Ok. I think there’s a serious mess that needs clearing up on the subject of Ozpin’s curse and the book Blake read that nods to it.
RWBY vol 5 spoilers ahead
A lot of people seem to think that because of the book Blake read at the beginning of the series Oz is going to fight and force Oscar into becoming 'Ozpin'. That the Ozpin now was the same Ozpin at the beginning of the curse, when that's not quite how it works and we have solid shit pointing at that? I know all the fairy tales have a grain of truth to them so far, probably on purpose, but that doesn’t mean every single detail is true.
Ozpin is still technically the guy that failed and got cursed yes, true, but he also has been and is every individual that's been him up to that point. The Oz we hear now is the Oz that was a kid with a voice in his head decades ago just like Oscar is right now.
There’s a merge, not a takeover, leaving Ozpin and the current ‘host’ changed certainly, but it’s more like I feel the duties, memories, responsibilities, and powers finally being fully accepted by the current form. The original is ‘changed’ by trusting the new Ozpin to do what they have to do to and letting them assume full personality control.
When Oz talks to Oscar about how he had to do the same thing, he doesn’t use language that indicates he’s talking about all of the past lives. He’s talking about his own /personal/ experience as the last ‘Ozpin’. He has a distinct personality from the Ozpin persona and responsibilities that when he steps into the latter even /the kids can differentiate/ it as him being ‘off’ or ‘not himself’ in volume 1. How he talks about Hazel indicates him talking about his own lifespan as Ozpin too.
He is the combination of all those men for thousands of years, not just their memories and some over-arching person that steals their auras and bodies. The common thread is the failure and guilt and curse from the original. They’re all ‘like-minded’ souls, which, one, sort of infers that they kept their minds in the first place and two means that the reason their auras can merge is that there is eventual understanding and harmony between the two. Not infighting and then a hostile takeover.
And besides pressing the importance of their situation and how dire it is upon a farm boy who had little to no idea about a lot of stuff, which of course was scary and honestly if he just accepted it right off I’d be concerned because it all has to sound outlandish and make him feel like somehow he’s lost his mind at the age of 14, Ozpin hasn’t forced too many issues.
Think about it. He probably could’ve taken control and got Oscar on a train to Mistral at any point but he doesn’t. He does wait until Oscar’s willing to take that step himself and he even apologizes for it when Oscar does leave. He could’ve taken control when going to find and meet Qrow, right off the bat, not have Oscar relay a (frankly pretty sassy for a dead guy) message about his cane.
When he does assume control for the first time, they both make sure to clearly note to everyone present that Oscar is still there, not gone or forced out and that he will be back in control afterward.
And it’s certainly not true that Ozpin chooses to do any of this. It’s a curse from the gods. He has already mentioned he’d rather not do this at all to Oscar when they first ‘meet’. He explains that the process fucking sucks and is stressful and confusing for everyone involved. He hates it. It’s a curse!! He knows what it dooms people into and marks them as.
All of it is pretty nuts. He knows that too. He mentions that too. He doesn’t expect everyone to understand or believe him at first or even completely at all.
So, until we get Raven’s side of the story, weighing it with the grain of salt that Raven has demonstrated she requires, or until he actually does something purposefully sinister in show that we can see, can we not just assume he’s some evil control freak or well-intentioned extremist who’s willing to completely rob a kid’s free will? Because nothing in canon yet suggests it.
He’s the cursed man, but he was also their headmaster with a distinct individuality of his own who went through what Oscar currently is going through, and knows that it sucks, that Oscar was an innocent bystander before all of this and is genuinely upset that it all turned out this way.
