The Lost Fable Broke Me script

INTRO: 

Also known as the Fable that Should’ve Stayed Lost.

At nearly 24 minutes (excluding intro and credits), this is the longest chapter of RWBY ever produced, and when this came out, CRWBY really wanted to emphasize how much of an undertaking this was.

But even with all the asset creation, unique set design, and clear effort the animators were made to put into just this one episode, something about “The Lost Fable” never sat right with me. I walked away feeling… nothing. Not even in that way where a piece of media just leaves you numb and lost, and you know that was the intent. I just felt empty. Unaffected. The grand story we’d been building up to for 6 seasons - ever since 2013 - turned out to be so… shallow.

I mentioned in my recent Making Peace with RWBY video how I was high off toxic positivity at the time. I let my perceptions and thoughts of the show be warped so I could continue to enjoy it, when in my gut I knew I wasn’t happy with what we got. I even convinced myself it was okay that this episode left me disappointed, cuz it was my own fault for expecting too much, and it’s okay if the show doesn’t want to tell a compelling story with rich themes. But the thing is… I don’t believe any of that. A story that sits on such a storytelling goldmine, that has the potential to explore complex themes of what it means to be human, what it means to be alive, and refuses to isn’t a story worth twisting yourself in knots over.

But you might be wondering why it’s given me such problems. It functions just fine as an origin story for Remnant, Ozpin, and Salem. And that’s the thing: on a superficial level, it functions. It gives you the appearance of a story in which the world became a Remnant of its former glory, caused by Salem’s arrogance which will go on to torment Ozpin through all his lifetimes. But if you look a bit deeper at any part of this episode, it quickly falls apart. There’s nothing here but the illusion of an epic fairytale, and if you even squint your eyes just a bit, you see through the mist to find Miles and Kerry telling the animators to spend all-nighters with no overtime pay rendering this out “for the fans.” Miles pressuring animators. Afterbuzz, V3 finale.

So here we are. We’re gonna go in depth as to why “The Lost Fable” doesn’t work on any level. And to begin our journey, a humorous recap of what went down to make this easier, especially for folks who either don’t know RWBY or who abandoned the show before we got here. Trust me, y’all: you didn’t miss much.

THIS STRUCTURE IS FUCKED: 

Before we dive into the specifics of this cursed folktale, first we need to establish the core issues of the show as a whole, because they all play into why this story just doesn’t work beyond the bare minimum.

Salem is the catalyst for the Lost Fable’s plot. She’s the one who instigates conflict with the gods, leading to the end of the world, and eventually becomes the big bad we’re dealing with in the present. That’s why our story begins with her, as a lonely girl locked in a lonely tower by her cruel father… at least, I think he’s cruel? Cuz we never meet the man.

And it’s here we start running into our problems. RWBY has always struggled with its obsession with mystery and withholding information to keep fans guessing and coming back for answers. The issue there, however, is that storytelling relies on prioritizing what information to give the audience so they understand the conflicts and can get invested, versus what to hold off on until later. And oftentimes, novice writers will withhold far too much, giving their audience little to nothing to get them hooked in the present.

That’s part of the reason it’s so frustrating we were made to wait 6 whole seasons for basic information about the main conflict of the series. And I do mean basic. This entire chapter feels like the bare bones summary of plot points all crammed into as short a chapter as possible. This may be one of the longest chapters of the series, but within the context of what it’s trying to accomplish, it feels rushed trying to breeze through so much information with so little time to explore anything meaningfully.

“The Lost Fable” would be better served as a two or three parter, or maybe even a whole volume to itself given volumes structurally are basically extended movies rather than full seasons. And even then, it would’ve been best if some of the information here had been shared before this to give us anchor points to work with.

Because we don’t have the time to properly delve into anything going on, we basically get a SparkNotes edition of Remnant’s origin story. We don’t get to know the characters fully, we don’t know who they are, where they come from, what their motivations are, nor why they have these motivations. Rather, characters are treated as vehicles for plot progression, with surface-level character work to leave the audience to fill in the gaps the writers left in. It’s part of the reason so many people walk away with aggressively different interpretations of the entire show and its characters; because clarity has never been a priority for RWBY. With this show, you don’t really get a story; you get the illusion of a story… probably induced by Jinn’s obnoxious smoke clouds.

Salem’s probably the best example of all of this. We’re told she’s locked in a tower by her ‘cruel father,’ as Jinn says. We’re using Jinn as a narrator to tell us the basics of the story so we have an easy jumping off point. Okay. Nothing inherently wrong with using a narrator for these sorts of things. The issue is we’re not grounded enough in what’s going on to get a full understanding of the context, leaving viewers to do guesswork themselves to follow what’s happening.

Like, most people would probably assume Salem’s father is abusive, or maybe overprotective, and that’s why he stuck her here against her will. However, someone could also say he’s just an evil man who wants to keep his family as possessions. Or maybe he’s a cynical recluse, and keeps Salem around as the only form of human connection he deems worthwhile. Because we don’t have the information as to why Salem is being kept here, and what her father’s motivation is, we can’t fully be invested in the story, because we’re actively wondering what his motivation is. Rather than being immersed in the emotional beats of Salem’s captivity and liberation, we’re stuck in theory brain mode crafting narratives based on what we’d prefer to see in the story based on our own biases, likely from whatever media knowledge we’re working from.

And to make matters more frustrating, they go more into detail about Salem’s story in the fairy tale book, which tells stories from all across Remnant. But this is another issue RWBY has always struggled with: using supplemental content as a crutch to make up for its own failures in storytelling. The purpose of supplemental content is to add value to a work that’s already complete and of merit; that’s what supplemental literally means. Ideally, you get a finished product you can enjoy, and if you really love it and want more, supplemental material lets you immerse yourself even further than most casual audiences would bother with.

RWBY, however, knows of its shortcomings in conveying information, and rather than trying to fix it, instead uses supplemental content as both a quick fix and a shield. This way, they can just say, “All your unanswered questions are in this fairy tale book, or this canonical novel.” The problem is that you shouldn’t need supplemental content in order to complete your understanding of a work. That’s not what supplementing is.

