Based On @rwbybutincorrect Post

Based on @rwbybutincorrect post

https://www.tumblr.com/rwbybutincorrect/710092024245895169/pyrrha-hey-can-we-stay-in-your-dorm-tonight

I'm just taking a moment to appreciate this beauty after being severely traumatised by the latest episode :)

more pirate au bc i have no self control

Nuts and Dolts!!!!

Something I’ve always thought was the most interesting takeaway from watching The Girl in the Tower was that it REALLY got me thinking about all the actual parallels that can be drawn between Salem and RUBY.

Because as far as RWBY villains go, Cinder acts as the diametric, ideological opposite and foil to Ruby: The girl who strives to see the best in people and the world and is practically the embodiment of optimism and positivity pitted against a girl who is the product of all the WORST parts of humanity, has known nothing BUT negativity and pain her entire life and embodies negativity and cynicism as much as Ruby embodies positivity.

But the more information we get, I’m thinking that Salem on the other hand might well be Ruby’s evil counterpart. Whereas Ruby and Cinder are practically opposites, Ruby and Salem are looking to be all too similar.

For one, just look at how The Girl in the Tower emphasizes Salem’s love of books and stories, just as Ruby does. It seems that both Ruby and Salem grew up enamored with stories of heroes and adventures and were inspired by those stories to go out and have adventures themselves.

And when we look at just what they have done, I think we see that Ruby and Salem actually have very similar abilities. For one, both have shown to be quite capable at rallying followers to a cause. Salem was able to rally all of humanity to take up arms against the Gods in her time, just as Ruby is working to rally all of humanity in her time against Salem. And just as Ruby has drawn a close nit group of trusted friends to her side, so too does Salem draw in a select group of loyal followers.

Not to mention both Ruby and Salem have shown themselves to be quite adept at not only inspiration, but manipulation as well. One of Salem’s greatest strengths has always been her ability to manipulate and exploit the flaws of her enemies, subtly undermining them and turning them against themselves and each other. A skill that Ruby has likewise displayed several times in recent volumes. From baiting Cordovin into revealing her mech’s weakpoint with a heroic speech, to breaking up the Ace Ops in their fight so she and her team could pick them off one-by-one, to basically playing Ironwood like a fiddle in the gambit to save Penny and evacuate Mantle and Atlas.

Heck, when we see Ruby and Salem finally meet in person, Ruby basically uses a number of Salem’s own tricks against her. Ruby even needles Salem’s insecurities by bringing up the Lamp and how ‘we’ve seen you fail’. When you actually put Salem’s ‘Just accept your —– and this can all be over’ and Ruby’s ‘We don’t need to kill you to stop you. And we will stop you’ lines side-by-side, they feel VERY similar.

And lest we forget, Ruby actually did manage to get under Salem’s skin with her little speech. Just look at Salem’s reaction to it: No highbrow, self-assured declaration of how her enemies have no hope of beating her. Just a frustrated, petty jab at Ruby’s mother.

When we look at a scene like the one in Midnight where Salem manipulates Cinder with surgical precision, I can’t help but feel like we’re seeing a ‘what if Ruby used her powers for evil?’ situation. Where Ruby has had thousands of years to hone her keen insight into how people think and is using that insight to manipulate those around her with horrifying skill and finesse.

And when we look at the physical abilities that Ruby and Salem have exhibited, I think we can find even more parallels.

Going back to Salem’s time rallying humanity against the Gods, she did so using a power that came from the God of Light; her Immortality. Just as Ruby wields her silver eyes, a power that likewise came from the God of Light.

And speaking of Salem’s immortality, I can’t help but think that Ruby’s semblance might well function in an almost identical fashion. After all, we’ve seen Salem come back from being a literal charred smear on the ground or being basically vaporized. If Ruby’s semblance allows her to deconstruct and reconstruct herself at a molecular level, I get the feeling Ruby might actually be capable of the same regenerative feats that Salem has shown.

Finally, going back to The Girl in the Tower, I can actually see some parallels between Salem and Ruby in how they may have been ‘imprisoned’. Now on the one hand, there are some direct parallels that can be drawn between Ruby’s and Salem’s childhoods; Both lost their mothers at a very long age and were raised by a father who was wracked with grief over that loss. Though on the other hand, from what we’ve seen it doesn’t seem like Tai was in any way ‘overly protective’ of Ruby or Yang, at least not nearly as Salem’s father seems to have been. But then again, Tai hasn’t been all that big a presence in the story we’ve seen.

Consider the following: Just as Salem was physically imprisoned by her father, Ruby spends the first major chunk of the series figuratively and narratively imprisoned by a symbolic father-figure in the form of Ozpin, a man who might not be related by blood to Ruby, but who nonetheless serves as a prominent mentor and guide to Ruby in the early volumes of the show.

Both Salem’s father in the past and Ozpin in the present are old men who are fearful that the young girls under their care will come to harm and thus go to extreme and ultimately harmful lengths to ‘protect’ them. In the case of Salem’s father, he imprisoned his daughter in a tower to hide her away from the possible dangers of the world. In the case of Ozpin, he tried to hide his students, namely Ruby, away from the truth of the world and the dangers represented by that truth, ie; Salem.

This becomes all the more relevant when we consider that Oz seems to have designed Beacon Academy to look just like the castle Salem was imprisoned in. Without ever realizing it, I think it’s fair to say that Oz eventually became all too similar to the very man he once rescued Salem from all those eons ago.

And the parallels continue when we consider the final lines of ‘The Girl in the Tower’; Ozma tells Salem “You freed yourself,” stating that Salem took control of her destiny by reaching out for someone to help her. And just look at what Ruby does in Volume 6. The moment Ruby asked Jinn “What is Ozpin hiding from us?”, she is no longer following Ozpin’s lead and has effectively seized control of the story for herself.

For much of ‘The Girl in the Tower’, Salem’s father tries to control her destiny. And for the first five volumes of RWBY, Oz effectively tries to control the narrative of the story. Essentially, it is Ozpin who is effectively driving and maintaining the simple, straight-forward ‘fantasy high-school’ genre that defines the Beacon Arc. He keeps major secrets that would upend the entire status-quo of the current narrative, all because he believes it is for the heroine’s own good and safety. He is desperate to maintain a flawed and ultimately unsustainable status quo. Because despite Ozpin’s efforts, the reality of the dangers facing our heroines still came calling and destroyed that status quo.

And even after the Fall of Beacon, we can say that Ozpin was still desperate to maintain that control over the ‘narrative’ of the story for what he believes is the heroine’s own good. No matter how much it gets them hurt or even killed. Just as Salem’s father was so desperate to protect her, no matter how much he hurt her and others in the process.

Until both Salem and Ruby effectively take control of their stories, wresting control away from their literal and symbolic father-figures.

So what do all these parallels mean going forward? I think it means that Salem will ultimately be positioned as Ruby’s true rival and ‘evil counterpart’. And we will be shown that Ruby and Salem are ‘not so different’. I think it’s all too easy to imagine Ruby’s efforts to unite humanity against Salem being painted as all too similar to Salem’s efforts to unite humanity against the Gods.

Imagine when we get the inevitable showdown between Ruby and Salem, it is Ruby who does that ‘we are not so different…’ line that truly rattles Salem like nothing else in the show has?

Finally, these parallels massively reframe the narrative dynamic between Ruby, Salem and Ozma/Ozpin/Oscar, and how the latter could NEVER have been the ‘hero’ of this story.

Ozma wound up becoming little different from the man who imprisoned Salem all those years ago. Ruby on the other hand, is all too similar to Salem herself.

Meddling kids