Fanfic / Raise

Soul of Revival by GWBrex

Raise is a For Want of a Nail RWBY fanfic by Coeur Al'Aran where Jaune has an impossibly powerful Semblance: the ability to truly resurrect the dead.

Complete as of September 7, 2023.

Raise contains examples of the following...

• Aborted Arc: The possibility of the kingdom's going to war over Jaune's power is mentioned very early in the story, and from the middle point onwards there is a building tension between the kingdoms, which is contributed to by things like Gillian's rise to power and the death of Gira and Kali Belladonna parents. Atlas especially becomes increasingly closed-off and volatile following Jaune's departure and retreat to Beacon. Jaune faking his death similarly causes a lot of accusations thrown once it appears an Atlas terrorist (really Tyrian) killed him. But ultimately a war never breaks out and its never commented on.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In canon, there's nothing outright confirming that Ozpin knew that Blake was a former White Fang operative when he put her on a team with Weiss (though the odds of him not knowing that are admittedly low), so there's no focus put on the fact that he put Weiss on a team with a former member of an organization that attacked her family before. Here, Ozpin knows for a fact that Blake was party to Weiss's murder but puts them together anyway, which is called out by everyone who knows the full story as outrageously cruel.
• Adaptational Name Change: Because they’re formed to protect Jaune, the canonical Ace-Ops are now called the Arc-Ops.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Whitley apparently hasn't become the conniving manipulator he was when he was introduced in canon. He helps Jaune socially navigate Weiss's birthday party while making sure he's reasonably comfortable and giving him advice. In Chapter 8, Whitley mentions that he now considers Jaune a friend, and is thus suspicious about Weiss's receptiveness to the latter's obvious attraction to her. He wants to make sure it's not solely at the behest of their father to secure a link to Jaune and that Weiss isn't just starstruck by someone "special."
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul:
  • Because Jaune ends up accepting Ironwood's invitation to live in Atlas, he becomes much closer with him and the members of the Arc-Ops (the canon Ace-Ops) than in canon. In particular, Jaune and Elm end up becoming close friends, whereas in canon the two were simply allies working together.
  • Jaune and Weiss hit it off much better than in canon, as Jaune is a famous man known for his benevolence while in canon he was a complete stranger whose attempts at flirting were viewed with annoyance. The downside being that Weiss now puts Jaune on a pedestal, which increasingly sours the relationship on his end and causes her severe frustration as she wrestles with comprehending this.
  • When Jaune first meets Pyrrha, she has yet to have become the "Invincible Girl" or grown disillusioned by fame; the next time around she’s closer to that point. In both cases, it’s Jaune who has the more worldly and cynical worldview and chooses to help her learn to form genuine social connections before she can be taken advantage of.
  • Due to their mutual association with Jaune, Pyrrha and Weiss start off Beacon as friends whereas in canon Weiss originally approached Pyrrha to form a team with her, and when that failed they were only barely associating by the fact JNPR and RWBY often hung out with each other one way or another.
  • Jaune and Gillian never met in canon, whereas here she interacts with him when visiting Vale, even helping him to get his Aura under control when it starts overcharging.
  • In canon, Cinder and Jaune are bitter enemies, with the latter hating the former for murdering Pyrrha. Here, however, Cinder forms an unlikely friendship with Jaune, to the point of aiding him in faking his death so he could live a life of peace and anonymity...granted it was because she put the idea in his head with Mercury's help, due to how Salem wants Jaune to revive her daughters, but Cinder was being genuine with her desire to help him escape his current situation (and to her credit, while Jaune admits that she lied to and manipulated him, he is sincerely thankful to her for her aid in giving him a new life and identity for him).
    • Similarly, this changes her relationship with Pyrrha as well. In canon, the two came to blows in Volume 3 when Cinder made her play for the Fall Maiden, resulting in her killing Pyrrha. Here, however, she actually becomes an ally to her (albeit one with her own agenda), pushing her to accept and act on her feelings for Jaune; as a result, the two work together to help Jaune fake his death and disappear, allowing Pyrrha to be with him.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: The basis of the story is that rather than his Healing Hands Semblance of canon, Jaune instead has the power to resurrect the dead.
• Adaptational Villainy: It's indicated that Sienna Khan had the Belladonnas assassinated, which is a low her canon counterpart never reached; in canon, the attack on the Belladonnas was prompted by an increasingly radicalized White Fang some time after Adam had already killed her. Except as the final news headline reveals, it was Adam Taurus and the Albain brothers that were responsible, meaning Sienna had nothing to do with that.
• All Take and No Give: Weiss and Jaune's relationship gradually reveals itself as a twist on this. While Weiss doesn't ask Jaune to give everything to her, she expects him to give all he can to the world - her expectations for their relationship are predicated on the assumption that he's going to spend his entire life draining his aura twice a day resurrecting people, regardless of his very clear distress at the thought. In return, Weiss brings her PR expertise and levelheaded advice to their relationship; in other words, Weiss expects Jaune to follow all her suggestions "for his own good," and tends to get quietly furious if he lashes out about it, in spite of knowing damn well what draining aura to near empty means.
• Already the Case: Jaune points out how he is already accused of favoritism and has a life full of stress and problems, so taking Winter as his tutor won't really do much.
• Alternate Universe Fic: Before the events of Volume 1 where he would have run away from home to join Beacon, Jaune unlocks a different Semblance from his canon Healing Hands which enables him to resurrect the recently-deceased. This leads to Jaune becoming an internationally-renowned celebrity who's sought after by every kingdom, and the rush to curry his Semblance's potential causes increasing socio-political turbulence which was absent from canon. Jaune's interactions with characters such as Weiss, Blake, and Cinder's team are majorly affected by the shift in his circumstances compared to canon.
• Armor-Piercing Question: On one of their dates in Vale, Jaune asks Weiss if she has any hobbies, if she ever had any dreams besides becoming a Huntress, and if she ever had any pets. After a tedious back and forth where she refuses to understand why he'd want to talk about any of this on a date but answers anyway, Jaune asks if she knows what he would answer to any of those three questions. All she can say is that he likes comics, which isn't great news when she's planning to marry him soon.
• Assassination Attempt: In Chapter 20, a White Fang operative tries to sneak in poisoned chocolates among the get-well gifts along with a fake note mimicking Weiss' handwriting. Adam later decides he will try to kill Jaune himself to give the White Fang a major victory over the Schnee Dust Company and Atlas. He gets close to Jaune, but he ends up killing Weiss in a rage instead, and the resulting chaos forces him to flee.
• Asshole Victim: The reporters who hounded Jaune until he tripped and fell into a brief coma are revealed to have been dragged out of their homes and beaten to death by angry villagers. It's somewhat deconstructed, as the fact that the victims happened to be shitty people doesn't mean they deserved to die at the hands of an angry mob, and the people who did it only did so out of selfish rage.
• At Least I Admit It: This separates Ironwood from the Vale ambassador. Like the ambassador, Ironwood is speaking on behalf of a Kingdom that wants Jaune to move there purely for his Semblance. Unlike the ambassador, Ironwood is completely upfront about that fact and offers no flowery words or reassurances about it, instead offering what he can give in plain language.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Jaune's Semblance is literally miraculous but he can only resurrect 36 people a day (two shifts of 18 people with rest in-between), which is actually very little in any major population. Jaune lampshades this when he points out that even if he visited Vacuo for a full week and worked every day, he still wouldn't help that many people.
  • Chapter 41 has a Mistralian councilman point out how housing Jaune is this; each kingdom he shows up in has chaos ensue because of how people react to him.
• Back from the Dead: Jaune resurrects his father and many others after they are killed by Grimm. With a little experimentation, it's determined that he can revive someone as long as they only expired within about four hours, and in the process, his power fixes the immediate issue that killed them (like wounds) but doesn't fix longer-term problems that indirectly caused their death (like age and non-pathogen disease).
• Bad Date:
  • Jaune and Weiss go on a date to an Atlesian massage parlor, with Jaune excited at the chance to relax with the girl he likes. He's so tired beforehand that he falls asleep on the table and Weiss lets him sleep because he looks like he needs the rest, leaving Jaune bitter that she just let him sleep through their date and he didn't actually get to really experience the supposedly nice massage.
  • The two of them have another one after Jaune finally arrives at Beacon. First of all, the media goes completely crazy over the first date they've had since Weiss left Atlas, so the couple is forced to smile for the paparazzi as they enter the building. Then Weiss overrules Jaune's request to forget about work for the day by telling him that the mess in Atlas only highlighted that they needed to put more focus on the public and how Jaune deals with them, and she couldn't indulge him anymore. The "date" concludes with Weiss being horrified that Jaune's hospital work has led to an unprecedented anomaly that might mean that resurrections are now being Cast from Lifespan- because for the time being, Jaune is only going to do hospital shifts twice a week. Jaune ends up outright asking whether she wants him to die, and doesn't dare get into the fact that he doesn't want to resume his old schedule.
  • Their third date ends up being the worst one yet. With disguises from Cinder and her team, Jaune and Weiss attempt to have a movie and dinner date so she can try to get to know him better in his natural habitat, but Weiss basically refuses to play along. She finds talking about the movie pointless, and Jaune has to basically force her to answer even basic questions like what hobbies she enjoys. It concludes when Jaune asks her if she can name any of his hobbies, his dreams, or whether or not he's had any pets, and all she can say is that he likes comics.
• Bait-and-Switch: Ozpin's talk with Jaune makes it seem like he wants Jaune to work for him and fight against Salem. The next chapter reveals that he wants Jaune at Beacon because he is certain Salem will target him to bring back their long, long-dead daughters.
