Title: The Glass Menagerie
Author: Person With Many Aliases
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Humour
Status: WIP
Fandom: RWBY
Summary: Tempered by fire, and as beautiful as crystal, but in the end, their shape is still that of an animal. Velvet Scarlatina's quest to survive the outside world, control the biggest bunch of miscreants and psychotics Vale has ever seen, become a mighty warrior and huntress, and maybe, just maybe, even graduate from school.
Link: FF.net

Originally recc'd by kellanyed in the RWBY fanfic thread.

The Glass Menagerie is a refreshing RWBY fanfic featuring Velvet as the main character. An orphan, she gets a scholarship to Beacon for her genius skill in weapons design. Before even stepping foot into her new school, she gets pulled into a crazy, Vale wrecking sequence of events with three insane OCs who will form her future Beacon team.

The first arc is the real highlight of this story. It's fun, fast paced and high energy. It introduces/explores each of the four OCs as the slightly insane characters they all are and does a good job of bringing them together begrudgingly. Velvet makes a protagonist - as the shy, but also only sane person involved and how she gets reluctantly pulled into the plot, going through her own character development as we progress. Stylistically reminds me of those comedy/action Hollywood films that see a bunch of teenagers stumbling their way through some crazy big plot. The arc is really well structured, with a clear start and end and not being set in Beacon is pretty refreshing.

I think this story would really have benefited from having the first arc contained as its own story, with the second arc being a sequel as there is a pretty big contrast in atmosphere, plot style and concept between the two arcs.

The second arc has so far followed their journey through Beacon, and feels a lot more like a fanfic. It's still interesting, but seems to be a bit more focused on serious drama and character exploration.

Spoiler

I like the way that Zaffre is pretty much consistently portrayed as an arsehole. From her casual racism, bullying and general prickliness. It really makes Velvet seem that much more awesome for holding the respect/friendship of someone like that.

Arc 1 was a 4.5/5. Arc 2 has been a 3.5/5. Overall I'll average that at a, 4/5.

 

I couldn't get into this the first time I read it but I guess I'll try again.

---------- Post automerged at 17:00 ---------- Previous post was at 16:46 ----------

Is there another story out there called Glass Menagerie? This doesn't match up at all with what I read before.

 

I found this a couple of months ago and loved it. It is, hands down, the best story I have read from the RWBY fandom. It takes a while to get into, mostly because of the OC's, but don't be put off, they come into their own quickly.

The tone is darker than the web series, but it works. 5/5.

 

It's an excellent RWBY story. Naturally, it doesn't really mash with Velvet's character all that much, but seeing that this was written that all we knew of her was that she was getting bullied, well, that's not a bad thing.

Overall, I loved this. The turn of events, as the story progressed in classic adventure style, as Velvet met her new friends and allies one by one, got sucked into this adventure, it was just a blast to read. The OCs are distinctive, memorable and fun to read. It has been months since I've read this (forgot to post here) and I may have forgotten their names but I remember scenes from this story clearly and what their characters were like.

The friendship they build and the battles they fought together were great, memorable fun.

As Jarik said, though, the story changes a bit once they arrive in Beacon. It's not bad, mind you, just different and I agree that it would have benefited from being made into a separate, second story. Still, enjoyable and interesting so far.

4/5

 

Update

Zaffre's hatred for Jaune seems to start to make sense and finally causing some serious conflict within their own team.