#WARNING Discussion of flaws of both RWBY the team and RWBY the show

[anthurak]

Taiyang Xiao Long: The Latest in a Long Line of Fuckups

So there’s been quite a bit of discussion by this point from a number of people, myself included, about the idea that Taiyang Xiao Long isn’t actually the ‘Good Dad’ that much of the RWBY fandom has long seen him as. That he is in fact just as much of a dysfunctional fuck-up parent as Qrow, Summer, and yes, even Raven. There are a few different factors to this that others have gone into more detail on, but for me it really comes down to one core point in particular:

If you have checked out of parenting to the point where the two girls under your care can both state overtly and matter-of-factly that the older of the two raised the younger, then it frankly doesn’t matter WHAT your reasons were for checking out or how hard you may have been grieving. You have unequivocally, massively, FUCKED UP as a parent. The fact that the show has made it clear that Ruby considers Yang, her SISTER, to be her primary parent-figure does not speak well to ANY of Team STRQ’s parenting, Tai included.

However, with that said, I thought it would be worth talking about what all this discussion could actually mean in practice, ie; how might all this end up being actually explored in the story of RWBY itself?

After all, it’s not like Tai’s failings as a father have really been directly focused on or confronted or even overtly spelled out in the show thus far. The most direct we’ve gotten was during Yang’s talk with Weiss in the episode Alone Together, and even that wasn’t so much directed at Tai himself so much as describing how Yang was forced to take up so much slack in the family after Summer’s apparent death. Right now, discussion of Tai’s failings as a father is still very much ‘reading between the lines’.

And I believe that is all deliberate on the part of the writers. Thus far, the references to Tai’s failings as a parent haven’t meant to be overt and obvious to the audience. But rather they are meant to be hints and foreshadowing hiding in the margins and not immediately obvious to the viewer.

At least until it’s time to MAKE them obvious.

You see, I believe that Taiyang as a character is going to turn out to be all too similar to the likes of Qrow, Ozpin and Ironwood.

Men who are introduced appearing to represent noble and good-natured archetypes, but who wind up being revealed to have DEEP and extensive personal failings and flaws that wind up hurting themselves and all those around them. The warning signs of which turn out to have been floating around the margins, between the lines and just outside the audience’s field of view since practically their first appearances.

Consider for a moment just how characters like Ozpin, Qrow, Ironwood and Tai were/have been overtly presented in their early appearances. In other words, how the story at first wants us to view them:

The Wise Teacher

The Quirky Mentor

The Heroic Soldier

The Good Dad

And now let’s remember just how the first three wound up failing our heroines. And all of the hints we got that FORESHADOWED that failing:

All of the ‘Shady Oz’ behavior that people were noticing as early as Volume 2, and which only compiled and built over the subsequent volumes until being finally dragged into the light at the start of Volume 6.

Qrow’s rampant alcoholism, which he was outright introduced with in Volume 3 and later noted by Glynda to ALWAYS to be drunk. And shown later in Volume 5 when Ruby doesn’t bat an eye at Qrow showing up at their house near-passed out drunk.

And of course, ALL of the red flags that Ironwood was on the fast-track to fascism right from his first appearance when he showed up for the preparations of a festival celebrating peace and unity with a fleet of giant warships.

Now we have Tai, a character who turns out to have all kinds of indicators pointing to him actually being a complete dysfunctional fuck-up as a father once you start looking closely. From Yang’s multiple recountings of how Tai shut down and left HER to care for Ruby, to his shall we say QUESTIONABLE mentoring advice to Yang, to Ruby outright stating that it was YANG who raised her…

Really if you just start taking a closer look at Tai’s actions and behavior across the show, you can start finding plenty of hints and red-flags to his dysfunctional parenting hiding under a thin veneer of ‘expected’ character-archetype behavior, just like what happened with Ozpin, Qrow and Ironwood.

For example, just look at Tai’s ‘mentoring’ of Yang in Volume 4. At first glance, this scene is framed like a typical ‘hero gets tough-love advice and help from their wise and experienced parent’ situation, which is the takeaway most of us probably got on first viewing. Yet the moment you take a closer look and start unpacking what Tai is actually saying in this scene, it becomes clear, particularly in hindsight, that Tai is FULL OF SHIT. To the point of seemingly not even understanding how Yang’s semblance even works.

