#a different label onto that character. but 'lack of attraction' seems to mostly be taken as an invitation to rewrite it as 'gay attraction'

[stilloutofmyvulcanmind]

An Unexpected Accident

Pairing: Bruce Wayne x Gender Neutral!Reader

Characters: Bruce Wayne, Reader, Alfred Pennyworth

Word Count: 1700

Warnings: Car accident but mostly cheesy fluff

Summary: It’s two weeks before Christmas, and helping a stranger after a car accident leads to some unexpected events

A/N: This is just a short little thing that came from nowhere. Not written with any particular version of Bruce in mind.

You weren’t entirely sure how it happened. One moment you were driving home from work, carefully, listening to one of the many Christmas songs that had been playing on the radio as you went, the next, something was slamming into you. The force of the impact sent the car spinning, skidding across the icy roads at dangerous speeds. You tried, in vain, to get the vehicle under control, but it was hopeless. Another car hit. And another. There were others, in the background, you could hear the collisions, the screams, the shouts.

A final impact and everything went black.

You groaned groggily as you came to. You ached all over. You shivered. It was freezing. It took effort to raise your head, but slowly you managed to do so. The windshield was shattered, glass and falling snow coating the dashboard. Another time and it would’ve looked pretty. You looked through the hole. A streetlight had finally halted you it seemed. What was left of the front of your car was wrapped around it. 

Fuck, you’d gotten lucky.

But you needed to get out. 

Fumbling with the buckle of your belt, fingers feeling heavy and clumsy, and thankfully it popped loose. The door the passenger’s side was crumpled in, but somehow your side was still intact, and you managed to scramble out.

You’d gotten very lucky. 

You took a second, to just breathe and squash the need to vomit, then straightened up and looked around.

It was absolute carnage.

There must’ve been nearly a dozen cars. Some near on top of each other. Some in far worse shape than your own. People were everywhere. Some clearing the area, a couple were on phones, and you could hear sirens in the distance. 

You moved slowly, still not entirely sure how the hell you’d survived or how it hadn’t been so much worse. 

A woman screamed and pointed. Thick smoke was starting to plume up from one of the cars, dark and heavy. There was someone still inside it. A man. He wasn’t moving. Everyone was running away.

Damn it.

You ran towards the car, feet skittering over patches of ice, but somehow managing to remain upright. You reached the car, jerking at the handle of the door until it burst open suddenly enough to nearly send you flying backward. 

“Hey!” You shouted, leaning in to shake the older man’s shoulder. He groaned but didn’t respond otherwise. There was blood trickling down from his hairline. The smoke was getting worse, trying it’s best to choke you. “I’m getting you out,” you said between coughs, hoping he could hear you. 

Reaching in over him, you managed to pop his belt and free him. You draped one arm over your shoulders, holding onto him tightly as you pulled him free of the car. He managed to support some of his own weight, but not much, leaving you to nearly drag him away out of the smoke and to the safety of the sidewalk. 

You set him down carefully on a mostly snow-free patch, quickly removing the winter coat you were wearing and wrapping it around his fancy looking suit instead. The cold hit you immediately, even worse than before, but he needed it more. He looked to be pretty elderly, and he was hurt worse than you, keeping him warm was more important.

“Ambulances will be here soon. They’ll get you right in no time,” you told him, mostly just to fill the quiet. There were still people around you, but they were mostly too focused on themselves. “My name’s Y/N.”

“Al-Alfred…” He mumbled, opening his eyes and looking up at you for a split second before wincing and closing them again. “Thank...you…”

“It’s okay. Save your strength.” Alfred didn’t say anymore, but you kept talking to him, about nothing really, but it passed the long couple of minutes until firetrucks and paramedics flooded the scene, and whisked you both off in different directions to get aid. 

You hoped he’d be okay.

