History FanFic / NotThisTimeFate

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Weiss manages to force Fate to end Jaune's loops forever, meaning that he finally gets the ending he always wanted: all of his friends and family survived the Fall of Beacon, Cinder and her allies are all dead, and he can finally move on with the life he always wanted. It then sinks in for Jaune that, without the loops giving him a purpose, [[AndThenWhat he doesn't know what he's actually supposed to do with his life anymore]], so while he may have finally ended the loops for good, he's ultimately left a shell of his original self with no sense of identity anymore. He's seventeen and is too psychologically tired to do anything else, and it's likely that only his friends will be able to keep him in some vague veneer of life - but at least he gets to live his final life with them, grow old, and eventually die like he's wanted for so long]].

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Jaune's victory over Pyrrha in the food fight is this. [[spoiler: This is something that has never happened in any previous loop; every time Jaune is pitted against Pyrrha in the food fight he loses. The fact that he wins this time is an indication that his efforts are not as hopeless as they appear and that Fate is losing control of the chain of events.]]

* ForWantOfANail: Jaune's lived so many lives that he's seen what these sort of timelines can produce, and this is invoked at various points in the story.
** The past loops:
*** If Yang gets arrested from her canon bar brawl, she gets sent to prison, then commits suicide after hearing that Ruby dies in the fall of Vale.
*** If he simply kills Cinder, Mercury, and Emerald by bombing their room, Adam gets let off the leash and goes on a rampage in Vale that kills just as many people (if not more) than the Fall of Beacon.
*** Whenever a loop puts Ruby and Blake on different teams, Jaune goes out of his way to trigger a meeting with Penny to secure Blake's survival at the docks because without Penny's intervention, Torchwick and the Fang kill her. If they aren't on the same team, Ruby isn't one of the people combing Vale to find her, and Ruby's the only one who will normally indulge Penny long enough to get her involved in the search and rescue.
** Roman is normally supposed to be taken alive after the Breach, then busted out to ruin Atlas's forces from the inside. [[spoiler:But this time Jaune kills him at the Breach. Without him there, the Battle of Beacon progresses with Atlas keeping air support and their robots helping the defense. There being less enemies and more allies, the students are able to band together and kill the Grimm Dragon, saving the school]].
** The different circumstances of Jaune's capture at Mountain Glenn rather than Ruby's (for one thing, there's no Paladins) cause the team's Huntsman chaperone to fight Neo instead of Yang. [[spoiler:Thus Yang doesn't use up her 'one save' from Raven until later during the Battle of Beacon]].
** A crucial and unprecedented change happens this loop: [[spoiler:Ruby and Pyrrha are put on the same team. To avoid putting all their eggs in one basket, and to avoid Ruby's Silver Eyes weakening the Fall Maiden's power, the conspiracy chooses ''Weiss'' to fuse with the Maiden instead of Pyrrha in spite of the concerns over Weiss' family connections. Weiss has more identity trouble with the Maiden's memories than Pyrrha ever seemed to, which becomes the main reason she believes Jaune when he confesses his true nature to her. Finally having an ally that understands his circumstances and goals is the biggest asset that makes this loop the last one, allowing Weiss to snatch victory when Fate forces Jaune himself to fail]].
** The entire story is the result of one change from canon: [[spoiler:instead of carrying on after Beacon's fall and experiencing Volumes 4 and beyond, Jaune succumbed to despair and committed suicide. This threw a wrench in Fate's intended plan, and it brought Jaune back to try and get an outcome that was close enough to work. The end result of that one act is hundreds of alternate timelines that seemingly still exist, culminating in one timeline that has gone completely off the rails because Fate was convinced to give up on its plan]].

* LeaderWannabe: Weiss, as in canon, albeit the situation is a bit different. She detests the fact that Jaune, who initially appeared to be nothing but a LazyBum was made a team leader instead of her and wants to assume this role herself. Unlike Ruby in canon, Jaune is actually willing to hand the leadership over to Weiss, partially so that he can avoid the spotlight, but also to simply save himself effort. Weiss eventually changes her mind and decides to make Jaune into a worthy leader instead, much to his annoyance.

** [[TheSpeedster]] Ruby also suffered from this when she was little, generally in the form of [[TooFastToSto misjudging when to "put on the breaks"]] to avoid running into walls and people she was running up to hug.

* PowerIncontinence: Yang claims she unlocked her Semblance at school, and caused a massive ruckus because one of its effects is that she bursts into flame. It burned one of her friends' hair, she was freaking out thinking it was burning ''her own'' hair (and her head's on fire), the helpful pamphlet on Semblances incinerated when she picked it up to read it, her dad had to put himself out after trying to calm her down with a hug, Zwei was going nuts, and Qrow was dying laughing... up until Yang remembered to stop-drop-and-roll, [[FromBadToWorse in their wooden home]].