Or how about his claim that Raven ‘did a number of this family’, which if you actually take a minute to analyze, ESPECIALLY now in hindsight, makes no goddamn sense. How exactly can Raven have ‘done a number’ on the family when she’s been GONE from said family for the past 18 years? Particularly now that it seems like if any member is guilty of ‘doing a number’ on the STRQ, it’s actually SUMMER for going off on her super-secret suicide/martyr mission. We can’t even say that Tai can blame Raven for what happened to Summer because as Ruby’s Tree Vision made clear, Tai doesn’t even know Raven was involved. What this statement REALLY feels like is a shitload of projection and Tai blaming Raven for all of HIS fuckups as a parent.

HOWEVER, because none of this is directly framed by the show as being explicitly ‘bad’ and doesn’t present Tai with traditional/obvious ‘bad dad’ traits (see Jacques, and more on him in just a bit…) and generally couches his behavior with a veneer of ‘feeling baseline care and affection’, it’s easy to overlook on a first viewing.

Really, it feels all too much like how Volume 4 also presented Ironwood on the surface as the noble, heroic ‘only sane man’ among the authority in Atlas, all while slipping in NUMEROUS red-flags of him being on the fast track to fascism.

Speaking of Jimmy the Child Shooter, it’s been noted by a few people at this point that in hindsight, it’s pretty clear that Jacques Schnee effectively served as a red-herring villain to distract the audience from the growing red-flags surrounding Ironwood, both in Volume 4 and again in Volume 7.

Well, what if Jacques was also being used to distract the audience from TAI’s own parenting red flags in Volume 4? After all, it’s easy to be more forgiving of Tai’s sketchy parenting choices when the show keeps cutting back to Jacques’ brand of ‘parenting’.

Really, I think in hindsight Volume 4 is giving us three different looks at fatherhood: We’ve got the caring, nurturing father in Ghira, the abusive villainous father in Jacques, and the dysfunctional fuckup in Tai. A real ‘the Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ situation.

And finally, the simple fact that Yang raised Ruby. The biggest indicator of Tai’s, as well as the rest of Team STRQ’s, MASSIVE fuckups as parents which goes all the way back to Volume 1 when Gold framed Yang as a motherly figure to Ruby, outright comparing her to Summer.

It all points to Tai being set up for the same kind of big, subversive narrative rug-pull as Ozpin, Qrow and Ironwood. Men who are introduced as these strong, capable, ‘good-guy’ archetypes, only for it to be later revealed to both the heroines and the audience that these adults that they trusted are actually massive fuck-ups who have been making a mess of everything.

The only difference with Tai is that the story simply hasn’t decided to shine the light of narrative focus ON all of his numerous problems and fuckups and force our heroines to confront them like it already has with Ozpin and Qrow in Volume 6, and Ironwood in Volumes 7 and 8.

At least, not YET.

And wouldn’t you know it, the last RWBY Beyond episode set up what could be the PERFECT opportunity for that with Yang’s line about Tai being on ‘special assignment’.

Sure, people have been saying stuff like ‘Oh he’s gotta be doing something super important like guarding the Relic of Choice’, but this is RWBY we’re talking about. The show that ALREADY made a big point about how the ‘Daddy had a good reason for abandoning you’ trope is utter bullshit.

So frankly, I’d say there is NO WAY IN HELL that Tai has an actual ‘good reason’ for not having come to Vacuo to see his daughters.

And that this is instead the setup for Ruby and Yang to finally have to DEAL with all of their parents’ dysfunctional bullshit.

[kitkatopinions]

While thinking about the flaws of the main four protagonists in RWBY, I realized something. You can pretty clearly trace the flaws of three of the four main characters back to their early roots, whether or not the show addresses them as flaws currently. But with Blake, you can’t really do that.

