[RWBY] RWBY Shorts

[Sift Green]

And the Fifth Dark Maiden Candidate concept, this ones a two for one:



I've done Fee Clochette, Allie Warbucks, Princess Badoura, and Talia Rosamond all in response to this prompt, but in all honesty Salem would probably have enough Maiden Candidates to fill a medium sized High-School classroom if she was taking the idea of obtaining the powers of the Maidens seriously. As such there's still room for more, and I've a duo for your consideration.

They are Bianca and Samar Straparola, inspired by the main characters of Biancabella And The Snake:



Bianca and Samar Straparola: Fraternal twin sisters with different fathers, Bianca and Samar were a surprise to their parents the Marquess and Marchioness of Zoan, a small town on what used to be the border of the Hellenic League and Mistral before they were part of the same kingdom. The couple had believed themselves to be barren after years of trying and failing to conceive a child. This misplaced assumption of total infertility lead to them being careless at a particularly wild party. The unexpected pregnancy caused the couple no small amount of panic, as there would be a huge scandal if the child wasn't Marquess Straparola's.

The couple were relieved when the twins were born and paternity tests showed that Bianca was indeed the Marquess' daughter, though it would have been easy for him to claim she was if she hadn't been. Her pale skin, sky blue eyes and golden hair all came from him and made declaring her his heir the obvious course of action.

Such tests were unnecessary on Samar, for she was a faunus whose animal trait was impossible to hide. Her green hair and golden eyes were uncommon features but not unheard of, and they contrasted nicely with the pale skin she inherited from her mother... while also matching the scales that covered her shoulders and arms. This was her non-concealable faunus trait, a pair of snake arms. That's not to say she had the arms of a snake, but rather her arms were snakes; her right hand a viper's maw and her left a cobra's hood, connected to her shoulders with a serpent's spine in lieu of regular human bones with both reaching her knees when they stretched out.

What the Marquess and Marchioness ought to do with the faunus girl was something they fretted about until she was weened. It was obvious the child would never be able to live a normal life; her serpentine mouths could never be as dexterous as normal hands robbing her of a wide variety of fine motor skills like writing, turning the page of a book, fastening buttons or tying knots. She needed someone to help take care of her, and they could afford to do so.

And so they raised Bianca and Samar together, and taught them to always support one another. Bianca would do the delicate tasks Samar could not do for herself, while Samar in turn would watch her sister's back and keep her safe. This dynamic made the sisters close in their early years and they remained inseparable as they grew up. Even their diverging educations where Bianca learned how to manage the family estate and Samar began conditioning herself to learn the art of combat did little to divide the sisters, as they both accepted that's just the way things needed to be. They would still be sharing important milestones with each other, and in the end they would be each other's greatest support.

One milestone they shared was the unlocking of their aura on their twelfth birthday. A milestone they did not share was the discovery of their semblances, as Bianca found a high quality Dust crystal while brushing her hair a little over a year later. Shocked, Bianca and Samar combed through all of the human sister's hair and discovered that dust flakes were growing from the girl's scalp and mixing together into full blown crystals in her golden locks.

This was cause for celebration, for over the course of a week Bianca would generate enough dust crystals to pay the manor's staff for six months. The family could now be much more flexible with their finances and they could start upgrading some of Zoan's infrastructure with the increased funds. News spread through town like wildfire and the common folk sang the praises of the Marquess' heir and her Crystal Crown. The sister's would later wish they and their parents had kept things under wraps.

A year after the discovery of Bianca's semblance a bandit tribe descended upon Zoan. The bandits tore down the town's walls, set fire to the people's homes and slaughtered all who opposed them. They came unto the Straparola manor and did worse there killing everyone they could find and carting Bianca off as their prize.

Samar would wake up under the wreckage of a table that had protected her from the collapsing roof of her home. She would find the bodies of her parents and weep as she struggled to burry them with arms not made to work a shovel. After that she would stumble out of the ruins of Zoan the town's sole survivor, her heart brimming with anger as she haphazardly searched for the bandit tribe's trail.

Creatures of Grimm were of course drawn to her anger but Samar would choke them to death with her coils or envenomate them with her fangs. The young girl proved herself to be a savant of combat as she took the fundamentals of the martial art she had been taught and built upon it with practical experience, adapting it to take full advantage of her serpentine limbs. Her accursed limbs also aided her in catching and consuming enough small game for her to live off the land, as her snake mouths were still connected to her human stomach allowing her to eat without the aid of the cooking she could not do.

For the next two years Samar lived as a half-wild creature doing what she could to find the people that destroyed her home. The search wasn't exactly fruitless, she found their camps a week or so after they had abandoned them on more than one occasion, but their continual escape frayed the ends of her mind. This vexing hunt came to an end when a stranger introducing himself as Hazel discovered her and offered his help.

Hazel had originally come to the area to learn how the local bandit tribe was sourcing its' Dust, and quickly put two and two together once he had learned Samar's story. Enraged on her behalf the giant of a man vowed the bandit tribe would be utterly destroyed by his hand. At first he tried to convince Samar to let him do this alone, but after her forceful insistence and an unplanned test of her combat powers he relented and included her in his plan to catch the bandits by surprise.

This plan was a success and the two of them tore through the bandits like a hot knife through butter. Soon the bandits were dead, and Samar had found her sister.

The bandits had not been kind to Bianca, having cut off her arms and gouged out her eyes so she could not escape them. Samar wished she could kill them a thousand more times for this cruelty. Hazel consoled the sisters as best he could, raising their hopes by telling them how those he served could restore Bianca's damaged body. Desperate for any good news they agreed to follow him, which is how they arrived at Evernight and met Queen Salem.

The Queen of the Grimm made good on Hazel's promise, using ancient magics to restore the girl's eyes as good as new. Bianca's arms were in turn replaced by the ministrations of Doctor Watts, as Bianca desired new hands. Powerful hands. Hands that could protect her if she were ever separated from her sister again.

And so Doctor Watts crafted her some of his most advanced combat prosthetics and Bianca began training alongside her sister. The two became a solid combat duo in part to how hyper defensive of their sister each of them had become. In fact some would say the two of them had become unhealthy clingy and codependent, each sister refusing to let the other out of her sight for any reason.

Seeing their drive to improve and protect each other Salem concluded they could be powerful assets, and offered to train them in preparation to pursue the powers of a Maiden. The twin half-sisters agreed as the words of Hazel echoed in their ears: the tragedy that befell their family and hometown was a failing of the modern system of Huntsmen and Huntresses, so to prevent further tragedy they needed to burn that system down so something better could take its' place.

Samar is the more melee focused of the two, using only the natural weapons her body provides as she seeks to perfect her own unique martial art. Her cobra arm is of the spitting variety, giving her a mid range option to blind or distract her foes. Her viper arm has the heat sensing pits of a normal viper, giving her an extra combat relevant sense to work with.