** Ruby, even moreso than in author's other stories. Not only is Jaune made into the protagonist, Ruby isn't even a part of the story's main team and doesn't take part in events like the docks battle or the Breach (other than being part of TheCavalry). Her role in the narrative is mostly limited to making a few fruitless attempts at getting Jaune to open up, some comedy, and leading the fight against the Grimm Dragon, [[OffScreenMomentOfAwesome which largely happens off-screen anyway]]. However, in keeping with her general characterization as TheParagon, she provides Jaune with exactly the words he needs to hear to summon his HeroicSecondWind and resolve to make this loop the last.

** Ruby, even moreso than in author's other stories. Not only is Jaune made into the protagonist, Ruby isn't even a part of the story's main team and doesn't take part in events like the docks battle or The Breach. Her role in the narrative is limited to making a few fruitless attempts at getting Jaune to open up and fighting the Grimm Dragon, [[OffScreenMomentOfAwesome which largely happens off-screen anyway]].

* AngerBornOfWorry: Jaune is outright furious when Blake, Yang, and Weiss go off to assault a White Fang hideout behind his back. Part of it is this trope -- even if their lives are just as expendable since they'll just reset if he dies, he still keeps the bad memories of it happening -- and part of it is that they unwittingly work against his secret efforts to keep them safe.

** Another trope scrutinized is the genre's [[SlidingScaleOfFreeWillVsFate implicit assumption of an indeterminist universe and thus the primacy of free will.]] What happens, as Jaune discovers, if the universe is, at least to some degree, deterministic?

** Weiss sees through Jaune's facade of apathy towards his team after her argument with Blake and the latter running away. He didn't actually stay for Blake's confession to being a faunus terrorist, but shows no surprise when Weiss talks to him about it, meaning he knew already and cares enough to keep it secret. She also realizes that if he was truly as uncaring as he presented himself, he would have given in to Yang's attempts to pressure him into looking for Blake, because coooperating would have been the past of least resistance.

** Weiss sees through Jaune's facade of apathy towards his team after her argument with Blake and the latter running away. He didn't actually stay for Blake's confession to being a faunus terrorist, but shows no surprise when Weiss talks to him about it, meaning he knew already and cares enough to keep it secret.

* StationsOfTheCanon: Invoked. Despite his best efforts, Jaune goes through the same events as he did in the original timeline, such as the initiation, trip to Forever Fall or the Breach, and with largely similar outcomes at that. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Even the damn food fight, to his annoyance]]. [[spoiler:{{Justified}}, since Fate is manipulating the events from the start in order to create a desirable scenario and those events are crucial for its desired outcome]].

* OverprotectiveDad: PlayedForLaughs with Jaune and Blake. He's not only not her dad, he's the same age as her, but as per [[LikeAnOldMarriedCouple the team's dynamic]] he has the ''attitude'' of a dad, and has been known to cause millions of lien in property damage and dozens of deaths to protect his "daughter". Sun comes to Jaune for his blessing to pursue Blake, half-jokingly claiming he wants to MeetTheInLaws, and in return Jaune makes over-the-top threats (that Sun knows are precedented) to make the kid squirm [[ItAmusedMe for kicks]].

* AdaptationalVillainy: {{Downplayed}} by Neo. Like in canon, she becomes single-mindedly obsessed with vengeance on one of the main cast for their role in Roman's death, but in this fic, Neo crosses one line in pursuit of that vengeance that her canon self never crossed. [[spoiler:Whereas the canon Neo only cared about killing Ruby and regarded anyone who got in her way as collateral damage, Neo in this fic deliberately and actively targets and attempts to murder Jaune's family, including his heavily-pregnant mother, to get back at him]].

* HundredPercentAdorationRating: Without really meaning to, Jaune ends up giving the general public a much better opinion of Ozpin, Huntsmen, and the Atlas military compared to canon, where Cinder's plots encourage distrust and anger towards them leading up to the Vytal Festival. His snitching on White Fang rallies to Qrow makes the Vale authorities look more proactive in dealing with the terrorist threat, and his tipoff before the Mountain Glenn mission meant that Beacon is ready to respond to the Breach in no time. These both combined let Ozpin keep his position as head of security for the Festival, so Ironwood doesn't get to bring his whole fleet to Vale and make the city nervous. [[spoiler:By the end, Ironwood and Atlas are praised as heroes for their noble actions in the Battle of Beacon, a far cry from their canonical awful publicity from the same event]].