TL;DR at the bottom

Ruby started the show being over-confident and reckless. She was a combat school student with only two years of learning under her belt when she took on Torchwick (although she may not have known who he was.) She easily assumes her team can handle Torchwick and the White Fang, wanders off alone in Mountain Glenn, charges after Torchwick again in the Fall of Beacon, travels to Haven to fight against Cinder without understanding any of the particulars and seemingly with no plan, and unnecessarily leads her team into stealing an Atlas plane while literally telling Qrow that she doesn’t care what he thinks and basically tells him to go along with it or leave. Any of those events could’ve resulted in her death, and it was often - not always, but often - due to outside forces that she survived (Glynda rescuing her, Oobleck realizing about the underground city, tons of fellow Beacon students + Atlas military taking out Grimm after the train crash, a Grimm eating Torchwick, Qrow taking out Grimm on the path to Haven, Qrow saving them from Tyrian, Cordovin aiding them after their unnecessary actions result in a massive Grimm attack.) So when she refuses to accept a no-win situation, traps a city in the direct line of Salem’s fire, sends out a message to everyone that might cause mass panic directly condemning Ironwood for trying to save as many as he can, and then doesn’t have a plan to actually save anyone in Mantle or Atlas, it’s very frustrating, but it’s not surprising or hugely out of character. It’s easy to track this. Ruby’s over-confidence, recklessness, and stubbornness started small and with her only striving to be a hero whether she was ready or not. And left unchecked, it just continued to grow. Weiss started the show being judgmental, rude, and prone to pettiness. Although she seemed to open up quickly to her team and these flaws seemed to die down considerably in volumes 4-5, it’s not exactly out of left field for her to act the way she does towards Whitley in volumes 7 and 8. In V1 Weiss judged Ruby as a child who didn’t know what she was talking about that had taken something from Weiss (the leader role,) and therefore Weiss acted like Ruby was a nuisance and treated her coldly and aggressively. She was hugely judgmental towards Sun, and Blake as well the minute she learned Blake was a Faunus and a former White Fang member, and even after she decided Blake was fine anyway (so badly handled) she made it clear that she wasn’t accepting Sun just yet. Despite any growth she might’ve had with her team, we never see her change outside of that. It becomes clear it’s still a problem, when Weiss is confronted by her considerably younger brother in volumes 7 and 8. Weiss judged him as a child who didn’t know what he was talking about that had taken something from her (her position as CEO of the company) and therefore, Weiss acted like he was a nuisance and treated him coldly and aggressively. Weiss showed no sympathy to him despite knowing his home life. It’s easy to track this. Her pettiness, judgmental tendencies, and aggressiveness never went away, they just stopped being directed at Ruby, Jaune, or the rest of her friends. Yang’s flaws are always easily tracked. She’s got a big temper, charges into things without thinking, and she’s pushy. We see this from the start as she pushes Ruby to make friends despite her clear discomfort and explodes at Grimm for damaging her hair. This continues on pretty clearly in the first couple of seasons, including Yang refusing to give Blake space, and yelling at her with red eyes and pushing her when she wasn’t listening. The funny thing about Yang is that most of this gets addressed and started getting worked through. Yang charging into battle and over-relying on her semblance are combat driven problems that are pointed out to her by her father and worked on to overcome. Yang is much calmer and patient than she had to be with Raven, continues to be patient and understanding with Qrow and Oz when she finds out they’ve been keeping things from the group in volume five, she listens to and accepts Weiss’s advice, and doesn’t lash out at Blake at all when she returns. Although she was still clearly the same person, she was also clearly working on her flaws and trying to be better. However, this seems to backslide in the latest three seasons, with her acting aggressive and not even trying to understand Oz, acting aggressive and not even trying to understand the Ace Ops, pushing Ren to talk about his feelings and then getting angry at him for expressing ones she doesn’t think he should feel, launching into battle without thinking repeatedly and seeming to not really take the situation seriously sometimes. This is frustrating to me, but it’s easy to track, too. Yang was working on her flaws, but has recently backslid into old habits.