Her semblance is called Bites Twice, and allows her to alter the chemistry of her venom to provide different effects like paralysis or hemorrhaging. After significant practice Samar found she could even replicate certain medicines with her venom, and figuring out how to make new medicines out of her venom has become a favored hobby of hers.

With Samar focused on hand-to-coil combat Bianca focus more on the ranged side of combat. The combat prosthetics Doctor Watts provided can mechashift into multiple different weapons such as Dust powered energy rifles. These rifles burn through Dust quickly but that isn't exactly a problem for Bianca thanks to her semblance Crystal Crown giving her a near limitless supply of the stuff. Other configurations of her arms include Dust powered beam swords and parrying daggers for when the enemy gets close and a set of comb extensions for her fingers so she can quickly find dust crystals in her hair.






Alright so part of my thought process with these girls was to fill a gap with my previous Maiden Candidates. You see Fee partners well with Watts, Badoura partners well with Tyrian and Allie would partner well with Merlot if Salem recruited him in whatever fic you're writing. That means Hazel is the only member of Salem's inner circle who didn't have a Maiden Candidate that naturally partnered with him, so I set out to fix that with Bianca and Samar.

Now the twin half-sisters have a more sensical backstory than Hazel, meaning they're more misguided and traumatized radicals than delusional hypocrites, but this backstory means they share something narratively important with Hazel: they're the most likely Maiden Candidates to turn on Salem if they ever realize how bad the Grimm Queen winning would actually be.




Anyhow what do you guys think of this duo? Do they work as Dark Maiden candidates or no?

 

[Frankly Tired]

Pyrrha Event
~~~~~~

Reaction Fics, and some shorts usually write Pyrrha's Jealousy as a Murderous Burning Rage:
"How dare that bitch flirt with Jaune!"

She has no social skills, do you know how embarrassing it is to reveal your true emotions like that? She couldn't do that no matter how Mad.
That, or because she has no actual social skills, outside of her sponsor events and Fan Meets, she's more Jealous that someone is taking her time from him, because she knows he's more dense than bedrock. and has mini tantrums.

both are good.
~~~~~~

But I like to think its a more of a "Killing Intent with a Smile", as her semblance rages for her:

Ruby: "Hey Pyrrha, did you see that girl talking to Jaune early today? They look like they know each other."
Pyrrha: "Oh, Is he? That's good, I'm... Glad he has so many friends."

Nora cleared her throat.

Ruby: "Yeah, but it's kinda odd they're all girls though."
Pyrrha: "Is it Ruby? I haven't quite noticed that."

Nora lets out a cough, her corset feels a bit tighter than usual today. Must have been the pancakes earlier.

Ruby: "Oh yeah! Just the other day, these group of girls were crowding him at the comic store. I thought they were looking for books behind them, but they really were there for Jaune!"
Pyrrha:"Really? that must have been an odd sight. did they say anything about him? Perhaps they were from his hometown."
Ruby: "See I thought so too, but they kept calling him Cute and Handsome, which is like two wildly different spectrums of boy."
Pyrrha: "Were they now?"

Nora felt more of a squeeze. That is definitely not the pancakes!

Ruby: "Yeah, and then Jaune called them beautiful in turn!""
Pyrrha: "Did he now?"

Nora is desperately trying to remove her Corset, because of the Integrated Metal that was used to conduct electricity for her semblance is now Backfiring, and slowly crushing her! Mayday mayday!

Ruby: "But get this! When they asked who was most beautiful in the room-

-Creaking was heard, as Nora finally successfully removed her corset, just as it was immediately crushed into a ball. 'Phew'-

Ruby: "He glanced at a Pumpkin Pete poster, and said 'Pyrrha Nikos'!"
Pyrrha: "He did what?!"

The creaking stopped. However, Nora's now removed corset Exploded! 'Why?!'

Ruby: "It was so funny, because technically, you were in the room, you should have seen their faces! I have to go tell Yang, she's gonna tease the heck out of him! Maybe it'll distract her long enough so I can sneak some cookies- oops!- You didn't hear that! Bye, I'm going to go do the thing I didn't say I wasn't going to do!

Pyrrha didn't hear her.

Ruby stopped for a moment, and noticed the crosses on her skirt are now little hearts.

Ruby: "Why does this always happen!?"

Pyrrha finally responded, after Ruby long since left.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

The Now Fragmented Corset, which was collected in Nora's hands, reformed into a metal firework, shot into the air, and exploded into even smaller Metal Confetti fragments all over area. 'Oh, Come on!"

Pyrrha: "EEEE- cough cough, No-Nora!? When did you get here?"