• Batman Gambit: Ironwood manages to make the Crown back down by threatening to blow up everyone involved in the conflict, since Jaune's presence means he can simply resurrect Atlas's forces and leave Crown's destroyed. Jax backs off rather than take that bet, just as Ironwood predicted - they couldn't actually fire the missiles, as Jaune has never tried to bring back someone who had been burned to ash and it likely wouldn't have worked.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Throughout the Atlas arc, the Atlas citizens constantly decry Jaune's presence as wasteful, condemning him for taking the money they offered and never giving him a moment of peace. This culminates when his scroll is hacked and his attempt to publicly confront it gets met with scorn from two journalists and their studio audience. So he decides that if they won't want him despite how many lives he's saved in the two years he's been there, then they don't need him there, so he throws away his Atlas citizenship card on-air, declares he no longer cares about how the corpses will pile up without him there, and collectively tells Atlas to fuck off before storming out.
• Beneath the Mask: Underneath Atlas's image of the sparkling Kingdom in the clouds is revealed to be a Kingdom of entitled supremacist idiots who think they are owed things they're not. The more time goes on, the more it becomes clear that the entire Kingdom is a powder keg ready to explode over the smallest issues possible, to the point that citizens begin fleeing in droves (with Mistral outright referring to them as "refugees") and Mistral openly warning its citizens not to go there as things start to fall apart.
• Blessed with Suck: Jaune's ability is incredible, but the responses people have to it mean having the power to revive the dead is a decidedly unpleasant experience. It only takes a few months before he hates both his power and the people he uses it on; he literally cannot please everyone due to his four hour limit and limited aura, so it inevitably breeds resentment and delusional behavior (like taking members of his family hostage).
• Boom Town: By Chapter 3, it's stated after several months, Jaune's reputation resulted in Ansel's population skyrocketing as hundreds, if not thousands of people come in to be in close proximity to him and his powers. The previously small town then has to deal with numerous accidents, rushed construction, and housing prices soaring. Ironwood explains to Jaune that the unusual circumstances of Ansel's growth mean that it's simply not sustainable, as there are not any new jobs and most of the people moving in are sick, disabled, or elderly, and so much needs to be done to make the village better that it's only going to get worse as long as he's there.
• Brutal Honesty:
  • Ironwood practically weaponizes this in his conversation with Jaune. As opposed to the Vale delegation, Ironwood gets straight to the point and offers nothing but the truth as long as Jaune gives him the truth back, recognizing that Jaune doesn't care for flowery words as much as he just wants help. He goes on to detail how his mere presence is dooming Ansel to eventual collapse.
  • Later on, when Jaune decides to fake his death, he finally tells Cinder that he knows she hasn't been honest with him and that she wants something. In response, Cinder is as honest as she can be given the circumstances - she's working on behalf of a woman who wants her daughters back but those daughters have been dead far too long, she will get dangerously angry when it doesn't work, he'll have to promise to return if his Semblance evolves enough to make it possible, and she's manipulated both him and Pyrrha for what she believes to be his own good. Jaune is so desperate for some isolation that he couldn't care less and goes along with her plan.
• Celebrity Is Overrated:
  • Within a few months, Jaune becomes arguably the most important person on the planet. People from all over the world converge on Ansel to get close to him, straining the village's capacity to burst. Entire governments are forced to treat him like a valuable commodity, with the only care given to his own desires being how best to manipulate him. He can't so much as walk down the street without people accosting him or trying to rip clothing off his body to sell. Mentally disturbed individuals with a skewed understanding of his power break into his home and threaten his loved ones to do something he can't accomplish. Throngs of journalists ambush him and bombard him with manipulative leading questions that pick at his own deepest fears, for no other reason than to put something sensational on their front pages.
  • When he gets to Atlas, things improve because it is a large city with the resources to control the small percentage of people who are insane or violent towards Jaune, allowing him to finally start enjoying his fame which downplays this trope. And then Played Straight again when the journalists immediately turn on him and twist words to make him look entitled when he takes a necessary break to recover his Aura after reviving SDC victims of a terrorist attack. As Jaune puts it, Atlas isn’t much different from Ansel; the narrative is simply more controlled.
  • Pyrrha is only just being introduced to her fame and chafing a bit under it, but it's only a matter of time before she becomes fully disillusioned for all the same reasons as canon. She's in the thick of it the next time she and Jaune meet, and she asks him for advice on handling celebrity. Jaune, who by this point is deeply jaded, can only suggest that she get out sooner rather than later, because she has that choice and he feels he doesn't.
• Central Theme: The Mortality Phobia of all humans and the Immortality Seeker tendencies that go with it. People flocked to Ansel to be near Jaune and get a chance at a form of immortality, Atlas was willing to pay a fortune -both in an initial payment to Ansel and regular care packages, and an annual salary for Jaune- for Jaune to move in, and Jaune is the single most famous person in the world because of his power. He is revered by those who are not insanely desperate to be near him for his power.
• The Chain of Harm: Weiss displays emotionally abusive behavior towards Jaune because of the damage Jacques did to Willow. She has come to confuse any sort of admission or guilt or concession on her part as letting Jaune walk all over her and her attempt to set boundaries comes across as a complete lack of faith in Jaune's character. This has resulted in her being the controlling party in her relationship with Jaune.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome:
  • Jaune is shown to internalize many of the same accusations thrown at him by desperate beggars, refusing to risk missing death by resting for any length of time, or else he's responsible for not reversing it. His response to the idea of going to Vale's capital is not only a hard no but also a panic attack thinking of the dozens of people who'd no doubt be dead for good by the time he'd get back. Though Atlas tries to put more strict limits on what they have him do, from the first day he's already pushing back against their rules because he can't bear to not help someone when he has the power to do so.
  • This attitude starts to show cracks in Chapter 13 when people tear him apart again out of entitlement and even Weiss looks at him for his Semblance first and as a person second. He guiltily admits he’s grown to despise the people who need his help and treat death as an inconvenience just because of his presence.
• Conspicuous Consumption: Weiss's birthday party is noted by Ironwood to costs millions of Lien and includes things like a carousel and go-kart track. Indoors in a mansion. As Ironwood explains, the party would usually cost millions just so the Schnees could show off, but because Jaune is there, they spared no expense.
• Cruel to Be Kind: When Jaune's first words after waking up from a three-day coma are to ask how many people died while he was out, Nicholas finally has enough. He rudely but quickly tells Jaune that people die - it's going to happen no matter what he wants, and it's not his responsibility to clean up the stupid mistakes other people made because they were selfish. It's incredibly harsh, but it's all in an attempt to get Jaune to realize that he needs to take care of himself before he drops dead from the weight he's putting on his own shoulders.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: While they're in Mistral, Weiss decides to test her skills against Pyrrha. While they're both still a ways off of Beacon, Pyrrha proves just as unstoppable as usual and beats Weiss with almost no effort.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Jaune is brought to the scene when the White Fang bomb the Schnee compound and murder a bunch of executives, and undoes the deaths (including the bomber's), but as a result he doesn't have the capacity to make his next hospital shift. The next day he's accosted by protestors and journalists demanding why the rich executives took priority over the common people who need his help, and when he claps back that he's giving literally everything he can every day, the news twists his words to make him out to be lazy and entitled. With this incident he realizes that there is no winning, the public is not dealing with him in good faith, and people will find a way to be outraged no matter what he does. After having bottled it up so long with his hero complex, Jaune is forced to admit that he now resents the people he saves.
• Deal with the Devil: Ironwood outright refers to Atlas's deal with Jacques as a deal with the devil, as it means that they have the most important person in the world in their kingdom at the cost of Remnant's most corrupt businessman having actual government power.
• Death by Adaptation: Ghira and Kali Belladonna are killed in a house fire orchestrated by the White Fang (later revealed to have been masterminded by Adam Taurus and the Albain brothers).
• Death Is Cheap: Despite being a story centered on a man who can raise the dead, this is averted. A running theme throughout the fic is how much people fear the death of themselves or loved ones. The fact that the way to cheat death is itself finite and limited means that people's behavior deteriorates, as they feel they must fight and claw for what they want or else risk being passed over. The result is the worst of humanity's selfishness and stupidity comes out to the forefront, bringing more chaos to Ansel than ever before and leading to even more deaths than would have happened if people had just stayed away. Furthermore, major world governments treat Jaune as the priceless resource he is, with Atlas paying a fortune to acquire him, thus averting the cheap aspect very literally. While in Atlas, many families also show immense relief and gratitude when Jaune revives their children, further showing how much weight his powers have.
• Despair Event Horizon: Jaune crosses it after the attack on the Schnee board. After he finally gets to use his powers proactively by saving the victims of an attack, the citizens of Atlas decry him as selfish and lazy, even when he tries to appease to them by pointing out how often he works. Combined with Weiss bothering him during the event, Jaune starts asking how the victims died before he resurrects them, and the realization that most of them were killed by sheer idiocy and negligence drives him to hate the people he saves. He spends the following diplomatic trip to Mistral going through the motions, uncaring of absolutely everything and everyone around him.
• Destructive Romance: It soon becomes clear that Jaune and Weiss's relationship is only making things even worse for him. Without realizing, Weiss puts Jaune up on a pedestal and treats him like a "miracle", not truly taking his wishes into consideration or treating him like an actual person. She even tries to get him to overuse his Semblance in a misguided attempt to guide his heroism, even when she knows that it actively pains him to do so. Just to top it off, their first fight ends disastrously and suggests that she doesn't even trust him to be a good boyfriend to her without prompting and strict instruction. Elm outright says that she's not good for him after he passes out and advises that Ironwood should keep them separated whenever he can, even if he can't outright break them up. It only becomes worse for both of them as the story develops and neither wants to admit that their relationship isn't the best for either of them.
• Dice Roll Death: When Jaune is resurrecting children during his first event in Atlas, it is unknown the exact number of people he can resurrect in one sitting. Everyone who was unlucky enough to be too far back in line will die permanently because Jaune simply cannot resurrect any more people. Once his limits are known, they only bring up to that number so that people don't have their hopes dashed, and so Jaune won't overexert himself again.