But Blake? Blake’s early flaws were things like taking too much responsibility on her shoulders, being unable to let things go, running from her trauma, and lashing out at her friends. Many of her stronger traits were connected to her flaws, and were things like standing up for herself and others, having a strong moral code, and being responsible. (NOTE: Her arc and the allegories to real world racism were absolutely mishandled, making things like her strong moral code - like ‘stealing is always wrong’ - problematic in context. However, for the sake of this argument, I’m referring to her strong moral code as a strong trait as in it was something distinct about her character that we were meant to see as a good trait.) Blake had firm standards, like ‘stealing is wrong,’ and ‘I can’t wait for others to handle things for me, I have to handle it myself.’ During the course of seasons 4 and 5, her character arc was centered around learning to embrace her strong traits without falling into her bad ones. Like Yang, many of her flaws were directly addressed during these seasons, Sun and her parents helping her see that she can rely on and trust others, Blake expressing herself without lashing out, Blake confronting her past head-on in the forms of Adam and Ilia rather than running from it, and finally letting go of much of her own guilt and self-deprecation at the same time. The funny thing about Blake now is that she’s still showing flaws, they just aren’t the flaws she used to have that all pretty much got tied up in a bow, pun unintended. Instead, many of the flaws Blake seems to be showing now are in direct contrast to her former strong traits. She doesn’t stand up for herself, leaving it to Weiss or Yang to speak up for her. She doesn’t take responsibility, putting it on Ruby’s shoulder and begging her to help her in fights. She doesn’t have the extreme moral code, being one hundred percent fine with stealing, beating up law enforcement officers, fighting against the government, etc. Like, not to say that those things are always bad, just that Blake thought they were always bad, not that long ago. This is why, out of all the main characters, Blake is the most upsetting to me. I can hate what Ruby, Yang, or Weiss do, but Blake doesn’t even feel like the same character anymore. Adding onto that, she doesn’t seem like a powerful or interesting fighter anymore either when she used to be very good and very interesting to watch. This makes her just... Feel like a chess piece that CRWBY has say things every now and again to sound good. She feels like another weapon that Yang can just use sometimes. It’s honestly hard to see, because Blake could’ve been a really great character, and now she doesn’t feel like a character at all.

TL;DR It’s easy to track the flaws of Ruby, Yang, and Weiss all throughout the show, but Blake’s recently displayed flaws directly go against her early characteristics. This makes it feel like her whole character is different.

[officialao3fandomlastforever]

Fandom’s thoughts on “Uncovered” and why the situation is fucked no matter what.

So I’m seeing so many differing opinions on the Ozpin vs Team RWBY moment in the chapter Uncovered. I wanted to wait and see the end result come episode 3, but honestly I kinda had to put my thoughts here.

Warning; My thoughts are going to probably differ a lot from both the Pro-Ozpin camp and the Pro-RWBY camp going on, and I’m not really on either side here. And this isn’t me bashing on and hating characters, as I love them all to death. 

Also it’s going to be long. REALLY long. 

Spoilers ahead, so if you aren’t caught up, or if you don’t want to read a 30 page essay, don’t continue.

Okay, so for those that stuck around

Now I want to discuss the actual conflict. Because it’s a lot more than just a simple case of “trust vs distrust”. It’s also “old vs young”, “inexperience vs excessive experience”, “emotion vs logic”, and finding a balance between how much someone needs to know at any given moment. 

But first, we need to set the scene.

It’s a year after Beacon has fallen. Two weeks since Haven was saved and the Relic recovered. These kids have been through a lot more in a week than most Huntsmen see in a lifetime. They just survived a train crash. Their supplies are limited. They’re miles from their destination, their secondary tank, and their main healer of the party. They have a civilian who cannot, as far as we are aware, fight and able to defend herself should Grimm show up. Tensions are going to be high, no matter how hard you try to remain calm. And on top of that, they just learned that they have a secondary Grimm Magnet that the Big Bad wants, one that can’t be masked by an emotion nullification/suppressant type semblance.

So now that we have a setting, let’s look at our players in this scene. 

Let’s start with Ozpin and Oscar.

Ozpin has very valid points. 

He’s an immortal wizard cursed with reincarnation where he ends up possessing another being. He’s been fighting Salem for eons. He’s done things he’s not proud of. He’s been stabbed in the back. He’s been doubted. He’s been honest and open. He’s probably made a lot of choices based on his past lives. Leonardo wasn’t the first person to betray him, and most certainly, he fears, may not be the last.

He was right about lying to the public about Leo. If they truly knew what had happened, his involvement in the missing Huntsmen of Mistral, panic would arise. The entire kingdom probably would have been wiped out because of the level of negativity. 

And of course, living all those lives, all those merges, all those deaths (his allies and his own), there’s bound to be a lot of trauma and heaviness weighing on him. 

Because at the end of the day, he’s a flawed character who is trying to protect humanity. He wants to shed as little blood as possible, let kids be kids, and end this war before it gets too far to stop.

But I think Ozpin’s biggest flaw, the one that’s currently got him in this quarrel with RWBY in the first place, is that he seems to have forgotten that there comes a time that you have to be 100% open about things. Even if you don’t fully trust others. In a situation like this one, the best way to have handled it was to be open and honest, despite how much it might have hurt and despite how much it could possibly change things. Everyone is entitled to secrets, but Ozpin’s are far to big to keep hidden from his allies anymore. The entire world is at stake. He sees RWBY as children still. But they’re not just kids anymore. And its getting to the point where if they’re going to lay down their lives in this war, they have to know everything, or at the very least, far more than he told them. 

