very fed up with the situation and it’s not contradictory for him to both have an agenda and act with petty cruelty while pursuing it.

with that being said, hinges OFF!

i’m gonna also tag in @lizarr7’s reply on the op because it’s salient to the topic and probably the best place to begin:

Light is afraid of change. I think that's the simplest and most distilled way of putting it.

Also I'm not convinced we've seen the last of Dark. After all, if the tree kicked them out on the terms that they couldn't return until they found unity or whatever, why would it let one brother in without the other, especially when the very reason he is returning is because they haven't? I don't think dark could ascend if he wanted to. I don't think the tree would let him.

as a point of clarification, while the tree makes the door for the brothers explicitly because their fight is harming the ever after, they are not exiled in the punitive sense and it is actually somewhat unclear whether they were made to leave as opposed to just being given the means to; more broadly it’s unclear to what extent the tree is an active force at all.

i don’t think the tree is entirely passive—the blacksmith is an aspect of the tree and obviously she is a thinking, feeling being with philosophical opinions!—but a core tenet of the blacksmith’s ideology is non-intervention. the joy of creating is “the not knowing [what the creations will become]” and balance is “an ecosystem, an organism, a living breathing thing” which “cannot be restored with force or calculation” because “true balance finds its own equilibrium.” that’s a pretty hard line against direct interference or management, and when ruby finds her in the tree, the blacksmith tells her “the only thing that can happen to you here is what you want to happen; the choice of what you become and where you end up is yours to make.” she offers ruby guidance because ruby isn’t able to articulate what she wants, but she can’t (or at least, won’t) make ruby’s choices for her. the red prince is an important data point here in that it’s demonstrably possible to ascend toward the worst version of yourself instead of the best, if you do choose. so i don’t think the tree would ever prohibit an ascension, for better or worse.

in any case, this is how the blacksmith recounts the brothers’ departure:

The Ever After could no longer bear the Brothers’ experiments. And so, the Tree built them a special doorway to a greater beyond where the Brothers could try creating worlds of their own. A doorway that would remain open for the Brothers’ return, and any of their creations. And what truly remarkable things they accomplished, whenever the Brothers’ creations have come to the Ever After.

i do not get the sense that the tree intended their exile as a punishment or imposed any restrictions on when or how they could return, beyond “if you’re going to fight, take it outside.” rather i think the brothers took this “greater beyond” as a place where they could resolve a vicious fight neither of them wanted to be having and reconcile with each other. before all of this happened they were constant companions who did everything together! they were always very different, but for a long time they found harmony in their differences, not conflict.

before they leave, dark glances at light and inclines his head as if to ask “ready?” and then waits for light to nod before he steps through. there’s some tension under the surface—dark is standing rather stiffly with his hands clenched into fists behind his back, he’s not super happy to be leaving—but a sense of camaraderie also. and of course the whole thing ultimately kicked off because the brothers wanted to try new things and see what else they could do. the tree kicked them out in the way that you’d tell roughhousing kids to go play outside. it’s a consequence of bad behavior but not a punishment.

hence my thinking is that the brothers themselves were deeply invested in negotiating a compromise and tried their absolute best to do so, but were stymied by their incompatible ideas about, fundamentally, the value of destruction and the place it should have in their world.

the narrative of ‘the two brothers’ is, i think, probably accurate in the essentials of what the conflict developed into:

Though they had distinct personalities and competing desires, they were still connected and did not feel whole unless they were together. Since they could not agree on where to go, they decided to create a world for themselves.

[…]

One day the God of Light approached his brother. “I have been trying to create a beautiful world for us, but your creations spoil it.”

“Your creations are almost as dull as the unending void was,” said the God of Darkness. “If this place is going to entertain us, we need to make things lively.” With that, the God of Darkness brought forth earthquakes and volcanoes that tore his brother’s continent apart into smaller lands, boiled the oceans, rained fire and ash, and wiped out all the living things.

(NB: the creations light refers to are the moon, deserts, mountains, canyons, and grimm. humans do not exist for the grimm to prey on yet so this is wholly a quarrel over aesthetics; light wants everything to be lush and tranquil, dark wants a world in endless motion. note how the main point of contention here is just “plate tectonics, yes or no?”)