• Didn't Think This Through: Yang somehow figures that the best way to confront the tension between Jaune and Blake is to confront it head-on and basically say they should be talking. Jaune, with an angry smile, asks her if she'd be willing to talk to Blake if she found her over Ruby's dead body, and the end result is Jaune not acknowledging either of them and Team RWBY getting in a massive argument.
• Dissonant Serenity: Discussed and ultimately subverted. Jaune notes with incredulity that the Arc-Ops, Nicholas, and Sleet seem to be unaffected by the Crown's attempt on his life, with some of them even making jokes about the affair. Ironwood then takes him aside and points out that not only are they all either soldiers or politicians, meaning that they're trained to handle events like this, but that the jokes and laughs aren't because they're not affected, it's because their adrenaline is still rushing and they're trying to keep themselves calm rather than let their inside panic out.
• Distant Finale: The final chapter has a time skip ten years into the future, showing that Jaune is living a peaceful, quiet life in a remote Vacuo village under a presumed identity, in a loving romance with Pyrrha (and with a daughter to boot). Across Remnant, the war between Atlas and Menagerie has ground to a halt, with Ironwood and Sienna having worked out a peace treaty, while the political leaders that pushed Atlas into isolationism have been ousted from power. And as revealed in the final news snippets: Lavender Arc married Whitley, with the two having opened up a children's hospice in Jaune's name; Ozpin has stepped down from his position of Headmaster, handing the position off to Glynda; Gillian Asturias has been crowned the new Queen of Vacuo; and Adam Taurus has been publicly implicated as the guilty party in the murder of Ghira and Kali Belladonna (likely aided by the Albain brothers), and forced to go on the run.
• Doom Magnet: Within only a few months, Jaune's mere presence has led to so many people moving to Ansel that the town is under severe economic strain, his family has been put in danger multiple times (and, in Nicholas and Juniper's cases, outright killed), the death rate in Ansel skyrockets due to the number of people in it quintupling and the chaos leading to fatalities that otherwise wouldn’t have happened, and anyone who harms him runs the risk of meeting a swift death at the hands of an angry mob. After a few years of chaotic events following Jaune and his Semblance, a Mistralian councilman even publicly points out how impractical having Jaune around is becoming, as chaos and death seems to follow Jaune wherever he goes.
• Downer Beginning: The first arc of the story deals with Jaune discovering his power, and the world responding to it by making his and his family's lives miserable. The author intends to painstakingly place Jaune into a very bad mental place, so that the later parts of the story will have more impact for being less stress-filled and depressing.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Jaune's powers only work on people who have been dead for four hours or less, stopping him from being near godlike. For this reason, he cannot resurrect Dr. White, who dies while Jaune is in a brief coma.
• Dramatically Missing the Point:
  • At least once a crazed woman broke into the Arc house and threatened one of Jaune's sisters so Jaune would revive her son, except said son has been dead too long.
  • When Ghira confronts Blake over attempting to murder an innocent person, Blake swears she had nothing to do with Weiss's death, only for Ghira to furiously remind her that he was referring to Jaune, the innocent person in the room that she attempted to assassinate.
  • After a particularly bad date with Weiss, Jaune goes to Pyrrha to talk about it. When she asks him if his relationship is working out, he tries to say it is, only for Pyrrha to incredulously point out that he's currently ranting to her about all the ways it's not working out, which marks the first time Jaune actually has to think about the long-term problems he has with Weiss.
  • When Weiss publicizes Jaune's Aura issues to the Vale populace, Jaune attempts to confront her about it. As he pours his heart out about how she had no right to release his private information like that and how she needs to stop acting on his behalf, her only response is to tell him that they'll talk later when they're not in front of her team. The fact that she basically ruined his life in Vale and all she does is try to postpone the inevitable talk is what finally makes him realize that she simply doesn't view him as a partner.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Jaune's reputation in Menagerie progressively gets worse over the course of the story, as seen in newspaper headline snippets. Jaune himself has no idea he's been branded a human supremacist and declared an enemy of the White Fang. Authorities in Menagerie tried to contact Atlas to get a diplomatic visit from him like the other nations, but upon being ignored attributed that decision to Jaune personally and characterized him as racist, when in reality their request never made it to him in the first place.
  • The Vacuo newspaper headlines slowly chronicle how Gillian Asturias takes advantage of the chaos the Crown caused to lawfully insert herself into power, all while the world has no idea that she was responsible for that mess in the first place.
  • By the time he begins planning to fake his death, Jaune knows to look for an angle in any help he’s offered, so he asks up front what his savior wants. He’s told that a powerful woman wants him to revive her four children. Her minion admits up front that he definitely can’t do so, since the children have been dead longer than Jaune’s been alive, but his new employer would be motivated to keep him alive and in good health on the chance that his Semblance evolves in the future. Jaune agrees to this because he believes his situation can’t get any worse, and the worst he could picture was an aging crime boss whose connections would be hard-pressed to hurt his loved ones given the level of security they have. In reality, Jaune was agreeing to hand himself over to the Queen of the Grimm, her “task” involves reviving people after millennia, not decades, and she is entirely capable of sending the Grimm after entire Kingdoms just to get at Jaune’s family.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: By the end of the fic, Jaune has earned his. with the aid of Cinder's allies, he has successfully faked his death and now lives a normal, mundane life as "Nickel 'John' Sanders" in a far-off village in Vacuo. Ten years have passed, and not only has he not once had to use his Semblance to revive anyone, he is able to make an honest living as a doctor, and he is married to Pyrrha, with the two having a daughter, Helena. Granted he is only able to live this life due to Salem having him on retainer in case his Semblance one day evolves to bring her children back to life, but he considers it a small price to pay since she makes sure no one discovers his true identity.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Discussed by Jaune and Ironwood in regards to Blake Belladonna. The former initially just wants her fully punished for her part in Weiss’ temporary murder by Adam (which arose from conspiracy to kill him), isn’t sympathetic purely based on her youth or remorse and is outraged that her parents’ status gives her leniency nobody else would have gotten in her position. The latter points out that she’ll be held to account regardless, but that appeasing her parents will gives Jaune powerful allies; furthermore, taking retributive justice will likely only indoctrinate her further and not provide any real satisfaction. Jaune finally agrees, so long as she’s out of Atlas so he doesn’t have to deal with her or worry that she’s anywhere close to Weiss, showing he’s currently far from forgiving her anytime soon.
  • By the time he and Weiss are in Beacon, Weiss has come to forgive Blake, but Jaune still can't do it. Weiss’ forgiveness is especially surprising given that she was so traumatized that the family had to fire all their Faunus servants and yet she can sleep with Blake in the same room. Yang also apparently believes Blake should be forgiven by Jaune given her comments, though he simply asks if she’d be so easy to forgive if Blake was complicit in Ruby’s death.
• Enraged by Idiocy: As Jaune becomes increasingly jaded and embittered, he starts asking how the people he revives died and finds himself aggravated by the fact that most of the deaths he undoes could have been easily prevented by the victims (and/or their caretakers) just being a little more careful or attentive.
• Entitled Bastard:
  • The people of Ansel, both the locals and refugees, honestly believe that Jaune is being monstrously selfish by not bringing back their loved ones. They act like they deserve his help even after their constant harassment and monstrous behavior. When Jaune moves to Atlas, many view it as Jaune having been kidnapped or tricked, rather than him fleeing a bad situation.
  • Atlas itself isn’t any better, as Jaune realizes later. The narrative is simply more controlled by the government. The second Jaune has to take time off because he spent all his Aura reviving SDC members after a White Fang attack the people are immediately protesting and insinuating that he’s lazy or focusing only on the rich despite his months of constant work.
  • In chapter 14, there are protestors that think he should be doing more rounds in the wards despite the fact Jaune already works to exhaustion.
  • By Jaune's second year in Atlas, people believe he should work even harder while simultaneously claiming that he doesn't deserve the money the kingom willingly offered him. So he gives them exactly what they want and renounces his citizenship in Chapter 28. In response, the same Atlas citizens who called him a waste of money and resources sign a petition en masse who have him criminally prosecuted for anyone who dies while he's gone.
• Erotic Asphyxiation: Subverted. As part of Crown's plan to view Jaune's powers, Carmine lets herself be killed by Bertilak, and she picks being strangled to death because she's at least heard it can be a turn-on. She bitterly notes later that nothing is erotic about not being able to breathe to the point that instincts kick in and she starts having to fight for her life.
• Extreme Doormat: Despite Jaune’s growing bitterness and anger, he rarely ever says no or stands up for himself. Even when Weiss finally gives a backhanded apology for her actions he doesn’t point out how lacking it is and simply hopes the rest of her team will point out her flaws rather than doing it himself.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Gillian Asturas may be a Hate Sink slaver who definitely has some ulterior motives for speaking out, but when Jaune's scroll is hacked, she publicly condemns the perpetrators while most of the other news sources are busy using the leak for sensational headlines.
  • The White Fang go on record as decrying the bombing directed at Jaune in Vale that killed children. It is not clear whether it is legitimate standards or knowledge that they would lose support if they condoned it.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Even Ironwood and Sleet, both of whom have fully admitted that they want Jaune in Atlas purely for his Semblance, are disgusted when Vacuo's officials have Jaune publicly resurrect ten people within minutes of his arrival without giving him any kind of warning.
  • Oman, the journalist who interviews Jaune in Mistral, is noted to be primarily focused on a good story when he interviews Jaune, but when he learns that he watched his mother die in Ansel, he immediately calms the audience down and then changes the subject.
  • In her interview with Jaune, Lisa Lavender clearly takes Jaune's side, expressing disgust for the citizens who believe he can't have any mental troubles because of his riches and never once letting up on how sad she feels for Jaune and his family. When her questions almost give Jaune a panic attack, she gives him the chance to back out, even though she admits that her editors would've fired her if he did.