Not to mention, the purpose of storytelling is to captivate your audience by… well, telling them a good story. And that story needs to be finished and polished. When you buy any product, let’s say a computer for example, you’d expect it to be finished right out of the box, right? But what if the company you bought it from said you needed all these additional pieces of hardware so it could perform basic functions, like connect to the internet, or play movies and music, or just not crash every 5 seconds. Pardon me for my lack of computer knowledge, but that’s not the point. The point is that a product needs to be complete for customer satisfaction.

And as much as I dislike the commodification of art, that still holds true on a storytelling level. Your audience should be able to kick back, relax, and enjoy your story in all its glory. The work comes from you, the storytelling, crafting your story for the enjoyment of others. Making them do the work on their own just so they can understand what’s going on not only risks them losing interest, but is a betrayal to what it means to share a story in the first place.

And this isn’t the same as holding your audience’s hand aggressively and beating them over the head with what you’re trying to say. Telling a subtle but coherent story is vastly different from telling a story where your audience literally has to google basic things like your worldbuilding, your character motivations, so on, so forth. I liken it to puzzles. Telling a good story is like providing your audience with a puzzle, and the more complex your story is, the more subtle, the more pieces are scattered about. Your story is the picture of the puzzle that guides the audience to piecing it together to give them satisfaction, but you’re still doing a bulk of the work to give them the information to work within the text itself.

The RWBY approach, meanwhile, entails giving your audience a very blurred, low res image of your finished puzzle, and then chucking the puzzle pieces at their face. And oh no, now they’re all over the floor; some pieces are broken, some are chipped or soggy, and some are just plain missing, forcing the audience to literally construct their own pieces in some hopeless, desperate bid to understand what the fuck kinda paradise would be worth all this torment.

Except the end paradise isn’t a paradise, it’s “The Lost Fable,” so… no thanks, I’ll just burn the pieces I was provided and go watch Girlfriends on Netflix.

I mention Salem cuz she’s the prime example of this fundamental failure. The text itself fails to give us a clear image of her background, why she’s in the tower, and her most basic motivations and flaws, and as such we’re given the illusion of a story that winds up becoming distorted based on our own expectations or desires. And it’s the same with Ozma, it’s the same with the Gods, and it’s the same with… pretty much everything else in the show. Ultimately, RWBY isn’t even really its own story, but a hollow imitation of other stories.

There’s a huge difference between taking inspiration from other stories and artists you admire versus mimicry. So much great art was inspired by other art that the creator enjoyed (for instance, Taylor writing “Death By A Thousand Cuts” because she loved Something Great on Netflix, like oh my god, how is this woman real), and skilled writers know that tropes aren’t something to be avoided, but rather building blocks to be played with to tell a story they may wanna see more of in the world. RWBY, meanwhile, was never given enough time in the oven, nor handed to writers capable of bringing that original vision to life, and as such has stumbled trying to become something other than itself since its premiere.

“The Lost Fable” really serves as a microcosm of the show’s problems. It’s every minor problem in plot, pacing, character writing, and everything else all boiled down into a 26 minute experience of overwhelming ambivalence. That’s probably part of why it fucked me up so much when I first saw it. It’s the culmination of RWBY’s shortcomings that I wanted to believe they could grow past… but they had 6 volumes to do that, and I couldn’t admit that at the time. But now I can.

And now with our full understanding of RWY’s problems, we can finally talk about the details of “Lost Fable” and why it’s such a shallow, vacuous mess.

SALEM:

So as we’ve established, “The Lost Fable” doesn’t tell us why Salem’s father has locked her away from the world; we get no information beyond him being “cruel.” But you can be cruel for many reasons, and in different ways. Maybe it’s a cruel overprotectiveness, doubting the good in the world and Salem’s ability to fend for herself. Or maybe it’s just a malicious enjoyment of her misery, a way for her father to exert control over someone else. The reason why this all matters is because his motivation—or lack thereof—directly feeds into Salem’s motivation. It explains the environment she’s growing up in, how she’s been raised, and how all of that paints her own picture of the world.

We’re told Salem dreams of freedom, but why? Does she just earnestly wanna see the world and want more? “I want more!” (ala “Part of Your World”) Or does she have an ulterior motive; some goal to pursue once she’s out? Maybe she wants to learn more about her parents before they built this tower, or what happened to her mother… ya know, the one we only know about from the goddamn fairy tale book. Maybe she wants to spite her father and live recklessly, or see whether he’s right about the world’s dangers, or even go full conquest mode and become a bigger tyrant than him? Maybe she’s always shown malicious tendencies for whatever reason and her father is trying to keep not only her safe, but the world at large from her.

We. Don’t. Know.

Do you see how quickly this lack of information spirals? Any one of these stories can be engaging on its own, but because we’re not given any context, we’re not able to understand anyone’s motivations and follow their journeys with full investment. Maybe some people think Salem just doesn’t have people skills and that’s why she doesn’t know how to grieve later on, or maybe some people think she was manipulative from the start because of her upbringing and it was only a matter of time. That ambiguity isn’t from a well-crafted story, but rather, a lack of storytelling from the writers who are paid and credited for their work here.

And on top of that, why doesn’t Salem just bust out of her tower from the start? We’re told everyone here has magic, so what’s stopping Salem from using that magic to take down her father, then get the hell out? An easy critique is that her cruel father probably has mentally abused her into staying, which is all too common among victims of all kinds of abuse. However, it doesn’t quite work here because, again, we don’t have the context of Salem’s imprisonment. Without the full details of the situation, we’re left to guess why she hasn’t tried leaving, whether it be legit fears of fleeing her captor, or just plain lazy writing while she waits for her hero.

The fairy tale book mentions her throwing letters from her window, beckoning heroes to come and save her, and even suggests that this shows her manipulative tendencies and her ability to craft a narrative from Day 1. But… this is literally just her asking for help. Nevermind it’s not in the show itself, but even if it were, this wouldn’t even work the way the writers intended if it played out how it does here. Her father is said to be more overprotective and sympathetic in the fairy tale book, thus villainizing Salem, but it honestly feels more like a retcon the writers came up with to make Salem look worse in hindsight. And again - it’s not even in the show, so it’s irrelevant.

