This is so important. I just wish more people knew and talked about this.
I definitely feel this between my mother and myself, but as my own parenting journey has been fairly pleasant and free of the drama/sacrifice narratives, I seem to have different emotions about my kids than I expected to have. This, in turn, angers and alienates my mother.
Qrow please find out that you were wrong about your semblance and find out that it’s not bad luck but actually luck manipulation
That part reminded me of a post I saw about Robyn telling Qrow that his and Clover’s semblances were not bad and good luck but just luck-based with no other adjective and that together they didn’t cancel each other out but just created more chaos because you know what ?
That’s absolutely true
I’m too lazy to go hunt for screencaps, but remember at the Battle of Haven, when everyone was fighting in every corner of the room and we had a couple shots of a bullet or a sword missing its mark by, like, a centimeter, and some people said it was Qrow’s semblance at work ? I always found this really interesting because, if it was Qrow’s semblance’s work, then it wasn’t bad luck. It was good luck for the people escaping an injury thanks to this and bad luck for the people missing their attack. Good and bad at the same time.
And I think this is the same situation. Obviously, the bomb stopping and not falling off is good news, right ? Yes, from the heroes’ perspective. But it could also be seen as bad luck. The bomb was supposed to destroy Mantle, it was Harriet’s intent, and if it had killed some of the last refugees who still hadn’t gone through the portals, it would have been a plus for the bad guys. So, for us it’s good luck, but if you asked Salem, she’d probably say “too bad that thing didn’t fall down and kill hundreds of people, though I don’t care all that much”. It would have been a plus for her, and it’s bad luck, from her point of view, that it didn’t happen.
So I’m totally on board with Qrow understanding that his semblance can affect luck in different ways depending on how you see it and his self-worth improving a little. He deserves it.
Do you guys realize how important the reincarnation cycle is for Ozma, though? And how crucial it is for differentiating him from Salem, and her own form of immortality?
A very common trope in modern fiction is that immortals just become… out of touch with humanity. How can you relat to someone who’s life is a flash, a brief moment, compared to your unchanging, unending, interminable stagnation through history? How long until you lose the ability to empathize with the small, day-to-day troubles of these brief flashes in a pan we call life?
How many times has Ozpin met Team RWBY throughout the ages? Not the same people, but - the optimistic hero? The rebellious princess? The revolutinary? The protective firebrand? How many times has seen people just like them live, fight, and die? How long until they all start blurring together, and all you can see is their coming end?
It’d be so easy to forget that these people you’re protecting are people, not just faces. And from there it’s a short jump to start asking yourself… why? They’ll just die in a few years anyway. Why does it matter?
It’d be so easy.
People like Oscar, like Ozpin, like all the countless lives Ozma’s soul has passed through over Brother’s know how many eons, are so crucial because they remind him. Ozma isn’t just continuing through the ages like Salem is, he’s experiencing the lives of other people - their families, their friends, their hopes, dreams, fears, and deaths. He’s constantly reminded of the importance of the little, miniscule moments of life, because as old as he is, he’s constantly re-experiencing them through the eyes of people living them for the first time.
How many times has Ozma met people like Team RWBY? Countless. How many times has Oscar? Once. And that makes so much difference.
“Why do you keep coming back?” Salem asks. Because he hasn’t forgotten. Not like she has.
Well, RWBY has given us yet another example of how easily lawful goods can be co-opted by a system which pays lip service to their code, but actively undermines their morals.
Because Rhodes does seek to do good, and likely believes himself to be a good man. He sees Cinder’s plight and does as much as he thinks he’s able to do- shows her kindness, trains her, mentors her, tries to give her a way out. But he never steps outside the bounds of the law that governs him. Even though it means allowing a young girl to be brutally abused, something he pretty clearly believes is morally wrong, he allows it. Because he believes upholding the system is more important. And when it comes time to make that choice again, he does it without question.
Rhodes knew Cinder still ultimately wanted to do good, he knew that she could still be helped.. But he also knew it would mean rejecting the rules of the system that granted him his positon. Rules he believed in, rules that in his mind, gave him the power and agency he needed to help others. He knew he couldn’t support both her and the system, and so he chose.
He saw a young girl who had been utterly failed by the system, who had been sold as a slave and brutally tortured for years, a girl who finally snapped and struck back at her abusers… and he chose to punish her for it. Because the law protects those that hurt her. But it never protected her from being hurt.
And isn’t that just Atlas for you? Punishing those that try to protect themselves or others from the system, but never those that use the system to abuse them in the first place? And pretending its right because that’s justice?
First big thing, “but first I need the one who can show me how.”
That’s a dead ringer for either Ruby or Oscar getting kidnapped. They’ve been the ones passing the relic between each other, so we’re gonna get a little “Sparky Sparky Boom Man” side plot, if I had to guess.
