Hey, guys. I'm going to talk about Salem, the primary antagonist of RWBY. Although Salem was my all time favorite RWBY villain because of her terrifying design, the problems is her character: not only that she's tragic just for the sake of having audiences sympathizing her, but she lacks personality, she wasn't threatening despite that she created Grimm, and she never physically killed everyone throughout the entire series. But for me personally, I'm gonna make her better, scarier and more threatening.

1. Number 1: Her current appearance would be always that way (except for the eyes): What really bugs me about her is while in half-Grimm form, Salem appeared to be white with blood veins along with red irises and black scleras while her past counterpart was a blonde woman with blue eyes, because the animators wanted to make her look 'evil' when she becomes one. I know she looked like this because she's half-Grimm and she was cursed with immortality (which we'll get to it later), but she had the ability to create them (and the Grimm designs, we'll get to it in another thread) and her change of appearance doesn't make an explanation as she's the only Grimm who is sentient (speaking of the Hound) due to that. What would make a lot more sense is that the reason why Salem was all white with red eyes is because she was born with albinism, and it's rare among human beings in the real world and in the anime genre. In case if you don't know, albinism is a rare genetic condition caused by mutations of certain genes that affect the amount of melanin your body produces, which includes hair, skin and eye colors, like you see white animals with red or blue eyes. And her appearance would draw fear among both audiences and characters due to her appearance that appeared 'unnatural' which is what she'll use fear as a weapon, along with physical combat.
2. Number 2: Salem would be raised as a warrior princess, not by an abusive father: I find Salem being a daughter of an abusive father cliched because we've seen any other villain who had backstories like this as the writers expect the audiences to sympathize with them, but to be fair, Freddy Kruger was abused by his father, but he didn't care of it especially when he was being bullied in school. What I expected a backstory is ever since she was a child, her father, after realizing that humans can be evil after saving his past wife from a group of raiders, he is desperate to train Salem to defend herself. However, because of how she can bring fear by her appearance due to albinism which is how she can fight off her enemies really easy as Neo, her father realized he created a monster instead of a warrior as she murdered only not just self defense, so while the canon version of Salem's father locked her away due to how an abusive father he is, in my option, he locked her away to prevent her from hurting everyone.
3. Number 3: Salem is a highly intelligent hypocritical liar and a deceiver who plays the victim: While Salem in the canon version was a woman fallen in love by a savior who fell by an unknown disease (maybe cancer or rabies, I don't know), my version of Salem doesn't need love, she can fool everyone into thinking how she'll play the victim in order to accomplish her goals, and she was only using Ozma, while pretending to be fallen in love. This would've explained how she formed a faction as she can manipulate people, mostly criminals, into joining her. While her father was unaware that Salem gained semblance due to combat, she used her lightning beam to send out a signal to any unsuspecting rescuers. When her father realized it, he sent out his guards to prevent any rescuers from releasing Salem, and while the guards succeeded, the only rescuer they outmatched was Ozma, a highly trained knight and Ozpin's ancient ancestor, and as he reached his destination, he killed Salem's father who tried to warn him about his daughter being a murderer but didn't believe him. Ozma freed Salem, and the two get married; however, after making out, Salem betrayed Ozma and killed her 'husband' when it was revealed her plan was to breed more and more warriors, and inflict world domination, but she was unaware that Ozma's semblance was rebirth after early death while kept his old memories similar to Mothra.
4. Number 4: She was responsible for the Maidens: While we don't know the exact origin of the Maidens, in my version, Salem gave birth to her children who were then referred as 'Maidens', but because of her abuse of her power, she had poor motherly instincts as she abused them and treated them like slaves, resulting her children to betray her and run away, enraging her. This would've explained why Salem ordered her faction to steal Maiden powers as a homage to her children where she can one day use as weapons. The Maidens met young Ozma the second and begged him for help, and he killed Salem, shocked that it was Ozma who resurrected himself by is semblance.
5. Number 5: Salem became an abomination by becoming the first sentient Grimm instead of falling into Grimm Liquid: While I'll get to the Grimm in another thread, my version of Salem was born similar to a zombie (I'll get to it in another thread), while the canon version was that she became an abomination because of the Grimm liquid. But while she kept her semblance and memories, Salem is more lovecraftian than the canon version as she can manipulate her entire body, even with dismemberment, regenerate, and shapeshift when she has to, and use her body parts to create Grimm by attacking, eating and assimilating humans and animals into one of them, which explains why most Grimm resemble animals, which again, I'll get to it in another thread. This explains how she can survive for so long because every Grimm, while they can dissolve into ashes, cannot die, and she just became an Alpha Grimm because of her actions of being a cold-blooded killer, just like them. And them 'attracted to negativity' is the reason because it's part of Salem's tactics as she knew the enemies' negative reactions can exploit their weaknesses.

Conclusion: The reason why I had to write Salem like this is because she was the main antagonist of RWBY, and because the show's theme is about good vs evil, the post first half of volume 3 writers failed to write the characters and villains, especially Salem, so I decided to make her into a monster instead of a sympathetic Thanos knock-off. I know some of you were fine for the canon version, and that's okay, but I personally wanted Salem as a complete monster as the main antagonist of the show the features good vs evil, friendship, fear and paranoia, and moving forward.

This is just my version, don't judge me or make responses. You can have your own version you want in the comments down below.

She went from a giant chair in a throne room to an even bigger chair in a whale throne room

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You know, I was expecting Salem to sit inside a giant Grimm exo-suit similar to the Harvesters from Independence Day. That'd be awesome.