Her whirlwind romance with Ozma likewise falls flat. We’ll get to Ozma a bit later, but we’re led to believe the two fell deeply in love after her rescue because Jinn told us. You could argue that’s meant to make fun of the tired cliche of love at first sight we see in fairy tales, or how people fall in love and get married in like 3 days, but usually in those old stories they actually do a good job portraying that the circumstances did indeed make them fall in love. Or at the very least, that they’re infatuated with each other. None of that happens with Salem and Ozma.  Instead, some random guy comes to save the boring lady from her pointless tower, and then they hold hands and he dies. Wow. What a tragedy indeed.

Salem’s connection with Ozma is what’s supposed to cause her to lash out at the gods demanding his return. So like Salem’s father’s motivation informing hers, the lack of a meaningful bond between Salem and Ozma robs this conflict of all its potency. It’s basically like the domino effect: the writers fail to properly establish one thing, and the rest of their writing collapses in a series of crashes and dumpster fires.

It even goes back to her own motivation for seeing the world. This and her romance with Ozma should work together to inform why she demands his death be reversed. Is it a simple flaw of her arrogance, wanting Ozma back in her possession and not caring about death? Or does she simply not understand what death is? Without these crucial pieces, we can’t understand what she’s going through or why she does these things, and therefore, the story doesn’t work.

All of this feels like common problems of a first draft, where the goal is just to get the story out in its most raw, most basic form before refining it prior to publication. But knowing RWBY’s production timeline where volumes are cranked out in less than a year, and chapters are rendered and exported within the same week as their release, I very much doubt the show’s scripts get more than one or two drafts before they’re shoved down the pipeline for the poor animators to work tirelessly on, trying to give some life to a project that’s dead on arrival.

So we have no clue if Salem even understands death, nor why she wants Ozma back, but dammit she wants him back. And here we reach yet another divide at which people will argue whether she’s pitiful or contemptible, lost or just selfish. Don’t worry, there’s plenty more forks in the road the writers will be hard braking? Through the dark forest we drive, and no matter which road we take, all paths lead to the ravine of despair… which weirdly does make an appearance at the end of Volume 8, but I digress.

So once she’s given immortality by the gods, they claim it’s a punishment. She won’t be able to enter the afterlife to reunite with Ozma until she understands the balance of life and death. On its own, I actually really love this. It’s meant to assert the fragility of life that must be respected and cherished. Immortality isn’t a blessing, but a curse, never letting you rest, and guaranteeing that even if you do make new connections, you’ll be forced to watch them grow old and die over and over until you relent and choose isolation. And even if you don’t, humanity will eventually die out. And then when the world is barren, when your kind has gone extinct, you’ll still be wandering the wastes for all time.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the writers actually thought that one through. It doesn’t even really work given Salem wasn’t established to have this fear or defiance of death. This is a classic Need vs Want. Your character wants something external, but they need something internal; in Salem’s case, she wants her fairy tale romance with Ozma, but what she needs is to understand how life works and accept it… along with therapy. But we don’t know her want nor her need. I’m not even sure the writers thought that far ahead, so now we have an amorphous character whose wants and needs aren’t clearly defined, thus failing to give the audience anything concrete to latch onto.

She winds up “manipulating” the human kingdoms to turn on the gods, but it doesn’t really mean all that much. She talks about people not having to watch their loved ones die anymore, which would be interesting to explore given all living things are born with an inherent fear of death. Survival drives us to build communities and protect ourselves and each other, but it can also lead us to destroying anything perceived as a threat; even ignoring death can have astronomical consequences if you do it your whole life.

But Salem’s words aren’t shown as ones that ring true for mankind. Instead, Jinn’s tone, the framing, and the music all suggest that this is mere manipulation. That Salem’s giving these people lofty promises to turn on the gods who’ve crafted a perfect world for them. But all these problems have applied to this supposed utopia as well, along with the Brother Gods, which… hoo we’ll get to them, don’t you worry. But it’s not even portrayed as a morally gray situation where everyone’s a bit in the wrong and failing to communicate, thus breeding conflict. Instead, it’s a clumsy conflict that doesn’t think as to whether Salem has a point, nor whether the gods themselves may be at fault for the way they handle things. They’re gods, after all, and gods be infallible, her da der der.

She winds up being left alone, which… I guess it makes her sad? Jinn says she blamed everyone but herself, but once again, I must repeat that the failure to establish her motivations and character beyond superficial “I want my dead boyfriend back” has left us, much like Salem, wandering the darkness looking for some kind of reason for our suffering. For some divine answer. But all we’re greeted with is despair… and also a creepy pool of Grimm ichor to dive headfirst into.

On a story and thematic level, Salem falling into the Grimm pool once she’s alone is great. And I meet that sincerely. On a plot level, it explains why she’s part Grimm later on, but on a character level, it’s the moment she gives into her darkest impulses and commits to being a monster, and on a thematic level, it represents how isolation imposed by your own failings and misdeeds can turn you into something much darker; how those vices can twist you into something else entirely. But again, this is me constructing an entire story myself because the show couldn’t be bothered to tell a complete story of its own.

After this, we don’t see her again until her reunion with Ozma. Supposedly, she’s built a little cottage for herself, living alone, far away from the newly evolved people who fear her as a witch. Sidenote: oh my god, mood girl. I vibe with this gothic cottage core aesthetic;  put some folklore and evermore on and sign me the fuck up.

But we have no clue what this has done to her either than make her hate the gods more. Which… yeah, same though. But then she suggests a full-on conquest with Ozma where they guide the poor lost humans. Again, the framing here suggests she’s evil, but… why? What about her plan is evil? Hell, the show doesn’t even really explain her plan all that much. She seems to want to take the gods’ place and create a paradise, but the writing keeps this undercurrent of treachery and malice going the whole way without anything to really back it up.

Like, Salem’s encouraging Ozma to help her build themselves a little kingdom to give some order to this ruined world. What about this is evil? If they were commanding Grimm to slaughter people, targeting the Faunus, or just taking away people’s most basic liberties, then yeah, I’d agree there’s poison in the water; but none of that happens. The only “evidence” of her evil is her and Ozma’s assumed army waging war, and her talking about fighting and destroying their opposition to spread their word. But… that’s something literally every country on the planet has done. It’s just standard fair when you’re building a nation.

Then later on when Ozma tells her about the God of Light’s mission, Salem says it doesn’t matter. Her exact words (and I’ll recite them cuz I’m trying to avoid copyright) are “Why bother trying to redeem these humans, when we could replace them with what they could never be?” I’ve heard people try to argue she’s referring to replacing the gods as she stated earlier, but it doesn’t grammatically track… and also it would be redundant because it means her motivations haven’t changed, versus this scene trying to imply Salem’s somehow taking a turn for the worse.

