Cure SymphoPug

Rather than his sister Gretchen die in a training mission as a student huntress, in FRWBY Hazel's brother Magnus got possessed by Ozpin becoming the man we know in the Beacon era. First of all, this hurts his fairy tail inspiration of Hansel and Gretel. Second, the fuck?

Ozpin in the Beacon era wasn't redesigned, he looks absolutely nothing like Hazel which makes this reveal come completely out of nowhere. Are they half brothers? Adopted? For a man obsessed with tiny details that don't matter a lot of the time I'm shocked Celtic never does for this

Hazel's feelings toward Cinder are also never delved into. This is the woman who killed his brother and it's never been addressed. Granted there's a good chance Celtic will do this for Volume 8, but this aspect of the character hasn't been touched on at all. Nobody even calls out how he's fighting alongside his brother's killer

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

He's basically unchanged in the Black Trailer and Volume 2. Given his lack of screen time no surprises. The real shit starts happening from V3 onward

In canon Adam was threatened into joining Cinder's cause due to her obtaining half the Fall Maiden's power. But she also sweetened the deal by offering resources he didn't have access to, giving him a better opportunity to slaughter people. In FRWBY, she just gives the offer a second time after she gets the power and Adam accepts. No threats, no blackmail, no resources, nothing. This is ESPECIALLY baffling because Adam is written to be a much bigger extremist for the rest of the series why on Remnant would he join Cinder here

As mentioned above, Adam is a bigger extremist in FRWBY than in canon. He outright despises faunus like Velvet due to perceiving them as being complicit in humanity's oppression of the faunus. He cuts off one of Velvet's rabbit ears, three of Fox's fingers, and blinds one of Cardin's eyes. This is never addressed again. It's just something that happened to them. We never get to see them sort out their feelings about losing parts of themselves, they were just made into his victims

Adam's confrontation with Blake and Yang was basically unchanged outside of a few line tweaks. This includes the toxic ex-boyfriend stuff like his "my darling" lines

After this, Adam's toxic ex traits were almost if not completely removed to focus much more on him being an extremist revolutionary. He kills Sienna after she takes over the White Fang due to her being not enough of a violent extremist for his liking

Throughout the Mistral arc (mainly V6) we're given scenes showing Adam's shit life to make us sympathize with him. In his early teens he learns that his "landlord" (slave master? Kinda unclear) who treats him and his mom like shit is actually his father. His father *may* have been doing the deed with his mom while she was in heat due to faunus having heat cycles in this universe. I thought this was just an awful lore point but this is part of the actual story now. Heat cycles are a porn fic plotpoint or for third rate trash isekais, not something for actual serious stories

Sick of the abuse, Adam eventually kills his father. Jump forward a few years and he's shown stealing Schnee Dust Corp supplies, and an employee catches him branding his eye in response. He gets kicked out of Atlas to Menagerie by councilwoman Camilla due to poor faunus relationships in Atlas. Final scene of the flashbacks is him meeting Blake and Ghira. If you were wondering what happened to his mom, she died while he was away and he learns of this in either V4 or 5, can't remember which

We're given more scenes of him arguing with Hazel and the rest of Salem's faction in V5, pretty much always getting told to step up for their plans and get his shit together

In V5 he and Blake have a 1v1 that's pretty evenly matched in the base he's hiding out in. Come the battle of Haven literally one day later and Adam's fighting Blake, Sun, and Ilia all at once and winning. Never explained how he's doing so much better. During the battle he destroys Haven's CCT Tower. When things start to go sour for the Fang he gets KO'd by one of his grunts from behind and they all retreat

And then comes Volume 6

Volume 6 opens and he immediately kills his grunts that saved his life, for no reason. I guess this is him going super evil and insane now. With this I have no idea if he really is an extremist revolutionary. Team RWBY claims he never cared about the faunus cause and him killing his subordinates supports this, but even right before his death he was still on the revolutionary stuff. I have no clue what Celtic's going for here. Is Adam just delusional and not realizing he doesn't REALLY care? Lying to himself? Just unclear storytelling?