  • The assassination attack on Jaune in the hospital is implied to have shocked all of Atlas.
  • Ironwood serves Atlas above all else, but he's disgusted by the Kingdom's entitled citizens and is genuinely unnerved at the possibility that he'd be recalled to Atlas away from Jaune's side at such a tumultuous time. When they do receive the orders, he and Elm are both disgusted and unsure of what to say, and though he's ordered to bring Jaune back with him, he makes absolutely no effort to do so - in fact, he publicly condemns Atlas for its behavior and commends Jaune for his efforts in front of news cameras.
• Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems: Jaune's growing cynicism and upset with his life are revealed to be in part due to the repetition. He may be paid a lot, but he ultimately has a physically and emotionally exhausting, repetitive, dead-end job where he fixes people's dumb mistakes that he will most likely be stuck in for the rest of his life. Also, his life will revolve around his work until he dies. The few things he has that don't have anything to do with his job, such as his sparring sessions with Winter, are the only things that actually motivate him at all.
• Fair-Weather Friend: Pyrrha didn't exactly have a Friendless Background — she had friends, but as she got more skilled, more successful, and more famous, all of them either left because she wasn't letting them benefit from her fame as much as they'd like, or became parasites who just wanted to mooch and forced her to cut them off. She's very relieved to have Jaune consider her a friend, because for the first time since she's been in the spotlight she won't have to worry about that issue (because he has all the same problems but worse).
• Fairy Tale Motif: Jaune is analogous to "The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs": Both are genuinely unique and magical beings that provide prosperity: The goose provides gold while Jaune provides resurrections. A recurring issue is people failing to realize how special he is and how blessed they are to have him at all, instead demanding more.
  • Jaune leaves Ansel in part to escape them and those that try to force the issue in Atlas are banned. They've killed the goose with their selfishness and will not get anything else.
  • Jaune's exhaustion with overusing his powers also brings to mind killing the goose to find more eggs: trying to gain more in the short-term that will destroy a unique resource. This is epitomized in chapter five when Jaune nearly kills himself to resurrect a single child after his aura hits ten percent. Clover states he has given all he has and more, but there are so many more families that will still not receive his help that day.
  • Jaune is even referred to as Atlas's Golden Goose, a common idiom based on the tale, while in Vacuo.
  • Eventually, the people of Atlas get greedy and become unsatisfied with Jaune's work. Ironwood even notes that the workload is already killing him.
  • All of this leads to Jaune leaving Atlas after newscasters and an audience decry him as a spoiled brat, constituting a pseudo 'death'.
• Fantastic Racism: Menagerie asked Atlas for a visit from Jaune. It was completely ignored to the point Jaune doesn't even know about it.
• Fee Fi Faux Pas: The first thing that happens when Jaune arrives in Vacuo is that he is presented with ten corpses to resurrect in public. He goes along with it but he, Ironwood, and the councilman are unhappy about it. It is even directly called a political faux pas by the narration.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Not exactly a fourth date, but Weiss proposes marriage to Jaune shortly before heading off to Beacon despite them dating for only a little over a year and still being teenagers. Jaune's too overwhelmed to do anything but agree.
• Forgotten First Meeting: It's only a matter of a few months before Jaune completely forgets having met Pyrrha. He can't be bothered and doesn't have the mental energy to pay attention to other famous people, and her growing competitive accolades totally flew under his radar. For her part Pyrrha isn't bothered.
• For Want of a Nail: Because of his fame and reputation as someone who helps others selflessly, when Jaune first meets Weiss, they are implied to have a mutual Love at First Sight, whereas in canon he was her Abhorrent Admirer in the early volumes.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Jaune and Weiss hook up very early in the story, whereas most of Coeur's fics wait until at least halfway through for shipping. However, Chapter 13 shows fractures in their relationship with Weiss seemingly unable to see Jaune past his Semblance and Jaune sctually finding it relieving when Weiss has to leave rather than spend time with him.
• From Bad to Worse: This basically defines Jaune’s life from the moment he unlocks his Semblance.
  • First humanity’s Mortality Phobia floods Ansel with crazed mobs desperate for resurrections, nearly destroying the settlement and killing the Arc family even as Jaune spends every waking moment at the hospital.
  • He gets a Hope Spot that lasts a few years as Atlas evacuates his family, sets boundaries for his hospital work, and compensates him well for his services- but this just solidifies his image as an asset for nations to fight over, it breeds resentment among the Atlas population who think he’s paid too much, and his workload is still literally killing him.
  • Even as it becomes clear that chaos follows Jaune wherever he goes, the kingdoms continue to compete for his Semblance because he is a completely unique resource, and can’t simply be ignored.
  • It gets to the point where Jaune decides to try Faking the Dead with the help of a woman who admits that she’s using him and clearly has criminal connections, believing that his situation couldn’t possibly get any worse… and thus he unwittingly works to put himself in the power of Salem, the Queen of the Grimm, who wants him to stretch a firm four-hour limit to revive children who have been dead longer than the new human civilization. And given that Salem had already made a goal out of destroying the world, she would have no problem with razing kingdoms with armies of Grimm to give Jaune some encouragement.
• Godzilla Threshold: When their stealth-based approach fails, The Crown decides to just kidnap Jaune through a group of armed slaves, even though that means a shootout with the Arc-Ops.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Dr. White gave his life holding back an angry mob to protect his fellow doctors and patients in critical condition, saving several lives at the cost of his own.
• Hidden Depths: For a politician in one of Coeur's works, Sleet is remarkably calm-headed in the face of danger. When the Crown attacks him and Jaune, he freely admits that his life is secondary to Jaune's and even blithely comments that death would be fine for him as long as they evacuate his corpse. He is clearly scared, but he puts on a brave face for Jaune and even promises to give Ironwood his own political backing should he need it as thanks for saving his life.
• Holding Out for a Hero: People in Atlas start neglecting to take proper care of themselves or worse yet their own children because of the background belief that Jaune will revive them. Jaune notes most of the kids he brings back died in preventable accidents when he starts asking how the children died. Best summed up when Jaune leaves for Mistral.
  Atlas Times Newspaper: Hospitals face complaints at Arc leave of absence to Mistral: "Who will be here to protect our babies?" asks impassioned mother.
• Honey Trap: Ironwood brings this up in chapter 10. If Jaune were not openly dating Weiss, he would definitely be introduced to numerous lovely young women on his trip to Vacuo.
• Hope Spot: In an attempt to get public opinion back on his side, Jaune gives an interview to Lisa Lavender detailing all of his mental health struggles, finally opening up about his trauma and pain. The citizens of the world express support for him... for a few months, until Atlas gets used to having him around again and the citizens start decrying him as a waste of money.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Atlas, as in the show, is the most technologically advanced Kingdom and its sense of patriotism is unlike any other place on Remnant. However, Jaune's presence there eventually brings all of the Kingdom's problems to the forefront, exposing most of the populace there as angry and entitled idiots who believe they are owed more than they are. This is capped off with an election where everyone involved desperately tries to appease the populace with anything they want, which includes things as evil as a second Faunus expulsion and as stupid as just cutting Atlas off from the world entirely. The result is that Atlas's standing in the world steadily collapses, to the point that Ironwood outright admits they are "weak" at the moment, Faunus citizens flee the country entirely, Mistral's government outright warns its citizens not to vacation there, and Atlas eventually locks itself entirely, with the world viewing them as a child throwing a tantrum for not getting their way.
• Humans Are Bastards:
  • It takes less than a day for the people of Ansel to go from civilized neighbors to feral monsters so desperate for Jaune's power that they kill his mother in their furor (luckily, she gets better), with no consideration for boundaries or self-awareness. Within months, people flock into Ansel just to be near him without considering the economic strain they're putting on the town, others threaten his family in an attempt to get him to resurrect someone they knew (even when they've long since passed the limit on Jaune's power), and even entire governments are preparing to manipulate him in any way they can to get him in their Kingdoms. It only gets worse when Jaune is suddenly taken away; when he falls unconscious, the mob goes mad with rage and slaughters the people responsible, then accuse the hospital of hiding him away and they storm the building, only leading to even more unnecessary death. After the story moves to Atlas, it is shown that these people are the relative minority and they seemed so ever-present because Ansel was too small to police them properly.
  • And then Played Straight once more. Atlas end up being just as entitled and ungrateful as the people from Ansel and start taking Jaune's presence for granted. Meanwhile the other countries aren't much better. The newspapers rumor monger about a teenage boy's life without a care for his privacy, the Crown try to enslave Jaune to their own ends, and the Faunus brand Jaune a racist and try to assassinate him. Little wonder Jaune ends up becoming so bitter.
  • The tensions in Atlas and Menagerie eventually escalate to the point that war between the two is on the horizon, with the other Kingdoms being implicitly forced to take sides. The citizens within Atlas are all to happy to encourage this by lumping everyone into being either a White Fang apologist or an isolationist who wants Atlas to just disappear off the world stage.
• Hypocrite:
  • Richard and Sally try to call Jaune out on-air for refusing to explain why he's not comfortable with Blake being a student in Beacon and call it a cop-out when he says that the military has restricted that information. Jaune points out that they've already read all of his texts and calls so they also have the full information, but they're refusing to discuss it either because they know it's illegal.
  • Ironwood tries to convince Jaune to let Blake go with a plea deal by arguing that simply locking people away in prison solves nothing. Not long after in a private conversation with Ozpin, Ironwood says that, were it up to him, he'd lock Blake up and throw away the key.
  • Weiss gets angry that Jaune didn't tell her about his mental health issues and insinuates that it feels like he doesn't trust her. This is despite her projecting onto him on what she thinks he should be like and her also not confiding in him about her plans such as deciding that they should be married before attending Beacon. She also despises anyone attempting to control her life due to her father's long history of doing so, but she does her best to control everything Jaune does with his Semblance, gets furious if he argues with her about it, and goes behind his back to publicize his issues to force him back into the hospitals.
