#salem being the key to that door because: she makes ozma want to live

[bestworstcase]

the teacup mirror symbolism is about apostasy btw ->

exhibit a: blake

"we were being treated like equals, but not out of respect; out of fear. so i left."

exhibit b: ozma

"this curse was bestowed upon me by the gods because i failed to stop salem"

exhibit c: salem

"we could become the gods of this world: our powers surpass all others. our souls transcend death."

& exhibit d: ruby

"how did it all get like this?"

<- this is a conversation.

adam is to blake as the god of light is to ozma; blake rejects adam's vision of domination through fear and flees the white fang into what she perceives as the moral sanctuary of the huntsmen academies--noble warriors, pure and good.

but those academies are merely the most recent permutation of ozma's god-fearing zealotry, an institution built on a foundation of his terrified acceptance of the premise that humankind as it is now does not deserve to exist, and must submissively repent or else be annihilated. deep down he knows this--until the end, "the enemy was right" and so forth--so he lies, casting himself as the failure cursed to discipline his defeat at salem's hands.

but salem, pressed on what she truly believes, outlines the case against divine rule in succinct terms: the brothers are not the highest power, and they failed utterly to achieve their ends--they couldn't even kill humankind in a way that mattered, because people were reborn phoenix-like from the ashes--and so remnant and its people owe them nothing at all. it is our world now, she says. we could become more than the old gods could ever be.

how did it all get like this? ruby asks. and the answer is thousands upon thousands of years of ozma's fearful obedience to a god who sent him here to contort remnant into an inescapable saw trap for the apostate scapegoat, who is fighting now to escape by any means necessary.

grips you. when ruby drinks the tea and meets the blacksmith and the blacksmith says "what if you could be anyone?"--ruby is offered ozma's curse exactly, what if you could slip into any like-minded soul, someone who is you but isn't, who is you but Better, would that fix you? and the rhetorical point that the blacksmith intends to make and succeeds in making is that the only person who can be ruby rose is ruby rose. this is what we might call sledgehammer foreshadowing with regard to ozma and how ozma's desperation to be anyone else but ozma (hey man why were you suicidal before you met salem. what broke you, the first time) informs his resignation to the curse that forcibly breaks and remakes him into anyone else, and what needs to happen before he can escape the false-ascension inflicted upon him

[aliarlies]

When Disaster Strikes

Here's my take on March 29th's Modern AU prompt for @rwbyrosegardenweek

It was nine minutes before disaster, and Ruby and Oscar were eight minutes away from their first kiss.

A series of unexpected events started to unfold that morning for this disaster to occur. Headmaster Ozma Pine, Oscar’s father, received a call that preparations for the upcoming school festival were met with questions regarding city regulations that he needed to confirm. Because of this inquiry, Ozpin needed to contact the mayor whom he later called after breakfast. Unfortunately, that same mayor was none other than the headmaster’s ex-wife, Salem, and neither had an amicable relationship post-divorce. This call ruined the good mood she had that morning that lasted well into the afternoon. When her daughter came into her office around lunch to ask to borrow one of her mother’s rare classic cars, Salem met the request with an angry stare, a chiding of her daughter’s poor behavior recently, and a grounding. More annoyed than upset, her daughter ignored her and decided to go over to her father’s house in the evening to borrow what she needed.

Oscar, however, wasn’t privy to any of these events. That morning when his father told him that he would be gone this evening for work, he took it as a chance to invite his longtime crush, Ruby, over to his house to spend time with him. Perhaps he could even muster up the courage to ask her out on a date or confess his feelings for her. This line of thinking was quite common for sixteen-year-old boys.

Ruby, also, wasn’t aware of any of these events. That morning when she met Oscar in their folkloristic class, she offhandedly mentioned that she hadn’t done their latest homework yet and how it would be a great idea if she could do it with someone so she could make sure she get a decent grade. She received what she asked for when Oscar invited her to study after school. Now all she had to do was muster up the courage to ask him out on a date or confess her feelings for him. This line of thinking was also quite common for eighteen-year-old girls.