Throughout the volume he's suffering from schizophrenic hallucinations that mainly show flashes of his life. I guess to make up a parallel with Yang since she also suffers hallucinations from her PTSD in this rewrite. PTSD he gave her by the way

In canon Adam had some pretty solid buildup in V6. Blake has a few flashes where she thinks she sees Adam only for him to vanish, making it questionable if she's just seeing things. Only for it to actually have been Adam the entire time and he was stalking Blake waiting for her to be alone and isolated so he could kill her. Fun rewatch bonus. In FRWBY we're just outright shown him due to his massively increased involvement. Less fun rewatch bonus

Celtic tries to turn Adam into Vergil from Devil May Cry so hard it's actually funny for the wrong reasons. He gave Adam Vergil's fit, turbo charges him this volume, and plays Bury the Light for a good chunk of his scenes this volume. No Celtic, don't insult Vergil like this

Keeping up with my Vergil comparisons, Adam has the Concentration Meter. What exactly does that mean? Due to his growing hatred he's "acting like a man possessed" with nothing to lose supercharging him to justify the absurd stuff he pulls off this volume.

He jumps on the train to Argus getting into a fight with Qrow, Cardin, and Russel all at once and is winning. He also fights all of Team RWBY multiple times at once this volume. Really takes away from the intended threat if he keeps failing to kill the heroes multiple times in the same volume

Adam has zero dynamic with Cardin by the way, the guy whose eye he blinded. Cardin fighting him is just a background element. Not even an "minority extremist vs former racist" angle, it's just a shitty background fight. During the battle Adam causes an avalanche derailing the entire train they're on which puts the main cast on track for The Lost Fable and Brunswick

Miraculously, Adam survived the avalanche and walks all the way to Argus. In the freezing cold. I thought this was supposed to be a "realistic" rewrite of RWBY Celtic what do you MEAN Adam survives and does this?

Here comes round 2. He invades Argus slaughtering the guards at the gate. Team RWBY arrive and instantly try to run away out of fear of him. On foot, team RWBY's on Bumblebee by the way, Adam catches up and forces them into their second fight. Due to Ruby's leg being weak from being broken most of the volume, Adam is in complete control of things and is about to kill Weiss

Right before he can kill Weiss, Cordovin zaps him with a cattle prod KOing him calling him an animal. Even shows him in the Yamcha death pose. You fucking serious? You build him up as this unstoppable badass superboss that can take on Qrow and multiple other people at once, have him soloing all of team RWBY multiple times, and CORDOVIN takes him out? Imagine if Cinder gets killed by Jacque shooting her in the back and he calls her some filthy slave. That would be incredibly LAME, you see how dumb this is?

During Volume 6's climax, Adam escapes The Boot and fights team RWBY one last time. He destroys Yang's prosthetic and cuts Gambol in half in the process but the team beats him with teamwork they magically regained. When he's down and beaten Weiss apologizes to him for what her father's company did to him. His final words are "Fuck You Schnee." Ruby shoots him right as he tries to kill Weiss

You read that right, Ruby. Not Blake who knew Adam the longest and haunted the narrative for her throughout the entire series. Not Yang who he crippled and gave debilitating PTSD. No catharsis for them when he destroyed Blake's weapon and Yang's prosthetic arm during the battle. Not even Weiss who has tangential relations to him at best due to the atorocities her father's company commits on the regular. Ruby. The person with ZERO connections to Adam gets the kill. She's shaken up by this for about ten seconds and this hasn't gotten any kind of follow-up

When he dies, he goes out with pity from the main cast. Blake also takes Wilt & Blush to reforge it into Gambol Shroud 2.0 in V7 to "redeem" the weapon. Yknow. The weapon of the man who mutilated close friends in Velvet and Fox. The weapon of the man of that crippled Blake's soon-to-be girlfriend Yang who he also gave crippling PTSD