Nora gave her a flat stare.
~~~
Nora would later work with Ruby to make her corset "Push-of-a-button" removable in case of more "Pyrrha Events."

 

[Joss Jamon]

Funnily enough, this character started out as a character for something else entirely. But then Andrew said something to make me bring him up, and...
Name: Doctor Abraham List
Allusion: Abraham Van Helsing (younger version from the original Dracula novel), with strong influences from the Nome King (Roquat) of the Oz books
Naming Process: Abraham honors the legendary vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing, reflecting List's role as a brilliant, obsessive pursuer of monstrous truths. List is a plain, scholarly surname that evokes "list" as in catalog or inventory — fitting a man who methodically dissects and catalogs the fundamental nature of Grimm.
Age: 35
Background: A brilliant physicist and Grimm theorist, Dr. Abraham List studied under the controversial Dr. Viktor Merlot before surpassing his mentor in rigor and insight. He became the first researcher to subject stabilized Grimm samples to high-energy physics analysis, producing groundbreaking (and highly classified) reports on the exotic substance he designated "Umbrite." As the lead researcher at the prestigious De Leon Institute for Grimm Studies in Vale, List has pushed the boundaries of understanding the Grimm threat through a cold, clinical lens. He was once approached by agents of Salem with offers of power and knowledge, but he saw through their deception and refused — though the encounter confirmed to him that an active intelligence guides the Grimm. List walks a solitary path: neither fully aligned with Ozpin's circle nor corrupted like Merlot, he pursues pure scientific truth with ruthless detachment, believing that understanding the enemy is the only path to humanity's survival.
Race: Human
Emblem: A fractured white circle (representing scientific order) being consumed by writhing black fractal tendrils — symbolizing the relentless encroachment of Umbrite and humanity's fragile attempt to contain it
Weapon: "Entropy's Edge": A custom retractable gauntlet-blade reinforced with stabilized Lightning Dust emitters. It allows him to deliver precise cutting strikes while generating localized stasis fields to briefly stabilize Grimm samples in the field for emergency analysis.
Semblance: "Absorption"
Through physical contact, Abraham can partially assimilate properties of the material he touches — gaining the durability of stone, the conductivity of metal, or limited insights into Grimm matter. Mastering this Semblance required extreme discipline to avoid being overwhelmed or permanently altered by the absorbed substance. It grants him unparalleled intuitive understanding of physical and exotic materials, making him an extraordinary experimentalist, though overuse risks psychological or physical contamination.
Appearance: Tall and strikingly fit with a lean, athletic build honed by both laboratory discipline and field expeditions. He has messy, long red hair usually tied back in a practical ponytail, sharp light brown eyes that seem to analyze everything they see, and sharp, aristocratic features that give him an intense, almost predatory scholarly presence.
Outfit: A tailored dark greatcoat over a crisp white shirt and vest, practical trousers, and reinforced boots suitable for both the lab and dangerous field sites. He often wears protective gloves and carries an array of scientific instruments in a custom satchel. His overall appearance is that of a gentleman-scientist ready for both lecture halls and Grimm-infested ruins.
Personality: Cold, ruthless, and profoundly detached. Abraham List views the world through the lens of variables, equations, and puzzles to be solved. His towering intellect and ego make him difficult company — he is blunt, impatient with lesser minds, and often treats people as data points rather than emotional beings. This forced stoicism is a necessary shield; he understands that empathy can cloud judgment when confronting the existential horror of the Grimm. While he rejected Merlot's descent into madness and service to Salem, List remains morally ambiguous — willing to cross ethical lines in pursuit of knowledge that could save humanity. He is not cruel for cruelty's sake, but he will sacrifice much (including personal relationships) for scientific progress.
Notes: Dr. Abraham List is widely regarded as one of Remnant's foremost authorities on Grimm physiology and exotic matter theory. His groundbreaking work on Umbrite has opened new avenues for anti-Grimm weaponry and containment, though his cold pragmatism makes him a controversial figure among Huntsmen and moral philosophers. He maintains a wary distance from both Ozpin's inner circle and Salem's forces, pursuing his own agenda of total understanding. Beneath the icy exterior lies a man who has stared too long into the abyss of Grimm nature — and is determined to make that abyss
blink first.

 

[Sift Green]

Moving on to Team EPIC, let's start off with the original post:


Alright so we have a lot of characters in RWBY that are only hinted at in the original show, but stand a high chance of needing to be in the spotlight of a fan fiction. The most obvious example is Jaune's large family, but plenty more of them exist.

Consider Penny's Team. We know she was part of a full team of four before her fist death but the only teammate of hers we know anything about is one scene wonder Ciel Soleil, and while her scene was a great character establishing scene it was still only one real scene.

That scene also told us that Penny's Team was unaware that she was a Robot... which honestly doesn't make much sense. Penny's behavior is too unusual and her efforts to hide her robotic nature too unsubtle for people spending as much time with her as her school teammates would be to not figure it out. It also doesn't make sense for Atlas Academy to not select teammates for Penny that couldn't be trusted with a secret since Atlas' culture should have produced plenty of youth who would obey orders to keep their mouths shut about something.

I know that Ruby knowing Penny's secret was supposed to be part of their friendship, but we aren't really given a good reason why Penny had difficulty making friends with her team. Her teammates knowing Penny is Atlas' most valuable asset before they meet her is a decent obstacle to friendship for Penny to overcome in a story. It also makes the high value Penny places on Ruby's friendship deeper because she made friends with Ruby before Ruby found out she was a robot, meaning the obstacle between her and her teammates doesn't exist with Ruby.

So anyways I've brainstormed some Teammates for Penny. Here we go:



Team EPIC: The administration of Atlas Academy knew that Project P.E.N.N.Y. would attend their school far in advance of her actual attendance. As a result when the school started brainstorming team compositions her unique needs were at the forefront of their minds, and the desire to keep her status as the world's first Aura-capable Robot a secret influenced their thinking. As a result teammates that could obfuscate Penny's robotic nature and the ability to keep a secret were prioritized a bit over unit cohesion, leading to some unexpected friction between Penny Polendina and her teammates.



Emma Seraph (Alita Battle Angel): The daughter of one of the best cybernetics-surgeons in the Kingdom of Atlas, Dyson Seraph, who raised her in Mantle where he did most of his work. Emma suffered a horrific accident in her early years that would have killed her if her father was less skilled with putting people back together. While her father was able to save her life it was a very close call, and she is now a full-body cyborg who's only organic components are 95% of her brain and a handful of her internal organs.


Wanting to make his daughter as hard to kill as possible Dyson used the most dangerous augmentations he could get his hands on while building Emma's body. This caught the attention of General Ironwood's predecessor, who agreed to subsidize Dyson's efforts seeing Emma as a good testbed for Atlas' cutting edge combat cybernetics. Today Emma has a body made of highly experimental technology that makes her one of the most impressive combatants of any room she's in.


As a way to cope with her accident and her new body Emma enthusiastically threw herself into the world of underground extreme sports like motor-ball. Her love for high speed on her motorized rollerblades combined with a feeling of invincibility from her practically indestructible body eventually lead her to participate in illegal races through abandoned sections of Mantle where Grimm would be released onto the racetrack as obstacles for the racers. During one of these races something went wrong with Grimm containment and the monsters escaped into Mantle proper.


Seeing people in real danger Emma acted without thinking to save who she could. While did save several people that night many more lost their lives, and those deaths stuck with Emma. Her nightly excursions were no longer about feeding her adrenaline junkie tendencies for the sake of the thrill, her nightly excursions were now about feeding her adrenaline junkie tendencies in unlicensed Grimm hunts in the abandoned sections of Mantle for the sake of keeping those monsters away from people who don't have near indestructible cybernetic bodies.


Dyson had known about the underground extreme sports, and while he didn't approve he understood Emma's need to feel alive. However, while he had been willing to tolerate her risking herself in extreme sports he was less willing to tolerate unlicensed Grimm hunts, and so he put his foot down and told her she was ether going to stop hunting or go to Atlas Academy and learn how to hunt Grimm the correct way. By this point Emma felt she was doing something genuinely good with her life instead of just living from one adrenaline high to the next, so the decision to attend Atlas was a simple one.


When creating Team EPIC Emma was selected in part because of full-body cyborg nature. Penny Poledina's spare parts could be packed and shipped with Emma's spare parts thereby preventing suspicion regarding Penny's mechanical nature. She was given the position of team leader in part because Ironwood recognized her vigilante escapades as legitimate experience that proved her ability to think tactically in a tight spot. He also hoped that the responsibility of leadership would help curb the less desirable parts of her maverick tendencies. Trusting her with top secret information connected to Penny was a hard decision to make, but after personally testing her character Ironwood decided Emma could be trusted with such information.


Emma Seraph fights using a customized curved sword designed for slashing passes at extreme speeds achieved with her motorized rollerblades. She is also devising a unique style of martial art meant to take advantage of her body's unique cybernetic nature.



Penny Polendina: You know her, you love her. Need I say more?



Indie Regina (Indominus Rex): Shortly after James Ironwood became a Captain in Atlas' military he lead a raid on a facility that was suspected of conducting illegal Faunus experimentation. These suspicions were proven to be correct, and among the experiments discovered there was a young girl that quickly latched onto Ironwood and refused to leave his side. When the girl's parents could not be found Ironwood took the girl in as his ward, in part because of how attached she was to him and in part because his position would help meet her unique needs.


The experiments caused young Indie to develop multiple primeval faunus traits such as a long saurian tail, wicked claws on her hands and feet with scales going up her forearms and shins, feathers on her head instead of hair and a bestial speed and strength that was impressive even before her aura was unlocked.


Indie's obviously inhuman appearance caused problems for her growing up, not just with prejudiced humans but with faunus as well. There were plenty of humans who hated or belittled her for having animal parts. There were plenty of faunus who hated her for being Ironwood's "pet." Yet there were humans and faunus that treated her with respect thanks to the disciplined upbringing Ironwood gave her.


Having seen that terrible people came from all backgrounds Indie came to the conclusion that one's origins had very little to do with the kind of person you were; you ether chose to be a kind person or a jerk. This has given her an extreme dislike of those who view the world through the lenses of human vs. faunus conflict, firmly believing that the issue would have died (at least in Atlas, Vale and Vacuo) if the post-Belladonna White Fang weren't actively stoking the fires of resentment.


Her upbringing has also made her extremely patriotic, fueling her desire to become a huntress as a means of fulfilling her duty to her country (and maybe make her father figure proud). Her ultimate goals in life are to ether become the chief general of Atlas' military like General Ironwood or to become the Headmistress of Atlas Academy… like General Ironwood. Her plans once she gets the position? She fully expects her career to be mostly spent undoing the damage the White Fang has done to Human-Faunus relations in Atlas, so most of her plans currently revolve around promoting species-blind meritocracy.


When creating Team EPIC Indie was selected in part to aid Penny Poledina socially. Indie had spent most of her early childhood in a lab, so it was expected that she could help Penny adjust to life outside of a lab. If nothing else being the bit scary dinosaur faunus people would be hesitant to approach could be used to create a social barrier if Penny became overwhelmed in large high-class gatherings. Her connection to Ironwood also helped with the decision to inform her of Penny's classified nature, as the General already knew he could trust her.


Indie is a natural brawler who engages in melee using her natural claws and primeval strength to rip apart her foes. If the enemy can fly or otherwise keep their distance she possesses two simple service pistols to deal damage from afar. She calls her semblance "Thermal Vision" and it allows her to see in infrared wavelengths when it's active, making it difficult for an opponent to hide from her.



Ciel Soleil: [Insert Ciel Soleil headcanon here.]

So I'm currently thinking Ciel's one of the top students of Atlas' JROTC equivalent, and that she was chosen for Team EPIC because her exacting nature, incredible memory and literal interpretation of things like "give us a minute" means that anyone suspecting there's a robot on the team will point to her first only to find that she's provably human, thereby throwing people off Penny's sent.