But the object Salem is referring to in that sentence is “these humans.” As such, the “them” in the second clause is still the subject from the first clause—“these humans.” I didn’t expect to have to explain basic grammar rules, but… here we are. So she wants to replace the humans. The reason this kinda makes sense is because in the previous scene, we saw their nameless daughter (we’ll talk about the daughters eventually, relax) showing off her newfound magic. Because Salem and Ozma have magic, their children have magic too. Simple enough.

So now the obvious assumption would be that Salem finds the current humanity worthless, because they’ve lost the ability to perform magic. Thus, it would make sense that her goal would be to wipe them out, then replace them all with sorcerers, similar to the way the old world worked, just replace the Brother Gods with herself and Ozma.

But the show doesn’t really… commit to that? It doesn’t explain it and make that obvious, and thus her plan, like her motivations, is still as cloudy as Jinn’s Lantern fumes. At this point you basically have to guess it’s just to spite the gods and nothing else, even though Volume 8 winds up throwing that in the trash, but… that’s for another time.

And this is where her original motivation comes to bite the writers in the ass. Without that, there’s nothing to inform how she’s changed, thus allowing us to understand her better as a villain. If she has a fear of death, then maybe she wants to make everyone immortal like she does. Plenty of animes and RPGs do that, where you wipe out the humanity that already exists in favor of an ideal that’s easier for you to stomach, like replicas, or lifeless beings, or just emotionless husks. Hello Tales games, how are you today? But this is all just speculation. Nothing in the text points to this, because the text doesn’t point to anything but an obscure destination of “Salem bad, she must be stopped.”

What would’ve been interesting to see would be that fear of death twisting her into something truly monstrous. Like, maybe she has this moment of realizing because of her immortality, she’s going to watch Ozma grow old and die over and over as he reincarnates, and left with large chunks of time where he’s lost to her. And worse than that, a realization that because their daughters are mortal, they’ll die and just never come back. And maybe Salem can’t handle that. Maybe that fear of losing connection drives her to scorn it altogether, leading her to detach, which fuels the last straw before she kills them all in cold blood. But nah, she just… kills them because Ozma didn’t wanna do conquest with her anymore.

So… Salem’s is a fucking mess. She’s nothing more than a device for conflict that the writers can throw at the heroes and go “Wow, isn’t she scary? Isn’t she powerful? Isn’t she a MAD WOMAN?!” “mad woman” by Taylor Swift. She’s the embodiment of this show’s inability to tell a coherent story that knows how to establish context, and convey a worthwhile character arc in favor of the illusion of something deep. And in reality, that profoundness is actually about as deep as a dried-up puddle in the middle of the Nevada Desert. So I can’t even throw myself into the ichor pool right after her. Wonderful.

OZMA (the actual fucking victim):

And now we move onto Ozma… poor characterless, motivationless, and agency… less Ozma. Look, we were on a roll, just go with it. But Ozma’s kinda the inverse of Salem: whereas her character writing was unclear in which direction the writers wanted it to go in, Ozma’s just has… no direction. He exists solely as an aimless object of Salem’s desire to superficially explain her actions, and then to oppose her later on when they decide she’s the bad guy… oh and also so the main characters can abuse him and Oscar later on, but we’ll get there, good lord.

Like Salem, we don’t have enough information about Ozma to understand him as a character: who he is, what’s his background, what’s his motivation, etc. Except while we at least knew Salem’s father was vaguely cruel and locked her in a tower, all we’ve got about Ozma is that he’s supposedly a hero, and he’s quite popular. That’s it. Well, also that he’s pretty, but that just goes without saying, like… goddamn. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the bad writing, right.

So we have no clue where Ozma is from, and no clue as to his motivations. He’s a hero, sure, but why? What made him decide he wants to help people? Does he travel around the world like a drifter, maybe even as a thrill seeker? Does he take mercenary jobs, does he fight dark lords or rogue monsters, is he righteous or possibly self-serving. Nothing. We get nothing but a vaguely do-gooding blank sleight. No motivation, just… sure, let’s free Salem from this stupid tower because the script says so. We’re not even really sure of what his abilities are beyond the general magical abilities everyone has, which… oh god, we also need to talk about those, cuz damn they are boring.

It robs us of how the dynamic with Salem would play out, thus preventing the audience from becoming fully invested in either of them as characters, as well as their relationship. And that’s especially a mistake because the loss of that relationship is what’s meant to inform Salem’s supposed descent into villainy. And just touching on the death briefly… a single sickness prevailed? What?

Okay, okay, I will admit, I kinda like the simplicity of it in theory. It shows how death can be unexpected, and come from the most basic of things. But also… this is some bullshit. You’re telling me a healthy young man who’s fit enough to travel the lands adventuring was taken down by the common cold, I guess? How? Y’all have magic, but you don’t have healers or even doctors? And also, isn’t this meant to be a utopia filled with prosperity protected by the gods? Sure, people can still get sick and die, but a little cold shouldn't be able to take out a person so presumably young and healthy. You’d expect that more from something like a serious disease or even plague, which… I mean, if it was that, they would’ve established that in the text. Maybe even a disease wrought by one of the gods to fuel Salem’s hatred of them? But nah, nah that would require too much thought and nuance to fully write out.

So Ozma just… dies, and thankfully Salem doesn’t have much to clean up given he just poofs away in a cloud of Jinn smoke. You’d think the death of such a well-respected, beloved hero would garner more attention from the public, and we could see how Salem deals with that, and how in turn that displays her true character, but… let’s be real, when has this show ever cared about building a believable world that feels lived in?

The next we see of Ozma is him getting yo-yo’d between the realms of life and death by the Brother Gods throwing a goddamn tantrum.

Yo-yo under the sofa, but it’s Ozma. (Courage the Cowardly Dog)

Like, this poor man just died, and now he’s being brought back to life without his knowledge in the domain of the Dark Lord, only for the God of Light to kill him again, to which the God of Darkness immediately brings him back before killing him in a plume of hellfire. He has no agency in any of this, and no real say beyond vague confusion, nor does he bring this up later on and ask Salem what was up with that. It’s literally just to… well, I’d say traumatize Salem, but to be honest I have no clue what the hell they were trying to do with her character at this point, and they somehow managed to make Ozma’s horror both laughable and memeable. Which… impressive, guys. Wow.

