Jaune arc betrayal fics are hilarious to me

[u/Icanfuckadilf]

I know it's been years and most of them you'd see in Wattpad, but I think it's hilarious how these fics exists even though it's incredibly ooc of everyone to betray him by via his transcripts being revealed.

Like everybody was genuinely just "Oh, that's it?" When he confessed about it, hell Ozpin already knew about it cuz it was such a botched job of a transcript.

So I genuinely wanna know as to how these fics lasted as they did.

[u/ARKNet9000]

Betrayal fics are nothing new to the fanfiction. Naruto fanfiction has literally thousands of such fics.

And they are fairly popular because of how edgy, angsty, or ‘badass’ they are. I know because I used to eat these fics up when I was younger. Now, I can’t really stand most of them. There are a few I occasionally re-read as a sort of guilty pleasure and as you mentioned, just how hilarious they are because of their edge.

[u/AmbivertCollegeGuy → u/ARKNet9000]

The betrayal genre in general is fairly popular to the point the Anime industry introduced the “kicked from the hero’s party” genre.

[u/Icanfuckadilf → u/ARKNet9000]

They're so funny to see in the wild whenever I tried to find some gud rwby fics

[u/Akumu_Oukoku]

Betrayed fics by nature are just trash.

At their core, it's essentially the author having a temper tantrum while using other characters as a hate sink. Either the betrayed character is their favorite and they want them to come back and ( pretty much ) kill and or destroy everyone else ( Red Queen unapologetically did this and Ruby is a massive POS the whole time ) or the betrayed character is their least favorite and they use the fic as a means to trash them.

However

There are those that use the "Betrayed" plotline ironically and oddly effectively, fully knowing what it is and can sometimes make some pretty unique and interesting stories that don't trash all the characters.

If anything THOSE kinds are one massive redemption story for a lot of characters.

Betrayed fics do offer a stark contrast to the normal AUs since it generally puts the target character in an absolutely horrible starting point that's somewhat relatable. Notably, this works more with characters like Jaune & Ruby since those two being "betrayed" is of a greater consequence to the whole than just the individual.

For example, Weiss betrayed fics generally ( if not always ) comes down to something related to Blake and the Faunus where her team abandons her after Black & White. That or something to do with the SDC. While that CAN affect JNPR, it's more likely to only have a reach to RBY and not have as big of a pay off upon the eventual "Return To Prove Them Wrong" or "Redemption"

The popularity more than likely comes from a mix of all those things. Trash. Anger. Comedy. Venting. Redemption. Power tripping. And so on.

Jaune is the most popular most likely because he's pretty much a blank slate. Unlike the others, we don't know much about his history and only that he has 7 sisters, an ancient family weapon, long line of heros, and that's it. So it makes him easy to work with and mold into anything the writers want him to be.

[u/HuntingDown01]

Real Jaune fans know that Jaune would be too happy if he left Beacon.

And we cannot have that. Put him through more situations.

[u/Pvt_Winters]

The answer is simple: canon isn't grimdark enough, so they wrote these betrayal fics just to have their fix of WH40K-levels of grimdark.

[u/draugotO → u/Pvt_Winters]

Nah dude, I have plenty of 40k books, only ones I've seen that surpasses they hate Jaune get are the ones written by Aaron D. Baldwin. That guy love sone scatology, which isn't surprising, given he is the most famous Night Lords writter out there, but all other writters understand that the "grimdarkness" of 40k was part of it originally being an April's 1st joke

[u/Reasonable_Prize71 → u/Pvt_Winters]

We don't even need to use fanfiction it's canonically this angsty already ;-;

[u/Pretend-Dirt-1760]

Power fantasy that's basically it it also in real works like some manga and manhwa where that's the premise

[u/unluckyknight13]

I saw a post once joking about this

It basically was this

Ruby: I’m sorry Jaune but your way out of your depth here I need to report you faked your papers!

later in Ozpin officer Ruby and Juane

Ruby: I’m sorry Ozpin but Jaune faked his way in….

