YMMV / Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger

• Catharsis Factor:
  • Considering that Cardin is a racist bully, it can be very satisfying to see him on the receiving end of Jaune's Force choke in "Victory" or seeing his pure terrified reaction when faced with the terentatek in "Fear".
  • Considering Cinder's smug reaction to encountering Darth Nihilus directly before they battle, coupled with the fact that she's just as devoid of empathy here as in canon, it can be very satisfying to see Nihilus ultimately kick her ass, even if this version of Cinder doesn't live long enough to kill Pyrrha or commit any of her post-Volume 3 atrocities.
  • After watching Adam Taurus viciously and sadistically torture Blake and Weiss, up to and including maiming Weiss for life, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who wasn't rooting for Nihilus when the latter confronted Adam and sucked the life out of him. For bonus points, Nihilus' Force Drain lightning which he apparently uses on Adam is depicted as an excruciating way to die.
  • After all the sufferings and horrors that Nihilus has maliciously and heartlessly inflicted over the course of the story on so many of the heroes — not least on Jaune — watching the tide turn against him, and watching Ozpin and Ruby's respective magics utterly mutilate him, can be very gratifying. And Jaune himself being the one to finish the Sith Lord off is truly something to savor, with Nihilus' voice in Jaune's head clearly losing his shit whilst Jaune verbally tears apart what Nihilus did to him.
• Complete Monster:
  • Darth Nihilus was formerly a Jedi serving under Revan until he succumbed to vengeance and sadism. After becoming a Force Wound, he gleefully destroyed the Jedi Order before becoming trapped within his mask. After being dropped onto Remnant, Nihilus manipulates everyone around him for centuries to cause untold death and destruction, eventually drawing Jaune Arc to his hiding spot. After turning Jaune into a Force Wound himself, Nihilus uses Jaune's growing hunger to drive him mad, even encouraging him to rape his friend Weiss, until Jaune puts on the mask to end the torment. After finally taking control of Jaune's body, Nihilus brutally kills everyone in sight, even crushing Crescent Rose in front of Ruby just because he finds it funny, then crashes the Atlas airship into Beacon's campus to start the Fall of Beacon. When he realizes he might be losing, Nihilus takes as many of Beacon's fighters as he can with him, both in personal combat and by bringing down Beacon Tower on the battlefield. Embracing his self-proclaimed status as a "God of Destruction", Nihilus intends to destroy not only Remnant, but the entire universe as well, all just to satisfy his endless hunger and bloodlust.
  • "Vengeance": Adam Taurus proves himself to be just as spiteful and sadistic as he was in canon despite his brief appearance. In the past, Adam was incredibly abusive to his girlfriend Blake, physically abusing her and then gaslighting her into believing the abuse wasn't happening. Leading the White Fang in their attack on Beacon, Adam gleefully participates in the murder of innocents, including executing an Atlas student after defeating him. When confronted by Blake and Weiss, he blames Blake for all of his horrific actions and rejects all of her attempts to talk him down, gleefully slicing out Weiss's eyes when she talks back to him just because of her last name. Immediately afterwards, he stabs Blake in the stomach, gloating that he purposefully missed any of her vital organs just so she could continue to suffer for leaving him.
• Evil Is Cool: Darth Nihilus in general.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Poor Pyrrha suffers almost every bad thing she went through in canon and then some. She has to watch her team leader and friend who she's in love with slowly devolve into a dangerous sociopath, and then into a literal monster who slaughters dozens of students and innocents all around her, driving her to try and save him. Unlike in canon, Pyrrha successfully takes on Amber's Aura to become the Fall Maiden, but she effectively becomes a spiritual Frankenstein of two souls in the process. And Pyrrha doesn't just die in this continuity — she dies by the blade of the very beloved leader who she's spent the story trying to save from Nihilus after Nihilus has fully possessed him, only able to pass on the Fall Maiden power to Ruby in her dying moments and hope that the latter can finish what she started.
  • Ruby. The amount of suffering and loss that she experiences throughout the third act makes what her canon self went through during Volume 3 seem downright pleasant in comparison. In addition to losing Penny and Pyrrha like in canon, she also has her uncle Qrow die, is Forced to Watch as her Crescent Rose is destroyed by Nihilus, has her school reduced to rubble rather than just overrun by the Grimm, and loses two of her closest friends within minutes of each-other, watching one of them commit a Heroic Suicide just to put an end to Nihilus' rampage. And that's not even getting into the total bloodbath Ruby witnesses from Nihilus' extremely graphic massacre of civilians and students alike in "Nihilus". Yet despite all of this, Ruby never completely gives up the fight until Nihilus is stopped, and "Epilogue" implies that she's repressing her trauma to put up the front of a strong leader.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Some readers are only interested in the fic because they want to see Darth Nihilus fight everyone else. They were not disappointed when the chapter "Nihilus" finally came out.
• One-Scene Wonder: The terentatek. Despite only appearing in a single chapter, the terentatek provides several memorable scenes. It no-sells Jaune's Force powers, nearly kills Jaune, overpowers Pyrrha Nikos in a straight-up fight, elicits an Oh, Crap! from Nihilus with its appearance alone, is able to withstand the combined assault of Goodwitch, RWBY, and JNPR, and is so far the only Star Wars enemy that the heroes get to fight outside of Nihilus.
• Rooting for the Empire: A lot of readers find themselves actively rooting for Darth Nihilus to win, given how inexplicably cool Nihilus is and the fact that just seeing him curb-stomp everyone would be awesome in-and-of itself. It helps that two of the first people Nihilus is set up to fight are Cinder and Adam Taurus.
• The Woobie:
  • Jaune. Poor, poor Jaune. All he's ever wanted was to be a hero, but he was constantly discouraged by his overprotective parents. Everything he's done under Nihilus's influence was out of a desire to protect the people he loved. At the end, he ultimately destroys all his friendships and loses the will to continue on, allowing Nihilus to take over and use his body to kill the very people he swore to protect. By the end of the story, he kills himself to prevent Nihilus from using his body any further, but not before losing everything that was precious to him, including the girl he loved.
  • Weiss really doesn't have an easy time herself. She abruptly becomes infatuated with one of her friends and goes to the school dance with him, only to find out afterwards that her feelings were entirely the result of him unwittingly performing a Jedi Mind Trick on her that she didn't even know he could perform — to make this even worse, having no control over her own actions is Weiss' absolute worst fear, having grown up with an abusive father who wrestled for control of everything except her thoughts and wants. She responds to the realization understandably. Later, Adam Taurus violently cuts out Weiss' eyes, and her team still gets dissolved after the Fall of Beacon. Weiss' only comfort that her canon self lacked immediately after the Fall is that she's going back to Atlas under Winter's custody instead of Jacques'.

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