It also kinda brings into question the morality of the Gods, and whether they actually respect human life the way they claim Salem doesn’t, but again, saving it for later. But on the note of the Gods, it’s the God of Light who asks Ozma whether he wants to go back to his world for… reasons? Even the goddamn Gods don’t have a coherent motivation. Like, dude, didn’t you just give up on Remnant? Why bother bringing Ozma back and throwing him headfirst into an eternity of suffering in a ruined world you abandoned?

But even beyond that, this is one of the few times Ozma has any kind of agency, but it’s rendered hollow by the fact he’s had none of it leading up to this moment, and he and Salem’s relationship has proven more stale than moldy bread. And when he’s sent back to Remnant, it’s… in some white-haired dude? He doesn’t even have a name of his own. The Ozcarnations are designed in such a way where when the current Oz dies, his soul is randomly assigned to another young man who becomes the host, and eventually their souls become one.

However, this isn’t Ozma hopping into some random guy’s head and having to talk to him the way that Ozpin had to convince Oscar to save the world. This is just straight-up possession. This guy presumably already had a life of his own giving he’s farming when Ozma awakens and first looks through his eyes. Which is… odd, given one of the villagers doesn’t even know who he is when Ozma saves him. And the argument of this person just coming into being now doesn’t make sense because… why in the fuck was he created to be killing a Grimm with farming equipment right out the gate? And why right next to some random burning village?

The show tries so hard to appear deep and tragic with the whole concept of the Ozcarnations, and this fear that Oscar is going to lose himself one day, and it’s out of both he and Ozpin’s control. But it never actually feels engaging, mostly because it’s never explored in what this means for either character, nor does it feel like something the writers are interested in beyond, “Wow, look at how tragic these characters’ story is!”

And this is proof of it. In the origin story, we don’t even see Ozma having to struggle with sharing a body with this random guy, see them bond, and watch that possession slowly progress as the chapter goes on. No, that would take too long and be inconvenient to write in, so Ozma just straight-up body hops, Oscar is distrubed by it, and then we never address it again.

He later runs into Salem, and… my god this reunion is so underwhelming. Like, if you were separated for your one true love for literal eons after enduring indescribable trauma and hardship, and then suddenly in this new world you managed to find each other again, what would you do? Wouldn’t you be speechless, or maybe run up to them to hug them while crying your eyes out? But neither of them do that. All they do is slowly amble towards each other, hold hands awkwardly, and then go, “Lol what do we do?”

I mean, I’d get that kinda from Ozma given the warning he got from the God of Light, and especially Salem’s current appearance as a Grimm witch, not to mention all the things people have been saying about her for… some reason. But maybe Salem is beside herself with relief and joy, and it makes Ozma suppress his doubts. And we get… NOTHING! YAY! I swear, this feels less like I’m watching characters struggle and face tragedy and more like I’m having Wiki page summaries narrated to me by a genderbent version of the Genie from Aladdin subjected to rule 34.

So later on, Ozma has this realization that violence is wrong and conquest bad, which causes him to reveal to Salem the mission the God of Light stuck him with. Again, no clue why Salem’s a bad guy here when she’s just doing what literally every leader of a young nation does, but… okay. But he decides she’s now far too gone because clearly that’s the conclusion the writers want the audience to arrive at. They never bothered giving us a good reason for it, nor actually leading us there competently, but… they tried, I guess? Not even sure about that but I’m tired so we’ll just say they did at this point for the sake of my sanity.

There is actually a deleted scene presumably from this chapter that was shown off in the Volume 6 trailer which shows the reborn Ozma floating before a bunch of presumed followers, bowing in fear before him. That was probably going to be another moment to establish Ozma’s cementing distrust of Salem, but was cut for… reasons. This happens all the time with this show. Because chapters are finished last minute, certain things will be abruptly cut for the sake of getting them out on time, even if they may seem vital to whatever botched story the writers attempted at telling.

This even happened recently with Volume 8. I won’t talk about it for too long, but Volume 8 hinges around Salem laying siege to one of the four kingdoms and the main characters having to face her… well actually, only one of them actually interacts with her, and even then it’s only for two seconds before they explode her 5 episodes before the actual finale. No, I don’t get why she wasn’t the final boss of the season either, but Ruby and Blake were actually meant to go to the hell whale—yeah, her wartime lair for traveling is a demon Monstro, just go with it, it’ll make it easier for both of us—to go fight Salem before she exploded.

That, however, was cut for time; at least, that’s what the writers admitted at a panel (They’ll share tons of information like that outside the actual show, and yes, it’s infuriating). Some will argue this was because of the ice storm which battered Texas earlier this year, but that chapter was actually the last one released before said ice storm hit, and was also the second chapter back after a 6-week mid-volume hiatus, during which the team was presumably working on the volume… or were they?

I don’t know. All I know is the fact the animators were expected to crank out a new volume as usual in the midst of a pandemic, all while still enduring awful working conditions, is just… hideous. I’ll probably go more into this if I make a video all about Volume 8 specifically, but suffice to say… fuck Rooster Teeth. Just, fuck ‘em, and god help the employees.

Anyhow, Ozma tries to get himself and his daughters away from Salem, only for her to viciously slaughter them all. Yes. All of them, even their daughters who had no clue what the hell was even going on. Before Ozma can say a word, Salem incinerates him on the spot, and then continues to reincarnate still processing his trauma before realizing he has to defeat and destroy his former lover in order to accomplish the mission he got from the God of Light. Why is he still so gung-ho on this mission? Your guess is as good as mine, but I suspect the answer is the same as to why he got Salem out of the tower: he’s a vaguely do-gooding blank sleight.

And then when he asks Jinn how to destroy Salem, he gets this: “You can’t.” Thus he falls into despair, and has to lie to his future followers so he can continue the fight. First of all… what a weird question to ask? Like, it makes sense, but wouldn’t you expect something like, “How do I defeat Salem?” or “How do I stop Salem?” Destruction specifically feels convenient so the writers can strip him, the characters, and the audience of hope and leave them shocked, but it rings so hollow… mostly cuz this entire chapter is hollow. But also because the scenario is obviously an obnoxious red herring.

