aliarlies

[aliarlies]

In a Heartbeat

So my good friend, @mcmystery, and I were chilling late at night and we happen to randomly come up with this punk band AU for RWBY. While she drew this amazing piece here, I decided to write this:

If you're not into this format, I posted it on AO3 here:

[aliarlies]

Ren: I can use my semblance to find Oscar by sensing flares of emotions.

Yang: Great! Just pick out the most traumatic emotions there is in this dump.

Ren: ...

Yang: ...

Jaune: Ren?

Ren: There's nothing *but* trauma here.

[aliarlies]

Vol 8 is just around the corner and I swear… this is just wishful thinking TOT OSCAR I SWEAR YOU BETTER COME OUT OKAY.

[aliarlies]

You keep tellin’ yourself that, Rubes.

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[aliarlies]

Just because someone carries it well…

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“Not friends. Family.”

[aliarlies]

Small scrawly comic of the conversation that plays in my head when I think about Oscar reaching out to Cinder with the seeds of doubt starting to take hold in her head about Salem. 

Can’t win them all, Oscar… or can you? I haven’t decided how I’m gonna finish this yet… so….

[aliarlies]

They form a terrible pact with one another, an alliance, and wreck havoc upon us all.

May our souls be saved.

canon Oscar, fanon Oscar, Lemon Oscar, British Oscar, and Mushroom Oscar all walk into a room. Who comes out alive?

[aliarlies]

I just realized something as I was trawling through RWBY Twitter and seeing people bully others for a ship I enjoy. I wasn't mad that they didn't ship it, I was more upset that they would completely deny the friendship the two characters have.

I love Rosegarden, and I've come to realize that I ship it in almost all forms I could think of. I don't mind if it gets romantic after they become adults. I also would love it if they just remain friends. It would be even cool if it becomes an intense queerplatonic relationship as well.

All in all, I just really love the relationship Ruby and Oscar has in any form. They're two characters burdened with a unique destiny because of who they are, and them bonding due to it will probably help them out a lot as we move forward with the show.

So I absolutely detest it when antis would go as far to deny that they're even friends or want to support each other. It doesn't matter if you think Ruby's relationship is better with someone else, you can't deny that Ruby and Oscar have become good friends over these past few volumes and to deny it and attack others for it just means you're nothing more than bullies who want to make someone leave a fandom out of fear.

[aliarlies]

It was frustrating during Volumes 4-6 because we were given only crumbs on his characterization. Most of it had to come from extrapolating his behavior by assessing the scenes they gave him.

Volume 4 allowed us to have a glimpse of his possible character, but he still remained illusive on how we can interpret him because Ozpin played a crucial part in that.

I think our biggest catch of his personality and concerned came in Volume 5 when he and Ruby talked in the dojo. We were finally able to see his doubts and inner turmoil. Furthermore, we even see how he came to start bonding with the others as shown when he grew upset when Ruby was hurt in the Volume 5 finale.

However, the biggest misstep with him is in Volume 6 when CRWBY cut out his inner journey after he left everyone. I'm glad we were able to get a JNR moment, but I wish we also were able to see what Oscar went through and how he managed to settle his doubts for a moment.

Volumes 7 and 8 are our biggest best chance to know who Oscar is as a person. We see him how he wants to distinguish himself away from Ozpin. Choosing to trust others and even risking himself in order to talk to Ironwood. We even see more of that growth in Volume 8 where he wants to talk to Salem's cadre rather than escape.

Unfortunately, his haters seem to dismiss his development in Volumes 7 and 8 which I think is a great shame. Regardless, I'm still plenty excited of what will happen next for him.

I like how they're doing the merging so far, but I would love to be surprised to find that Oscar, as we know him, remains relatively the same boy we came to love about him.

OKAY SO, it’s a well-known fact I am one of the biggest Oscar stans and I love my son boy with all my heart. And it does make me sad that there’s a lot of people in the FNDM who aren’t interested in him at all, but I do understand why. I can’t speak for every single person with this stance on Oscar, but I can point out very obvious reasons why he’s just not likable to some people. 

Rant/Explanation Below:

Keep reading

[aliarlies]

Oscar is a fantastic musician but he doesn’t know it yet

You know how Oscar somehow inherited all of the muscle memory of past lives? Imagine if one of those past lives was musician or a singer? He is just bored out of his mind in the whale and somehow manages to figure out how to carve a saxophone out of bones and he is just suddenly playing smooth jazz.

Neo: *cries at the sound of hearing such mesmerizing music* Hazel: “It’s beautiful...”

[JYR arrive to rescue Oscar] Yang: “I hear... music?”

[JYR enter the throne room to find Salem tied up in a corner while the others are enthralled by Oscar’s smooth playing.] Oscar: *stops* “Oh, hey guys. I got them to switch sides!”

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Neo: *signing several curse words and other terrible things aggressively*

Yang: "So what's she saying?"

Oscar: "Umm... Cinder is a jerk."

Ozpin: "Oh, you know she definitely said more than that."

Concept: Neo comes before JNOR/RWBY in an attempt to establish herself as an ally and explain her defection from Salem. However, communication isn’t going as well as it could be, because the teams can’t decipher precisely what she’s trying to say with her gestures and expressions. 