Keep in mind, up to his dying breath Adam was rewritten to lean much more heavily on the extremism angle. He has almost no dynamic with Blake or Yang in the final battle. Hell even his parallels with Yang were altered since her PTSD is a lot more crippling in this rewrite. Like it or not, the ex-boyfriend stuff was one of many things Adam has as a mirror to Yang and add more fuel for the bees, it wasn't there for no reason

But wait! Shit! Fuck! Celtic must have realized he messed up on this! Wanna know why? In Volume 7 Blake spells it out to RWY and the audience that she and Adam were exes. I assume to try and patch that hole he left in the bees. Half a volume after Adam's death. After completely scrubbing the toxic ex traits in the Mistral arc. You're really not as clever or good of a writer as you think you are Celtic

Adam in canon is a personal villain to Blake and Yang. Unlike what certain other people think *COUGH* ERUPTIONFANG *COUGH*, him dying fighting only Blake and Yang is a fitting end to his character. They're the people in the main cast who have been hurt by him, so it makes sense that they finish him off. He's a personal villain, not some hyper giga cool badass superboss. In FRWBY you have a good argument for him being the strongest non-magical character in the series due to how hypercharged he gets in V6. And he dies to someone with zero personal connections to him DESPITE still hurting Blake and Yang just as badly as canon

First of all, she never confesses her feelings to Blake or makes them explicit for the audience. Just some "totally gay but not saying it so homophobes don't get mad" sort of scenes. Ilia's confession also acts as a mirror to Yang mourning Blake's absence that same episode, we even see Ilia's eyes turn red it's pretty intentional. Considering her feelings for Blake are a key part of her character, it's utterly baffling to exclude this. What makes this even weirder is every other character that gets to be openly queer (Saffron, Terra, Robyn, May, Clover, Blake and Yang) aren't subject to these Hays-Code ass censorships

Ilia and Blake get into a heated argument in Volume 4 about faunus rights and what to do about humans. I mostly liked the argument, until Ilia said she'd commit genocide against humanity if that's what it took to keep the faunus safe. You could argue it's to make her extremism stronger to make her redemption more "earned" by making her go further than canon. But seriously considering genocide in any context is WAY past redemption if you ask me. Maybe I'm being too harsh on this I don't know

The attack on the Belladonna household happens at the end of Volume 4 but is otherwise unchanged outside of some small details of the action and Blake and Ilia's argument. Ilia ends the volume getting arrested and sent to prison alongside the other attackers

Throughout Volume 5 Ilia helps Blake, more than she does in canon. She helps Blake piece together the Fang's attack on Haven, takes out the bombs just like canon, and fights Adam alongside Blake and Sun

Despite this, Ilia gets sent back to prison right after Volume 6's first episode. Woo a "realism" rewrite even though Ilia did more for the heroes than canon. I guess the genocide line stuck in Blake's head or something. She didn't even do anything worse than canon, hell her attacking Sun was completely removed due to that scene in V4 getting deleted

Fixing RWBY on the other hand has two of the absolute worst power scaling fuckups I've ever seen. Funny enough, both of them involve the White Fang, which is why I'm posting this immediately after my previous one

In Volume 2 Blake and Banesaw have a decently close match, although Banesaw wins out. During The Breach, Banesaw proceeds to fight Port, Oobleck, Sun, Yatsuhashi, Fox, and Cardin all at once. And he's winning. He even outmuscles Port Fox and Yatsu all at once too. It's never explained where this came from, it's never said he held back on Blake, or that his Semblance supercharged him, nothing. He goes from having a tough fight with Blake on her own to soloing six characters that should be on or above her level. It's said that he's stronger than Adam but that doesn't explain the Blake 1v1 at all

Then we have Adam. The night before the attack on Haven he and Blake have a fight. As Celtic describes it, it's a pretty even match between them. During the attack on Haven, Adam proceeds to fight Blake, Sun, and Ilia all at once. Somehow he isn't getting overwhelmed here, he's actually winning. Just like Banesaw it's never explained that he held back, or that Blake is injured, or anything. He suddenly goes from fighting evenly with Blake on her own to winning against Blake and two other people on her level at the same time

