The Writer Games
It can take decades to write a masterpiece, and years to plan it- so see what a couple of amateurs come up with in 15 minutes after a prompt. College Fool, Couer Al'Alran, and the Jaune story concepts that followed.
/
/
Coeur's Intro Note:
The prompt is a weird one because we know nothing of Summer or Raven, and this was also my example to CF on how to play the game, so the goal was to get all the different points of a story-line addressed. One of my problems with time travel fics is that people often just reveal straight away they are from the future - and everyone seems to accept it. Sometimes they will come up with a really week rationale like: "Oh I used a password only they knew" or something - as though hackers, espionage and such doesn't exist...
Instead I decided to throw two examples forward which look at how else you could take that. One with it being found out later, and one with Jaune selfishly choosing never to reveal it. It's never answered - and need it be? If you went back into time and took over another's body, would you reveal what happened, losing everything you have? I can't help but think we would try to make a life for ourselves, and one that we could live. And that's where I wanted to go with the Raven story.
It's selfish. But why should Jaune not be selfish?
/
/
College Fool's Prompt – "Taiyang Xiao Long is time-traveling Jaune Arc from the future."
/
/
Romance 7 - beats
Jaune x Summer
Jaune Arc travels to the past in an attempt to save the love of his life - Ruby Rose. However he instead ends up in a world he barely even recognizes, in a body not his own. With children... oh my God...
Beat 1 - Jaune travels into the past and wakes up in a new body. Things are different, there is a warm body beside him. He thinks it is Ruby and rolls over to snuggle her, falling asleep with her in his arms. It's not Ruby.
Beat 2 - Wake up the next day, Jaune is in an absolute panic, as he sees what looks like an older - and somewhat different Ruby bustling around the house. She kisses him goodbye as she heads on a mission, leaving him with his daughters. Jaune slowly comes to realise what is happening as he bounces his three year-old daughter Yang on his knee, as Ruby sleeps in a crib.
Beat 3 - Jaune Xiao-Long accepts that he needs to make the best of what is happening, and recounts everything he knows about Ruby and Yang's past, hoping he can improve it to give the woman he loves, and one of his best friends - a better chance at life. This is awkward however as Summer is not his girlfriend, and being intimate with her feels odd. Summer senses his nervousness, and thinks something is wrong with her - the relationship becomes strained.
Beat 4 - Summer heads on the mission of her death, and when Ruby starts crying and won't stop, he gets nervous. He calls Qrow and tells him to look after the kids, while he rushes to the area the mission was in. He arrives in time to save Summer's life, though he loses an arm for the effort. Summer and her team are able to get him back, while she rants at him for being so foolish. Jaune says he can't afford to lose her, she thinks he means romantically, kissing him. He means Ruby and Yang cant afford to lose her.
Beat 5 - Summer is at home more now, recovering and looking after the kids until Jaune is healthy enough to do so on his own - and has learned to be okay with one arm. The relationship is a little stronger now, but Jaune still feels awful for sleeping with her when he doesn't love her. He slowly begins to feel attracted to her however, as the shows her loving maternal side, Summer loves Ruby and Yang so much that he can't help but love her for that.
Beat 6 - Somehow Jaune's past as a traveller is revealed, he fails on basic knowledge - Summer can tell he is different, hell, he acts completely different from how Taiyang did! She is furious, believing herself played - and her husband, dead. In a rage she attacks him, but is stopped when Yang sees them, whispering "Mummy?" nervously as she seeks Summer looking like she is going to kill Taiyang. Summer flees, horrified with herself.
Beat 7 - Jaune hunts Summer down, finding her at the same place her grave is at in canon. She is contemplating throwing herself from the cliff. Jaune begs her not to, and after a long conversation and some emotional turnaround - involving Jaune telling her how he has come to love her, she relents. The two of them go home to raise a family together.
/
Alternative!
/
Jaune x Raven
1- Jaune goes back in time, finds himself in adult Taiyang. But it's worse, his daughters are at Beacon currently, and are even somewhat distant with him. They care for him, but push away his attempts to get close to them. Instead he decides to save them by taking down the White Fang, sparing them the agony from the WF and Cinder.
2- Jaune attacks a White Fang base, causing major casualities. He is more experienced, and efficient than his younger form - and Taiyang's body (and semblance - same as Yang's) making him a potent force. He is stopped by a black-haired masked woman, who fights him off with a nodachi. He is injured, but she lets him escape to his confusion.
