Title: Null
Author: Coeur Al'Aran
Rating: M
Genre: Adventure/Drama
Status: In-Progress
Library Category:
Pairings:
Summary: A Semblance so powerful Kingdoms will kill to acquire it. A family stolen away to try and replicate its effects. A conspiracy that threatens to tear Atlas in two. A young man who wants his sisters back, and a General caught between doing the right thing and his duty. Will Jaune manage to rescue his family, and can James Ironwood prevent him falling to darkness in the process?
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13492440/1/Null

For those who don't know him, Coeur Al'Aran is famous in the Rwby fandom because of his prolific writing of better than average fanfictions, such as Forged Destiny, Not This Time Fate, In the Kingdom's Service... He also is a professional writer. His fics do have some flaws but almost all of them are 3.5 or above. I recommend reading all of his stories for the Rwby fans. Although, it is not necessary to watch the Rwby canon in order to enjoy his fanfictions.

In the world of Rwby, Grimms (monsters created by the Witch Salem) populate most of Earth and humanity only lives in the few land left, which is called Remnant. Ordinary people cannot kill them and they regularly attack humanity in order to wipe it out from the Earth. The heroes with the ability to kill those monsters are called Hunstmen. Those Hunstmen are people who have their Aura unlocked, which is an energy field around the body stronger than most armors, that allows Hunstmen to survive what would kill anybody else. Some Hunstmen also unlock a Semblance, which is a power that varies depending on the soul of the user. Hunstmen can survive bullets and for those who turn criminal, they cannot be killed by ordinary people or soldiers.

Jaune Arc, son of a hunstman, has his aura unlocked. Unfortunately, he unlocks a Semblance whose ability is to disable any other Semblance or Aura, meaning he can kill any Hunstmen if he simply shoots them. Because of this power, he gets abducted by the Atlas weapon manufacturers, who decide to run experiments on him and his family with the hopes of replicating his power for their own ends. After countless experiments and torture, the White Fang, a terrorist organization that fights against racism, attack the Atlas weapon manufacturer (Atlas is responsible for systemic racism against the Faunus race), and liberate him by coincidence. Jaune decides to join them in order to save his family, as he knows very well what it is like to be treated as if he wasn't a person.

Each protagonist has well-thought of reasons for acting the way they do. Even the "nazis" side gets explanation for their actions with ethics (as in, the philosophical subject) involved, as from their point of view it is only a small sacrifice to pay considering the possible benefits. The Faunus terrorists make sense too, as they couldn't find any way to change things without violence.

An interesting uptake on ethics, politics, and justice. A solid 5/5.

 

This was one of his better fics I think precisely because it was darker. I think he does that better than comedy. I might go so far as to say it was my favorite of his fics.

About the only thing I was disappointed in was

Spoiler: spoiler

He didn't follow through with a couple of the truly dark aspects such as with the Ruby arc. Not even her death perse but even permanent repercussions. I would have rather seen him embrace the nature of the fic 100% as opposed to 95%

That was the only truly major mis-step on his part. Everything else was very solid. I liked the conflicted morality. I liked the unique relationship with Adam and Jaune (wish we had gotten more.) Very solid fic. One of the better ones in the RWBY fandom.

I suspect most of his fans wont consider it his best. But I do. And he kept the length under control too.

Id give it a 4/5

 

Personally my favourite was In The Kingdom's Service. I like Ruby far too much to want to see her hurt, so I honestly didn't care about the last-second save. I find

Spoiler

Matthew Field's twisted views and how he would even justify genocide for the long-term sake of humanity.

very realistic because, according to historians, that's the kind of things that could have happened had the Nazis won the war.

 

Unlike both of you, I disliked this fic. Spoilers below, although I've tried to keep it semi-vague.

I enjoy Coeur's work in general - he publishes frequently, at a decent quality, and covering a range of stories/storylines, even if he does tend to focus on Jaune (not something I have a problem with). His stories also tend to have a bit of meat to them, rather than being a canon-rehash but also Ruby now has a twin.

The direct antagonists here didn't view themselves as the bad-guys, Atlas were sort of backed into a corner, and Oz following along also made this feel like a much more serious story than the majority of RWBY fics.

However, I dropped it midway through, and didn't pick it back up until it was finished. The antagonists were too entrenched, had too much power, and their view that they were the good guys was nearly there - they could have paid a stupid amount of money, rather than resorting to kidnapping at the first chance (and restructured all the testing, but that could almost certainly have been done above-board), and had the public's blessing. In fact, I think that's why Coeur threw in the statements from the soldiers - to make them obviously evil.