And all that aside, the characters are still convinced Ozma is a victim? This honestly deserves its own section, which will be our final talking point of this terrible evening. But Ozma is so clearly a victim, both in the actual storyline of both Salem and the Gods, but also on a meta level a victim of the writing. I mean, all the characters are victims of these writers, but Ozma especially. Hardly any real agency, no depth or true convictions, and immense amounts of needless pain, suffering, and trauma in the hopes those alone can give the illusion of a deep, tragic character. And after all of that, they have the nerve to frame him as the bad guy. To have the main characters ridicule, lecture, and beat him, and to have the audience go along with it. And the sad part is… it worked. For a lot of people, myself at the time of “Lost Fable’s” release included.

YOU SURE THIS IS A UTOPIA THO? (the Gods suck):

A big part of Remnant’s worldbuilding is that… well, it’s a remnant. It’s a leftover scrap from the old world, which was presumably prosperous and vibrant with magic; before it was abandoned by benevolent gods providing their blessings. A world where people were happier, less inclined towards sin, and suffering was nonexistent. A stark contrast from the world of bloody evolution we’re stranded in now. Only issue is… fuck no, this is not that world.

We already mentioned how Ozma dying of a random cold alone is kinda emblematic of this not being a real paradise. And that brings us into the question of the Brother Gods: do they suck? Well, in terms of design, yes. Oh my god, their humanoid designs are so boring to behold, and barely make up for their dragon forms. I will admit, I do like how the God of Light is an eastern dragon since they’re considered divine and benevolent, whereas the God of Light is a western dragon, which was considered demonic and malevolent. But beyond that… I hate these fuckers.

Granted, I’ve always had a bit of an anti-authority streak in me, so I’m naturally wary of these gods claiming to have a perfect system so long as everyone does what they say. But if I may be petty for a moment… they’re seriously boring though. I hate harping on this, but seriously? One god of light, one god of darkness? That’s the most original thing you could come up with? Especially in a series led by four young women where the number 4 is crucial, in a world supposedly filled with rich fairy tales inspired by every culture the world over, all we get is discount Brothers Grimm?

The Gods don’t even really have their own motivations in “The Lost Fable.” They just exist to have conflict with Salem and then send Ozma on his way to his eternal torment. The God of Darkness was said to hate his brother’s creations back in that Volume 4 exposition dump, but… why? No clue! He just hates flowers cuz they’re stupid and gay and he made Grimm to trample them? Yeah, the demons that feed off of human misery and vice? Their origin is equally boring, as discussed in my Grimm video, it’s great, go watch it after this one.

The God of Darkness here is just some dick who’s happy someone finally asked him nicely for something, only to take it away because he was second-choice, and then later exterminate all of mankind because a few angry soldiers showed up on his brother’s doorstep. There’s no motivation for this. He doesn’t even seem to enjoy being wicked for wickedness’ sake; he’s just vaguely jealous of his brother cuz he’s more popular, but he doesn’t really do anything about it.

His Boringness is even the reason why Remnant’s moon is shattered. Oh yeah, all those years people spent theorizing why the moon is the way it is, how it could possibly tie into Salem, or the Grimm, or even the Silver-Eyed Warriors? It’s just cuz the God of Darkness yeeted himself into it on the way out. How riveting. It’s a lazy and vapid answer that fans had been craving for several years at that point, and equally shallow in its symbolism. Supplemental material tries to say it’s symbolic of the folly of man, but we’ll discuss in a bit why that’s a crock of shit.

The God of Light, meanwhile, is actually worse than his brother. Honestly, he’s to blame for everything wrong in Remnant now, but the show frames him as a creator who’s being failed by his creations because obviously the light god deer boi must always mean well! If he’s supposed to be benevolent, then why didn’t he empathize with Salem and give her the tools to move on? You might say it’s not his job, but why would a divine being capable of creating entire worlds be bound by the same earthly limitations as mortals? And the way he engages with his brother in yo-yoing Ozma to and fro death doesn’t exactly scream “loving god.”

And when humanity is destroyed, again, it doesn’t feel justified… because it isn’t. It’s a relatively tiny army compared to the entirety of the human population, but all of mankind is judged and promptly eradicated because Salem convinced them to fight the gods. Shouldn’t the extermination of all life be a last resort? Granted, it’s the God of Darkness who does this, but the God of Light doesn’t try to stop him. He just looks away sulking. And if these gods are capable of bringing people to and from death, it makes no sense why the God of Light couldn’t have reversed his brother’s actions right then and there. Instead, he just gives up entirely because of the actions of a small, very gullible chunk of humans.

The God of Light’s motivations don’t make sense, which is to say he doesn’t have one beyond, “I’m so disappointed in my creations.” But he still seems to care, at least enough to revive one dead human and chuck him right back into the hell pit to try and do what he never could’ve: unite humanity and teach them to do better. Good luck with that, kiddo. Why does he even care? Is he meant to be a good guy, cuz his actions certainly don’t carry that. Is he meant to be arrogant, and incapable of understanding people are complex creatures beyond a good-and-bad binary? The show doesn’t support that, especially given the Silver Eye powers of love and compassion come directly from him rather than these people’s own understanding of humanity he’s never been able to grasp.

Not to mention if he’s so kind and generous, why did he create such a bafflingly cruel reincarnation system for Ozma? He says it’s so he’ll never be alone, but like… was the Avatar ever alone despite each incarnation being their own person? There’s no reason it needed to be this cruel a process, robbing each life of their autonomy as they’re randomly chosen and absorbed into Ozma’s consciousness, just like the God of Light didn’t have to pout while his brother broke the world. We’ve seen how much this whole process weighs on Ozpin and Oscar, so why would a benevolent god design such a harsh system for no good reason?

And the whole, “humanity will be made whole again” thing… what does that even mean? The only tangible difference between old humanity and new humanity, besides their origin, is that the latter can’t perform magic. Big whoop! That magic couldn’t stop the common cold from ending the world, so who even cares? Aside from that, there’s no difference whatsoever. The only substantive difference is their environment: old humanity lived in an ostensibly prosperous and peaceful world; new humanity, meanwhile, is essentially stranded in hell among an endless horde of angry demons with only the bare minimum essentials to protect themselves.