Team RWBY, Qrow, and Oscar are all he truly has left as his inner circle right now, and so far all of his choices are pushing them away.

Now Oscar? He’s a simple farmhand who was uprooted from his life without much say in the matter. He’s a 14-year-old boy. He’d probably be attending Signal or Sanctum had he chosen to go to training school at the same age Ruby did when we first met her. He doesn’t know half of what’s going on.  And by the looks of things, he doesn’t get as much say in anything as we were initially lead to believe. He wants answers. And as Ozpin’s vessel, if anyone should know the truth, it’s Oscar. 

But he’s not being told much of anything either. He’s learning bit by bit because of the merge, sure, but he’s still just as much in the dark as RWBY and Qrow.

Oscar isn’t being told everything, and in his eyes, Ozpin’s constant secrets and lies are spiraling out of control. The danger is rising. Everyone is falling apart. So he does the only thing he can think of to try and fix things. He tells them something important, because he feels they need to know.

He gives RWBY the only clue he can provide in hopes of getting answers.

So, let’s look at Team RWBY. 

And I think I’m going to get a lot of flack for this, but I do honestly believe Team RWBY’s actions in this episode are not the result of them being emotional, selfish, or not thinking clearly. At least not entirely. Let’s look at who we have here. We have:

Blake- A former member of an organization that was meant to bring equality to her people that was turned into a terrorist organization. She’s an abuse survivor whose abuser is obsessed with making her life a living hell. She’s been manipulated before. She’s been betrayed before (see “Alone Together” and Ilia’s trap). She knows what it’s like to feel like you can’t trust anyone. That’s what 90% of her arc has been, her learning to trust and open up to people and stop running.

Weiss- Another survivor of abuse. The middle child of three siblings who has been verbally, emotionally, and physically abused by her controlling, selfish father, and eventually neglected by her mother who was too distraught with the family situation to cope. Who has been isolated because of her family name. Who had everything stripped away from her when she tried to make her own choices. Who, the moment she neared her goal of finding her sister, was attacked and held hostage by bandits only to learn her goal of finding her sister was meaningless, was thrown into a war she wasn’t prepared for, and then stabbed in the side, nearly dying in an attempt to prevent a repeat of Beacon. 

Yang: A child who only ever wanted answers about her mother, who nearly got herself and her sister killed at a very young age to find them when the adults in her life wouldn’t give her any clues. Whose father shut down after the loss of her step-mom. A girl who, despite her father still trying to raise them, had to pick up the pieces to help care for her baby sister. Who was traumatized after being framed for assault and lost her arm saving a friend, who then left without even leaving a note. Her mother, after attempting to manipulate her, told her straight up that if she didn’t stay in the tribe, they’d be enemies the next time they met. Her mother then joined the villains and let her walk into a trap. And at the battle of Haven, after learning her mother murdered a scared young girl, was abandoned by her once again after confronting her on her lies and cowardice. A girl who had no one there that could understand the stresses and pains she feels from trying to be a good big sister in the middle of a war.

Ruby: A girl let into a high Huntsmen academy too early. Who had been attacked, beaten, and at one point kidnapped (see Mountain Glenn) by bad people. Who witness the death of a villain (Roman) and two of her best friends (Penny, Pyrrha). A girl who was pushed away by her sister, the only girl in her life who had always been there for her no matter what. A girl feels guilt over not being able to save her friends. Who has a target on her back because of her hidden powers. Who learned there’s things she’s not being told. Who had to watch her beloved uncle nearly die. Who is being given high expectations and responsibilities at a very young age. Who feels guilt over dragging her friends into this fight. Who nearly broke down thinking that she was about to lost another friend at Haven. Who, even now, is being trusted as the leader in this band of misfits. 

When they started the story, they were 15 and 17 respectively. Currently, Ruby is most likely 17. Weiss, Blake, and Yang are somewhere between 18-20 (would help if we had actual birthdays and a calendar but I digress).  

These aren’t just kids anymore.

These are kids who were forced to grow up too fast because of circumstances beyond their control. Who have been scorned, manipulated, hurt, lied to, ignored, doubted, and traumatized by many people in their lives that should have been there, but in one way or another either weren’t there, or when they were, they did more harm than good. They’ve lost friends and loved ones in more ways than one.