~

 You asked about him at the hospital, but no one was able to tell you anything. Casualties had been taken to a couple different hospitals though, so you weren't too surprised. Still, you were disappointed. As for yourself, you'd somehow managed to walk away with just a few scrapes, and a hell of a bruise across your chest from the seat belt. 

You were sent home the next morning, and a couple of days later business resumed as normal for you. 

It was a week later, near the end of the workday when a whispered commotion started to spread through your office floor. Bruce Wayne was in the building and no one knew why. 

You were less fazed than some. It wasn't that you didn't like him, far from it. His charity efforts alone made you respect him. You just didn't feel the urge to swoon and dote like some. 

So when the elevator pinged open, and the manager’s assistant pointed in the direction of your desk, it was a surprise for everyone. 

Everyone stayed calm, pretending to carry on working but continued to watch from the corner of their eyes as he walked over, exuding the confidence he always seemed to have. 

“Y/N Y/L/N?" 

You nodded, "Yes, sir."

"Bruce Wayne." He extended a hand which you shook. 

"Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Wayne?" Though what that could be, you didn't know. Your company had next to nothing to do with Wayne Enterprises, and even if it did, there'd be no reason for Bruce Wayne of all people to need to speak to you. 

"No, no, nothing like that. Is there somewhere we could speak more privately?" 

"Uhh yeah, this way." You led him to one of the smaller offices on the floor, closing the door behind you both. 

Bruce sat in one of the chairs, setting the plain bag he had with him on the floor, and motioning for you to take the one next to him. "Sorry for the mystery, I just prefer to talk one on one."

You nodded again, "Talk about what exactly?" 

"Last week. I wanted to thank you for what you did, face to face."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand."

"The man you saved, Alfred, he's my butler."

Oh. "Is he okay? I think we were taken to different hospitals."

Bruce smiled, "He's fine. A few stitches and a little shaken, but he'll be okay. Thanks to you."

"I didn't do anything special. Anyone would've done the same."

"Except they didn't. You were hurt and you still took the time to help someone else. A lot would call that being a hero."

You laughed at that, nervously. It was from the way Bruce was looking at you than anything. It was like he could see what you were thinking. "I wouldn't go that far."

"Alfred’s family. I would certainly go that far."

"You make it sound like I'm Batman or something."

Bruce chuckled and shrugged, "I think he'd agree that you share similar qualities."

That made you blush. "I...thank you."

He smiled again, warmly, and reached down to slide the bag over to you. "Also wanted to return your coat."

"Thanks." You took the bag and pulled out your coat, only, "This is isn't my coat. The same color, yeah, but it's lacking the hole in the pocket, and going by this label probably cost five times mine did."

Bruce shrugged, "Huh, must be magic."

Tucking the coat back away, you shook your head, "I can't accept this, Mr. Wayne."

"Bruce, please, and I insist. It's the least I can do."

You went to protest more, but a raised eyebrow stopped you. "It's beautiful, I appreciate it."

"Of course." He started to say more, but a chime from his phone halted him. He looked at it, the screen lighting his face, then tucked it away back in his jacket pocket. "Business calls, I'm afraid."

You stood with Bruce, shaking his hand again, not failing to notice that he seemed to hold on a couple of seconds longer than was necessary. "Thank you for coming. I'm glad to know he's okay."

Another warm smile and then he was at the door, hand on the handle. Before he opened it, he paused and turned to look back to you. "Don't suppose I could convince you into letting me take you out to dinner?" 

"I think the coat was more than enough as thanks."

"Not as thanks."

"Then as what?" 

"A date?" 

"I-" Bruce Wayne wanted to take you on a date. That…was unexpected. You knew his reputation, but for whatever reason, you weren't getting the vibe that he was only asking to get you into bed. 

"C'mon. I know a place that's been doing dinner and a show for Christmas. Gotten great reviews."

Fuck it, what did you have to lose? "That...sounds lovely. I'd like that."

The pleased look was definitely genuine. He pulled out his phone and passed it to you so you could enter your number. "I'll call and let you know the details," he said, taking it back once you were done. "I'll look forward to it."