This story could easily touch on what it even means to be human, and whether the nature of humanity is good or bad, or whether it can even be categorized either way given how messy and chaotic life can be. The show’s failure with the Grimm ties directly into this. Because they aren’t enough of a threat, the audience can’t be convinced that life in Remnant is difficult even within the kingdoms’ walls, and as such, this claim that humanity’s lives as a whole are miserable now without the gods remains baseless.

Aura and Semblances could’ve even been brought into this. Again, Aura and Semblance rules are stupid and dumb and not well explained in the slightest, but there’s potential in them as ideas, especially in this new world. All living things have souls, and thus presumably have Aura. However, Semblances don’t seem to be part of the old world. Why? Well, they probably didn’t need Semblances. They all had magic, after all, so there was never a need to unlock Aura and develop one’s Semblance the way people need to now.

And Semblances are all unique to the individual, all meant to reflect something about who they are… in theory, at least. So maybe, in that uniqueness, though Semblances could be seen as a pale imitation of the original magic, they could also be seen as striking, misshapen sparks of that old flame. The remnants of magic in the planet’s people. Their unwavering wills, and the expression of themselves and their light within even the darkest depths. A beauty that could never have existed without the ugliness of the world they were born into, capturing the duality of life, and the paradoxical nature of what it means to be alive.

But again, NONE OF THAT TO BE SEEN. Salem never comments on Semblances versus magic, the show never talks about the differences in depth and how the characters interpret them, hell it couldn’t even be bothered to explain Semblances within the show itself—without those godforsaken World of Remnant shorts—until Volume 5, in one of the most blatant “As you know, Bob” ways imaginable.

(for those unaware, “As you know, Bob” refers to a clunky exposition technique where one character explains the worldbuilding to another character to give information to the audience, when both characters should already know these things to begin with given this is the world they live in)

The faunus are also an afterthought here, which is… unsurprising. Supposedly their origin got cut just like the Ozma scene, so we’ll likely never really know what their story is beyond emerging from bloody evolution. The fairy tale book talks about different faunus creation myths, but I’ll repeat myself briefly: that’s not what supplemental content is for.

Dust isn’t explained either. It just briefly makes an appearance in a random marketplace next to the faunus that Ozma walks past. This is especially a fumble given how important Dust was made out to be at the very start of the series, explained in Hbomberguy’s video all about the show, it’s great, go watch it. Look, I just love me some good left tube content, okay? If Lindsay and ContraPoints made good content about fake animes I’d never shut up about them in my videos either.

But people still debate what Dust is. Is it the remains of old humanity, making them the equivalent of dinosaurs becoming fossil fuels for us to burn? Is it the fallen chunks of the shattered moon crashing into Remnant? Will we explore what these things could mean thematically? You know the drill now, OF COURSE NOT!

Even the Relics and Maidens are complete afterthoughts here. The God of Light just… shows silhouettes of them to Ozma and tells him to collect all four to start Judgment Day whenever humanity’s ready. They’re shallow macguffins and nothing else, their origin, along with that of the vaults as these extradimensional holding spaces, isn’t even touched upon. The Maidens, likewise, get nothing more than a technical cameo through Ozma and Salem’s nameless daughters.

Also wanna mention that Ozpin mentions in Volume 5 how he created the Maidens by giving them each a share of his magic. Yes, I know, Oz lies, but given the show never gave us an alternative, the only canonical answer we have is that the God of Light didn’t create the Maidens, Ozma did, and he did it at some point between the end of “The Lost Fable” and the start of the series.

I talk more about the Maidens and Relics in my video The Four Maidens Represent Nothing, but to summarize… none of it means anything. They’re just shallow macguffins to move the plot along, and nothing more. More illusory storytelling, which… RWBY viewers should be accustomed to at this goddamn point.

CHARACTER REACTIONS:

So to summarize what Ozma’s been through, he saved a random woman from a random tower, and—according to the Wiki pages Jinn memorized—only to die thereafter from a bad head cold. He was then yeeted betwixt the shores of light and dark by the ghastly gods themselves, then tasked by a comically oversized golden globe for furries to fix all the world’s woes, all while robbing each reincarnation of his new life in hellworld of their autonomy. All this followed by his now demonic lover ostensibly manipulating him into building her an empire, then slaughtering him and their children, all in front of his eyes as their home burns to ash, for daring to question her.

But yeah, he did lie about some stuff, so I guess he’s the bad guy.

This is such bafflingly stupid reasoning for Ozpin’s villification, both in-universe by the characters, and on a writing level by the show’s framing itself. When someone goes through such a horrific experience, especially at the hands of someone they once loved, they’re not exactly going to be apt at the thought of sharing that trauma, even with close, trusted loved ones, let alone some random schoolchildren and their depressed bird uncle. It essentially comes off as, “How dare you not tell us all the gory bits of your past in vivid detail!”, without any compassion, or even a twinge of sympathy, from any of our supposed heroes. Not an ounce of regret for making Ozma relive something that’s probably haunted him for the literal eons he’s been trapped on Remnant.

This is likely because the show had tried for years to clue us in on how shady Oz and his inner circle were, and goddamn, do I regret buying this and fueling it in my earlier videos. But they really tried to sell us on the idea that Oz wasn’t sharing everything, especially with Salem’s talk of him using children as disposable shields, and that weird talk in Volume 5 about how awful it is he gave Qrow and Raven, who consented, the power to become birds at will. Wow. How awful. Next you’ll be telling me he gave Ruby the power to turn into rose petals—wait no, that’s just a Semblance she naturally developed, then that’s fine I guess. Magic, Semblances, so vastly different!

The point is the show believes Oz is in the wrong for… something. Like the needless suffering that comes with his reincarnation process, it seems the writers want to inject moral grayness into this story, but didn’t bother actually thinking through what constructing a morally gray conflict might entail. Instead, they just suggested the idea that Oz has done some fucked up shit with nothing to back it up, and then pretend like this huge lore dump where he mostly suffers through events largely out of his own control is evidence of his wickedness. Do you know what this is called? It’s called victim blaming.