It was now 5:37 PM. At 5:41 PM, Ruby and Oscar would share their first kiss. A minute after, disaster.

“I’m glad I took up your offer to study together, Oscar,” Ruby said, stretching her arms after jotting her final notes and leaning closer to the boy.

Her closer proximity made the boy flush, but he managed to smile. His confidence was rising. “You don’t have to mention it. I mean… Folkloristics is more my dad’s thing and, well, I never thought I would enjoy it. You, uh, you certainly make the class fun.”

Both of their hearts pounded as they stared at one another. Whatever words they wanted to say were caught tangled at their tongues. Blood rushed to their heads as each admired the other. Fortunately, with their minds too flummoxed, they just allowed instinct to take over. The two would move as one towards each other. Their breathing grew shallow; their eyes closed half-lidded. Their lips crashed into one another like gentle waves at the beach.

For a blissful minute, there was no one else in the world but Ruby and Oscar.

“Wow. You’ve surprised me, Oscar. I never thought you would bring a girl over,” said a sarcastic feminine voice.

Ruby and Oscar pushed each other apart. Standing above the two of them spinning a key ring around her finger was Cinder Fall, smirking down at the two of them with mirth in her eyes.

“CINDER,” Ruby shouted, nearly gasping.

Cinder chuckled. “Ruby Rose. Did you enjoy kissing my little brother?”

“Ruby, we came as soon as we heard about you having an emergency,” Weiss shouted as she barged into Ruby’s room with Blake in tow and nodding along.

Yang greeted them from her lax position on Ruby’s couch. “You’re just in time. Just wait until you get a load of what Ruby just went through.”

Weiss and Blake glanced at one another, then to Yang, and finally on Ruby who looked dead on her bed with a pillow firmly hugged against her. Her eyes seemingly spiraled with despair and confusion.

“Well? What’s the emergency?” Weiss asked, taking a seat at Ruby’s desk. “You know I had to cancel my club activities.”

“I had to leave Ilia in charge for the protest we had planned at city hall,” Blake said, sitting on the couch beside Yang.

“Oh, dope. What for, Blake?” Yang asked.

“Nothing big, but they recently passed a regulation where—”

Weiss loudly coughed into her fist. “Girls, no time for that. Ruby. Emergency. What happened?”

Yang grinned and let out a loud giggle. “Well, I��ll go ahead and tell since Ruby is being all sulky. What happened was—” A pillow struck her face.

“Shut up, Yang. I’ll tell everyone,” Ruby said morosely, rising from her bed with dull eyes of torment.

What followed was a summary of events that codified the beginnings of a romantic comedy. She retold everyone how she made a mortal foe with Cinder Fall, her upperclassman in the Archery Club. Their rivalry was the stuff of legends that involved defeating their good friend, Pyrrha, in her last competition before she transferred schools, thus totally bumming their friend circle out. And how she totally ruined the farewell party with Penny who was going home for her foreign exchange program with her gang of ne’er-do-wells who cheated their win against Penny in Dance Dance Revolution. Ruby also told her friends of how she met a wonderful boy named Oscar Pine who got into school early like her at the start of the new semester after her two good friends left and how he was so cute. She told them how she was falling completely head over heels for him because of how sweet and caring and thoughtful he was. This particular segment lasted for thirty minutes and thoroughly annoyed her sister and two friends.

Finally, she revealed how during a study session at Oscar’s house earlier that afternoon, it was revealed that his older sister was none other than Cinder!

“Wait, wait, wait, hold on.” Weiss stood up, crossing her arms. “Are you telling me I had to skip out on my extracurricular because it turns out your boyfriend is related to your rival?”

“He’s not my boyfriend… yet,” Ruby protested.

Blake groaned as she allowed the couch to consume her. “Ruby, I know it’s your first boyfriend and all, but you shouldn’t freak out just because your boyfriend has relatives you don’t like. Or vice versa, even.”