• I Hate Past Me: Not “hate,” exactly, but after Jaune snaps and heads to Beacon, he begins to attribute basically every development he’d allowed in his work or love life since awakening his Semblance to being exhausted 24/7 and leaving him as “a hollow shell of a person.” From that point on, Jaune starts putting his foot down, hard, to make sure that things change going forward.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Like her canon counterpart, Pyrrha had trouble socializing with others because of her fame, and longs to have friends. So, when Weiss and Jaune visit Mistral for the Vytal Festival and start to hang out with her, she "clings to them like glue". She even cries when Jaune agrees to stay in touch after the Festival.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Played With in Pyrrha's case. Not only does she have feelings for Jaune and kisses him during one of their talks to show it, but she genuinely believes that she would be a better fit for him than Weiss would and thus would make him happier, given all the heartache and trouble Weiss keeps causing him. It adds an extra layer of hurt for her to know that the man she likes still wants to repair his relationship with a woman who seems to do nothing but hurt him, but she still soldiers through and genuinely tries to fix their relationship since he still wants it to work. After Weiss spends a week helping Blake recover from her parents' deaths yet never tries to help Jaune when he loses Elm, Pyrrha finally has enough, and with Cinder's coaching she starts genuinely trying to tempt him away from Weiss.
• Immoral Journalist:
  • A group of reporters swarm Jaune and ask leading questions for sensationalist articles. When they accidentally knock Jaune out so he can't resurrect anyone, they are torn to shreds by angry mobs. The ones at Altas aren’t any better and turn on Jaune when he takes some required time off.
  • The Kuo Kuana Express is clearly anti-Jaune from the get-go and ignores any piece of evidence that suggests he's a good person/not a racist. Even when he gives an interview publicly detailing his mental health struggles, they completely ignore it and focus on the Faunus journalist who Atlas subdued when he tried to rush Jaune outside the hospital.
  • Sally Reed and Richard Landgreen are an infamous pair of Atlesian news presenters who've achieved great success not through hard-hitting pursuit of the truth, but by being combative in interviews fishing for "gotcha" moments, and flip-flopping what opinions they push based on whatever makes the current guest look worse. They're the only ones willing to book Jaune on such short notice after his personal communications are leaked. Jaune comes prepared and doesn't put up with their snide insinuations and disingenuous assertions, but when the studio audience turns against him anyway, their obnoxious drama-mongering proves to be the end of his rope, getting him to finally unload all his resentment live on air and announce he's backing out of the deal with Atlas.
• Innocently Insensitive: As time goes on, Weiss's constant praise of Jaune as a hero starts to grate on his nerves more than it pleases him, as it hints that she cares more about putting him on a pedestal than she actually cares about him as a person. For her part, Weiss never notices how uncomfortable such praises make him and keeps piling on, accidentally making everything worse. Unfortunately, she continues this same habit with Pyrrha, which only alienates her further, and when Jaune attempts to point this out, she assumes that he's reading too much into things and pushes them both even further away.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Weiss's refusal to accept even the slightest bit of blame for any of her and Jaune's relationship problems leads to her pulling some truly impressive mental gymnastics. In particular, when she makes him upset by praising his openness with his mental health as a genius PR move, we see in real-time how she goes from being angry at herself for assuming the worst of him, to flipping the blame back to him for implying she can't be trusted with his issues, all in the span of a few minutes at most.
  • Many people believe they're honestly entitled to Jaune's powers and that he should bend over backwards to serve them. All this despite doing nothing to earn them and many actively devaluing or insulting him. It's especially noticeable after his scroll his hacked; the citizens constantly call him a waste and insult him to his face, but when he finally has enough of it and leaves, the same citizens try to levy criminal charges against him.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Once Jaune arrives in Atlas, Jacques Schnee is shown to be a politician sitting on the Council when the events that sparked his canon stint in politics haven't happened yet and likely won't. According to Coeur, this is part of the dealings Atlas needed to make to come up with all the money they offered to Jaune.
  • As the author points out in Chapter 23’s post-chapter AN, while the circumstances differ Blake still ends up pardoned for her criminal activities and goes to Vale. On top of which later on, Team RWBY forms with the same partners and under nearly-identical circumstances despite the variables created by Jaune’s status, including Blake being a party to Weiss's murder.
  • Weiss’ with team RWBY are still with Ruby being made leader rather than the fact that she was put in a team with one of the people who killed her. She even easily forgives Blake whereas in canon she was much more incensed to find out her teammate was a former terrorist.
• Internal Reveal: Jaune finds out in Chapter 23 (courtesy of Ironwood, who himself learned it from an apprehended Blake) how he’s been Mistaken for Racist in Menagerie thanks to distortion of facts by the Kuo Kuana Express. Even with how jaded he’s gotten, this still poleaxes him.
• Irony: Jaune didn't revive the Schnee Dust executives out of favoritism like some accuse, but it is his favorite job. He undid the results of a terrorist attack that murdered multiple people compared to his usual fare of reviving people who died in stupid accidents.
• It's All About Me: Weiss shows more and more of a selfish side as the story passes, prioritizing only her needs and wants over everyone else’s. Her relationship with Jaune eventually devolves into her dictating what he should do and ignoring anything that doesn’t line up with her view what should and shouldn’t be. Even when she apologizes her words are tinged with Never My Fault justifications that downplay her actions.
• Karma Houdini: An In-Universe example with Blake. Despite being a known terrorist and being with Adam when she murdered Weiss and attempted to murder Jaune, her parents being the leaders of Menagerie means she avoids any jailtime and is instead handed over to Beacon where she becomes a student in the same team with the girl her ex-boyfriend murdered. Jaune is clearly not pleased by the latter turn of events.
• Kick the Dog:
  • When a group of journalists corner Jaune at the hospital, a particularly cruel one asks him if he really watched both of his parents die and had to resurrect them.
    Jaune: Yes, it's true but why would you make me remember that!?
  • When Jaune points out that he feels bad for Blake's parents, he bitterly comments that clearly the apple fell far from the tree. Blake has it coming given her actions, but it's harsh enough that even Ironwood winces.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Sleet reveals that protestors on the waiting lists to move into Atlas, who tried to force their applications to be accelerated so they have the benefit of Jaune’s powers on call, were taken off of the waiting list entirely to set an example for anyone else meaning to do the same: Anyone trying to get to the front of the line without respecting due process only dooms them and their loved ones to their natural deaths.
  • Sally Reed and Richard Landgreen continuously disparage Jaune, take anything he says out of context to be used against him, and argue he's both racist and isn't even a real Atlesian citizen. So Jaune throws his citizenship card in Richard's face and makes it very clear that he's renouncing his citizenship in large part due to their insults. One can only imagine the fallout of their careers and to themselves in the aftermath.
  • The final news headlines reveal that Adam and the Albain Brothers were personally responsible for the house fire killing the Belladonnas, with Adam being convicted as a result and Sienna swearing to hunt down the Albains as retribution.
• Like Brother and Sister: As time goes on, Jaune and Elm get closer to the point that they each consider themselves a sibling. Her being forced to abandon him in Vale emotionally devastates both of them, with the only caveats being that she gets to train Cinder's team to protect him and she promises to protect his family for him.
• Logical Weakness: Jaune's power may be miraculous, but it's not omnipotent.
  • Jaune and Dr. White soon discover that he can only resurrect someone within four hours of their time of death. Any longer and the life force that Jaune is able to connect with to bring them back simply isn't in there anymore.
  • When he resurrects someone, he heals the wound/disease that killed them, but that only goes so far—resurrecting someone who died of old age will only give them a few more days before it catches back up to them, and if it was a disease but not a pathogen (like cancer), then it'll come back to kill them again soon enough. Additionally, while he admittedly hasn't tried, he doubts that he'd be able to resurrect someone whose body has been destroyed, such as if they were burned to ash.
  • His power runs on his own Aura, meaning that once it gets too low, Jaune has to stop and rest to allow it to recharge before he can use it again.
• Love at First Sight: Ironically, given the nature of the relationship of Jaune and Weiss in the first couple of volumes of canon, Chapter 7 appears to set both up for this trope. Jaune is just as smitten with Weiss's beauty the first time he sees her and awkwardly blurts out a compliment the first time he talks to her, but since this time Weiss has a far more favorable view of him given his reputation as a tirelessly selfless life saver, she is flattered at his attraction and just as flustered. The author's note also points out that it helps that at this point Weiss hasn't become quite as embittered with her life in the Schnee household, and Jaune is more embarrassed and restrained here than coming on too strong and pestering her. However, the Chapter 8 author's notes hint that given that these are two mutually starstruck teenagers experiencing their first attraction under the eyes of global media and local Atlas interests, things may not go so well moving forward. As the story develops, the deterioration of their hasty romance is shown in detail.
• Love Triangle: Across several chapters, it becomes increasingly clear Jaune's friendship with Pyrrha is more natural and comfortable for the both of them compared to his fraught relationship with Weiss, and the connection deepens whenever Jaune vents his frustrations out to her. It comes to a head in Chapter 33 when, after confiding in Pyrrha again in the aftermath of a disastrous date with Weiss, Pyrrha gives in to the urge to kiss Jaune from the frustration of seeing how unhappy he is with Weiss, which Jaune finds himself returning.
• Loving a Shadow: Weiss towards Jaune, as the story unfolds. Her attraction to him stems primarily from the stories she’d seen of him resurrecting people and she seems incapable of separating that from who he is as a person. When he suggests taking a day off to celebrate his birthday with her she’s aghast that he would ‘let people die’. Later on, after he expends nearly all his Aura resurrecting SDC victims of a White Fang attack, she actually protests Elm suggesting he take a break and states that he could surely resurrect one more person. Willow tells her directly that she doesn't love Jaune but rather "the idea of him."