Oscar sees this happening and Oz is like, “I know just what to do. Try signing to her,” and Oscar is like, “But I don’t know how.” Oz replies “Try it, and you might be surprised.” Lo and behold, Oscar finds that he’s suddenly able to use sign language. Ozpin explains, “When you’ve lived as many lives as I have, you tend to pick up this sort of thing.” 

Neo brightens because FINALLY, someone around here she can have an in-depth conversation with. The only other person in recent memory who actually knew sign language was Roman, and since then she’s had to get by with body language alone. So then she starts signing excitedly to Oscar, explaining that she doesn’t want to serve Salem and like, just badmouthing the shit out of Cinder and the other jerks she had to deal with aboard the whale. And from then on, Neo uses sign language much more frequently. 

[aliarlies]

Yeah, there is no denying that. Hence why I lean towards it being more of a tragedy where they have to break up or something if they're still young. A sort of situation where they know they love each other, but they can't be together. I feel romances doesn't always have to be about being physically together.

However, if they're adults by the time they have to deal with all that, I often prefer it if they try to handle it with some nuance. People will be uncomfortable with it, I'm sure. It's my opinion though that writing is a good gateway to touch on those sort of heavy subjects to help explore ourselves as humans.

I don’t know how most other Rosegarden/Rich Farmers deal with the Oscar/Ozpin duality, but I think it’s kind of creepy to ship an immortal being with a teenager. I deal with this with a post canon headcanon where one of three things have happened.

1) Salem has defeated Oz in a way that somehow didn’t kill Oscar. I don’t know what that would look like, so, uhm, magic.

2) Pietro finds a way to transfer Oz to an artificial body a la Penny. He can already do soul transfers, so it’s just a matter of finding a way to separate the two souls.

3) Oscar wins the battle of wills and subsumes/banishes Ozpin from his mind. This is my favorite theory, just because Oscar is a badass and I think he could.

In all of these scenarios, Oscar keeps the memories that he’s unlocked from Ozpin and in 1 and 3, he keeps The Long Memory too.

[aliarlies]

For Rosegarden, Data Farm, and Rich Farmers, I often see people ignore Ozpin or write him out like you suggested.

However, I prefer the approach of it becoming a conflict for the ship that the couple has to deal with. How little time do they have left before the possibility that Oscar could be gone? Will Oscar's partner stubbornly try to remain with him to show that Oscar is still Oscar despite the new memories?

There is a treasure trove of material present there to take advantage of in writing and art.Personally, it doesn't even have to be a happy ending. Sometimes you can turn the ship into a tragedy if you feel the ship is doomed because of it.

I'm not saying people shouldn't still have fluff, but trying to tackle the whole Oz thing to help give the ship some nuance would help go a long way to make each ship have more dimensions to it.

I don’t know how most other Rosegarden/Rich Farmers deal with the Oscar/Ozpin duality, but I think it’s kind of creepy to ship an immortal being with a teenager. I deal with this with a post canon headcanon where one of three things have happened.

1) Salem has defeated Oz in a way that somehow didn’t kill Oscar. I don’t know what that would look like, so, uhm, magic.

2) Pietro finds a way to transfer Oz to an artificial body a la Penny. He can already do soul transfers, so it’s just a matter of finding a way to separate the two souls.

3) Oscar wins the battle of wills and subsumes/banishes Ozpin from his mind. This is my favorite theory, just because Oscar is a badass and I think he could.

In all of these scenarios, Oscar keeps the memories that he’s unlocked from Ozpin and in 1 and 3, he keeps The Long Memory too.

[aliarlies]

Wooooah, I didn't expect anyone to actually have read that. Even without the Rosegarden in it, I enjoyed toying with the idea of the two of them having this siblings relationship. Cinder is all about tormenting Oscar's friends, but then she makes sure Oscar doesn't get involved in it.

Weird thought now that I’m all aboard the Cinder and Oscar are bizarre Stepsiblings Kinda train: Cinder patting Oscar’s head like Rhodes did to her at a crucial moment where Oscar tries to reach her again.

[aliarlies]

I live for this headcanon

I once wrote a College AU one-shot back in March where Oscar and Cinder are siblings with Ozma and Salem as their parents who are divorced. Oscar doesn't know that Cinder was somehow his group of friends' bad bitch rival, and no one believed when it turns out they're related.

Weird thought now that I’m all aboard the Cinder and Oscar are bizarre Stepsiblings Kinda train: Cinder patting Oscar’s head like Rhodes did to her at a crucial moment where Oscar tries to reach her again.

[aliarlies]

Does anyone else muse what kind of ethnicity Oscar would have in our world?

Personally, I like to think he's Southeast Asian, specifically a Filipino. My mother is Kapampangan and my father is part of the Lumad (an indigenous group of Filipinos), and so my family's skin tone leans more to Oscar's skin tone. One of my brothers have freckles like him, and we all have hazel eyes that are similar as well. Of course, not everyone in that ethnicity have that, and I'm pretty sure my family are Asian mutts with all sorts of ethnicities in the blood.

Still, it makes me happy that I can look at Oscar and think he could be like me since I feel a lot of Southeast Asians don't get a lot of representation in American media.

I'm super happy with my headcanon that Oscar can be Filipino ethnically. Though I'm pretty certain others have their own headcanons as well.