These are kids who are not kids anymore. In Remnant, in their story, they’re Young Adults. They’re old enough to choose to be Huntresses, go to bars and order drinks, to chase dangerous criminals in a deserted settlement in the mountains, and more. And they’ve been through more in the last two years than most Huntsmen have seen in a lifetime. People have been lying to and manipulating them, keeping secrets, putting them in more danger than they are ready for because of that manipulation and the lies and the half-truths.

And they’ve had enough. 

Everyone has a breaking point when it comes to people keeping them out of the loop, and this was Team RWBY’s. It was bound to happen eventually, and it just happened that Ozpin lying and hiding important information about the Relic here is the breaking point. Blake isn’t putting up with this kind of shit anymore, as evidenced with her (still ongoing) arc with Adam. She’s fighting back against that kind of shit. Raven told Yang and Weiss to question everything. That Oz couldn’t be trusted. And as far as Yang and Weiss are concerned, Raven is right and Ozpin’s current actions have only solidified her views on him. And now Ozpin’s speech and Oscar’s warning has caused Ruby to begin lose heart too. 

They’ve been hurt.

They’re still hurting.

They’ve had enough.

So they made a call to get answers. 

And now let’s talk with Qrow, who I believe is going to be making some of the biggest make or break decisions next episode.

Qrow is Ozpin’s right hand. He’s bad luck. He knows a lot about this war that our Heroes don’t. He trusted Ozpin. He’s a great fighter. He was willing to die for this cause. He’s lost so much already. Ozpin gave him a cause to fight for. But he doesn’t have all the information either. He doesn’t have all the answers. He’s the Scarecrow without the rest of the brain. 

He is just as confused and shocked as the kids when he starts learning that Oz is keeping more secrets than he realized. He’s watching the entire thing play out. Not once when Oz is explaining things in this scene does he step in add his opinion like he did before. He’s listening. He’s watching. He’s trying to process the situation. And the further along this story goes, the more he seems conflicted. 

I mean, just look at him after finding out Jinn can still answer two questions, when Oz told him and the others to their faces that she couldn’t.

And then his face after Oz begs them not to ask anything.

Like it or not, Qrow doesn’t fully trust Ozpin anymore, even if he wants to. That much is clear.

But I think he was still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and defend him. That’s probably what his “Hey” was. He wanted to say “Maybe we should calm down and think this through”. I have no doubt he’d tell Oz to start being honest had he been able to get the girls to listen to him, as we’ve seen Oz look to Qrow before moving forward with releasing information (see Pyrrha’s situation). And chances are, Oz might have opened up more if the girls were willing to listen to Qrow.

However, when he tries to talk to RWBY near the end of the scene, and he realizes the kids won’t let him try and defend Oz’s actions anymore and they go on the defensive, he only has one thing left to say.

“Do whatever you think is right, kiddo.”

He trusts Ruby to make the right call here just as she’s done before on the train. So be it trusting Ozpin and not asking Jinn a question, or asking Jinn for answers, he’s following her lead. 

But I think whatever they end up learning could potentially break him. And he’ll incredibly disillusioned and may even begin to shut down. Maybe not completely, but he’ll seriously be spiraling down if this moment from the opening is any indication.

Now Maria? I think she’ll be the one to bring everyone back around to what matters most.

At the moment, Maria is a bystander. She hasn’t been on this adventure with everyone else. She’s probably the only one who has any chance of looking at this objectively. Being thrown into the deep end, but still being old enough to have seen a lot in her time, she might be able to see things from a perspective the others can’t. We just have to wait and see.

Ozpin has been around longer than anyone. Compared to him, everyone else in the group are infants, including Qrow and Maria. Team RWBY doesn’t have the knowledge or experience he has. But Ozpin isn’t sharing it, not even with his vessel or most trusted circle member.

Team RWBY are still children to Ozpin, but in the world of Remnant, in the lives they’re living now, they’re grown ups who became grown ups too quickly, and as such are rash, emotional, and are done with the way things have been handled before. 

Everyone has lost too much. 

RWBY is young, inexperienced, and have been through more than any child should. They’ve wanted answers all their lives, but no one will be honest with them. They have their secrets, but be honest. How often did enough adults put trust in them to share those secrets? How often were they pressured? How often were they thrown into situations they weren’t ready for? How often were they kept in the dark and silenced? They’ve trusted people before, and have been betrayed or let down. And after nearly dying again and being shown they’re being kept in the dark again, they’re not going to be thinking pragmatically. They’re going to be thinking emotionally. And that’s what happened here. Could they have handled it better and calmer? Most definitely. But honestly, that wasn’t going to happen here, especially since this was a breaking point.