And I just don't like reading through "Everything gets shit, the bad-guys win again, next chapter next week". I was coming away from the story having just not enjoyed the chapter, so I put reading it on pause. I have no desire to re-read the story now that it's finished, either, as finishing it just had each chapter with more and more crap-sack added on top.


All that said, I like Coeur's other work, and this isn't any worse than them. I couldn't give it a 5, but it's not actually bad, just not for me, so I'll settle on 4/5

 

If the author didn't put those statements to make them sound evil, many people would have screeched like banchees that he is a nazi.

Spoiler

The same kind of reasonings used by Matthew Fields to exterminate the faunus was used by the Nazis Jews or sterilize those they deemed useless for the good of Germany

I study history and specialize in the history of eugenics.
It is true that, by going public Atlas could have gotten popular support using propaganda much like it happened in history. However, it would take years of propaganda before it would get accepted by most people and careful deconstructing of moral value.

In history, darwinism destroyed the traditional christian values by weakening to the extreme christian values (since darwinism, the science not the eugenics part, disproved the genesis and the fixed species theory etc etc) and since no alternative was there, social darwinism took the "moral vacuum".

Also, the Nazi Party was seen as a saviour because "they" (Hjalmar Schacht) solved the problem of hyperinflation and mass unemployment, which gave credence to anything they said regardless of the content.

What could the Atlas government boast about to get that much support? Who is going to invade and destroy them? And in fact,

Spoiler

exterminating the Faunus who are the majority of dust mines workers would be extremely stupid because who the hell would replace them and who the hell exterminates his own workforce... But again the Holocaust wasn't rational to begin with.

 

If Couer hadn't added the below, then there would be very little reason for Chivalric to be run as a black ops group - exterminating the grimm through (even badly compensated) human experimentation wouldn't be something thought of poorly.

Spoiler

Soldier suggesting raping Jaune's sister, and genociding faunus

So having those added sort of feels like they were stapled in so that CA are very obviously the bad guys.

However, civilization on Remnant is under constant, actual, threat from the grimm. So much so that child soldiers are not only normal, but celebrities. Having a company come out with "We're doing experimentation on human and faunus cells, to see if we can replicate semblances to make our super soldiers even more super. So far, it's been showing success. If you have a cool semblance, let us know, and you too can be part of this" seems like it would be met with cheers, applause, and pretty much every huntsman on Remnant queueing up to donate bone marrow.

 

I very much doubt it. First, how much power would that put in this company's hands? Would the other kingdoms all go "Yeah, just make up stuff that means you can easily conquer us all. Go ahead."? No way in hell, it would mean escalating tensions until war happens.

Huntsmen would become obsolete if Chivalric Arms had their way. There is no way most hunstmen would do something so against their own interests. Most Huntsmen don't do it to protect people but for glory and money exactly like in medecine school. Most people are here for the social status and money, saving people only comes second.

How many suicides would be prevented by good economic policies that diminish unemployment? Each 1% of unemployment kills roughly 3000 people a year by suicide in Japan if I remember the numbers right. It's the same in all countries and unemployment and suicide go hand in hand.
I don't see anyone rushing to economics degree hoping to save people. A good economist will save many more people than a single physician. An agricultural engineer, inventing new ways to produce food for cheaper costs, saves magnitudes more lives than a physician. It's paid 4 times less, so I don't see many people rushing to do that.

To put the nail in the coffin, according to Nazi ideology Jews weren't human beings but a disease. Did it stop them from raping Jewish women and children? Not at all.

Why would this researcher care about raping someone who cannot fight back and which isn't even considered a person? Do I need to add the countless human experiments done by Nazi (and Japanese) physicians on unwilling subjects? Do you think those physicians didn't rape any of their subjects? No way.

To sum it up, what you suggest goes deeply against human nature.

 

What the fuck dude

 

To be certain, this fic has a certain quality to it that is present in all of the author’s works: it’s readable, and the plot follows a somewhat unique direction. Not exactly high bars to clear, but for this fandom it stands out.

As someone who’s read this whole fic, I’ll throw in a warning that it contains extremely dark, fucked up scenes. This is by far the darkest RWBY fic this guy has written, and may even be a contender for that title in the whole fandom.

Minor Spoilers Below.

As a previous comment said, one of the obvious flaws in this fic was the fact that the bad guys kept winning, and were perhaps way too overpowered. Additionally, some of the good guys make evil choices due to the fucked up nature of this version of Remnant. Couple these facts with the details of the darker content and you get a truly depressing story. I had to embrace my masochistic side (hard gained from plowing through garbage recs from discord) to make it through.

For that, though it’s subjective, I’ll give this a 2/5.