[…]

“Brother,” said the God of Light one day. “Why do you take pleasure in torturing and destroying my creations?”

The God of Darkness smiled. “You take so much joy in their creation, I merely want you to be able to do more of it.”

[…]

The God of Light wanted his brother to see the world as he did, to comprehend the responsibility that came with their immense power. And so, he made a bold proposal:

“What if we create a new form of life together, one more capable and fascinating than the animals and insects? We can make them aware of what they are, and empower them to control and shape their world.”

The God of Darkness was intrigued. “If they can think and communicate as we do, they won’t be as predictable as the things you’ve made before.”

“There is one condition, Brother,” said the God of Light. “If we create these beings together, then we must share in any decisions about their fate. You must promise not to wipe them out on a whim; they must have the chance to find their own destiny and rule or ruin this world we have made for them.”

[…]

For a time, the brothers were satisfied with what they had made together and they watched Humanity adapt and flourish. People spread across the planet, and if the God of Darkness occasionally tossed adversity their way in the form of natural disasters like a flood or tornado, the God of Light then blessed them with bountiful harvests and fair weather.

The God of Darkness was interested in testing the Humans’ limits and admired their resourcefulness. Following a devastating earthquake, rather than give in to despair and accept failure, Humans rebuilt their homes—stronger than before, so they would survive the next quake. And though they grieved their lost loved ones, they picked up and pressed on. The God of Light underestimated the Humans, overprotective of their creations, but the God of Darkness saw how they thrived in facing challenges and grew in overcoming them.

[…]

“Your abominations [grimm] are killing the Humans,” the God of Light told his brother. “Get rid of them.”

“You protested whenever I wiped out your creations, but now you want to do the same to mine?” the God of Darkness snapped.

“Your creatures are not alive. They are crafted from malice and hate, with the sole purpose of destroying all that is good in the world.”

The God of Darkness scowled. “Is that what you think of me, Brother? Never forget: You and I are the same.”

with the context provided by 9.10 it is very easy to trace the lines of this conflict all the way back to its source: dark ate and light did not. dark understands destruction as a natural and essential part of life that brings healing, nourishment, and revival; light misunderstands it as something his brother did to get rid of bad things and he cannot wrap his head around why dark refused to get rid of jabber (a bad thing) OR why dark keeps adding destructive things into their new world (which, having been created ex nihilo, does not have a primordial wilderness for dark to clear).

to him this seems arbitrary, pointless, and cruel; meanwhile dark looks at light’s creative efforts and sees an egg that could hatch into something wonderful if only the shell would crack. and then once he’s added a beak here and some talons there and has the newly-hatched chick cradled in his hands, light accuses him of ruining the egg and he can no more understand why his brother is so upset about that than light can understand why dark keeps doing this.

the cherry on top of the irreconcilable differences sundae is that light thinks erasing jabber or the grimm from existence is exactly the same as, say, breaking up the planetary crust before spinning the world like a top. but to dark these are profoundly different—one is death, the other a renewal. a forest burnt to the ground by wildfire erupts with new life again; a town flattened by a terrible earthquake is rebuilt stronger and with more care, to survive the next quake unscathed. this is ascension! this is the pattern they have known and cherished all their lives, adapted for a different environment; an old song in a new key!

and the longer this fundamental difference in perspective goes unresolved the more impossible it becomes to find any common ground at all in the conflict arising from it. when we meet them in 6.3 they have been in the trenches of this ideological stalemate for so long that it’s devolved to dark spitting that creation is his nature just as it is light’s and light responding flatly that no it isn’t. it’s gotten to the point of “you don’t own creation, you don’t own humans, and you don’t own me” and the answer being, basically, “well i’m right, you’re wrong, and that human tricked you into breaking the rules because she’s bad and needs to be punished.”

it’s gone on for so long and grown so large that in a very real way it’s mutated into a fight about whether or not dark is an evil monster who needs to be restrained lest his malice bring the world to ruin, and while i don’t think light would describe it that way it seems very clear to me that dark has grasped this. as i said in the original post, resurrecting a virtuous hero who died in the prime of his life, at the request of his devastated, grieving lover, without any conditions at all, for no other reason than because it pleased him to be kind, is as clear and unambiguous a proof of the value dark sees in life, in love, and in creation itself as dark could ever make—and it changes nothing. it completes the circle and the original fight begins again, exactly as before. dark recognizes this as it happens and immediately capitulates, immediately takes full responsibility, apologizes, and corrects his ‘mistake’—and it changes nothing. light still lunges at salem, to punish her for what dark did.