"So will I."

And then he was kissing your cheek, and for a moment you lost the ability to think coherently. Okay so maybe you were more attracted to him than you'd let yourself imagine. 

"See you soon," Bruce said, opening the door. 

"Bye." You waited for the door to close again, before sinking back into the seat, thankful that the blinds looking out onto the floor were closed so no one could see you. 

That was not how you'd expected the day to go, but you weren't complaining. Had you gotten caught up in his charm? Maybe. But it didn't feel that way. It felt like Bruce actually saw something in you that he liked, and that…that felt good. Not that you'd ever admit it to anyone. 

You garnered up your strength and exited the office, ignoring the looks you got off the others. Your cellphone pinged just as you reached the desk. It was from Bruce, giving you his number in return. 

It crossed your mind that you needed to ask him how he'd even found you. You'd been so swept up in his presence that it hadn't even occurred to you to ask. He must've pulled some long strings. You could find out on your date. 

Your date. 

With Bruce Wayne. 

You smiled. 

This was going to be a pretty good Christmas.

#bruce wayne x reader #batman x reader #batman imagine #batman one shot #bruce wayne imagine #bruce wayne one shot #dc imagine #dc one shot

[rwbyconversations]

Why I think some people don’t like Jaune

Jaune Arc. Jauney boy. You make very hard to like you sometimes. 

Jaune Arc is almost certainly the most discussed character in RWBY, even more so than the titular four girls. This is not a very good thing. Since the early days of Volume 1, Jaune has been derided and mocked by portions of the community, often dismissed as a poorly planned out audience surrogate, a writer-insert and/or Miles shoving in a cliche shonen protagonist into Monty’s tapestry of art. That last one is hyperbole, for the record. But regardless, Jaune is far from unanimously loved by the fandom- just go see how many RWDE posts are about him. I tried reading some of them and after I finished washing my eyes out with bleach, I found myself mildly disagreeing with their contents. 

(sidenote if anyone ever convinces Dudeblade to learn how to use italics, bold or underline to emphasize something instead of random capitalization like Baby’s First Word Doc I will actually pay you in pesos)

But while the reasons people give for hating Jaune are many, some of them have little basis in reality. Others, meanwhile, are quite painfully true and have incredibly valid criticisms that can be applied to RWBY as a whole at the core of their message. So today, I’d like to explain why I think some people hate Jaune, why some of the reasons don’t hold much weight, and why a few are quite valid.

Reason 1) “Jaune’s a Self/Author Insert!” 

Perhaps the most common and damning criticism of Jaune, especially in the earlier volumes, were claims that Jaune was just an insert character for Miles to fawn over. Miles and Kerry have themselves said that Miles has had very little to do with writing Jaune in the show proper since Volume 1, and that most of Jaune’s larger scenes were done at the behest of Kerry or Monty. Quote:

In the first few Volumes, if Jaune was in a scene it was almost always because either Monty or myself wanted him in a scene. From the very beginning, Monty was very big on having that archetype of character be fairly prominent in the show. Miles has always been incredibly hesitant to insert Jaune into scenes, to the point where he's voiced before that he wishes sometimes that he didn't voice him.

That said, this only came out in early 2018 after Volume 5 had already wrapped. In the years before then, many a fan was utterly convinced that Miles was behind most of Jaune’s more limelight-hogging scenes in Volume 1 particularly. This wasn’t helped by some quotes of Miles that got taken out of context, primarily that he based Jaune off himself as a younger teenager (the quote is in fact referring to Jaune’s voice).

Fandom also plays a purpose in Jaune gaining the inglorious title of self-insert. Jaune’s lack of a semblance, conventional attractiveness, age that put him close to the girls and vague backstory meant it was very easy for fanfiction writers to appropriate Jaune into whatever they needed, which at best included harem comedies and at worst...