One of the biggest criticisms of the faunus racism plot is that the world we see just isn't racist enough to give it any bite. FRWBY addresses this by adding in more racism than canon, namely in Volumes 1, 2, and 7. This is fine in the Beacon era, but in Volume 7 it's basically all of Blake's plot aside from her romance with Yang, which takes away from the focus of the Atlas plot for the sake of fleshing out the world. I'd still say it's a net positive but not perfect in execution

To help show that the White Fang aren't just an "evil" organization the room that Sienna set up as a throne room was a former slave trade base that the Fang wiped out

We're given multiple scenes in Volumes4&5 showing a much more involved White Fang than canon. We're given a lot of scenes between Adam Ilia and Sienna and the shifting internal politics of the Fang as a result of Adam's actions at Beacon. This does flesh out the Fang more, but creates some new problems

In the FRWBY universe it wasn't Sienna that led the Fang down the path of violent revolution, that was an OC named Onryo instead (probably a guy because of Celtic's constant sexist rewrites and we're never shown what they look like). Instead Sienna takes over after the Fall of Beacon when Onryo gets himself arrested as basically a peace offering to the other kingdoms for Adam's actions so they don't annihilate the Fang. A "realistic" rewrite that REALLY takes away from Sienna as a character. She's also much more moderate than Onryo and plans to dial back the violence, which pisses off Adam and is a big reason for killing her

The Albain twins are also planning to stab Adam and Ilia in the back and blame them entirely for the attack on the Belladonna estate, essentially putting Adam into Onryo's shoes so that they can become high leader with the power vacuum of his absence.

My parents pulled me for the fourth grade, and I was homeschooled until the end of high school. Nine entire years. They pulled me from the public schools for a perfectly reasonable reason — my mental health was in the toilet and I needed to be away from other kids who might hurt me as they had spent all of my third grade year doing. My mom has a fucking PhD in neuroscience and tutors math professionally. She was, during the ten years that my siblings and I were homeschooled, the best, kindest, most caring, understanding, lovely teacher you could ask for.

But I'm still broken. That's the thing about homeschool. You can have the best experience possible in homeschool and still come out a fundamentally broken person. My social development stopped at the age of 10. I'm a 22 year old adult woman with the social skills of a 10 year old. That's not to say that that COULDN'T have happened in public school, but being homeschooled only made it more of a certainty. Both of my siblings and I have fewer coping strategies on average than our peers with similar neurodivergencies because we basically did not live in the real world for a decade during key developmental years.

Don't ban homeschooling because of the religious nuts. There are plenty of them. Hell, I KNEW plenty of them. But there are also plenty of quote unquote "good" homeschool families. Ones that do everything you would hope the model homeschool family does. And they are still hurting their children, even if unintentionally, because homeschooling is an inhrently traumatic experience. It's isolating. For seven entire years of my life, I had no friends. Not because I was a social outcast, but because I didn't even SEE anybody regularly enough. But, nonetheless, I knew people. You generally do if you get involved in the community.

Ban homeschooling because it breaks and utterly destroys everyone who goes through it.

Everyone.

1) Figured this out.

For all her bluster about the strong taking from the weak and acting like she's above the shadow war between Oz and Salem Raven, fundamentally, is a coward. There's a reason she jumps to Lionheart's defense, they're the most similar ones in the room at Haven. She ran away from Salem, probably as a result of being there for whatever the hell happened to Summer. This even extends to running away from Yang, she didn't feel fit to be a parent. This even plays into her final argument with Yang because despite being one of the most powerful people on the entire planet due to being the spring maiden, she isn't strong. Because a strong person in her position wouldn't give in to their fears and keep up the fight instead. You could even say her one save rule stems from her cowardice and not wanting to risk her life for distant loved ones any more than once

So how does Celtic fuck it up?

Raven actively fought to keep Yang and take her to the Branwens. Something she eventually gave up on because Tai absolutely refused to budge on. This ends putting her having Vernal into a strange light

Vernal is Raven's daughter in this rewrite. She's very overprotective of her to the point that she refuses to let her go on any scouting missions for villages to raid if they have anything more dangerous than fodder grimm

Despite this, she signs off on the fake maiden plot because "It's what Vernal wanted." What? You refuse to put her in any kind of danger but let Vernal paint a target the size of Atlas on her own back? Celtic doesn't have Raven go any further on her reasoning than that.