so, either dark lashed out at salem in a petty rage because he believed light’s insinuation that she sought to manipulate him (which does not, in retrospect, make sense, because it’s preceded by dark folding into himself, getting very quiet, and apologizing to his brother, at whom he was screaming furiously not a minute before; he doesn’t seem outraged or indignant, and he really has no reason to take light at his word)—or, he saw what was happening and backed down so as to prevent light from trying to solve the problem by killing salem, a la jabber.

only that didn’t work, because nothing dark does actually matters anymore. dark can bring a legendary hero back to life as an act of kindness toward his bereaved lover and his brother will see only an abomination in need of stern correction; he can bow his head, humbly apologize, assume full responsibility, and undo the act that provoked his brother, and light will still condemn the innocent mortal caught in the middle.

there’s nothing dark can do, at this point. he can bash his head against an unsolvable conflict for the rest of forever while his brother flatly refuses to move a single nanometer away from his original position that destruction is acceptable only within a very narrow, strictly-defined set of parameters (clearing away the primordial wilderness of the ever after to set the stage for light’s design) but aberrant and unworthy to exist in any other context because it incites change and change is anathema; or he can walk away and be free.

except he can’t walk away, because this world and humans in particular are very dear to him. light is cold and unyielding and punitive enough as it is; how much worse would he become without dark around to keep the world changing and growing? look at what light did to salem in retaliation for dark merely granting her request and then walking it back to appease his brother!—how dire might the consequences be for humankind if dark chose to upend the balance by leaving?

these are rhetorical questions; the answer is that light resorts to demanding absolute obedience or else he’ll vaporize the planet. because that’s the ultimatum he gives ozma, without dark.

so dark, if his goal is to leave remnant, has to make sure that light leaves too. how?

(tin hats on!)

here’s something sticky i’ve been chewing on: light bites jabber and shatters him and then the blacksmith skips ahead to their departure, right. we don’t see dark putting jabber back together again, but we do know he ultimately was left alive, and we can infer that dark fixed him up one last time before they left.

light bites salem, too. the sound cuts out and the screen cuts to black for a couple seconds. then she jolts awake, unharmed, falling from the sky above light’s domain. absent the jabber parallel, it made intuitive sense to conclude that light snapped her up without actually harming her, flashed back to his domain, and then dropped her.

but the jabber parallel underscores the physicality of light’s violence: he rends jabber to pieces with his claws, he shatters jabber with a snap of his jaws. (beware the jabberwock, my son!/the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!) lunging down to bite is one of the ways light executed jabber—so when he lunges down to bite salem…?

dark is cut completely out of frame throughout the whole sequence of salem’s reaction to losing ozma for the third time. he breathes a blast of fire to engulf them and then we do not see him again until after salem is made immortal. this is a very overt implication that light made his choice to retaliate unilaterally; and given that only a minute prior, dark makes a deliberate point of leaving salem unharmed, it seems self-evident that dark did not want to kill her.

and of course this occurs mere minutes after it’s established that dark can bring people back even when light is the one who killed them.

and,

“If we create these beings together, then we must share in any decisions about their fate. You must promise not to wipe them out on a whim; they must have the chance to find their own destiny and rule or ruin this world we have made for them.”

if ‘the two brothers’ is accurate in the essentials of what “the rules we agreed upon” entailed, and light killed salem without consulting dark, and dark did not retroactively approve that decision, then light violated the rules and dark has every right to demand that salem be revived and allowed to decide her fate. if light insists upon punishment, it must be a punishment dark will agree to.

and light’s rigid absolutism demands that he obey the rules, too. he might stretch his interpretation of them to rationalize doing things that are not in the spirit of the rules, but he won’t break them.

so, who dropped salem into the fountain life and creation? here’s some pernicious little oddities that have been taunting me for a year that now seem… suggestive:

number one: after salem finishes coughing up water and realizes where she is, she sits up and, while light chides her for being selfish and arrogant, turns her head away from him to stare at dark. she is looking at dark, not light, when she asks “what did you do to me?”