• Make an Example of Them:
  • When a mob of protesters — noted to be largely composed of the same refugees who moved to Ansel in the first place — made a nuisance of themselves outside the hospital in Atlas itself, Councilman Sleet realizes that jail time would not be an effective punishment. By having them permanently struck from the waiting lists of those moving into Atlas, he not only curtailed any means of them protesting in the future but set an example for anyone else who might try to do similar that the consequences are dire and (unlike a small town like Ansel) completely enforceable.
  • What Jaune inadvertently does in Chapter 28. After having gone through people constantly demeaning and decrying him day in and day out, getting himself made to look the monster by two opportunistic news casters finally pushes him over the edge, and loudly declares, while tossing his atlas citizenship card at the pair and understandably telling both them and the audience to go fuck themselves, that if they don't want him there, then he'll give them exactly what they want.
  • After Jaune resurrects a grieving father who was killed in the forest while trespassing to Beacon, he has to deal with several other people who do the same thing. When one of them turns out to be someone who was live-streaming the trip in an attempt to get famous, Jaune finally has enough and lets him stay dead, hoping that it'll finally discourage others from making the same stupid choice he did.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: The Belladonnas are killed by a house fire, but General Ironwood tells Jaune and Weiss that they know it was truly the White Fang who wanted it to look like an accident.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: An angry mob murders Dr. White while Jaune is unconscious; the author noted that given his track record with original characters, it was inevitable.
• Mistaken for Racist: Jaune is viewed as anti-faunus for his dating Weiss Schnee and Menagerie mistakes Jaune as being the one that ignored their request for a visit. In chapter 32, thanks to Jaune working willingly as a subordinate to a Faunus nurse at Beacon, the Kuo Kuana Express theorizes that it misjudged Jaune and that it was Atlas' influence that made him act "racist" previously (technically true, in that Atlas never let Jaune even know about that proposed Menagerie visit).
• MacGuffin Super-Person: The main reason that Jaune is a Doom Magnet. Everyone wants his ability to bring back the dead and there are people willing to do terrible things to get him whether out of desperation or pure selfishness.
• Moral Myopia:
  • The people of Ansel decry Jaune as no better than a murderer for not reviving their loved ones, then straight up kill his mother in their mob mentality without care.
  • Shorly after the disastrous expedition to Vacuo, Vale's media post stories claiming Atlas is at fault because they couldn't protect Jaune properly. Jaune bitterly notes that the entire reason he's even in Atlas to begin with is that Vale couldn't protect him from literally anyone - even a random crazed woman was able to get inside his house to threaten to kill his sister.
  • Parts of Atlas accuse Jaune of prioritizing the rich after he heals SDC victims despite the fact that he’s been working for months with no day off even during his birthday. When Jaune points this out they twist his words to make him look lazy and entitled due to the money he receives; the same money they offered him for his services.
  • The Kuo Kuana Express condemns Atlas as racist when they subdue a Faunus reporter outside the hospital Jaune is staying at, which ignores the key fact that the reporter was rushing at the person they were protecting in the first place. This is without factoring in whether or not they're aware that the White Fang attempted to assassinate him. Additionally, in the process, they completely ignore Jaune's interview detailing his mental health struggles, continuing to paint him as a racist instead.
  • The citizens of Atlas eventually start saying that Jaune is a waste of resources, demonize his character at every turn, and even say to his face en masse that they don't want him in Atlas. When he finally gives them what they want and leaves, the same citizens are furious at his "ungratefulness" and declare that he needs to be "held accountable" for those who die after he's gone, with a petition to criminally charge him reaching 250,000 signatures. A particular group goes so far as to claim that Atlas "created" him and, among other things, bombs a hospital and tries to kill his family to force him back.
  • Weiss makes it clear to Jaune early on that their relationship is meant to be a partnership and that she's the first person he should trust with her problems. She proceeds to forcefully make all of his decisions, blame him for every disagreement, effectively pressgang him into a marriage without getting his opinion, and then go behind his back to force him into the hospitals because she thinks she knows better than him.
• Mortality Phobia: A key theme of the story is how humanity’s innate fear of death is tested when someone appears with the capacity to resurrect the deceased. Those who want to ensure they and their loved ones are safe from death move to Ansel without regard for the strain on its economic or logistical capacity, and the population boom leads to an increase in fatal accidents; people still suffering bereavement years after can struggle to accept that this power has a limit and rationalize that Jaune isn’t even trying or doesn’t care for their loved ones, and having Jaune available means people are starting to disregard the frailty of their lives along with ignoring that he’s just human himself and not a bottomless well of resurrective power.
• Morton's Fork: The second that Sienna Khan has Menagerie's power, she begins causing as much global chaos as she possibly can by backing various Kingdoms into situations where either outcome sucks for them. First, she asks Mistral to take in the Faunus refugees from Atlas, meaning Mistral can either implicitly acknowledge her power by taking them or look like they're siding with Atlas by not doing so. Then, she tells Vale she's sending a diplomat for the Vytal Festival - the Kingdom can't legally refuse beyond arresting the diplomat as soon as they arrive (so she's sending someone with no record), but as soon as Vale hosts them, Atlas will turn against them.
  • The choice of what Kingdom Jaune might call his home is eventually revealed to be this, since his mere presence would be enough to exacerbate any existing problems in any nation he settled down in. With Atlas already fractured and ungrateful and Menagerie openly hostile, the choices are apparently down to Mistral with its crime families, Vacuo with its human traffickers, or Vale and its dearth of security. Jaune attempts to Take a Third Option by faking his own death and dropping off the radar- and in doing so, trades in an entitled public and insufficient safeguards for the Queen of the Grimm and ZERO safeguards beyond Can't Kill You, Still Need You.
• Never My Fault: This is a Weiss with even less real maturity than she had at the start of the series in canon. She's seen what's become of her parents' marriage — her mother becoming a useless doormat who doesn't have the authority or the willpower to stand up for herself or her children — and is determined not to have her relationship turn out the same way. Unfortunately, her idea of this is to overcompensate in the other direction and refuse to concede anything about her own behavior, even when she's the one at fault, because she conflates admitting fault at all with letting the other person walk over her. Even the one time she does apologize for something - after both her team and Pyrrha lay into her for it - she never actually apologizes for what she did, only for not explaining herself better.
• Nerves of Steel: Downplayed, but Sleet shows some remarkable calm in the face of the Crown appearing to threaten his life. Jaune notes that he clearly is scared, but he puts on a brave face and even manages to make some joking remarks during and immediately after the event.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ironwood and the Arc-Ops immediately get Jaune out of Vacuo when he's attacked by the Crown, meaning they don't stay long enough to find out who's responsible. As a result of this, Gillian Asturias, one of the masterminds of the attack, is able to play on the public's outrage to lawfully insert herself into power, giving Jax an in into the government; by chapter 33, she's legally gotten Carmine out of Atlas custody, meaning she also now has her top ally back.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Because Ghira and Kali agree that Blake deserves to be punished for her actions and accept a deal with Atlas, the White Fang (or as revealed in the final chapter, Adam Taurus and the Albain brothers) has them murdered in a house fire.
• Not Hyperbole: Jaune is noted multiple times as the literal most famous man on the planet by different people. His arrival at Atlas was heralded by fireworks and crowds.
• Not So Above It All:
  • When Jaune takes part in a talk show host's hot sauce blind taste challenge, he notes afterwards that General Ironwood of all people has the show's top score.
  • After an influencer dies trying to live-stream the trip to Beacon, Ozpin summarizes the possible choice to let him stay dead as "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". When Mercury later calls potential accusations of favoritism towards Beacon if they replace Atlas's teams with more of them own "dumb", Ozpin chuckles and says he won't disagree.
• Odd Friendship: Jaune ends up gravitating towards Mercury of all people, as they both are deeply cynical, misanthropic, and hung-up about their Semblances. It's partially manipulation on Mercury's end (since he's working for Cinder), but his later behavior suggests that he does genuinely like him, as he's rather defensive of him towards Cinder and Emerald on a consistent basis.
• Oh, Crap!: Richard seems to begin to realize the giant mistake he's made when Jaune hands him his citizenship card on-air and tells him (and Atlas as a collective) to fuck off.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: After Jaune's interview makes the news around the world, Weiss praises him... for skillfully playing the PR game and putting his critics on the back-foot, only expressing a little apprehension that his "claims" about his mental health could have consequences later. When he clarifies that they weren't "claims", they were (most of) his actual deepest feelings, she clams up in mortification at having misread the situation so badly.
• Overpopulation Crisis: Ansel faces this due to the influx of refugees. The town faces inflation, lack of space and resources, and the people showing up tend to be those who are dying, leading to massive resource strain.
• Parents as People:
  • Nicholas and Juniper are both good parents trying their best in a bad situation, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily successful. Nicholas ends up blaming both himself and Juniper for Jaune's hero complex, as they tried to go the soft route with his new power and it backfired; this is why he tries to go the tough route, as harsh as it is for Jaune to hear.
  • Ghira and Kali really did try their best to rein in Blake and ensure she grew up in a good environment, but there was only so much they could do against Sienna and Adam's grooming behavior and radicalization. When she eventually ran away, they did try to find her, but the danger involved in going against the White Fang made them think the best way to keep her safe was to wait for her to come to her senses and return home, which left her ripe for Adam's manipulations. As much as Jaune hates Blake, he ends up feeling bad for them, as they truly do seem like good people who had no idea how to solve such a big problem and are clearly overcome with grief for what she did to him.
• Parting-Words Regret: As Jaune decides to fake his death, his attempt at averting Never Got to Say Goodbye with Weiss turns into this as the two argue one last time since Weiss puts more focus on the Vytal Festival Tournament over an hour with Jaune, but at the very least, he was able to squeeze in one last "I love you" to soften the blow.