Well, hell on earth. Fandom has had a large impact on RWBY, and I believe the “self-insert” accusations regarding Jaune are perhaps the most clear example of this. Some people do still believe to this day that Jaune is an SI, but I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the writing team and assume that no, any intent was not maliciously planted and it was an accident.

Reason 2) Jaune’s an audience surrogate

This one actually has basis in reality since the crew have actually said Jaune’s purpose in the early volumes was to be the audience surrogate (see above, second bolded part). To explain the term the audience surrogate is a character, usually found in fantasy or science fiction stories, who is new to the setting and its more complex rules. Thus, when someone tells this character how the system works, it doesn’t feel weird for the audience to have this information. We learn with the character, drawing us further into the setting. On the surface, an audience surrogate is not a bad storytelling device, but what it comes down to is execution, and here is where I feel that RWBY falls flat on its face in handling Jaune.

Jaune’s primary purpose in the first half of Volume 1 is largely to serve as the vehicle through which we discover Aura. Aura, the resource incredibly common in-setting and able to be tracked to an exact percentile in tournaments. In fact, Aura is so easily tracked, Remnant’s smartphones can track other people’s Auras no sweat. Most audience surrogates usually only need lore explained to them when it’s a rare facet of life, hence why it’s often seen in fantasies with magic to get the reader caught up on the rules. 

For example, in the Mistborn series, while Vin is aware of burning metal, she unlocks her Mistborn powers at the beginning of the trilogy and then has to learn about the other metals she didn’t know she possessed, and gets further training on the one metal (brass) she could burn that she thought was just her luck. As well, Vin infiltrates high society, so alongside learning about the different metals, we also use Vin’s inexperience to learn how high society works under the Lord Ruler.

For Jaune to have no clue about Aura, despite the commonality of it in-setting, is almost unthinkable and essentially requires his parents to have locked him in a basement for his entire life. While surrogates aren’t meant to know everything about a setting, it is expected that they at least know the basics- again, see Vin from Mistborn as an example of this.  Therefore, I will not deny that Jaune is an audience surrogate. However, I do believe that Jaune is a bad audience surrogate who breaks the internal rules of a character alongside the logical rules of the setting.

Reason 3) Jaune’s a cliche shonen lead

Let me rattle off a quick idea for a story, like I’m giving an elevator pitch.

Our story is about a young boy (usually with spiky hair) who goes to join a magical academy so he can slay monsters. He’s not proficient in the art of combat but he has a big heart and genuinely tries most of the time, so through outside circumstances he manages to enroll in the school. Immediately, he gets pegged by the headmaster for special reasons and develops a crush with an cold-hearted young woman who rebukes his advances. All the while, he develops a close friendship with a shy girl who is holding a candle for him but he doesn’t see her desires until it’s too late. In the meantime, he continues to train to prove himself a great hero.

Now, who did I describe. Jaune Arc? Or half of the shonen genre? There’s a reason for the popularity in the stock shonen hero cliche- it’s pretty easy to get right on the first try, makes for a mostly likable hero who the audience can get behind and root for as they aspire to become a Pokemon master collect the Dragonballs win the Battle City Finals become the greatest hero who ever lived. Jaune hits a lot of the cliches of the Stock Shonen Hero in early RWBY, and this set off alarm bells in the minds of many of RWBY’s more anime-conscious fans. The moment Jaune fell for Weiss and she shot him down, the early fanbase were on-edge about Jaune. RWBY had been advertised as four girls fighting monsters and kicking ass with great choreography. And here comes this blonde wannabe in a hoody trying to insert a love triangle into all of that? Yeah, no thanks. Again, this was likely something Monty intentionally pushed through since the AMA says Monty was big on Jaune’s archetype being in the show.

Though Jaune, in my opinion at least, did step away from these trappings later in RWBY, becoming more sullen and less focused on traditional shonen ideals, the early days played no small role in defining why people loathed Jaune in early RWBY. And once the label of “shonen lead” was plastered onto Jaune, it would prove nearly impossible to remove. 