I don't know if their are common Ciel Soleil headcanons I need to be aware of when expanding off of her one scene in the spotlight. I'm thinking the team needs a ranged specialist and that would probably fit with her. Would her knowing everyone's file come from a photographic memory semblance, or should that be normal photographic memory leaving her semblance open for something else?



So that's what I have for Penny's team so far. What do you guys think? Do you like 'em? Thoughts? Suggestions?



And now I'm going to add some latter clarifying posts so they're together with the initial idea:

Clarifying post 1:

As for Penny and Team EPIC...


We have Emma Seraph (our Alita Battle Angel expy), Penny Polendina (you know her you love her), Indie Regina (our Indominus Rex expy/gijinka) and Ciel Soleil (Insert your preferred headcanon here).


Emma was made team leader in part to help curb the worst aspects of her maverick tendencies, as being responsible for other people has been known to do that on occasion. I'm figuring Penny's decision to sneak off and visit Vale will be a huge wake up call for Emma, giving her a taste of what she put her father through back when she was sneaking out and participating in underground races and unlicensed Grimm hunts.

I'm figuring her friendship with Penny will come to resemble that of a sometimes exasperated but otherwise loving older sister once they work through the social barriers between them. They're both live life to the fullest kind of people, Emma from her adrenaline junkie habits and Penny from her joyous desire to experience everything that's new to her, so it'd make sense for them to become close once they properly understand each other.



Indie as an Indominus Rex expy/gijinka probably has some underlying anger issues and a bit of a sadistic streak as a result of her raised in a lab-with-poor-ethics trauma. Ironwood's disciplined hand in raising her would mean she has those problems competently bridled and focused. The fact that Ironwood could keep a steady supply of training robots for her to work out her issues with probably also had something to do with how she grew up to be a well adjusted woman.

She probably also relishes any chance she gets to fight Grimm. Nobody cares how brutal you get with those literally soulless monsters and so she has a socially acceptable outlet for her sadistic side. Another reason why she's well adjusted in spite of being a version of Indomidus Rex.

Indie wouldn't have been the only primeval faunus rescued from that lab. While Ironwood fostered Indie a set of quadruplet raptor faunus with similar mutations as Indie were taken in by one of Ironwood's underlings, then Lieutenant and now Captain (or maybe Commander) Owens. Owens raised those girls right, and now they want to be Huntresses to pay his kindness forward and be heroes like him.

Yes, I am suggesting that expies/gijinkas of Blue, Delta, Echo and Charlie could be used to make another first year team at Atlas Academy. They'd need different names though. Open to suggestions.

Once the social barriers are broken I'd imagine Indie and Penny having a cool cousins kind of relationship, since Ironwood is kind of like a strict uncle what with being a male role model besides her Father that she looks up to.



As for Ciel Soleil... well working off her one and only real scene I'd say she's probably Penny's actual partner, considering she's the teammate acting as Penny's handler.

Penny described her as being like Blake- if Blake was under orders to spend time with you, to which Ruby replied with "So Weiss then." However Penny hadn't spend a lot of time with Blake or anyone else on Team RWBY besides Ruby at that point so that description should be taken with a grain of salt.

Are there any popular headcanons about Ciel I should know about before trying to craft something new whole cloth?


Clarifying Post 2:

I think the cliff notes for most people include time obsessed, socially awkward, very formal and reserved but generally highly competent. Maybe she is a little insecure about how robotic some people see her but does not really know how to connect to people outside the strict military hierarchy. Most CielxJaune stories of course focus on Mr golden retriever being the first person who cares to bridge that gap.

Click to shrink...

Well, I've personally always written her to be on the autistic spectrum and that she has a time dilation semblance, hence her fixation on time.

Click to shrink...

Okay, time obsessed, socially awkward, possibly autistic, yet incredibly competent and thriving in the highly structured and regimented hierarchy of Atlas' military society. Those are workable things.

...I'm now picturing her with an watchmaking/collecting hobby, building watches and other timekeeping devices from hobby kits and fixing broken antique pocket watches and analog wristwatches in her free time. The prize of her collection could be an old and fancy yet practical Trench Watchfrom the Great War that she sometimes uses on field missions.

And with a watchmaking hobby Ciel would probably be Penny and Emma's go to helper for mechanical maintenance they can't do for themselves for one reason or another.


As far as shipping goes I actually like the idea of Ciel x Whitley. With the watchmaking hobby and the potentially autistic tendencies I'm envisioning a scene where Ciel attempts to have a normal conversation with him at some formal function they're both at only to start vomiting all of the technical details about a very specific stopwatch brand that was only in business for two years three decades ago, her mortification growing with each word escaping her lips because she knows this isn't how your supposed to talk to civilians and why can't she shut up! Fortunately for her Whitley engineering side lets him appreciate talking with a woman that can visualize how a bunch of gears mesh together and work in a 3D space.



Anyways @Titanmaster_117 , could you elaborate on that time dilation semblance? Like what do you mean when you say time dilation? How does it work? How is it balanced so it doesn't break the narrative?

Ah wonderful, another cadet with anger and brutality issues! Absolutely lovely! But yeah, Total Grimm Death is a wonderful outlet for such people.

As for Owens, boring-ass military-nerd incoming.

It seems like Indie was rescued around 10 years ago = +-1991. Ironwood already was a Colonel in the Army Special Forces and Sienna Khan has already left the Atlesian National Armed Forces in search of a better purpose.
By my estimations it was around this time when Ironwood became Major General and a Headmaster of the Atlas Hunter Academy (yes, we are not tying the position of C-in-C and Headmaster together - it is retarded). And soon after in 1993, "Globals" faction of the National Armed Forces have performed their major reform - merging Army Special Forces and Navy Special Forces into one united Special Operations Forces.

Might have been that the primeval lab was the last operation Ironwood commanded before becoming a headmaster and going purely to office work. Owens would be... I would suggest he is from Navy Special Forces, a nod to the fact that the original was a former USMC, and at that time was Senior (1st) Lieutenant. So by V1 he would be Major.

And I already feel bad for the man who would be handling these 4 sisters. But the idea of more cadets for Atlas Hunter Academy is lovely! And I thank you for more info about Indie - even more and more ideas for what would be happening in 2003 in Mistral.

Click to shrink...

I mean the thing that made Indominus Rex a character instead of a beast was her sadistic impulses and hatred, so Indie would need just a little bit of that to be a true expy/gijinka of Indominus.

That being said Ironwood's firm hand in raising her has focused all of Indie's anger into doing productive things, so she is actually rather composed most of the time and most people would never guess she has anger issues or a sadistic streak if they've never seen her on the battlefield.

So I'm picturing Indie as a surprisingly refined young woman that becomes somewhat unhinged when she has an acceptable target in front of her that gives her a chance to let loose.


Clarifying Post 3:

Well, by time dilation, I mean that she can speed up or reverse the flow of time of any person that she touches, either aging them or deaging them, meaning that she can turn anyone either into a baby or an old man if she so wished.

However, there's a catch to this all, as it seriously weakens her when she uses it for long periods of time. The one time that she used it to age someone to death in self-defence, she was in the hospital on the verge of death herself. so it's not a very practical power. It's actually quite dangerous to herself, as it drains her life force the more she uses it. She's already lost ten years of her life because of it.

Click to shrink...

Hmmmm.....

On the one hand that's an interesting semblance, and the drawback seems nasty enough to keep it from being abused...

But on the other hand it wouldn't synergize with her fighting style if we make her a sniper or some other long ranged specialist, and semblances do tend to synergize with the Hunter's fighting style.

So personally I'll probably use something more like Colobopsis' suggestion for my own interpretation of Ciel:

Indie is becoming my favorite member of team EPIC morr and more!

And as for time dilation for Ciel, we do need to make it somewhat different from what Andres has - his is a combo of slow-mo/bullet time and foresight - his comes from him being a control freak and over-preparing for the worst type of person - "how this all can go to shit". Slow-mo lasts up to 30 seconds and overuse causes hallucinations and head aches.

May I suggest that Ciel has slow-mo/bullet time + critical points of impact highlight? Something to emphasize her precision. And it also raises the question how does the Semblance manifest visually. Eyes lightning up? Dilating pupils?

It is also popular to go with a sniper rifle for her loadout. Though maybe a rifle akin to PSG-1/M417 is a better option. And M417 is the standard-issue rifle of the Atlas Marines. If Emma and Indie are extreme CQB, Penny is longer ranges, they would better have something for mid range.

Click to shrink...

So she'd be slowing time from her perspective letting her take all the time she needs to calculate the perfect shot, and because she can take all the time she needs she can pick out details and weaknesses others would miss at a glance and account for them in her calculations. She can also speed things up making long waits feel like seconds, though she uses this aspect of her power much more sparingly.

The problem is that while she can alter the flow of time for her mind her body remains mostly in sync with the normal time flow of the universe, so while she can take thirty relative minutes to account for all possible factors in her next shot her body will only move one real world second per real world second as she acts on her thoughts.

In other words she has a pause screen that lets her take her time to think through incredibly complicated situations, and a fast forward she basically only uses to mentally skip multi-hour flights.

And that can tie into her keeping exact time to a comedic level from her character defining scene in the original show and the watchmaking/collecting hobby I want to give her in relation to that: the time pieces keep her grounded and cognizant of how in sync or out of sync she is with the normal flow of time.

How does that sound?


Clarifying Post 4:

(in reference to Indie)

Does she, in the privacy of her own head sometimes indulge in fantasies of rescuing a man, badly beaten, from a White Fang torture dungeon who says "Actually that wasn't so bad," and seems enthusiastic when she shows off her whips, fluffy handcuffs and leather outfit?

Click to shrink...

There are some hungers better left unfed.

By that I mean Indie might have fantasies along those lines, but she has consciously made the decision that such fantasies should stay firmly in the realm of fantasies.

Basically when she became old enough to start having a serious interest in romance she had a nice long meditative session where she concluded that mixing her sadistic streak with intimacy would end poorly for all parties involved; because when she gets mean she gets mean, and she knows she'd accidentally take things way too far and betray the trust true intimacy requires.

So she'd have a bit of an internal conflict with wanting something she knows would be bad for her and her potential romantic partner, and she'd be looking for alternatives ways to channel those feelings so they don't spoil what she truly hopes to gain from intimacy: mutual safety in vulnerability.

WAIT A SECOND! THAT'S LITERALLY FALLOUT 3/NV VATS! Like, how you can completely freeze time. And use that to calculate everything. Oh and the "Wait" button is glorious idea. Oh boy, what if she is the stereotypical FNV Sniper Build? Actually, no, those don't use VATS too much. Hmm... Oh, we also shouldn't forget that she can't spend eternity in such mode as it drains Aura, so we need to specify that too.

Overall, this idea clearly differentiates her from other characters with Semblances that involve time perception. Andres is limited, but has several passive abilities, such as flash negation, monochrome vision, foresight. Yes, he too uses it to process info at high speed, but it is all-around.
One of the many ideas for Ironwood's Semblance - "Gun Kata" make him have just a very fast thought process time.
And it seems like Ciel has complete freeze, but her POV is limited.

Click to shrink...

Fallout's VATS is one of the things I was thinking of when I was forming the idea. Another thing I thought of was the Mind Palaces from the 2010 BBC Sherlock series, with which Sherlock was able to use roughly three seconds of his remaining consciousness after getting shot to process several minutes worth of information to figured out the best way to fall so he wouldn't bleed out or go into shock.


Perhaps with normal aura usage Ciel can stretch a second into a minute or so. It's theoretically possible for her to stretch an entire minute into an entire day, but doing so would completely exhaust her aura supply and require a longer than normal recovery time from stretching things like that.

 

[Frankly Tired]

Penny's Friends List
I Am Biased And Correct.
~~~~~~