number two: this fucking split screen. light is above his brother at the top of the shot but dark is ascendant, and once their relative positions have reversed dark’s half rapidly fades out to reveal salem (and both of them are shown whole, so their heads overlap light as well). the symbolism here couldn’t be louder if you gave it a bullhorn; salem’s immortality is the ending of light’s divine rule but a victory for dark, who rises (ascends!) from his inferior position beneath light and promptly vanishes, leaving salem to take his place.

number three: before the split screen, when salem is on the ground, the tree is center frame. after the split screen, she stands up, which—because she was sprawled perpendicular to the camera, so to be clear this is not an animation error—moves her a little to the left, which in turn has the effect of moving the tree off-center as the camera moves with her. look. LOOK at how this changes the composition of the shot!

centered. symmetrical. salem lies at the roots of the tree and the brothers are both sheltered by its crown but apart from it. (you can also see how her head is turned toward dark here)

off-center. lopsided. salem is still under the roots but her prominence in the shot is much greater; she completely fills the space between the brothers and they now seem small by comparison. the tree has moved away from light, who is now fully alienated from it—no part of him touches it—and dark has moved toward it and into it. his apparent ‘movement’ from the previous shot to this one is a descent from the high branches, following the trunk down, toward the bottom. (afterans ascend by diving to the roots of the tree and then rising up to blossom from its crown.)

these two shots bracket the split screen and directly reiterate that symbolism: light is removed from the seat of his power (and symbolically alienated from the cosmic tree) and dark gains the advantage, but salem has become a formidable barrier between them which, with the context v9 supplies, gives dark what he needs to be able to return to the tree.

and as a final point of interest, light tells salem that she must learn the importance of life and death before she can rest, and, well, that’s an eyebrow-raising turn of phrase, isn’t it:

“I will give them knowledge of themselves and their world,” said the God of Darkness. “So they can comprehend life and death, and thus they will also know fear.”

The God of Light said, “And I will give them free will, the power to decide what to do with that knowledge and choose their own place in the world.”

do you see? do you SEE? dark used light’s desire for retribution to guide him to this outcome, and he made salem immortal to make salem his heir.

more opaque is the question of to what degree dark anticipated salem going as far as she did, but i do think his characterization in ‘the two brothers’ is elucidating here:

The God of Darkness was interested in testing the Humans’ limits and admired their resourcefulness. Following a devastating earthquake, rather than give in to despair and accept failure, Humans rebuilt their homes—stronger than before, so they would survive the next quake. And though they grieved their lost loved ones, they picked up and pressed on. […] the God of Darkness saw how they thrived in facing challenges and grew in overcoming them.

dark sees in humans a cycle of growth and continual refinement through adversity. he delights in this and is “endlessly fascinated” by the human will to adapt and survive. he doesn’t allow hardships to befall humans to be cruel, but rather to galvanize them to achieve their full potential—and so where light curses salem with eternal pain as retribution for her “arrogance,” dark likely intended immortality as the furnace that would forge her into what he hoped she could become.

“the gods hoped that salem would learn from her eternal curse, and she did. she learned that the hearts of men are easily swayed.” she learned that the gods are fallible. she learned that light is cruel. she learned that humans do not need the brothers and that the brothers do not own them. she learned that humans, too, have a claim on the powers of creation and a choice in their own fate.

dark gave humans knowledge.

one of the brothers wanted salem to learn her lesson and return humbled and contrite; the other wanted to disabuse her of her faith in them and provoke defiance, and he got what he wanted in spades.

“my own gift to them, used against me.” / “you thought there was no greater punishment we could bestow upon you?” / “still demanding things of your creators.” these are the last things dark says to salem—his parting words—and it’s you cannot overcome us with the weapon i lent to you. you cannot overestimate our cruelty. you failed because you expected us to solve your problems for you. is he mocking her inferiority or is he telling her DO IT YOURSELF FOR THE WORLD IS YOURS

and then he shatters the moon and fire rains down, and he freezes the debris forever so that the violence of his departure will never, ever be forgotten. salem curses the gods and the universe and everything but herself as she wanders the planet waiting for a death that would never come—passively suffering in the last helpless vestiges of her faith—until fate leads her back to the land of darkness and she takes fate into her own hands.

look at this. LOOK at what dark did to the moon,

and look what it became after salem hurled herself through its reflection into the pool of grimm!

it isn’t mended but it’s been made whole. by salem when she rejected the fate inflicted upon her and recreated herself.

