Talk:Jacques Schnee/@comment-1446360-20200111181543/@comment-35434444-20200112091131

You mean he can't be both?

Don't get me wrong, I've been clamouring for someone to have a measure of self awareness and realize that Jacques is the biggest rich-person cliche since Scrooge McDuck, but he's stil l a fucking monster.

I've been calling for a verdict that punishes Jacques for his crimes, but still carries some measure of mercy so that the protagonists don't wind up looking just as corrupt as he was, as well as a motivation that's a little more relatable than, "MONEY!"

I don't know about changing his ways, but the whole point of RWBY now is that human nature has been dismembered: the gods leaving Remnant is symbolic of the psychological shift from unconscious animal nature in to sentient human nature. This brings about the perception of duality. If the gods are to return, the human spirit has to be re-membered; the good has to be reconciled with the evil, just as life has to be reconciled with death, so that they can be one again.

This means that even though Jacques is genuinely reprehensible beyond forgiveness, he has to be permitted to live and act in the world just as Frieza was revived at the end of the Tournament of Power in Dragon Ball Super.

It's a tooth-biting and counter-intuitive problem because even if Jacques is let go, he's not going to stop being evil. For it to work, evil has to be recognized as having its rightful place in the world. Failure to see this will only cause more evil to arise and take his place anyway. There is no sense in trying to get rid of evil decisively because evil is already implicit in good.

I know this is excessively philosophical, abstract, and even a little pretentious, but that's how I see it. All human psychological development trends towards this, "Overcoming of the opposites."

"To see the world in a grain of sand,

And Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour."

-- William Blake