Specialist Winter's Surprise Report:
Report On: Penny Polendina's Friends
(Teams RWBY & JNPR)
~~~~~~

Ruby Rose: a Naive girl, if not for Penny's body being built to resemble a late 17 year old girl and not a younger child. Ruby Rose would have been the perfect 15 year old best friend, and Role model. Due to Penny's Unconventional upbringing and her collection of knowledge more suited for a scientist with multiple degrees, Ruby Rose has taught Penny how to be a child. Though a Huntsmen Child does have it's own trade offs, far more battle hungry than normal children, and -as stated before- Ms. Rose is a Naive girl, a child herself (regardless of the Huntsmen Adult Law.*), who believes that even the most heinous of criminals only need a simple beating and a "time-out" in jail.

Weiss Schnee: I am biased, She is my own sister after all. She is intelligent, Kind-hearted, and can occasionally be humorous**. However, I do not disagree that Weiss can be "Difficult" when she is forced into confrontations and moments not normal to our lives in Atlas. And Penny gets into a lot of New and "exciting" confrontations and situations, that I believe Weiss herself won't enjoy, or wish to explain. Weiss too lived in a life dictated by our father, and doesn't have much experience in the wider world. The two would certainly get along, but I do not see them being close friends

Blake Belladonna: I will not lie, Weiss has informed me of her past. I cannot make a much of a judgment on her character as a whole, as regardless of what I read about Ms. Belladona, I will likely be biased. However, I can say such a pervert, who openly reads erotica, should not be near Penny, and especially shouldn't be anywhere near her during Penny's Book club. The Ace Ops nearly died of heart attacks when she recommend we read one of those Filth books, herself unknowing to the contents.

Yang Xiao Long: No. At least she has the decency not to "teach" Penny uncouth behavior when others are around. Penny didn't understand why she had to eat soap after her report on her Test Playdate***. For every 1 thing decent Penny learns from Ms. Xiao Long, she learns 9 things that her she shouldn't. She's on par of That Drunk her Uncle, and needs to be watched closely

Jaune Arc: Through personal digging (back when Weiss complained of a boy constantly harassing her for courtship) I learned quite a lot about Mr. Arc. A boy who thinks himself a hero, someone who will get people killed. however reports from friends and family on Dustnet and word of mouth, also paint him very favorably. The Test Playdate was successful, very successful, far more successful than even Ruby Rose's. Jaune Arc treats Penny carefully despite her reinforced frame and Aura, and teaches her all kinda of material a child her age should know without ridicule, even common sense advice Ms. Rose wouldn't know, Such as paying attention where one walks****. He's patient with her, if it wasn't for Doctor Polendina's aversion to the very concept of procreation*****, one would think him her older brother. If it wasn't for the nature of his teammates, and his loyalty to them, Project Staff would have Recruited him immediately.

Pyrrha Nikos: [Pyrrha Nikos is not to step within Six Feet (6') in the direction of Project P.E.N.N.Y. for no Longer than 3 minutes. This decision is non-negotiable. Instructions are to separate them when possible if either gets too close. -Signed; General James Ironwood, Doctor Pietro Polendina, Specialist Winter Schnee]******

Nora Valkyrie: No. Ms. Valkyrie's Semblance passively outputs energy into the air, which Penny's body that automatically absorbs the minor electrical currents in the air, also picks up. One hyper Ginger is enough, thank you, and so while we will continue to allow the two to interact, we will keep contact to a minimum (Prolonged Physical Contact is a No.) She does however match Penny's enthusiasm and make her more confident.

Lie Ren: No. I don't know how, but after she received poems from Mr. Lie due to her curiosity on the subject, Penny somehow contracted Depression. The Entirety of the Project P.E.N.N.Y. Division had to pitch in to cheer her up and return her to normal. (Further investigation into these poems reveal that Mr. Lie pours in his trauma from his time during the Kuroyuri disaster, and Penny was able to read between the lines and see the meanings, each Poem regardless of how flowery and positive is filled with remorse regarding events in his life his deceased parents are missing.) Penny is Not to receive any poems from Lie Ren, and the two can only be in the same room if Nora Valkyrie is accompanying him. Having 2 hyper ginger's is a risk Scientists at Project P.E.N.N.Y. are willing to make. No wishes to see Penny like that ever again.