• Pent-Up Power Peril: When Jaune takes a break from reviving people for the first time in two years, he finds himself suffering an unprecedented problem: his Aura has been stressed so much and so constantly that it will not stop regenerating, even when devices read his Aura at greater than 100% capacity, something that none of the experts have seen before. Having so much Aura stored affects his mood in a way that he compares to a sugar rush, and when he does use his Semblance again, the overflowing power can't be controlled and releases all at once, causing an explosion of energy. Nobody has any idea what the consequences might be in the long term, but Jaune's first dreadful thought is that even if everyone suddenly decides to leave him be, he might not physically be able to stop working at the hospitals for his own safety.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Despite Weiss’ increasingly stubborn and controlling personality, she actually forgives Blake when the two are put in a team together despite Blake being involved with Adam killing her.
  • When Blake's parents are killed, all of the Beacon staff are informed that Team RWBY will not be attending lessons that day and are told not to ask why, giving them the chance to help their teammate grieve. Even Jaune can't help but feel bad for the situation and encourages Weiss to stay with Blake.
  • Jacques Schnee, of all people, agrees to house and protect Jaune's family when the situation in Atlas starts to get out of control, and he even helps General Ironwood split his money across several banks outside of Atlas in case the Kingdom tries to freeze his accounts. Jaune notes that there's probably a selfish element to it, but as far as Jacques knows his relationship with Weiss is fine and he wouldn't need to trap him or further improve their relationship.
• Poor Communication Kills: Inverted, as the problem is too much communication. Weiss tries to lay down some of her ground rules for her and Jaune's relationship after their first fight, but she lays out so many basic expectations (like "don't treat me like a trophy") that it insinuates that she doesn't trust Jaune to be a good person without strict instructions. She says that she's just trying to be open about her hopes for the relationship, but in the process she makes it sound like a business arrangement that she doesn't trust him to follow without being told everything he has to do.
• The Power of Apathy: Jaune by chapter 14 just starts ignoring the public, the media, and their opinions because they will always be negative. He greenlights Winter as a mentor because people are already claiming favoritism with the Schnee, so why should he care?
• Pragmatic Hero: Dr. White is a man of medicine, but he's also the first person to realize that Jaune simply can't save everyone, even if he wants to/theoretically can — if Jaune works too hard, he'll drive himself insane. He manages to convince Jaune to not resurrect the elderly on the grounds that they're just going to die again shortly after they come back, and it's shown that he's trying to convince him to not resurrect patients with non-pathogen illnesses like cancer that his Semblance can't fix for similar reasons.
• Rage Breaking Point: ALL of Chapter 28 finally does Jaune in. A scandal occurs when Jaune's scroll is hacked, revealing his conversations between him and Weiss, which Jaune predictably does not react well to. Then Ironwood is practically forced to send Jaune to an interview to clear up misinterpretations, but instead the two interviewers antagonize him and twist his words at every turn with the crowd agreeing. This causes Jaune to reach his breaking point, in which he throws away his citizenship card on camera, go into detail of how much aura he uses up to bring back how many people each day, week, and year, with statistics included, for what he sees as an ungrateful nation, and finally tells the interviewers (directly) and all of Atlas (indirectly) to screw off.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: The chaos in Ansel causes so many unexpected deaths that the annual death rate is even worse than the entire Kingdom of Atlas, especially with Jaune bringing some people back who then die again and only make the numbers even worse. Ironwood says that if you look at only the village's death rate, you'd think that it was in the throes of a deadly plague.
  Ironwood: In Atlas, the mortality rate is predicted to be around eight people per one thousand. That's annually. Here, it's closer to three hundred people per thousand, and not even for a full year - you muddy the stats, Jaune, meaning that some of the deaths come back to die again and make them even more complicated. That is ridiculous. It should be impossible.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Dr. White, as Ansel's only doctor, works to protect the Arc family from the mob of neighbors and test Jaune's powers in a safe environment, always making sure that he isn't overexerting himself and guiding him through the weight of his new responsibility.
  • Ozpin and Glynda are shown to be very apprehensive about pushing their interests on Jaune, refuse to ignore that he's a human being who never asked for the situation he's in, and make sure his own desires and wellness come first. Contrasting is Vale's ambassador in the same meeting, who clearly doesn't like trying to manipulate an unfortunate teenager for political reasons, but does it anyway and is much less cautious about how he goes about it.
  • Ironwood does even better than them, simply by being nothing but completely honest about Jaune's situation, what Atlas wants, and how they're prepared to repay him. While he is honest that Jaune's worth to Atlas begins and ends at his Semblance, he eases Jaune into the idea step by step rather than drop everything at once, and makes it clear that while Atlas has many benefits, Jaune needs to focus on the benefits to him rather than others for once. It works, and Jaune heads to Atlas. As time goes on, though Ironwood's leadership strategies do have their faults, he does his best to learn from them and never stops looking out for Jaune's well-being and family, even when his interests and Atlas's begin to conflict.
• Reed Richards Is Useless:
  • Jaune is a type 8. He does want to help people as much as possible, but he has a limit to how many resurrections he can handle at a time. This is seen best in chapter 5, where he pushes past his limits to resurrect one last child for the event and he collapses from the strain. Clover knows that Jaune nearly killing himself made a difference to one single child/family and there were still more families hoping for his help that will not receive it because Jaune genuinely can't give anymore. His Semblance is renewable but limited and there will always be people who never receive his help because of that.
  • There’s also the issue of physical and emotional burnout, which the Atlas authorities develop means to work with. By chapter nine, it’s firmly determined that he can revive eighteen people before his Aura falls to 10%; his reserves will replenish, allowing for another eighteen people that same day so long as he doesn’t strain it any further, enabling him to regularly do thirty-six as a daily average.
  • Jaune himself lampshades that if his visit to Vacuo was a week and he worked every day, it wouldn't actually make much difference to the dead and dying.
• The Reveal: Watts is revealed to be the one who hacked Jaune and Weiss's scroll conversations and leaked them to Atlas, which is what draws Jaune to Beacon.
• Revenge Before Reason: Adam and Blake try to carry out an operation at the Vytal Festival to assassinate Jaune to send a message to Atlas and remove an annoying factor that had undone a White Fang attack on the Schnee Manor in the past. Unfortunately, the two run into Weiss, and Adam in a rage kills her instead as vengeance for what her family has done to him and his people. This rumbles the whole mission before it can get set up properly, gets Blake captured while Adam flees pursued by the authorities, and didn't even actually accomplish anything since Jaune is right there to fix it anyway, the exact reason they were supposed to target him in the first place.
• Sadistic Choice: The first time Jaune gets to actually choose whether or not to save someone, both options are bad. If he saves a man who got himself killed basically trying to trespass onto Beacon to save his daughter, then it encourages others to replicate that behavior and it won't even save his (dead for longer than 4 hours) daughter anyway, so it will have been pointless; plus, letting the guy die means that others won't get themselves killed in the same way. Unfortunately, the other option is to just let him die knowing full well that there was nothing stopping him from reviving him. He ends up agreeing to do it, and the result is exactly as expected: the man is arrested for trespassing, his daughter is still dead, and at least three other people are caught in the forest trying to get to Beacon. Later on, a similar situation happens with someone who live-streamed the journey in an attempt to get famous; this time Jaune lets him die and it's explicitly not a difficult choice.
• Samaritan Syndrome: Jaune hits this in Ansel, feeling personally responsible for every death he doesn't undo. His father forcefully breaks him of this mindset when Jaune blames himself for falling into a coma. By chapter 14, Jaune has completely grown out of this mindset and seems to sincerely start hating the people he helps, and by the time he goes to Vale, the thought of going to the hospital anymore makes him furious.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Lampshaded. Jaune asks Ironwood if they are conversing about Blake Belladonna's fate because she is the daughter of powerful people. Ironwood is eventually forced to admit that if it were anyone else, there would be no discussion happening.
• Serious Business: Anything involving Jaune is treated with incredible importance by anyone outside his family. Some things, like where he chooses to live or his safety, make sense, others are ridiculous.
  • When he visits a comic shop, the other customers are starstruck, the owner tries to let him have his order for free, and everyone present asks for an autograph when a little boy breaks the ice. The owner's autograph is noted to be on a particularly rare, valuable comic which highlights how much he views Jaune's signature as being worth.
  • When he hits it off with Weiss, it becomes front-page news.
  • Jaune simply attending a Schnee party/hitting it off with Weiss is treated like he threw his support behind the worse practices by some groups, but it is noted this is a minority viewpoint.
• Shaming the Mob: Nicholas and Tommen try to get the swarm of bereaved villagers outside the Arc home to stand down by calling them out for terrifying an innocent family and trampling a woman to death. It falls on deaf ears. Threats of deadly force barely work either, as death has suddenly become cheap. The only thing that works to disperse the mob is giving them what they want, by having Jaune put to work in at least an organized fashion.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • After Jaune has dinner with Weiss at her birthday party, Jaune comes home to see his parents absolutely excited about his interactions, said interactions having made international news in ninety minutes with seventeen thousand likes. And that was just one website. Further ramped up with the fact that almost every article talks about how cute Jaune and Weiss are together. Jacques is also pleased to have had Weiss and Jaune hit it off so well, but for the more venal reason of securing the kind of influence having such a link to Jaune would get him.
  • Less obviously, Elm becomes convinced over the course of events that Weiss is bad for Jaune due to the pedestal she places him on and her tendency to be controlling, but approves of his increasing closeness with Pyrrha. After Pyrrha and Jaune kiss in the heat of a moment of stress and venting, Elm does very little to hide from Jaune that he should pursue her instead of Weiss.