Raven's reasoning for leaving Ozpin was completely changed. Rather than coming from her cowardice, it's because she learned that Oz is "just keeping the world the way he wants it" rather than trying to improve it. Considering that's an accurate assessment, she's pretty justified in leaving the shadow war

Her fight and dynamic with Cinder is basically unchanged, except Raven stabs Cinder right before freezing her. I assume because of Vernal's death being a bit more personal

When Raven returns to the Branwen tribe they all abandon her in favor of Shay D Mann as the leader due to Vernal's death

In canon Raven gunning for the lamp of knowledge was a desperate ploy to save her own skin by giving herself a bargaining chip, obviously from her fear of Salem. In FRWBY, her plan was to destroy the relic once she gets her hands on it to try and protect her entire tribe. Trying to make Raven "smarter" at the cost of utterly destroying the themes of her character. She can't even scratch the thing, not even with her maiden powers. She's about to bury the thing miles underground, completely unaware of the relic being a grimm magnet, but gets stopped by all of team RWBY. They confront her, call her on her being such a shit leader and person for her actions, and she hands the lamp over

What, you expected CELTIC PHOENIX to have characters do something PERSONAL and MEANINGFUL? Of COURSE Yang by herself isn't the one to talk down Raven here. She doesn't even get the final words in or be the one that makes her give up the relic, that goes to Blake and Ruby reapectively

In Fixing RWBY Vernal becomes friends with Weiss over the course of the volume's runtime. And due to actually seeing the process of this budding friendship, this is way more believable than Neo's offscreen redemption. She even goes out of her way to warn Weiss and Yang about the attack on Haven due to not wanting them to die.

This gives a lot more drama between Weiss and Vernal's confrontation than in canon. When she dies she was holding onto a memento that Weiss made for her during her time at the Branwen tribe, a pretty effective gut punch. I actually felt something over Vernal's death here. Best FRWBY character hands down, unlike everyone else she wasn't made worse

Praises done, now let's address the Goliaths in the room

First of all, the fight between Weiss and Vernal is kinda ruined by Hazel jumping in and decking Weiss after he finished off Ren and Nora. Way to ruin the personal drama for "smarter" villains Celtic, why am I not surprised. Weiss getting impaled by Cinder still happens like in canon. But without Jaune's recklessness and not caring about his life being the trigger for Cinder doing this it's just because "lol evil" and to set up her not caring about Emerald

Sorry, I lied. So did Celtic. This isn't Vernal, this is an OC. Vernal is Raven's biological daughter in this rewrite. She looks nothing like her canon counterpart, she's a mini-Raven or as I like to call her Little Raven Jr. Her weapon is nothing like her canon counterpart's either. Instead she has a bootleg of Omen that according to Celtic's narration is inferior to the original. "Vernal" isn't even her name, that's an alias she used for the Spring Maiden Decoy plot. I have no idea why. Her real name is Lily. Celtic Phoenix took an OC and didn't even slap Vernal's name on it, he used it as an alias

Despite this new blood connection, there's almost no family drama between Yang Raven or Vernal. Raven's daughters just learned they have a new half-sibling they were never told about, and next to nothing is done with it. We don't really get into Yang or Vernal's feelings about this. We don't even see Yang call out Raven on the fact she had a second kid like a year after leaving her since Vernal appears to be about Ruby's age.

We don't get any time for Yang and Vernal to bond, that went to Weiss. And yet after her death Yang has a "what could have been" imagination spot of her Ruby and Vernal playing together as kids. This is so, so, SO unbelievably forced. Yang genuinely doesn't seem to give a fuck about Vernal, never tried to spend time with her during the DAYS she spent at the tribe, and you give her a scene like THAT? Maybe that was the point, regretting time you could have spent together, but I still don't like it here