In all honesty, this is one of the smaller reasons for people’s dislike of Jaune, but notable in that it set the groundwork- people already dismissed him as a cheap shonen lead, and that principle latched onto Jaune like gum onto a shoe. 

Reason 4) Jaune’s stealing scenes and where it hurts characters

Though Jaune has had a significantly reduced presence in RWBY since Volume 1, it seems that his primary scenes in Volumes 4 and 5 had a very unintended consequence of taking away from other characters. One of the often-cited scenes of this is Volume 4 Chapter 10, Kuroyuri.

The scene is set for Ruby to finally confront the trauma bubbling beneath the surface that had been eating at her since Volume 3- Penny and Pyrrha’s joint deaths and the Fall of Beacon, her Silver Eyes and how no one was willing to talk to her about them. And yet who does most of the speaking in this scene? Jaune. Jaune indirectly hijacks the scene away from Ruby so that instead it can become a scene of, quite frankly, platitudes that ring hollow. Despite supposedly being a scene where Ruby is being built up, despite supposedly being about Ruby,  and how inspiring she is, the active character in the scene, the one with agency and prevalent on-screen characterization... Is Jaune.

Volume 5 Chapter 11 is the other standout example of this, in what is now an infamous string of events. Jaune basically hijacks not one, not two, but three active character arcs- he again strips Ruby of her agency by going after Cinder, who also has her sub-plot of hating Ruby curtly kicked out a window because of Jaune hogging her attention, and then Weiss takes a frankly insulting dive so that Cinder has someone to spear so we have a cheap cliffhanger so dramatic tension can die onscreen so Jaune can have an excuse to pop his Semblance’s virginity. And let me stress, Ruby has about as much agency as some belly-button fluff for the rest of the Battle of Haven and by extension the entire Volume.

This is a reasoning for disliking Jaune that I fully understand and can get behind. Through a mix of tragic circumstance (the Volume 5 scene is effectively the one time Jaune takes relevance in the entire volume) and some mind-boggling creative choices, Jaune now twice in a row stripped Ruby of agency she has desperately needed, interrupted a two-year in the making subplot with Cinder, and indirectly killed RWBY’s dramatic stakes. Did you really think they’d kill Weiss in Volume 5? Exactly, no one really thought they’d go through on it, Weiss and the rest of RWBY are basically safe until the last two or three volumes. Regardless of whether or not Jaune is meant to be seen as a main character or a side, his focus scenes have the tragic mishap of constantly coming at the expense of someone else being undermined.  

Reason 5) He’s... not actually that good a strategist.

Jaune is a crap fighter, he’ll readily admit to being much weaker in direct combat than anyone else in the heroes side. So instead, he adopted the sub-trope of shonen leads, the strategist/quick thinker. Be it Izuku in My Hero Academia or many of the protagonists in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, shonen has a long history of heroes who fight as much with their minds as they do with their fists.

Here’s the problem with that. Jaune’s really bad at being a strategist. In fact, despite not even doing it since Volume 3, Ruby has displayed far more tactical acumen than Jaune.

JNPR vs BRNZ isn’t won through tactical skill beyond just throwing Nora at the problem after Divine Cindervention (compare this with how effortless RWBY make taking down ABRN look). Jaune even rips off Ruby’s idea of code-names but his attempt fails due to insufficient practice. Meanwhile Ruby says “Checkmate” in Volume 5 and despite not having trained together for months, Blake and Weiss immediately jump into action.   

Jaune explicitly quotes one of RNJR having said "you're the strategist", and is the character that gets to come up with a plan for taking down the Petra Gigas. And even though the way his plan is phrased initially gets played as humorous, his dumb strategy ultimately gets vindicated by actually working.

