Thread:Soarel/@comment-24834640-20180622110646/@comment-27045477-20180625003100

That’s so wrong I don’t even know where to start.

Salem’s motives are spelled out in Divide's 3rd verse. She hates Ozpin for how he treats humans, ruling over them secretly, lying to them, and sending them to their deaths all just to fulfill a petty grudge with her. She refers to his actions as "sins" and makes other such moral judgements of him, calling him "sick and cruel" for how he treats humans and especially the hunters. If she hated humans, and especially if she wanted them dead, that would make no sense with the reasons why she hates Ozpin so much. Her entire motivation is based on how she cares about how humans are treated.

Plus, there's the fact that Cinder tried to persuade Adam into joining her side and he viewed her cause "a human cause". If killing all the humans was the antagonists' goal, Cinder would have told Adam that their group was planning on it, and he would be on board, but no, she didn't, therefore it is not their goal. In general, it makes no sense for humans to willingly and happily work for her if that were her goal, especially people like Hazel. Speaking of him, bash on Hazel entirely based on this misconception about what Salem’s goals are, but as I’ve demonstrated, that isn’t what her goals are. They created his entire character to demonstrate that the antagonists are doing what they think is right, and yet people dismissed him entirely based on their false idea that they’re not. People rejected his motives by claiming he was stupid for siding with someone who wanted to kill everyone. The writers created a character to demonstrate that Salem’s goal is not to kill everyone, and people rejected that character because of the belief that his existence was trying to refute.

Even Ozpin, the person who hates her most and has taken over the world and used the whole human race as weapons against her for millennia, doesn’t claim her goal is to kill everyone. The worst thing he says about her is that she wants to “change the world”. He’s trying to persuade the characters to join his side and fight against her. If her goal was killing everyone, he would have clearly said so in order to convince people to fight against her. But he didn’t.

Also, on the directors’ commentaries for V4, the writers make it very clear that Salem is very kind and motherly to her allies, and that she is a kind-hearted person. They say that people were expecting her to be cruel, but she’s really good at heart.