~~~~~~

* Thank Dust, shop owners have enough sense to deny her purchasing items suited for actual Adults, like alcohol. Likely Beacon's Headmaster Ozpin's doing through a meeting with Beacon Sponsored businesses.
** She inadvertently made a joke regarding The General during her last call, I still do not think she knows. I was surprised at myself that I was able to hold a straight face till her call ended. General Ironwood was reportedly quite confused when I had abruptly ended the the video call the moment I met his face as to not laugh in his face. I acted shameful in front of my superior, It was very embarrassing moment.
*** She hiccupped bubbles!
**** The amount of time's I've watched Penny and Ms. Rose collide into people because they were to engrossed in their conversation was pitiful. Agent Clover ran a betting pool to ascertain how often those two would walk into something, lucky as he may be, I walked away with 50 lien (67 times they walked in to a person, a wall, a lampost, and once, a truck)
***** Doctor Polendina disagreed that he had an aversion to Procreation, he then made a joke how, because he made Penny, he was a "Pro at Creation". I didn't Laugh. No one on staff laughed. I think Penny herself cringed. I didn't know she could, I don't believe Disgust was an emotion she knew. And I've seen her eat from the garbage bin when she was a prototype!
****** At least when Niko's semblance forced Penny into an 'Impromptu extended Hugging Event' Niko's felt uncomfortable enough to no longer be with Penny alone.

