#if you take ozma’s relentless concern for other people’s well-being

[bestworstcase]

ok ok but the thing abt the gods

and redemption—

“if your kind is unchanged, if you demand our blessings while still fighting amongst yourselves, then man will be found irredeemable and your world will be wiped from existence.”

the heart of this is that you can’t accept the possibility of mankind being redeemed by the act of unquestioning obedience unity without also accepting that humans as they currently are deserve to die, that if the gods came back right now they would obliterate remnant and that would be fair and just, because humanity failed to redeem itself. redemption cannot occur without genuine fault or genuine debt.

and one of the foremost reasons ozma is so profoundly fucked up is that he was, and in many ways still is, somebody who believed heart and soul in human worth, in the value of human life—and his status as the chosen one tasked with redeeming humanity DEMANDS that he take it as a given that humankind does not intrinsically deserve to exist, because he is responsible for saving them from their own unworthiness. his choices are to accept all of what the god of light told him, or to reject it in its entirety.

so

two things happen with salem in the lost fable that i think are important in making sense of where rwby is going with this:

1. the kitchen scene:

ozma raises the subject of humanity “seem[ing] more divided than ever,” to which salem says “are you surprised? this world is quite literally godless. these humans have no one to guide them. perhaps that’s all they need.”—and then, when ozma skeptically asks where she’s going with this, continues,“we could be the gods of this world. our powers surpass all others. our souls transcend death. we can mold these lands into whatever we want—what you want!”

none of this appears to disturb ozma particularly. he is, at worst, a little dubious. until salem says THIS: “create the paradise the old gods could not.”—the instant she says paradise, he’s like:

in short it is, specifically, salem’s insinuation that she believes human beings have the potential to be better than the gods that rattles him. remember, this is a man who was directly told by one of these gods that these humans are inferior and broken and must be either redeemed or destroyed—and he raised the subject of division as a way of testing the waters to see if salem would get onboard with that divine mandate.

and her response was to give him a full-throated declaration of human superiority over the gods.

everything else salem said fits tidily within the divine perspective and the moral framework of the mandate: in the eyes of the brother gods, magical power—the divine blessing—really DOES make salem and ozma superior to other humans, and ozma was in a very literal sense put on this world for the express purpose of acting in the gods’ stead in order to lead humanity to redemption. but the moment salem made it clear that she thinks human potential is greater than the gods? i think that was the moment ozma realized he would have to make a choice, that he could either leave salem and accept the mandate or stay with her and reject it.

only he couldn’t bring himself to make that choice, so he kept the mandate a secret and tried to have it both ways.

2. the confession scene:

“don’t you see? none of that matters anymore! why spend our lives trying to redeem these humans—” [the camera cuts away from her to ozma here] “—when we can replace them with what they could never be?”

the most intriguing thing about that cut is that it shows ozma’s shifting reaction to what salem is saying; he’s disturbed at first,

—and when salem says replace them, his expression shifts not toward disgust (as one might expect) but rather contemplation—

—and once her hand is extended to him there is a very clear beat of ozma genuinely not being sure.

which is to say, either ozma was so morally compromised by this point that genocide was not an immediate hard no for him, or salem meant something else and, for example, made a gesture we didn’t see that clarified her meaning as “replace the gods.”

worth noting: “she painted them pictures of a time […] when they could claim the powers of their creators for themselves, and in turn, perfect their own design. all they needed to do was destroy their old masters.”

also worth noting: the first time jinn uses the phrase “the hearts of men are easily swayed,” it’s in reference to salem leading a rebellion against the gods. the second time it’s a coda on salem telling ozma they can surpass the gods. “we can replace the gods” has a much stronger continuity with salem’s character up to this point than “we can replace humanity,” is what i’m getting at,

ANYWAY, THE POINT IS. ozma lays all his cards on the table after years and years of trying to both be with salem (which he wants) and fulfill his mandate (which he didn’t want, but agreed to so he could find salem)—and salem predictably flatly refuses to accept it. she rejects not only the task itself but the idea that anything the gods want or say matters at all; she rejects redemption and everything it implies.

it’s possible that she’s really proposing genocide here—i’ll grant that, and certainly the scene is structured in such a way as to suggest that quite strongly—BUT, it didn’t read that way to me the first time i watched the episode and it really doesn’t read that way to me now. and regardless, salem’s total rejection of human redemption innately goes hand-in-hand with rejection of the divine perspective that humans as they currently are deserve to die; ozma’s moral failure here lies in his refusal to reject the gods along with her.

[if she did mean “replace humanity” the only effective way to persuade her otherwise would be to reject the gods and then engage in an actual ideological argument; i do think salem would have been more receptive to discussion on whether or not they were doing the right thing if ozma hadn’t opened the topic by going yeah so when i said i wanted to unite humankind that was because the gods, who punished you with eternal suffering and then killed every person on the planet except you, told me i had to or else they’re gonna kill everyone. again. like. sir,]

which—somewhat ironically—makes the heroes adopting salem’s perspective of the world and humanity a prerequisite for her to undergo a complete villain-to-hero arc; as things stand now team oz are still playing by the rules set out by the gods, implicit acceptance of human unworthiness at all, and that is demonstrably NOT a position that salem can accept. (in that sense, raven saying that salem can’t be reasoned with is true: there is no possibility of an argument that will ever persuade her to accept the rightness of the gods.)

and

given the clearly negative way that rwby uses “redemption” in other contexts—it is what the albain brothers use to manipulate ilia into going along with the assassination of the belladonnas and kidnapping of blake, and it’s the excuse salem uses for abandoning cinder after haven and being cruel to her even after cinder nominally ‘redeems’ herself, which salem herself obviously comes to recognize as a huge mistake—i think there is a very strong possibility of this big picture moral question coming into focus for team rwby (and jaune) in the ever after, of what it truly means to accept that humanity needs to be ‘redeemed’ from human nature and in turn what that question means for the conflict with salem, which is made impossible to resolve by their side’s implicit obedience of the gods.

#if you take ozma’s relentless concern for other people’s well-being #and combine it with salem’s absolute hatred and rejection of the gods #you get the right answer #which is why ozlem is endgame in this essay i will—