3 - Yang and Ruby come to see him in hospital, berating him for getting injured. Fear of losing him has thawed their attitude a little, though it is still distant somewhat. Jaune makes excuses for himself, and when Ozpin tries to interrogate him - he simply says he is doing what he has to, and won't hear otherwise from Ozpin. Qrow comes to him afterwards, saying he too has been hunting the Fang, and that if Jaune wants help... Jaune takes him up on it, and the two dig deeper into the Fang - tangentially getting involved in the RWBY plot. I.e. he shows at the dock scene to hold off Roman. He cannot ever seem to get too far however, before the black-haired woman stops him.
4 - In one fight Qrow sees her and calls Raven by name, leading the woman to flee. Jaune pretends to recognise the name, and later finds out it was his first wife - and Yang's mother. He wonders if that is why she keeps letting him escape? He tries to dig deeper, hunting for her and drawing her out by attacking White Fang. Their fights become less serious, more taunts and showmanship.
She even goes so far as to invade his home one night and confront him. Jaune asks her why she is doing this, why she abandoned him and their daughter. She seems troubled, but won't answer.
Towards the end of this Arc the two sleep together once, both seeking comfort after the Breach incident, which Raven did not want to happen. It was Cinder's plan, she says.
5 - Troubles continue between the Fang/Cinder and the goodies - with Raven and Jaune's growing relationship becoming ever more strained by Raven's allegiance to the Fang. Despite that they try to keep it going in secret, small kisses - secret trysts. It's passionate and desperate, but weighed down by the uncertainty.
6 - A war erupts, with them on different sides. Jaune eventually comes across team RWBY fighting Raven, who is doing her best not to kill any of them - but is losing for that very effort. Jaune thinks that it looks like she WANTS to lose, dying so that she doesn't have to see a world where her daughter and husband are killed. He interrupts, defending Raven, to RWBY's horror.
He explains Raven is Yang's mother, and his first wife, and that he won't allow them to hurt her - she has surrendered, and is his prisoner. Yang won't have it, wanting to know why they were abandoned. Raven says she wanted to help the faunus, but the excuse doesn't please Yang - who in a rage tries to punch her with all her power. Jaune takes the blow, feeling it cause incredible damage to his ribcage. Yang and Ruby scream his name as his vision fades, and his pulse weakens.
7 - Story resolves as Jaune awakens ina hospital ICU - the war ended with a loss for Cinder's side. Raven surrendered and as a favour to him, Ozpin vouched for her as a double agent, granting her freedom. She is at his bedside, with Yang and Ruby. The family have a heart-to-heart chat, things aren't perfect - Yang and Raven are "getting on" but still rough. Jaune thinks it will all work out however, and smiles to himself as he considers that his second life really isn't all that bad.
Again, rough - would be more fleshed. I.e. more interaction between Jaune Xiao-Long and RWBY characters and team.
/
/
C.F.'s Impression:
Here's where the limitations of our game really come into play- Coeur is a lot better at writing within the timelimit than me, but you can see the limitations of not having time to explain yourself or think things through. Even though both of these would obviously get a lot more fleshed out in execution, there's big lingering question marks… like, 'where's the real Taiyang?', 'why don't the ladies seem to care?', and 'why is timetravel and body-swapping so irrelevant to the plot?' In both scenarios, Jaune ends up in a pre-established relationship. There are women who love Taiyang- and Jaune slides with no one the wiser.
Of the two, the Summer scenario is my favored- not least because it actually addresses the issue. Jaune's prior relationship to Ruby is a good starting hook with Summer and going along with the deception in hopes of giving Ruby a better life, while canonical Taiyang's 'recovering from grief' period offers an (unstated) rational for Summer excusing the character changes. She's been trying to heal a hurt man she was in love with, and now he's responding, and she likes what she sees. It's a good romantic tension- especially if/as Jaune does grow closer to Summer- and Beat 6 was a good example of fallout.
But Beat 7 was where it falls short. Jaune's time-traveling nature is never raised or addressed, Summer never learns that she's slept with her baby daughter's future husband, the suicide dilemma is questionable, and Summer's never given a reason to be attracted to Jaune rather than projecting Taiyang. But the end point- of resolving to try to reconcile and returning to raise Ruby and Yang together, rather than abandoning them to a broken household- I think that was a good endpoint.
My suggestion for getting there? Don't have Jaune and Summer get back together romantically. At least not in the story itself. Have the truth. Have the weirdness of Summer having slept with her daughter's future husband be too much. But also have the admission of interest/respect in both directions: Jaune likes the maternal side of Summer, and not just because it reminds him of Ruby. And Summer realizes that the 'healing' Taiyang she liked, the one who cared for the children and was being a father- that wasn't Taiyang, but it was really Jaune. So maybe the weirdness is too much to carry on as they were- but the affection is genuine- and they compromise. Jaune (and Summer) vow to look for Taiyang by looking into the how or why Jaune came back in time- with the possible end-state of Jaune returning and getting Taiyang back. But in the meantime- because that might be a hopeless task- they return together to raise the girls in the meantime, and maybe one day… maybe one day there will be something honest between them. That's a solid conclusion.