“Oh right, I remember you telling me how Adam’s parents were, like, the sweetest couple ever,” Yang said. “How’d the two of them get such a jackass of a son…”

Frustrated, Ruby groaned. “None of that is the point! I don’t mind if Oscar is related to Cinder! What I mind is that I totally smack talked about her all the time in our previous conversations! I outright completely hated her and said super mean things behind her back to her little brother!”

Weiss, Blake, and Yang paused.

“Shit. You got a point there, sis,” Yang admitted.

“Ruby totally hates me now!” Oscar shouted, panicked hands grabbing at his horror-stricken face. 

Cinder, meanwhile, helped herself to the snacks left on the table. There were many words that could describe Cinder. Beautiful. Conniving. Gorgeous. Terrifying. Ambitious. Unfortunately, sympathetic wasn’t one of them. If you were able to crack open her mind, you would see mostly images of her ruthlessly showing up Neo and those ugly twins later tonight at Junior’s club with her new dress and car.

“You’re being overly dramatic, Oscar,” she said breezily.

Oscar turned and faced her, looking exasperated. Their relationship was complicated, but they didn’t hate each other like their parents did. “Cinder, Ruby absolutely despises you after what you did to her and all her friends. I’m your brother. She’s going to hate me.”

Cinder would have snorted, but wouldn’t do well for her image. Instead she opted to just roll her eyes. “Look. What she and I have doesn’t have any bearing on what you do with her. Not to mention, I saw the way she looks at you. The girl is smitten.”

“…she is?”

“Focus, boy.” Cinder snapped her fingers. “Besides, if she does end up hating you just because of me, she wasn’t worth your time anyway. Besides, Neo likes you. Maybe? In a dom sort of way, I guess? I could introduce you to her if things with Ruby don’t work out.”

“But you hate Neo.”

She rolled her eyes again. “Of course I do. That mute thinks she’s better than me. I will admit she’s gorgeous though, and you deserve at least that.”

Oscar sighed and shook his head. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll… I don’t know, call Ruby and ask her if she hates me or something.”

Cinder sighed and grabbed Oscar by the wrist, pulling him as she made her way towards the garage. Little known fact about Cinder Fall was that despite her appearances and her ruthlessness, she did have a few weaknesses. When Oscar resigned himself to an awkward phone call, he inadvertently made his lips pout and his eyes went downturn looking up. Deep within the cold, unfeeling heart of his older sister, Oscar somehow managed to unfreeze a little bit of actual human kindness with a simple, unintentional puppy dog look.

“I’m taking you to Rose’s house, and you’re going to talk it over with her. Then you’ll clear things up by making out,” Cinder declared as she forced Oscar into their father’s muscle car.

“Um, Cinder. Why are you being so nice to me?”

Cinder stared dead ahead as the garage door slowly rose, letting the glare of the sunset burn her eyes and clear her mind with pain. “Because I need you to help me with dad once he figures out I took his car.”

Cinder lied as easily as she breathed.

Ping!

[It’s Cinder.]

Ping!

[Rose. I’m coming over to your house.]

Ping!

[Don’t bother asking how I know where you live. Of course I do.]

Yang whistled appreciatively as she read the latest text messages that sprung up on Ruby’s phone. She had relinquished her phone to her older sister in a vain attempt to stop herself from texting Oscar and further worsening the situation. In another timeline in which Ruby kept her phone on her and did text Oscar, things were a lot better and the misunderstanding would’ve resolved a mere thirty minutes after Ruby ran off in panic from his house. Unfortunately, this was not that timeline.

“Is it Oscar, Yang?” Blake asked curiously as she watched Ruby continued to rant and rave about her misfortune as Weiss patted her on the back in comfort while bored out of her wits.

“Nah, it’s Cinder,” Yang answered, chuckling. “Classic big sister move she’s doing. I think she’s going to come over and beat Ruby up for laying her lewd hands all over her little brother. It’s what I would do.”

Blake grinned. “Oh? Why aren’t you doing the same then?”