Ozpin is old, has far too much experience, and has gone through as much hardship as anyone else, if not more. While he has the fate of the world on his shoulders, it isn’t just his fight anymore. He’s entitled to his secrets, and there will be situations where lying may be a necessity. He’s recently been stabbed in the back once again. It’s understandable why he’d be on edge. He has every right to be suspicious and wary. But again, he doesn’t have many allies left. And the ones he does have he’s pushing away. He needs to put more trust in the younger members of his party, even if it’s hard.

Everyone has secrets they want to keep.

Everyone has questions they want answered.

And no matter how this scene played out, things were going to come to a head.

Because Ozpin pushed too hard to keep things hidden from his current team, and RWBY had been pushed too far to not get any answers.

No matter how things played out, RWBY was going to find out what Oz was hiding. They have to find out. Ozpin had a chance to be honest with them, and while it’s understandable why he wasn’t, he still held too much back at the wrong times. 

Ozpin and RWBY are just as much in the wrong as they are in the right. 

It’s not “Ozpin is right and RWBY is wrong”.

It’s not “RWBY is right and Ozpin is wrong”.

It’s “Everyone is stressed and have been pushed too far.”

It’s not black and white. 

And we need to stop seeing it this way. 

[kitkatopinions]

OZPIN

Ozpin for the RWBY character asks.

My top three ships for the character

Note: For these ships, I’m exclusively talking about gray-haired Professor Ozpin, and I’ve long written Oz to be at least somewhat affected by the age of his hosts, I’ve long written him to be around the same age as Ironwood and Qrow (I mean, he looks the same age and I missed Raven’s lines suggesting he was a teacher or headmaster when Team STRQ was in school,) and I’ve also long headcanoned that when he first hosted in Ozpin, the person he was hosting in chose to merge with him right away. So while he was Ozpin, there was no ‘Ozpin talks sometimes, Oz talks sometimes,’ or sharing a head. I’ve never done much shipping for Oz, but all that kind of lines up to at least make that version of him pretty shippable.

So yeah, Ozpin/Glynda could be a power couple of wholly devoted, tired, stressed caregivers trying to mentor sixty some kids at once. XD Ozpin/Amber has literally no real content, but they could look good together and she’s a non-character like Summer, but I see them as having had a lot of similarities in being kind and soft spoken. I also don’t mind Ozpin/Roman as a ‘once upon a time, Roman used to flirt with him all the time before anything went bad and Ozpin responded with amused tolerance and never really took it seriously, but a lot of their acquaintances thought they were seeing each other... Which would just make it hurt worse and be one more thing Oz blames himself for when Roman falls into a life of crime, 

My three least favorite ships for the character

Oz/Cinder, as previously stated, once someone kills someone, there’s no coming back from it. Also, he doesn’t need to get romantic advancements from any abusive manipulative magic girl who just wants to use and hurt him and abuses children on the side too. Oz/Hazel. Hazel is an abuser! He beat Oz! He blamed Oz for things that weren’t his fault and used him as an excuse for all his vile actions. Gross. And Oz/Salem takes the top spot for very obvious reasons. This one’s even more gross than Oz/Hazel.

My biggest criticism for the character

Honestly, the way he’s treated by the narrative of the show with much less sympathy than he should be. I love flawed characters, leaders that do their best but make lots of mistakes, but the narrative treated him as one hundred percent in the wrong, no discussion, and therefore deserving of Qrow hitting him (out of character moment!) and Team RWBY ripping his secrets from him forcibly, making him relive his trauma in high def, yelling at him and then being glad he was gone, and not wanting him back and then only begrudgingly and seriously accepting his apology (out of character, especially for Blake!) Especially since Ruby also didn’t have a plan and lied about potentially life saving information to an ally and then even when she made her broadcast to the world, she left out tons of information there too! Which, don’t get me wrong, is understandable for her, but the narrative should’ve recognized that she was doing the same things Ozpin did and they should’ve had her gain sympathy and understanding for him. And the narrative also gave credence to Hazel somehow, treating it seriously when he warns Oscar ‘no more Gretchens’ despite Hazel being a super abusive, murderous bastard who was trying to murder kids and making the world a worse place. I’ve had so many people tell me ‘Team RWBY are going to apologize to Ozpin and realize they were wrong to treat him the way they did,’ but it never happened. Because the writers wanted us to think of Oz as a morally gray person who had to be taught a lesson by Team RWBY, rather than an abuse victim who deserved some sympathy and understanding who shouldn’t have been abused again just for making a mistake. I don’t know why the writers thought pretending Team RWBY and Qrow were in the right would be okay, but I hate it.