And not gonna lie, Oz is justified in withholding a lot of this information. It’s lying by omission, yes, but let’s be real: if he told people, they’d all give up immediately and just let Salem end the world (or whatever the hell she wants). It’s likely that Oz’s thought process is that putting up a fight against her, even if it lasts forever, is worth giving the majority of people a relatively happier life within the safety of the kingdoms. Again, this is the show forcing me to come up with all this on my own, but even then I still don’t see the awfulness in Oz’s lies.

If anything, it makes sense why he’d act this way. Even if you think he’s wrong for lying, he’s by no means a villain, nor is he some kind of bloodthirsty monster or malicious liar. But no one even thinks to address the horrifying shit he had to endure. No one asks about his love for Salem, his daughters, or about how he dealt with what he’d gone through in the centuries since. Instead, they all decide to gang up on him and crucify him as an irredeemable traitor.

This could’ve worked if it was portrayed as a heat of the moment decision, while everyone was high on shock and emotions. But you know what usually follows a heat of the moment decision? Regret. Reflection. “Oh shit, I just made an awful fucking choice because I let my emotions get the best of me before I could think through my options.” Literally none of the characters do that. Not Ruby, not Weiss, not Blake, and ESPECIALLY not Yang… for some reason. But these opinions of Oz stick, with them being wary at the thought of his return, even two whole volumes later, even after he saves them on several occasions.

Not to mention that they’re all okay with the abuse Qrow doles out on Ozpin and, by extension, Oscar. No one apologizes to either one of them for Qrow’s actions, Qrow himself doesn’t really give a shit, and Oscar doesn’t clarify whether he felt the pain as Qrow punched him. The writers seem to really harp on that conflict of the Ozcarnations becoming one, but they seemed to have skipped over this bit where Oscar is getting the brunt of the backlash and literal physical pain because of Ozpin’s actions, and Oscar doesn’t even get apologies from it. It’s either lukewarm care or complete difference… or in Jaune’s case, flat-out aggression.

Also, I don’t know if y’all have noticed, but this show has such a weird fixation on physically abusing Oscar specifically. He gets beaten by Hazel in their fight in Volume 5, he’s punched by Qrow and shoved into a wall by Jaune in 6, he gets assaulted and left in rough shape by Neo in 7, then promptly shot off a cliff to his near death by Ironwood, and after the Hound makes Oscar his new chew toy in Volume 8, he spends most of the volume being brutally tortured by both Salem and Hazel. Like… what the fuck, guys? Again, needless suffering isn’t a substitute for actual character writing.

But the mention of the characters’ reactions earlier brings me to another point: the cast of RWBY operates on a hive mind. My friend Cynzi directed me to a Reddit post I’ll share here and link down in the description that points it out; god bless the critics Subreddit. But the gist of it goes that the writers don’t think about each character individually; what each of their individual motivations are, what knowledge they’re working with compared to others, nor what each of their goals are. Instead, they all operate on the same system so the writers have the easiest time churning out half-baked scripts. It’s part of the reason so much of the story feels illusory; the characters in RWBY aren’t true characters, but rather chess pieces to move about a board. And unfortunately, the RWBY writers don’t know how to play chess, nor use it for effective symbolism when it comes to Jacques YES I’M STILL BITTER THAT BLAKE AND WEISS DIDN’T TAKE THAT BASTARD DOWN TOGETHER, WTF MAN.

But with normal character writing, you’d have each character responding to the Lost Fable differently based on their own experiences and biases. Like, maybe Weiss feels for Salem for being locked away by a father, or Ozma for the abuse he endured. Maybe Blake is similar on the abuse front, but feels contempt at Ozma for allowing Salem to build such a presumably evil empire. Maybe Yang doesn’t know how to feel and just sees Ozpin as an easy scapegoat. And maybe Ruby sees the complexities of it all and starts to question her wanting to make the world good when it seems like it’s all just too chaotic to fix. Instead, they all just go, “Ozpin is a liar and he sucks,” and then they cancel him on Twitter before punching Oscar into a tree.

CONCLUSION & OUTRO:

Something I didn’t bring up during this, but find incredibly telling about not only the effort being “The Lost Fable” but the show’s recent volumes, is the lack of fights in this chapter. There is not one fight to be found here. Every time one is about to start, we cut away from it. Ozma and Salem escape the fortress? Use stills! Salem’s about to fight the gods? God of Light eats the camera and we cut to black. Salem v. Ozma? Only show their shadows and the main characters’ reactions like this is a YouTube reaction video.

RWBY was initially conceived as a show where fights were fundamental to the formula. That was mostly cuz Monty was best at making well-choreographed, character-driven fights, but he also understood that fights are a great way at showing your characters’ true colors in a tough moment, and working out a conflict in a fun and flashy way. After all, you can’t make a diamond if you don’t put it under intense heat and pressure.

But while the choreography of the fights may have technically improved in recent volumes… mostly, they still lack the energy and soul of the Beacon Era when Monty was still here. The animators do their best, but the writers’ inability to understand these characters and write them accordingly seems to translate into how CRWBY, on a production and directorial level, creates fights. They feel like an afterthought, devoid of any real emotion or meaning. Instead, fights in modern RWBY feel tacked on, like a mandate to please the fans without thinking as to how they can truly enhance the story.

This was especially an issue in Volume 8 in many regards, but it’s also a huge problem with “Lost Fable.” Granted, Monty-style fights couldn’t save the Beacon volumes given just how disjointed the production process was and how awful the scripts were, but at least back then they were fun spectacles to revel in out of context. There’s a reason why people still enjoy the food fight, or the train fights, or even Pyrrha versus Mercury in isolated clips on YouTube, but no one’s clamoring to do the same with Blake versus Ilia, or Cinder vs Penny.

So to recap, “The Lost Fable” is a shallow, half-hearted mess. It’s the culmination of all the show’s writing problems, condensed into 26 minutes of vapid or nonexistent character motivations, bizarre plot choices, and no emotional resonance whatsoever. On a surface level it may be an epic fable for the ages, but it’s gilded. Scratch that surface even barely, and you’ll immediately see just how shoddy this thing really is.

Anyhow, if you enjoyed that video and would like to see more content like this from me, then be sure to subscribe and ring that bell for notifications because YouTube hates creators. And as a gentle reminder, preorder links for my upcoming novel are in the description below. If you’d like to further support myself and the channel beyond just the book, then please consider, if you’re willing and able, pledging your support over on Patreon.

I’m the Unicorn of War, and the Lost Fable is a shit show.