The Lost Fable is one of the most important episodes in RWBY. It's the second longest episode in the series, explains the mythological origins of Remnant, gives us the history of Ozpin and Salem, sets the tone for future events and plotpoints, and completely shakes up the status quo. So how did Celtic fuck it up?
For starters, Jinn is way more verbose than canon. I'll just insert their introductory dialogue for comparison
Canon: "I am Jinn, a being created by the god of light to aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge. I’ve been graced with the ability to answer three questions every one hundred years. You’re in luck, as I’m still able to answer two questions this era.”
FRWBY: "I am Jinn, sent by the gods to catalogue the knowledge of existence and to bestow it upon the inheritors of man. I can answer questions of all there is and all there used to be. But Temper your thirsts for knowledge for I can only answer up to three questions. And once asked each question takes a century to renew. This is my second summoning in as much time. As such there are only two questions that remain. Please, tell me, what is your query?"
I liked the framing of The Lost Fable here where the cast picks up various books telling the story of Oz and Salem, but got sick of Celti's narration about it. He basically repeats "A young X picks up *insert book* and speaks in Jinn's voice" six times
In canon The Lost Fable was a story entirely focused on Oz, Salem, the gods, and their central conflict. There really isn't any scene or dialogue you could remove without weakening the story, it's pretty tight despite how dense with lore it is
In FRWBY, between Celtic's bloat problems of adding in useless shit that doesn't fucking matter and Jinn being about twice as much a talker as she is in canon, this is a slog
These pointless details include:
-Salem sending out a message for a hero free her from her father's tower
-Oz and Salem journeying and meeting actual faceless nameless nobodies
-After the gods curse Salem with immortality we meet four hooded faceless nameless magi that are humanity's defenders
-They try to stop the gods from wiping out humanity and accomplish nothing instantly dying instead
-Salem repeatedly eggs on Oz to keep expanding the kingdom they made to "enlighten the lesser people" by conquering and absorbing their nations. This happens three times
Now let's list off the major differences in The Lost Fable from canon:
-Oz is "more cunning than brave"
-The Brothers have an actual fight that results in them destroying the moon and leaving Remnant
-The Grimm were created in response to Salem's trickery to punish all of humanity
-Salem becomes a guiding figure for humanity and gets worshipped as an immortal god in the process
-In response to this worship, the Brothers wipe out humanity sans Salem
-Oz's mission isn't to unite humanity, but to "prove that humanity is more than mindless shadow" whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. Nobody in-universe knows what this means either
-Oz ends up with Salem a LOT longer after he reincarnates in remnant
-Oz and Salem become international nation conquerors due to being the only people on the planet with magic, and they get worshipped as gods. Why the Brothers didn't appear again to wipe out humanity due to the false idol worship is beyond me
-While Oz is away their children get assassinated, and Salem blames him for not being there to protect them starting their beef. Reminder she's the one instigating him leaving in the first place
-Oz asks Jinn what can kill Salem, and only the gods can do it. He refuses to summon them despite having the means to do so because he knows they'll kill Salem
So there ya go, villain Oz. He's kept the world at war with Salem for thousands of years and destroyed who knows how many lives because he still loves her. As Lionheart put it all he tells is lies, and as Raven put it he isn't fighting to beat Salem but to keep the world the way he likes it. They're fully justified in betraying him in this universe
First of all, the Brothers. While The Lost Fable frames them in a pretty malicious light, they aren't entirely evil. They still deeply care enough about one another to the point that the elder telling the younger that he's being used by Salem was all that was needed to stop their potential fighting. And as we learn in Volume 9, they're moreso VERY flawed creators who have poor ideas about how they should treat their creations rather than actively malicious. In FRWBY they're your typical jackass gods with no good or redeeming qualities, and I expect that V9 will have them intentionally destroy the Ever After with the tree kicking them out to keep up this characterization
And then there's Oz. This is a real chicken or egg situation. Did Celtic want Roman to be Oz's next host and rewrote him to be a villain to keep the similar soul rule? Did he rewrite The Lost Fable and make Oz into a villain and had Roman replace Oscar after? Or did he just make shit up as he went on despite having hindsight on his side? Either way, Oz is just as bad if not WORSE than Salem in this rewrite and he should be left to die in a ditch if him dying didn't mean he'd steal the life of another person
The Lost Fable was completely overhauled, changing the story of a hero faced with an impossible mission against an invincible enemy, into one of two villains fucking up the world because Oz still cares about Salem despite everything. I fail to see how this "fixes" RWBY Celtic
Oh boy, my most hated change in FRWBY, although the Weiss stuiff ended up taking a close second from what I heard.