  • Cinder clearly favors Pyrrha over Weiss for Jaune, and even pushes the former to get more proactive with her feelings and consider starting what amounts to an emotional affair. Of course, Cinder has an ulterior motive — she has little to no personal care for any of the involved parties, it's just that Jaune's relationship with Weiss is one of the main factors keeping him from running away from it all, and she wants them driven apart so he'll be more receptive to being smuggled off the grid.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The woman who broke into the Arc house and threatened to kill Amber is never even named, but the trauma she inflicts on both Amber and the Arc family as a whole is a big part of why they all eventually move to Atlas. That anecdote is also why Ozpin is trying to recruit him for Beacon as soon as possible. For if a random grieving mother is willing to go that far for Jaune's Semblance, even when it won't work anymore, then there's no way Salem, a mother having grieved for thousands of years, won't be willing to do the same.
• Spiritual Antithesis: To Null, by the same author. In Null, Jaune is made a fugitive after being kidnapped by Atlas's government when he unlocks a Semblance that is great for killing. In Raise, Jaune is hired by Atlas and becomes a super celebrity when he unlocks a power that can raise the dead. Both stories have Nicholas Arc die very early: In Null, this is part of Jaune's Start of Darkness, in Raise, it is part of Jaune gaining fame (especially because here, it doesn't stick). Both stories start with Jaune's Semblance causing others to ruin his life and ruin his family's lives. In Null, Jaune suffers mostly away from the public eye and spends most of his time away from civilization, here he can't escape people. In Null, the potential of Jaune's Semblance causes Ozpin to covet it to the point of obsessive madness, whereas in Raise, the potential of Jaune's Semblance induces the same reaction in Remnant's other resident immortal manipulator. And their endings differ as well, even though they both involve Jaune faking his death: in Null, Ironwood helps fake his death in order to protect his sisters, while the two work together alongside Neo to hunt down the remnants of the conspiracy that ruined the Arc family's life, all while knowing he can never live a normal life again. In Raise, it is Salem's faction who helps fake Jaune's death, keeping him on retainer should his Semblance evolve to the point it can resurrect Salem's daughters, all while Jaune is able to live a happy life of anonymity with his lover Pyrrha and their daughter.
• Stopped Caring: Jaune hits this in chapter 14. While he has a lot of bottled-up emotions still, he has internalized that he can't help everyone, people are stupid and entitled, and that the public will always find a way to complain. He okays Winter as a tutor because he doesn't care that it would further the claims of favoritism.
• Stress Vomit: Jaune's first question after waking up from a multi-day coma is how many people died while he was out. When he's told that it's almost a hundred, his panic and guilt boil over, right over the side of his hospital bed.
• Super Power Lottery: Jaune's Semblance is literally miraculous, and a Central Theme is how Jaune is valued for his power.
• Take That!: The beginning author’s note for chapter 5 has Coeur say that he hated Ironwood’s Face–Heel Turn in canon, calling him “one of the worst villains ever” and having “paper-thin motivation”.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • A small child asks for Jaune's autograph and calls him a superhero. It makes Jaune the happiest he has been in months.
  • Later on, after a series of traumatic events in Vacuo and Mistral, Ironwood has Jaune turned into essentially a first responder, having him on the scene for things like bank robberies and fires. Getting the chance to save actual victims instead of idiots is the first time Jaune shows comfort with his job.
• Too Dumb to Live: After being blasted in the media for reviving murdered SDC executives and leaving the less-rich at the hospital to die, Jaune starts asking for the cause of death for all his patients. This only confirms to him that most of the deaths coming for his help were easily preventable, the result of their or their guardians' negligence, and he wouldn't have to waste his power on them if they didn't feel entitled to him cleaning up their stupid mistakes.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Jaune maintains a good heart throughout the fic, but the years of being confronted with the greed and apathy of the public leave him intensely jaded. As time goes on, he goes from believing that it was only right for him to try to save as many lives as he could to openly stating to Weiss that he hates everything about his hospital work, and even edging on Blaming the Victim- or the victim’s parents- behind their backs.
• Toxic Friend Influence: An odd example with Mercury. He's an asshole, probably some flavor of sociopath, and he has no filter. A little bit of poison — akin to a stiff drink — gives Jaune the kind of catharsis he's been desperate for for years, finally having someone who will say out loud and agree with all the spiteful things he's had to keep bottled up. That alone is likely setting Jaune up to burn bridges (or at least ignite something that was already a fire risk) as the friendship rubs off on him, but the reality is that Mercury's only interacting at all as an excuse to manipulate him into leaving Beacon and meeting Salem.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Jaune activates his Semblance when he panics and goes into denial at the deaths he has seen, especially when his father is killed protecting him.
• Ungrateful Bastard: The kingdom of Atlas as a whole. While initially enamored with Jaune, they eventually expect him to work harder while at the same time disparaging him as a wasteful investment not worth the money he's paid despite their reliance on his abilities. Jaune calls them out on it in chapter 28, right before he renounces his citizenship and tells them to go fuck themselves.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Ironwood puts Jaune through a rigorous hospital rotation in an attempt to save lives and protect his reputation, but in the process he overworks Jaune so much that his Aura starts going haywire, including charging above 100% and being weakened to the point of Gillian calling it "soup with too much water".
• Villain Has a Point: The worse part about Mercury's rant that Jaune could solve his problem by faking his death and leaving Remnant behind isn't that he's doing it on behalf of Cinder, it's that he has a valid point on his face; Jaune's situation can't really get any worse than it is now, and continuing to let everyone else control his fate won't change anything unless Jaune finally takes control of his life. Notably, Mercury compares it to his own backstory of escaping his abusive father after losing his legs, and while he leaves out Cinder and Emerald recruiting him, he never outright lies.
• Vocal Minority:invoked After Jaune moves to Atlas, it is made clear that the constant presence of crazy, desperate people was due to Ansel's police force being too small to properly control the relative minority of violent people. Most people who meet Jaune are primarily starstruck. This is also shown later when Jaune is assumed to be affiliated with the Schnee Dust Company. A Faunus/Faunus sympathizer throws a rock at him and this extreme opinion is considered rare.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 22: while Blake and Adam are attempting to assassinate Jaune, they stumble across Weiss instead, and Adam furiously kills her. In the resulting chaos, Blake is captured, Adam escapes, and Jaune is further traumatized from having to revive his dead girlfriend.
  • Chapter 34: Weiss effectively ruins Jaune's life in Vale by exposing his Aura problems to the public, forcing him back to the hospitals against his will and finalizing the cracks in their relationship. Meanwhile, Cinder and her team make contact with him for the first time and confirm Ozpin's theory that Salem wants Jaune to resurrect her dead daughters.
  • Chapter 36: Another citizen dies trying to trespass into Beacon by crossing the Emerald Forest, this time live-streaming it in an attempt to get famous. For the first time ever (and knowing that the world will know about his decision), Jaune makes the conscious decision to let someone stay dead, and tells Ozpin that if anyone gives him shit for it, to make it clear that it was Jaune's decision alone.
  • Chapter 49: As tensions between Menagerie and Atlas begin to escalate into outright war, Jaune begins to seriously consider using Cinder's team and Emerald's Semblance to fake his death and hide from the world entirely. Though he mentions he won't actually do anything unless Atlas's forces are recalled home, the chapter ends with General Ironwood and Elm receiving their recall orders.
• Wham Line:
  • In chapter 19, Ozpin finally admits why he truly wants Jaune to come to Beacon: he's certain that Salem is going to make a move for him soon.
    Ozpin: I hear tell a desperate mother attempted to kidnap his sister and threaten to kill her unless Jaune brought back her dead child.
    Ironwood: He's limited to four hours. It would never work.
    Ozpin: That desperate, grieving woman did not care to believe it. Do you think she will be any different?
  • In chapter 47, the newspaper headlines in the opening cover the typical material they cover - patriotism for Atlas, Jaune for Vale, etc. - except for the Kuo Kuana Express, which reports out of complete nowhere that Ghira and Kali have been killed by a house fire.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Glynda gives one to the Vale Ambassador, Richard Wycliffe when the latter pointing out the strains of Ansel's growing population on the town and trying to manipulate Jaune to come into Vale sends the poor kid into a panic attack.
  • Both Mistral's doctor and Elm give Ironwood very subtle lectures after Jaune passes out, with neither of them outright criticizing him due to his position but making it clear that he went about "protecting" Jaune in every wrong way possible. Ironwood concedes their points and does his best to change his strategy going further.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Invoked, Deconstructed, and Defied. People believe that they are entitled to Jaune's help and that any refusal or inability for him to do so is tantamount to murder. Jaune himself internalizes this, but it is clear if he actually tried as hard as was asked of him or was necessary to make a true difference, he would die and he is already burning out physically and emotionally at his current pace. Furthermore, the people of Ansel and beyond are destroying the town and developing a terrible mob mentality to get access to Jaune, which has terrorized the Arc family. Finally, Nicholas Arc makes it clear to Jaune that literally no one has any right to his help, and those that act like it deserve it least.
• The World Is Not Ready: Jaune directly says this about his semblance in chapter 58, after everything that has fallen apart because of it, he's probably right.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: In Vacuo, the Crown attempts to kidnap Jaune quietly in the night and then the next day in a public attack. Both attempts fail, prompting Atlas to bring Jaune home early to get him away from the danger. Though they don't manage to capture their target, the nation soon descends into civil unrest because the government's humiliating failure to ensure Jaune's safety has made the people lose what little faith in it they had. As seen in newspaper headlines, Gillian Asturias (secretly one of the people who masterminded the attack in the first place) is able to leverage that political turmoil to lawfully bring down the sitting government and place herself highly in its replacement, making great progress in the Crown's original goal of installing themselves as new monarchs in Vacuo.
• You Know I'm Black, Right?: Weiss pulls a variant. When Jaune starts agreeing with the articles that criticize him, she points out how those same articles think the worst of her and asks if Jaune agrees with that. This is done not to show Weiss was offended but to stop Jaune's self-deprecation.