“You’ve met Oscar, Blake! The kid is a total sweetheart. I’m more afraid of Ruby hurting him.”

“Hey! I heard that,” Ruby shouted, her cheeks puffed up by the insult. “I definitely would not hurt Oscar.”

“You punched him in the schnoz when the two of you trained with Qrow.”

“Yeah, well—”

CRASH!

The girls yelped as a rock came crashing through the window.

“Cinder, are you crazy?! You didn’t have to throw a rock!”

That was Oscar.

“Rose! Come on out. I brought Oscar with me.”

That was Cinder.

Ruby turned to her sister and two friends, unsure what to do. Weiss looked panicked as she stared at the broken shards of glass now on the floor. Blake looked equally as shocked, but not that shocked, that Cinder literally threw a rock through Ruby’s window. Meanwhile, Yang gave Ruby a thumbs up and motioned for her to go downstairs.

“I got your back, Ruby. If Oscar’s here, you probably are just going to talk! I’ll watch your back if Cinder tries anything while Weiss and Blake cleans up the mess,” Yang said as a matter of fact.

“We will?” asked the two volunteered for clean-up duty.

“Do Ruby a solid, you two. This is her first romance! What’s a broken window or two?”

“Adam literally jumped through a window to chase after me when I dumped him, Yang.”

“See! It’s completely normal!”

“Fine, I’ll clean it up. But only because it is so unsafe to leave broken glass here,” Weiss groused.

Despite her nerves and the erratic pounding of her heart in her chest, Ruby nodded bravely and started her descent downstairs. When she opened her front door, she found Cinder leaning against a car parked by the sidewalk and Oscar nervously gazing at her. With a roll of her eyes and a kick, Cinder pushed Oscar forward. The two slowly closed the distance.

“Hey Oscar,” she said nervously, her fingers steepling together.

“Um… hey Ruby,” he replied, scratching the back of his neck.

Neither two knew what to say. It was to be expected, after all. The two were completely inexperienced when it came to romance. For Ruby, she didn’t quite know romance very well. Her family was a confusing chart of relations that involved too much melodrama. For Oscar, he only read books about romance. There was also his parents, but their enmity towards each other was legendary. However, at least they knew one thing. The person right in front of them was someone they really, really liked.

“I’m sorry!” “Sorry!”

Ruby and Oscar paused and stared at each other as they both apologized at the same time. Oscar smiled sheepishly and gestured for Ruby to go first.

“Oscar, I’m so sorry when I ranted to you in the past of how much I didn’t like your sister. You must have been so hurt that someone was saying horrible things about your family.” Ruby sighed and stared longingly at Oscar. ‘Goodbye my first love story.’

However, the boy blinked owlishly at the apology and asked, “Wait. You don’t hate me?”

“How could I ever hate you, Oscar? You’re so kind and thoughtful. You’ve helped me out so much even when starting college was all new to you. Meanwhile, all I ever did for you was just vent my worries.”

“Ruby, don’t ever apologize for having feelings. I told you before that I’m there for you, and I mean it. I was afraid you now hated me for being related to Cinder. It’s not the first time I’ve been treated differently just because of someone I was related to.”

It was if death no longer hung over the two. They then relaxed into one another’s embrace, hugging each other as relief filled them to the brim.

“So… that kiss we had? Does that mean we’re together now?” Oscar asked into her soft, red hair.

Ruby laughed into his shoulder. “Of course, silly.”

One hour and thirty-seven minutes after disaster, Ruby and Oscar found their happy ending.

“Um… Oscar. Cinder just drove off.”

“She does that.”

“Then would you like to stay for dinner?”

“I would love to.”

Twenty-three minutes after Ruby and Oscar found their happy ending, a tired Taiyang and Qrow would come home. One minute after that, after the two entered the living room where Ruby and Oscar explored their relationship in newfound romantic territory, disaster struck once more.

