Spoilers Off applies to all Tear Jerker pages, so all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
While the fic is mostly humorous, it is about a serious issue: racism and all the horrors and injustices that come with it.
- Jaune's initial situation at the start of the story: he's a sheltered teenager who's been labeled Public Enemy #1 after accidentally killing Adam Taurus, and being forced to run from the police. He has little choice but to work for a bunch of terrorists in order to salvage his good name.
- While Blake's obsession with Adam is considered a bit extreme, the fact is that the man she cared for is dead, and to her frustration, almost no one cares.
- When Jaune tries to improve his White Fang branch with food donations, the press falsely accuses him of preying on the homeless.
- When Jaune is forced to dress as Blake, cat ears and all, in order to go out in public, he finds himself forced out of the restaurant for being dressed as a Faunus. While eating at a Faunus-owned place, he reflects on the injustice of it.All I did was exist with a pair of cat ears on my head. Damn it. Is it really that bad?
- When Jaune shows Lisa Lavender his attempt at doing charity work, Lisa gives him a cynical speech about how most people aren't going to care how hard he tries. The worst part: she's right. Lisa tried to write a more sympathetic article, only for it to be rejected in favor of an article about Jaune crossdressing.
- Perry reveals his reason for joining the Fang: he wanted to be a vet, but was denied a loan due to discrimination.
- Jaune suffers sexual assault at the hands of a corrupt SDC manager, who has already assaulted other faunus men and gotten away with it. Jaune is so traumatized, he is driven to tears. In the next chapter, Jaune comments with Adam about how he ignored the plight of faunus for so long, and is forced to agree with Adam that decent people ignore injustice.
- During the fashion show, one of the faunus had her ears punctured and impaled by corrupt managers.
- At the Vytal Festival, when Jaune is confronted with the disdainful apathy of humanity, he ends giving a vicious and blistering speech castigating others for enabling oppression. He's absolutely horrified at himself once he's done, believing he's flushed all the goodwill he's carefully built up. Of course, Jaune learns that he hasn't failed by the end of the chapter, but his mental self-flagellation still hurts to read.
- Sun ends up brutally poisoned by a corrupt hospital, filling Jaune with regret for having put Sun in that position.
- Samantha, a Faunus doctor who helped Jaune raid the above hospital, is unjustly arrested by the Council because they want to make an example of any citizen who assists the White Fang. Jaune is so pissed, he wants to actually use violence, only (with Sienna's help) to realize it would be playing into the Council's hands.
- Sienna and Blake, with Jaune and Yang as company respectively, lament how their violent approach to Faunus discrimination accomplished nothing, while Jaune's methods achieved more than they could ever have imagined. Blake admits her resentment toward Jaune is a mask for her own self-loathing.
- Jaune getting shot. While he survives, the Council of Vale has Jaune locked up to protect their interests. Riots and violence ensue, with all of Jaune's work at creating peace going up in flames.
- Jaune is subjected to brutal psychological warfare in prison: he is barred from speaking to his friends or relatives, forced into a dingy cell, lied to and gaslighted by his prison guards, and only given a plea bargain. If not for Adam's encouragement, he might have given in.
- At Jaune's trial, he is forced to see assholes he helped bust treated better than he is by the system, despite their actions being objectively more harmful.
- At the end, for all the good Jaune has done, and even after he's earned the sympathy of the judges, he still is given a fifteen-year prison sentence with parole for six years. What's worse is the judges wanted to send Jaune to a lenient prison but the Council overruled them and sent him to a Hellhole Prison out of sheer spite.