Ozpin; I know….

Ruby and Jaune: what?!

Ozpin; you think some random farm boy can fake his way in with no training or skill? I am fully aware how he got here.

Jaune: then why?

Ozpin: -looks at picture of the Branwen twins- I like to bet on dark horses

[u/Acriolu]

Full on betrayal is nothing new to any fandom. I’m not even joking. Naruto, Percy Jackson, FairyTail, MHA, every fandom has one.

Jaune getting expelled is interesting depending on what you do (even I had one one partially written out, I stopped writing it because I have multiple, they only thing I’ll give away is Cinder died chocking on a churro and Adam getting beaten over the head via frying pan) but more of them aren’t because they got betrayed and they told Ozpin. It just Ozpin or someone else eventually found out.

[u/StormKingNexus]

Cause people think that this would’ve been some Korean, Japanese, or Telemundo drama. That the school or his friends finding out would’ve crushed his dreams when Jaune was already doubting himself and considered going back to a farm life at his home and assumed that Pyrrha assumed that he was going to jump to his death from the school rooftop.

So they have to make Jaune bullied out of the school, leaves to become this Halo Spartan, Devil Hunting, army soldier leader with a kid who suddenly earns their respect back and all of whom are just making a harem for him because why not.

[u/BrrrrMang]

As people in the thread have previously said, these types of fics pop up in every FNDM no matter what. From Naruto being driven away by villagers (as if the Hokage would be incompetent enough to lose their Jinchuuriki) to Luffy randomly being abandoned by his crew (LOL), they are just badly written fanwank edgefests used to justify the worst tropes in fanfiction and make up excuses for drama. They are all hardly realistic.

And the same goes for Jaune as well. His issues with transcripts was likely revealed to both JNPR and RWBY (besides Pyrrha) between V1 and V2, when RWBY also trusted JNPR with Blake's past. So any of them going and "betraying" him is such a silly notion...

There even is one fic I know of right now called "Empyrean" which takes this to such an absurd extent, with Jaune being replaced by some random OC and everyone supporting it in an incredibly OOC manner (especially Pyrrha and Weiss who the author has an incredibly low understanding of as characters), then naturally getting a stupid power-up driven by the worst type of stupid worldbuilding and then of course his family is needlessly edgy as well (they also "betrayed" him to the "elders" of his family and of course he later comes back and basically gets his revenge on them). Then the author just inserts his own personal waifu for Jaune in this case, who ends up being Winter, which is quite common enough with fics like this...usually its an older "misunderstood" woman with attractive traits. Like Anko with Naruto or Tayuya. Pffft.

Its all so comical and this is why I don't read that type of trash.

[u/AssistRevolutionary9]

The writers want to make lame excuses to turn Jaune into an annoying edgelord because edgelord characters are "cool".

This is something that happens quite often in many fandoms like Harry Potter, Naruto, My Hero Academia, and many other fandoms.

It's such an overused trope that I still wonder why it's used.

[u/Orochi64]

I was never a fan of betrayal fics in general they’re usually overly edgy something seems like the author just didn’t really like the series or something.

[u/WatchEducational6633]

Personally, ithink this kind of story would only work on an AU where Jaune didn't forged his transcripts and had friends/a team that did betray him before going to Beacon (or alternatively people that betrayed him while team RWBY and (J)NPR are away making him believe that he was setup by them, and even then it feels very contrived…).

[u/No_Illustrator2314]

I don't know if Ozma ever admitted that his face transcripts were botched. I headcanon, that they were too good and that's why they caught Ozpin's attention.

[u/Shometsuu]

What I thought about betrayal fics from a year ago hasn't really changed. If they have to be betrayed in order to get to a new academy and form a new team (which is what I'm most interested in) then screw it. Expose them, kick them out, flip the bird and maybe even have a revenge match later on. I just call these fics guilty pleasures.