“Keep moving, run in a circle” is pretty poor advice (in fact, Ren had already been trying this strategy when Jaune said it and the Nuck still landed a blow on him), but in-universe it’s treated like gospel. Nobody points out how weak Jaune’s strategies are because from a meta perspective, the only way Jaune is able to stay relevant in fights in Volume 4 is to shout inane “strategies.” The issue with this is that (yet again) it comes at the expense of other characters, including (again) Ruby, who in Volumes 1 through 3 was shown as far sharper when it came to using her team and their strengths. Everyone else on the hero side has to take an intellectual dive so Jaune can take home a glorified participation trophy. 

Jaune using his greatsword for a stabbing attack when it’s built for slashing in the Haven battle. I brought this up in my “What went wrong at Haven?” post, but I thought it was worth repeating that this is a massive blunder.

Reason 6) General misc stuff

I couldn’t make full points of these, so I made bullet points for some of the smaller reasons Jaune is disliked

The Weiss obsession. There’s no real nice way of sugarcoating Jaune’s actions in Volume 2, no means no. That this came about from some glorified improv and the idea that it would be a funny idea makes my stomach churn. 

The bully arc taking so much time. Thanks to how Volume 1 cut some episodes, Jaune’s arc with Cardin took four weeks in real life to complete. This only exaggerated the issues people took with Jaune, and had RWBY not immediately come back with the fight-scene Renaissance piece that was Blake and Sun vs Roman, I can’t imagine how many people would have dropped the show thanks to an after-school special that got wedged in their fighting anime.

Jaune looking away and letting Cinder shoot Amber. Ignoring that Cinder’s Semblance can let her shoot around targets, which she does in the Pyrrha fight, Jaune never stood a chance against Cinder, and no matter what, most friends would be distracted by their friend’s agonized screams and would likely turn around in despair.

Jaune hating Qrow in Volume 4. Thanks to Jaune being the one member of RNJR willing to call out Qrow for his and Ozpin’s parts in Pyrrha’s death, Jaune got some flack from Qrow’s notable fandom. Ironically enough, people began to dislike Jaune more when he refused to ever act on these feelings after Ozpin’s return in Volume 5, with Jaune only ever calling out Ozpin after Yang did it with the Birds Reveal (I’ve written a piece before about why that reveal fell flat). His out of nowhere tepidness in approaching Ozpin regarding Pyrrha’s death was so out-of-nowhere that people were begging for Jaune to have screentime again, that’s how random it was.

To conclude, there are many reasons why people hate Jaune Arc, and the story doesn’t really help his case a lot of the time in all honesty. While some of the stated reasons are far from logical (I at least hope I’ve explained why I think he’s not a self-insert), Jaune unfortunately fails to set himself as a distinct character without it usually biting someone else in the ass. He fails to be a proper audience surrogate due to lacking essential knowledge about the setting. He has an unfortunate tendency to overshadow other characters and hijack their plots for his own scenes (poor Ruby), and he fails to even be that competent a strategist, leaving his supposed skills to be more of an informed attribute. Add in a variety of smaller reasons for his hatedom, legitimate or not, that have stacked up over the years, and Jaune unfortunately has several valid reasons to dislike him. While I still personally like the Noodle Boy, and I do hope that he can develop and grow stronger as a fighter, tactician and character in the coming future, I cannot deny that I fully understand why people would be turned off by Jaune. So much could have been done with Jaune, but much like a bad salad that comes before a great main course, you’ve already lost your appetite before the main servings arrive.

To surmise, Jaune-hate began because of a perfect storm of circumstances that would be impossible to make happen on purpose. He could have recovered from the flirting with Weiss, the Audience Surrogate/Shonen lead status, or being the main character in several drawn-out arcs, but all at once? Was too much for any one character to bear, and Jaune was unfortunately the character who had all of this lumped on him within a year of the show beginning.

Thank you for reading.

... damnit kid why do you make it so hard to like you sometimes I don’t like doing this

#rwby #rwde #jaune arc #ctrq #ruby rose #miles luna #oscar pine #author insert #pyrrha nikos #cinder fall #rwby analysis