 

[Sift Green]

In the SB thread I had two posts examining harems in RWBY. Figured I should also bring them over.

Anyways here's the first one:

That and... Is there any man other than Jaune Arc who could herd team RWBY and keep them from destroying any more civilizations after the defeat of Salem? I don't think so.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, while it was completely unintentional on CRWBY's part the franchise does lend itself to being a harem story what with plot relevant females outnumbering plot relevant males for most of the show's run, and out of the plot relevant males only a small handful of them work as romantic interests for the plot relevant females.

I mean let's go through our list of prospective bachelors real quick, in the order they're introduced to the plot:

First we have Jaune, then Ren, then Cardin and his team, then Sun, then Neptune, then Mercury, then Oscar, and finally we have Whitley.

Let's look at everyone except Jaune first.

Ren is so closely linked to Nora at the show's start that he's functionally already married to her, even if neither of them are willing to admit that they're "together-together." You'd need a character that's just as much a match for Nora as Ren and could smoothly slide into their relationship without rocking the boat too much in order to make a Ren harem work, and I don't think any of the plot relevant girls in the cast fit the bill. As a result Ren doesn't work as a harem protagonist.

Cardin and his teammates are introduced as stereotypical bullies with very little depth beyond that, which makes them bad choices for our single ladies. They also loose plot relevance once the Jaune gets bullied plot line is over. You'd need to spend a lot of time on character growth before anyone on Team CRDL could work as a harem lead, so they're out.

Sun was designed from the ground up to be Blake's boyfriend, no matter what any Bumblebee shipper might claim. As a result he's a genuinely great guy who could make a great match for our single ladies with just a little bit of character development. The problem is, like I said earlier, is that he was designed to be Blake's boyfriend from the ground up. His best character traits are custom made to help Blake grow past her own character flaws (coincidentally the same character flaws that make Blake a bad match for Yang), and as a result the boy needs some retooling if you're going to pair him with any girl that isn't Blake. You could make him work as a Harem lead, just not as easily as some of the other guys on this list.

Neptune was introduced as a love interest for Weiss... but he wasn't designed to be her soulmate or anything like that. In fact it's clear from the word go that his romance with Weiss probably wouldn't work out. He's a skirt chaser that isn't looking for anything serious yet, and it would take some major character growth for him to change his ways and become an actual catch instead of a fling. So Neptune doesn't work as a harem lead.

Mercury is part of Team Bad Guy™, and while his backstory does give him the narrative potential for redemption/switching sides you'd have to realize that potential before he'd be a good match for anyone in the plot relevant female cast besides maybe Emerald or Neopolitan. So once again he doesn't really work as a harem lead. [Edit: However he could work as a harem lead for the girls on Team Bad Guy™ without having to go through a redemption arc.]

Oscar was introduced at the start of Volume 4 and became part of the main cast at some point in Volume 5 if memory serves me correctly. He actually has pretty decent relationship with our single ladies, Ruby in particular, so he actually has some potential as a harem lead... Unfortunately he also has a Wizard older than civilization itself living in the back of his mind and at some point he'll become that Wizard older than civilization itself. This has the potential to make any relationship with any of the main girls weird enough to make things unsettling if you think about it too hard, and this significantly damages his potential as a harem lead.

Then we have Whitley, and Whitley is great. Like in many ways he's the VIP of Volume 8. He's hansom, his heart is in the right place in spite of his terrible upbringing, he's clever, he's rich, and he's got a bit of a bad boy edge thanks to his sarcastic wit. He's basically an almost perfect haughty-rich-boy romantic lead. In fact the only major problem Whitley has is that his proper introduction happens pretty darn late in the story, meaning he doesn't really have a chance to form a dynamic with any of our plot relevant ladies, as a result you'd need to create the dynamic yourself as you write the story. But if you're comfortable doing that Whitley makes a good harem protagonist.

And that brings us back to Jaune. Now let's face it, this guy is the franchise's main character. It was a complete accident on CRWBY's part (in fact they were actively trying to not make him the main character), but his Zero To Hero character arc is the only fully realized one in the original show making him the most fleshed out character in the cast. Jaune possesses all of the characteristics of a classic hero and it honestly isn't a big surprise that the Japanese part of the fandom pegged him as the main character when you take the time to think about it. In other words if you compared him to the leads of any Shonen story that just so happens to have a harem element to it you'd find that he'd fit the same mold as a lot of them. On top of that he's been part of RWBY's story since the first proper episode meaning he has a well established dynamic with most of our plot relevant single ladies, and it isn't that hard to shift a good chunk of those established dynamics into a romantic direction. So if you're going to write a RWBY harem story Jaune is about as solid of a harem lead as you can get.


Every other plot relevant male isn't in the right age bracket to work as a love interest for our leading ladies, and the rest of the boys in the right age brackets have even less time in the spotlight than Team CRDL in the main show, and would basically be OCs if you tried to use most of them.


Therefore if we ranked our plot relevant bachelors on who would be the best harem protagonist using their canon characterizations and narrative roles I think we'd get something like this:


S-tier: Jaune, Whitley
A-tier: Sun
B-tier: Oscar (Without the Wizard's baggage)
C-tier: Mercury, Neptune
D-tier: Ren, Oscar (With the Wizard baggage)
F-tier: Team CRDL


So in summary Jaune and Whitley are the clear harem protagonists that you could make work with most of the girls in the cast. You could believably give both of them their own fairly large harem when you consider how their character archetypes work in the wider harem genre.

Sun can work as a harem protagonist with only a few minor tweaks, but even with those tweaks it would probably end up as him being the only boy in the harem he shares with Blake.

Oscar could maybe work if you either don't mind the wizard baggage, have a workaround for the wizard baggage, have some girls lined up for whom the wizard baggage wouldn't make things weird, or avoid the wizard baggage entirely by not killing Ozpin.

The rest of the guys don't work as harem protagonists right out of the box, so be prepared for a lot of work if you want to use them for some reason or other.

 

[Sift Green]

And here's the second one:


So in most circles it wouldn't be controversial to say that most of the Harem Genre is trash, with a lot of people who aren't interested in the genre assuming that the trashiness is a fundamental issue with the genre. However anyone who's actually looked into the genre can confidently tell you that the issues causing the trashiness aren't fundamental, as you can find plenty of harem stories that are genuinely good not just for the genre but in general.

No the real reason why most of the harem genre is considered trash is because the wrong questions were asked and answered in the brainstorming process. You see every author irregardless of genre needs to ask and answer a list of important questions to make their story work; now they don't have to be deep answers, but they do need to be there. (You know questions like "Why is the Bad Guy doing bad things?" The answer could be deep, it could be shallow, but in any case it needs to be there for the villain's actions to make sense in story.) Some of these questions happen to be genre specific, and unfortunately a lot of people working in the harem genre fail to ask and answer the questions specific to their genre.