My favorite thing about the character

I love Oz so much, but my favorite thing about him might be his dynamic with Qrow in seasons 3-5. Of course it all went bad in season 6, but I love a close friends, almost brothers dynamic where one does everything for the other and is wholly devoted to him, would die for him at the drop of a hat. And I love a mentor-father figure always throwing himself into protecting a kid and leaning on his shoulder while the kid is nervous, but excited and happy over it and wanting his affection and approval... And with Oz (and the headcanon that he’s affected by the age of his host,) I get both! There’s a lot more to love, but that’s my favorite thing. God, they flourish in fan fictions...

A headcanon I have about them

I already touched on some of my headcanons for him and his host, but also...‘Ozpin’ was that host’s last name, and his first name was actually Orpheus, but his team in Beacon and his inner circle only ever called him by his last name.

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

Okay, so hear me out, I’d still have people get mad at him for all his secret keeping and having no plan to defeat Salem, and I’d probably still have him temporarily retreat. But A. I wouldn’t have the punch, and instead, I’d have Qrow more ‘quietly disappointed’ than anything else and he’d regret it almost immediately and feel guilty about it (even though in that case, his feelings would be valid,) and B. Blake would be on Ozpin’s side. Seriously, Blake knows what abuse feels like, she knows it’s hard to trust after, she knows Oz has been through worse, even more than she can imagine. She should’ve been standing up for him, saying that even though he was wrong to lie, she gets why. And C. I’d have the people who have a harder time understanding and especially Ruby learn and grow and start to realize how much weight was on his shoulders while they make many of the same mistakes. D. I’d have Ozpin start coming back in V7, and apologize to Qrow in private (and have Qrow apologize back,) and then I’d have him mostly silent, ‘coming out to talk’ only really to James or Qrow and communicating through Oscar when the need calls for it, and he’d kind of step down and let James (and kind of, Ruby) make the choices for the group. Ruby at the very least would apologize to him by the end of the seventh season. And I’d totally still have him kidnapped and taken to Salem because I love that sweet sweet whump, but I’d have Hazel die like the unredeemed asshole he was and I think I’d have Qrow involved in the rescue somehow.

What I I think of their character allusion and what (if anything) I would change about it

Oz acts as both the Wizard of Oz and the Princess Ozma character merged into one allusion, and I honestly think some of it is really cleverly done. The Wizard of Oz had arrived in Oz and was treated as a god, and decided to lean into it due to Oz’s lack of current leadership and used his magician tricks to make it seem like he had magic (reflecting Oz agreeing to Salem making them seem like gods by using what was - in their world - perfectly ordinary magic, which Oz did in an attempt to grant leadership to a world he was tasked with improving.) The Wizard is treated as a king in Oz and is presented as a magic infallible solution to all of Dorothy (and her group’s) problems, only for that to be proven to not be the case, as he can only grant temporary pacifying placebos (reflecting Oz’s attempts to keep Salem back and present a false time of peace to the world while fighting a secret war that he has no plan to be able to end.) The wizard temporarily leaves the Land of Oz only to return to it later (like Ozpin dying only to come back,) and when he returns, he acts as a guide to Dorothy and dumps plot exposition about his origins (guiding the kids, the Lost Fable,) and is then permitted to remain in the Land of Oz by a magic girl who is the true leader (reflective of Ruby and the group ‘graciously’ letting him stay in their group.) Then, there’s Princess Ozma, the extremely benevolent and kind ageless fairy princess, descended from a long line of fairy princess’s, who is the rightful ruler of the land of Oz. Princess Ozma was friendly to outsiders and disliked violence, preferring peaceful solutions to conflict, and when she was first introduced in the books, it was while trapped in the body of a young boy named ‘Tip’ with no recollection of the life as Princess Ozma. I think all of that pretty obviously lines up with Ozma/Ozpin the RWBY character really well! I don’t mind this conjoined character allusion. I’m actually pretty dang fond of this one, I think this (along with Sun) is one of the few well done character allusions in RWBY.