The Raven scenario is a lot weaker- at least in terms of the story being a prompt about Jaune as a time traveler. There's almost nothing about Jaune's character, or backstory pre-time travel to get to the point he is in canon, or, again, addressing the time-travel dynamic. Which is funny, considering Coeur's and my differences on using time shenanigans in 'A Common Criminal or Something.' If you use time travel, it needs to be important and relevant and addressed… and for this, it isn't even raised. I thought Coeur forgot about it, honestly. It's not that it's a bad story- it's just that Jaune, lacking characterization or anything familiar, doesn't even need to be called Jaune. It could be anyone. Even just Taiyang- or Taiyang with memory problems- or Taiyang never having had the memories at all.
When you get down to it, Taiyang could be his own time traveler in this piece- from the past into the future- with his period of falling apart not being a matter of grief, but the time travel gap. That could have been the premise of Raven's disappearance- it's not that Raven left, and Taiyang fell apart, but that Taiyang fell apart, and Raven left to find him again. Taiyang pops back into the present, and has to deal with the family he (and his wife) were absent for.
Why didn't we think of that from the start? Oh, right- 15 mins planning and first impressions.
/
/
Coeur's Reflection:
/
Fifteen minutes is too short a time to write out a full plot, especially with one hand - instead all you can do is to work out the order of scenes as they happen, the big plot events and how they interact with one another.
The Summer x Jaune plot was to show an existing relationship breaking down. Beats 5-7 would have been very long in this, delving into the pain Summer feels upon realising the man she loved is dead, and the guilt she also feels at not hating the man who took his place. But instead having come to like Jaune too. On the other hand, Jaune has his own guilt, firstly for what he believes is cheating on Ruby - but also for lying to Summer and taking advantage of her.
The breakdown of the relationship in beat 3-4 needs length to show the different stages, and the ways they try to stick together. I wanted a real sense of "staying together for the kids" in those stages, with their love reaffirmed when Jaune saves Summer - only to come crashing down once she realises he isn't the real Taiyang. Before ending on a tentative romance for the future, that they don't know - they're shy teenagers almost again. But they're determined to make it work.
Beat 7 is rushing due to having around 30 seconds left, but would need fleshing out. A better ending might be Summer looking to take out her frustrations on Grimm, ending with her getting in over her head. Her aura is low and she bleeds out, red like roses staining snow. From there Jaune could find her, carrying her home and helping her recover. I'd like it to end on a note of promise or possibility. With her asking things such as "You're not Taiyang." "What happened to him?" "Was your love for our children fake?" "What about me?" Before ultimately she never says she accepts him, but when he stands to leave she grabs his hand. "Stay... please."
"Of course."
As for Jaune x Raven, on that front I wanted to look at what time travel would be like if it wasn't long enough to make a big difference. Jaune hasn't gone back far enough to save Summer, or train Yang and Ruby - in fact he is stuck in a person ill-respected by others, unable to change anything because he can't interact with beacon, and Yang/Ruby love him in a sense, but it's muted due to Taiyang's break down.
Ironically that is something Raven faces as well. At least in my mind. She has been gone so long that she can't really come back, not easily at any rate. The two of them both want to reacquaint with Yang and Ruby, albeit for different reasons - but both are scared and uncertain on how to do so. And ironically both choose the same way to handle it.
Don't.
Raven goes off and helps the White Fang, Jaune Xiao-Long goes off to stop the White Fang, both thinking "Oh if i make the world a better place, they won't be hurt." but both failing to actually have the guts to go and apologise and try to explain.
Similarly I wanted to show a developing romance between enemies who are actively at war - and not in that stereotypical "injured and healed" or "captured" trope - but by them coming to enjoy their fights so much that they keep sparing one another, hunting each other. Getting the blood boiling through combat and adrenaline, before finally giving in and ravishing each other.
Does Jaune ever reveal his past? No. He is more selfish, to his mind Taiyang failed in his original time, and is destined to fail again. If he doesn't want to live his life then Jaune will do it for him, morality be damned. Similarly Raven has been gone so long from Taiyang (at least 15-16 years) that her attraction has to be built from the start again. She isn't going to jump him "because" he is Taiyang, it's been too long for that - that romance is cold and possibly dead.
The plot outline ended with "Realises that this life isn't so bad after all." To highlight the fact that he has come to accept this new life as his own, and is committed to living it for himself and for the first time since he came back, not for others. Originally he planned to hunt and if needs be, die against the Fang, to save his friends. But now he has come to find it is as much a chance for him as anyone else.