“it created a being of infinite life with a desire for pure destruction, and in time, she would find her adversary.” and it’s not ozma, and it’s not ruby standing behind ozma, and it’s not weiss or yang or blake revealed by ozma’s aimless wander through the white void. it’s light, who breaks the silence by saying ozma’s name and reveals himself like this:

i can’t add a screenshot because i’ve hit the image limit but the way light is positioned here directly repeats and exaggerates the serpentine motion of his lunge at salem and these are the only two shots in the lost fable where his draconic head is shown from the front rather than in profile.

and note the repetition here of this composition.

light delivers his ultimatum alone, standing in the place of the tree, against a backdrop of the white emptiness beneath the ever after. in the absence of his brother he maintains the circle alone, re-enacting their conflict and creation of the world by himself, unchanging, forever. remember how i said that nothing dark did actually mattered anymore? this is the proof.

dark is GONE, and light carries on trying to win their fight millions of years after his brother washed his hands of it and walked away.

“in our absence, i would like to offer you a chance to return” / “creation, destruction, choice and knowledge were the ideals upon which humanity was made. now, i leave them behind with the hope that you can learn to remake yourselves.” he tells ozma that if brought together, “these relics will summon my brother and me back to your world, and mankind will be judged.”—but he makes it explicitly clear that he is acting alone. he says i, not we, leave these relics behind. i, not we, have chosen you. dark has no part in this.

if dark still exists as before, then light is violating his own rules by acting unilaterally—and he has no reason to believe that dark will answer the relics’ summons or participate in a day of judgment he did not agree to and may not even know about.

if, on the other hand, dark left remnant and ascended…

well. um.

Finally, overcome with loneliness, the dragon decided to create a companion with whom he could share the cosmos and eternity—an equal, fashioned in his own image. Because even an all-powerful god cannot make something from nothing, the dragon divided himself and all his magic into two halves.

However, he destroyed himself in the act of creation. The old god was no more; in his place were two brothers, a dragon of pure light, and his shadow, a dragon of unfathomable darkness. They were new gods with shared memories and complementary abilities.

we have hard confirmation now that this part of ‘the two brothers’ is not literal truth, so where did it come from and why is it here?

the dragon divides himself and his power into new gods with shared memories of complementary abilities. something cannot come from nothing, and so in order to create himself in this new form, equals fashioned in his own image, he must destroy himself. this is a description of ascension which introduces the possibility of a god destroying himself in order to be reborn as multiple new beings.

dark is gone. he left remnant behind and we have not seen him since; light delivers his ultimatum alone.

there are four relics now, each inhabited by one of the spirits of destruction, creation, knowledge, and choice—the four qualities that defined the brothers and defined humanity in turn.

these spirits are shackled and wrapped in chains. the two we’ve met so far palpably dislike ozma.

and light, who has never ascended, who does not understand the role destruction plays in creation, who abhors change, believes that when these relics are united, his brother will return.

they’re the dragon divided. into four, not two, because dark understood that balance is not two forces locked in eternal conflict and understood his own nature to be more than a false dichotomy.

[10gallon]

[10gallon]

[10gallon]

A Deal With The Devil

So lately I’ve been thinking that maybe this is how it all went down on Kris’s end!

Happy Halloween and Happy Anniversary, Deltarune! 

EDIT: There’s also a short follow-up comic: Some Self Reflection

[10gallon]

"Spamtons does NFTS" this and "Alphys would do NFTs" that- WRONG. there's only ONE utdr character that loves having their face on stuff so much that they're willing to cause actual damage in order for that to happen and it's THIS fucker

You just KNOW he'd make some sort of MTTcoin if given the chance. Alphys had to block the terms related to it in his browser to be sure he doesn't start selling links to images. Everyone has to try their hardest to make sure he never learns about cryptocurrency