Disclaimer: Once again, I have not watched FRWBY. So this is definitely a 'guy bitches about something from second hand info'. That criticism is completely valid. But hearing this stuff certainly doesn't interest me in finding out for myself.
So to be fair, i don't hate the idea of Ozpin being hesitant to progress the fight against Salem because he loves her. RWBY in general isn't very good with romance (says a lot Renora is the best ship and that's just other show's norm) so trying a different angle could give a better shot. Salem also clearly has complicated feelings about Ozpin, given the almost tender way she treats Oscar at first when he's captured. And logically, Ozpin should have issues with trying to kill the woman he once loved, since those emotions run DEEP. The idea isn't bad and could expand on parts of the show that were left to the wayside, like many fanfics do.
... Problem is that A.) This isn't a fanfic first and foremost. By Celtic's own words, it's an essay first, fanfic second. Whether or not Celtic likes the changes is secondary, them being better for what is intended is the primary concern. Which leads me to B.) These aren't better changes, they're just different.
First off, what is Ozpin intended to be? He's not intended to be a villain or even villain-like figure. People claim the heroes lashing out against him is proof of that...but ignore that everyone still follows his fight and what he believes in. Their conflict with Oz isn't that he's a secret villain: it's that he's a FLAWED MAN who doesn't practice what he preaches. Hence why the heroes are hypocrites with James: it sets them up as committing the same flaws as Ozpin so they reconcile later. But in FRWBY, Ozpin's flaws are taken up to eleven at best. His fear of people ditching him and losing hope becomes a more selfish fear of losing his wife, while STILL having him be responsible for the deaths of who knows how many. This means that the heroes have every right to be as angry as they are in canon and would need to sink MUCH lower to be on his level.
He's also no longer the classic fairy tale hero, the knight who saves the princess, the kind of hero that inspired RWBY, and now he's more of a trickster hero. In a show that glorifies classic heroes. I guess it kind of works with Roman....you know, the fatalistic man who was beating our main heroine over her 'childish' beliefs, beliefs Ozpin originally embodied. This is a big reason why Roman as Ozpin's host doesn't work: They're complete opposites in beliefs in canon. So, again at best: You're gonna have to break one of their characters to make them fit in some way so one of them can be changed by the other (probably Roman since he's the antithesis of RWBY). Now, it seems like this disconnect is just going unaddressed.
And hey, if this were a fanfic about a more realistic take on RWBY, it could have worked. But once more: this isn't a fanfic. It's meant to be a replacement for the original. It has less in common with Dragon Ball AF and more in common with Dragon Ball Evolution. Sure, some stuff presented in Evolution, like the merging of shounen-style mystical martial arts with everyday protagonists, could work. But that's not Dragon Ball and this isn't RWBY. The changes aren't better: they're just a different story when the whole point is to be a better version of the SAME story.
As for why this happened: I'm guessing it's a little from Column A and a little from Column B. The heat cycles thing kind of tells me Celtic threw in common fanfic tropes to try and flesh out the world but never considered the distance between a fanfic and an original work. So he threw in 'Ozpin is a secret bad guy' which was common pre-Volume 6 to address the 'Ozpin isn't that sneaky!' complaint but didn't consider why that was never the case. And since he changed Ozpin's morality and doesn't like Oscar: well, he gets to keep his favorite character around too. Three birds, one stone. Never mind he smacked a beehive instead.