[bestworstcase]

I feel like (different anon) half of the fandom doesn’t even care about Salem in the sense that regardless of what Her goal is? To be fair in my corner I’ve seen more individual character hatred rather than “this plot doesn’t make sense” hatred. Or ppl just saying the plot sucks without offering why they think so which is the majority of rwby “criticism”. But Salem being the key to the end of the show has been very well telegraphed since the end of volume 3. She started as this faceless monster, a creature to hate, the one who killed their headmaster and plunged the world into war. Then we learned that Oz was also keeping secrets and outright lying, so that knocked him off of the Trusted Adult pedestal (tho he has always been kinda shady but in terms of story formula that’s what I mean). Volume 6??? The Lost Fable?? Still so amazing. Salem very literally gets humanized in the eyes of our characters. She still did all of those awful things but she’s a Person now rather than an Entity. Those moments of confrontation (Ironwood’s office with Ruby, Yang while in the whale, Oscar.” We get to see her talking to her Evil Guy Crew. We see her have emotions.

AND THEN THE BROTHER GODS once thought of as entities much like how Salem was seen by the cast in the beginning. Yes they are still gods but not in the sense that at least I was thinking. They came From somewhere. And yes Salem was the first to discover they were fallible but knowing what V9 told us helped me put it into perspective

So the last arch being about fully learning what Salem wants and then, probably possibly, deciding how to help alongside with it. I think ppl get upset bc they view that as “oh yeah all the ppl she killed and lives she ruined don’t matter she’s our bestie mow” kind of Joining with Salem. When im seeing it as a more Neo agreeing to work with Cinder type deal. If Salem wants to stop the gods, get revenge, make them humble, and the gods return and want to wipe out remnant For Good, I’d say that’s a common goal our kids can get behind.

rwby is a cool show with cool villains and I enjoy it a lot and also your thoughts about it sorry this is so long

the thing with salem and the, like, common fandom interpretation of her and where her arc is headed is that. at least since v9 it’s less about resistance to the idea that the final confrontation being team rwby vs the gods as it is the way folks assume salem fits into that, namely that most of the fandom still takes completely at face value the idea that she’s selfish, arrogant, and needs to learn her lesson about the value of life and death. so you get these wild takes that the gods were assholes who punished her out of proportion for what she did, paired with this implicit idea that salem does actually deserve this punishment because she Still RefusesTo Learn Her Lesson, and thus she needs to be redeemed by team rwby proving her wrong somehow.

but like

salem did nothing wrong. praying to the gods was not wrong, reacting emotionally when they were cruel to her was not wrong, recognizing their fallibility and unworthiness was not wrong, rallying people against them was not wrong, vowing to keep fighting after they massacred everybody was not wrong, cursing them after they left and blaming them for ending the world was not wrong, jumping into the pool of grimm was not wrong, BEING grimm is not wrong, rejecting the divine mandate after ozma hid it from her for years was not wrong. frankly continuing to be a thorn in his side since then is, i would argue, also not wrong, because she’s made herself the immovable obstacle preventing him from summoning his genocidal god back to remnant to kill everyone again; it is laughably obvious that the ultimatum is not a game humanity can win. and then factoring in the part where ozma is obsessed with finding a way to destroy her, what else is she supposed to do besides live in exile. and of course if you close off every other door except violent rebellion you are eventually going to invite violent rebellion. 

so like. Salem Is Right, and seems to be taking what she considers the path of minimal destruction (the grimm held beacon but pull out of vale within a few days; her plan for haven was nearly bloodless and left mistral untouched; she made no move to attack mantle and began her siege with a grace period for her to leave in peace if the relics were surrendered), which means that she’s likely willing to negotiate methods if other less destructive paths are opened to her. her villain -> hero arc can’t turn on team rwby persuading her that she’s wrong, because fundamentally her position is “the genocidal divine tyrants do not deserve our obedience and we can and must defy them” which is, um, correct. but if they adopt that position themselves and then negotiate How i think they’ll find she’s a lot more reasonable than they’ve been led to believe, and i do not think the wider fandom is prepared for that whatsoever