Questions like: "What is it about our harem protagonist that causes multiple people to fall for them? Are those things enough for those people to stick around in spite of the competition?" Those are simple enough questions that are easy to answer since those are the same questions needed for the industry staple love triangles found in the wider romance genre.

Now if your harem story ultimately ends with the protagonist picking one of the girls you can stop asking questions because then you're just dealing with a more complicated love triangle, but if you're going to go with a true harem ending of some sort you need to ask more questions. Questions like: "Would the harem actually be stable? Are the girls that are going to end up in the harem actually capable of sharing, or will our protagonist become the enteral referee?"

Basically you need to have some consideration of what happens after the wedding/other-official-get-together-milestone if you want to have a satisfying conclusion to the story. Trash harem stories build harems that feel like they'll fall apart the instant the camera stops rolling. Good harem stories build a harem that feels like it will stand the test of time.



And that's why I like RWBY harem stories, Jaune harem stories in particular. I've already touched upon how Jaune is the most natural harem protagonist out of the available boys in the cast, so we'll be focusing on the women's end of the equation.

The three girls closest to Jaune in the canon show are:

1. Jaune's partner and secret admirer Pyrrha Nikos
2. Jaune's best friend who only needed one or two plot developments to become the girlfriend Ruby Rose and
3. His first on screen crush Weiss Schnee, and if her reaction to him being the Rusted Knight meant anything she's who he probably would have ended up with if the show had both continued and given Jaune a happy ending.

These three girls mesh well.

Weiss gets along well enough with Ruby that It isn't hard to construct a believable scenario where Weiss decides she'd be okay sharing Jaune with Ruby. Weiss also admired Pyrrha to such an extent that it also isn't hard to construct a scenario where she'd be okay sharing Jaune with Pyrrha.

Ruby in turn was affected enough by Pyrrha's death that we can infer the two of them became close at Beacon even though the show didn't actually show it and we have to assume they bonded offscreen. In any case it's still easy to construct a believable scenario where Ruby decides she's okay sharing Jaune with Pyrrha, just like it's easy to construct a scenario where Ruby's okay with sharing him with Weiss.

Pyrrha is interesting because of how passive she was in her longing for Jaune in spite of how all consuming that longing was. If another girl got Jaune first and then turned around and offered Pyrrha some kind of place alongside them it's believable that she'd latch onto that offer and refuse to let go, especially if the offer came from a girl like Ruby or Weiss.

In other words the girls closest to Jaune in the canon show are all girls that could believably be willing to try sharing him with each other without breaking character, and then make it work long term.



And it isn't just Jaune and the girls he was close to in canon. It's believable that Yang would be willing to share a guy like Jaune with Ruby, and vice versa. Sun, Blake and Ilia make a believable trio thanks to how Sun and Ilia are both into Blake, giving us a solid core for a different harem. Penny's overeager and sweet nature makes it believable that she'd be willing to share a paramour with a close friend. Emerald's devotion to Cinder in the early volumes make it believable that she'd follow Cinder into a man's bed, and it isn't difficult to see that level of devotion transfer to someone else once Emerald parts from Cinder after internalizing her heel realization. Whitley is an almost perfect harem lead who just needed a few canon interactions with girls not predisposed to distrust him for that to be obvious.



Basically RWBY canon gave us a wide selection of girls that could believably be happy in a harem together without breaking character, to the point that it'd be faster to list the combinations that don't work than it would be to list the combinations that do.

In fact there are enough girls that could believably be happy in a harem together that you could take the three most natural harem leads of Jaune, Sun and Whitley and give each of them their own respectably sized harem within the same story.



So that's why RWBY harem stories appeal to me; all the questions you need to consider in order to make a harem story where the harem ending is a happy ending with little to no caveats have answers right there in the open for you to pick up. As a result most RWBY harems stories are at least decent so long as the author is trying, even if they're a relative novice.


TLDR; Harems in RWBY just work, and that's why I like to see them.

 

[GraveyardShift]

So then tell me @Sift Green

How do the Artic Twins rate on your scale of Harem Lead?

After all in Iessa's own words: "I'm not joining your harem. You're joining mine."

 

[Sift Green]

So then tell me @Sift Green

How do the Artic Twins rate on your scale of Harem Lead?

After all in Iessa's own words: "I'm not joining your harem. You're joining mine."

Click to shrink...

Well, I'd have to reread the relevant snippets to see what they're like as romantic interests. From what I remember there was friction between them and the other cast members half rooted in culture clashes that the twins actively leaned into knowing leaning into the clash could cause friction. I also remember the twins being proactively abrasive with the other girls interested in Jaune after one of them secured Jaune as her boyfriend, with said abrasiveness being conducted in a manner that felt like it reduces the odds of successfully adding more members to a potential harem.

Now I may be misremembering, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if I'm misremembering everything since I have no concrete image of the Twins in my head to attach relevant memories to, but if my rememberings are accurate I'd say they're currently somewhere in C or B tier.

That being said I also don't know the direction their story and character arcs are going, and that's something that could raise or lower their rankings by a significant margin.


So yeah I'm like half "I need to reexamine them" and half "I need to wait and see" before I could give them a solid place on the tier list.

 

[GraveyardShift]

HA! Noted.

But mark my words. I WILL be having my revenge on digcat for all those armored angel taunts.

 

[Sift Green]

HA! Noted.

Click to shrink...

I guess that means my rememberings aren't completely off.

In that case the trajectory of their character arcs is very important. As things stand their deliberate abrasiveness makes them their own worst enemies if building a harem is a serious endpoint for them. So there either needs to be signs they'll be able to get a handle on that before they make permanent enemies of the other girls, or clear signs that they'll figure out how to rebuild burnt bridges when they do push their abrasives too far.

Because knowing a character's most likely trajectory can make their current shortcomings much more tailorable. Jaune's shortcomings in the early volumes are easier to accept since his zero-to-hero character arc makes it clear he'll grow past those shortcomings. Blake's problems are harder to accept because the abrupt abandonment of BlackSun made it clear she'd never grow past her problems.

So if you want the Twins to b A or S tier love interests and central figures of a harem you need to make it clear that their personal flaws are things they are capable of growing beyond, and plant a few hints foreshadowing how they'll grow beyond those flaws before the narrative reaches a point where those flaws cause them major problems.

 

[GraveyardShift]

Naw nothing so complex.

As I once outlined about Vacuian culture, they tend to be friendlier once they've fought you. Because that's how vacuians get to know the measure of you and each other.

As it stands Iella has fought both Jaune and Yang. Which has also resulted in her dating them both separately. Though Yang didn't really see it as such.

Pyrrha is next on the chopping block after the events of Shape of a Soul.

About the only hard no would be Blake. There's irreconcilable differences there due to White Fang troubles.