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Creator / Coeur Al'Aran

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Coeur Al'Aran is a prolific fanfiction writer who focuses exclusively on writing RWBY stories. He is known within the community for having completed several novel-length works and consistently updating ongoing ones on a weekly or biweekly basis.

Most of his stories focus on the character of Jaune Arc, usually with some minor or major changes made to either his character or the setting as a whole. A few such as Captain Dragon, Dating What Daddy Hates and The Beast Of Beacon avert this formula.

The list of his completed stories consists of:

The ongoing stories:

Other

  • A Hunter Or Something: Part of College Fool's "Or Something" Series. Plotted by College Fool and written by Coeur Al'Aran. On hiatus.
  • Three Sheets To The Wind: A random Crack Fic spat out one day to decompress from other projects. Currently an open-ended set of one-shots that may update whenever Coeur feels like.
  • The Writer Games: An anthology collaboration between Coeur and College Fool and unofficially part of the "Or Something" Series. The concept for the anthology started with the authors playing a game of producing stories under pressure in 15 minutes based on a prompt from each other (with a few guest authors), so the stories aren't "stories" per se, but more of a summary of how such stories would go, with the authors giving their reviews on each other's work and reflections on their own work in the author notes. Several of Coeur's stories actually have their origins from this anthology, if you know where to look for them.

Tropes present in multiple works, or works without their own pages, include:

  • Accusation Fic:
    • Several of his fics make clear he does not view the Brother Gods as benevolent deities, often having every character who learns about Ozpin's Dark and Troubled Past, regardless of their feelings on him, agree to the Gods being profoundly flawed at best, downright despicable at worst, for what they did to Ozma and Salem and also for inflicting global genocide on their creations as punishment for the actions of a few. Generally, Coeur's works are of the opinion that the Brothers are more to blame for Salem and Ozma's suffering in their backstory and the lingering threat to humanity than either Salem and Ozma are, while treating Salem's Start of Darkness with Adaptational Sympathy.
    • Two omakes in Headmaster Arc take shots at some of Jaune's traits post-Volume 3. The former mocking his "hair" in Volume 7, and the latter disparaging the upgrades to Crocea Mors made in Volume 4 and 7 as either Awesome, but Impractical or redundant.
    • He regularly accuses Team RWBY, and to a lesser extent their immediate allies, of getting away with literal crimes due to their status as Huntresses-in-training, like civilian endangerment in regards to the Paladin chase. His fics also frequently calls out the destruction of the fleeing Bullhead at the docks battle for racking up an extreme and needless collateral body-count (Null in particular deconstructs the incident viciously when the Morality Chain of the fic's Villain Protagonist is among the casualties). The aforementioned Null, and also Relic of the Future when addressing Team RWBY's canon-adjacent actions in Atlas-Mantle, accuse Team RWBY of being extremely dangerous and incompetent Tautological Templars and moral hypocrites. Some fics, like A Rabbit Among Wolves, punish Team RWBY for their canon actions and/or behaviors that Coeur considers failures, the dock heist being a frequent example, and they're all-round explicitly shown frequently racking up detentions for their Beacon-era actions; while fics like Null and Arc Royale make Team RWBY re-evaluating themselves and learning from disastrous failures a point of character development.
    • Blake is particularly accused of being a hypocrite in regards to various matters, even in fics which portray her positively or play this behavior from her lightly. Some specific examples include her doing nothing to defend her fellow Faunus at Beacon from racially-motivated attacks and harassment despite her claims to be seeking human-Faunus equality. She's also accused of having mentally fabricated her canon claims that she didn't realize until very shortly before her defection what the White Fang had become, because she found it easier to lay blame at the White Fang's feet via saying they were the ones who changed rather than acknowledge that she'd knowingly been a part of their crimes for years before she had a change of heart that made her sick of the bloodshed: it's pointed out that the White Fang had been a terrorist organization for many years, and she'd been a part of them since before their radicalization.
    • He blatantly considers Hazel's motives nonsensical, so if he has the opportunity to make someone call it out, then he'll do so. Professor Arc takes this up to eleven, with absolutely everyone, including Salem herself, being Disappointed by the Motive.
    • In more comedic stories characters will point-out that how illogical and irresponsible was for Ozma to create Maidens. Not only he made himself weaker, but also this powers will passed down to complete strangers.
  • Adaptational Backstory Change:
    • Works which reference Remnant's beginnings and the backstory of Salem and Ozma have tweaks made by Coeur relative to the canon version. The canon version states that the Brother Gods wiped out all of the magic-wielding first human race sans Salem and that the second, magic-less human race evolved afterwards, whereas Coeur's works explicitly say that the Brother Gods only managed to wipe out a majority of the first human race while taking the God of Darkness's gift of magic back, and that the modern humans are descended from those who survived the genocide. Whereas canon showed that the post-Brother humans already had a functioning form of civilization before Ozma and Salem became their rulers, Coeur's works have Salem and Ozma state that the post-Brother humans had been reduced a stone age level before the two immortals guided them back towards building a fully-functioning civilization. Salem and Ozma's falling out is also made out to be a much more gradual affair: in canon, their falling-out occurred within the lifetime of Ozma's first post-resurrection host after he realized Salem had become a monster with genocidal ambitions, and Salem is made out to be the more malicious and capricious of the two in the whole affair — in Coeur's works, both Salem and Ozma share the blame for their new civilization's warmongering before they fell out, and it took several centuries for them to reach the point where they accidentally killed their daughters.
    • Roman Torchwick. Coeur introduced his own backstory for Roman as a former huntsman student of Beacon who lost faith in the profession and humanity at large after his first-hand experiences concerning the fall of Mountain Glenn, before the canon novel RWBY: Roman Holiday established Roman's backstory as a Mistralian orphan who was pickpocketing in the city at age eighteen. Notably, Coeur tends to incorporate updates to the RWBY canon lore as they come into fics that he makes after the fact, as he did with Salem, Cinder and Neo's canon backstories; but he made an exception for Roman, keeping the Coeur-original version of Roman's backstory intact in his post-Roman Holiday fics In Your Wildest Dreams and The Second Torch (which contrastingly use the aforementioned Cinder and Neo's canon-updated backstories for them instead). It should be noted though, that even before Roman Holiday was released, Coeur's fics which touched on Roman's past still implied that he began a street-rat (which does line up with Roman's canon background) before he received his huntsman education.
  • Adaptational Badass: A consistent part of Jaune's characterization involves him being much more combat capable than he was in canon, especially in Relic of the Future, White Sheep, and Forged Destiny. Unlike most examples, this is usually done as part of the plot.
  • Adaptational Dumbass: If Team RWBY's lineup is the same as canon, they often suffer from this collectively in Coeur's works. Whereas RWBY canon is insistent that Team RWBY are always able back up their boasts and have good reasons for their actions, Coeur's works take Team RWBY's worst traits and actions as the show's critics perceive them, and he deliberately deconstructs them, resulting in a canon-adjacent Team RWBY lineup often being portrayed in Coeur's works as (at worst) incompetent, reckless Tautological Templars who hold others to standards that they don't follow. This is usually a critique on Coeur's part, however it is occasionally Played for Laughs.
  • Adaptational Early Appearance: You can always count on Qrow (and sometimes Winter) to appear in the story before the Vytal Festival.
  • Adaptational Friendship: Professor Bartholomew Oobleck and Roman Torchwick, two characters who never shared a single scene in RWBY canon, have an Adaptation Origin Connection: they're portrayed in the universal mythology of Coeur's works as former huntsman-in-training teammates, but they tragically fell out completely after Oobleck sacrificed the rest of their team on the Vale Secret Service's orders during the fall of Mountain Glenn, and his betrayal led to Roman losing faith in humanity.
  • Adaptational Heroism: Depending on the work, several villains tend to be at least slightly more heroic than their canon counterparts.
    • Roman Torchwick is depicted as a criminal who loves to steal, but that's all he wants to do: steal. Cinder's plans disgust him across various works and it's shown consistently that if he were strong enough to defeat her, he'd turn against her in a heartbeat. In canon, these standards are implied at best.
    • Neopolitan is downgraded from a ruthless sadist to a particularly trolly minx who just likes to cause trouble for fun. If her sadism comes up at all, it's either directed at Asshole Victims or Played for Laughs, and even then it tends to be downplayednote .
    • Raven Branwen's departure from Team STRQ, though not her abandonment of Taiyang and Yang, tends to be portrayed as a Both Sides Have a Point argument brought about by her upbringing and communication problems with her team, whereas canon implies that she simply abandoned the team and returned to her tribe out of nowhere. Additionally, in the few stories that adapt the events of volume five as they happened, Raven is often on Ozpin's side instead of Cinder's, even if she's not open about it.
    • Cinder Fall is given a legitimate Freudian Excuse that explains her actions, and she's often depicted as not even quite wanting to work for Salem but simply being too power hungry to go anywhere else - she has even made several Heel Face Turns in different works. While canon would give her a Freudian Excuse in volume 8, it's not used to justify her actions, and she still shows no signs of being anything other than a power hungry megalomaniac.
    • Tyrian Callows is portrayed with a My Master, Right or Wrong mentality and is willing to go along with anything Salem wants, even if she ends up abandoning her crusade against humanity like in Professor Arc, and he views her as a Goddess because of her power over the Grimm. Volume 8 would go on to reveal that he supports her because he views her as destruction incarnate.
    • Starting after Professor Arc, Adam Taurus is presented as an actual Well-Intentioned Extremist (who sometimes also happens to be a toxic person) with legitimate arguments as opposed to a mass murderer only out for himself like he was in canon. Canon also implies that he executes deserters, which is not the case in Coeur's works, and his obsession with Blake is still present but never reaches the point of reducing his character to a homicidal ex-boyfriend.
  • Adaptational Intelligence: Jaune is still naive, hopelessly awkward, and struggles in school, but Coeur consistently treats him as having actually done homework on the Huntsman profession unlike in canon, even in works that don't fundamentally change his character in the beginning. At a minimum, he usually already knows what Aura is, whereas Pyrrha had to explain it to him during Initiation in canon; Professor Arc even lampshades it by having him say that only a real idiot would try to go to combat school without knowing about Aura.
  • Adaptational Jerkass: The characters in Coeur's works often display more negative traits than they do in the original show. The most common offenders are:
    • Ozpin is oftentimes presented as an unrepentant Troll if not an outright villain.
    • Jaune is almost always far more manipulative than in canon and is occasionally portrayed as a pervert, covert or otherwise.
    • Blake's stubbornness, holier-than-thou attitude, and tendency to run away from her problems tend to get turned up to eleven in his works, though whether it's played for comedy or drama depends on the work.
    • Winter Schnee usually gets portrayed similarly to Blake above (except for the running away from her problems part), just more reliant on Atlas military protocol and is very prideful due to it.
    • The Brother Gods are consistently portrayed as much more self-aware about how their actions and attitudes are callous and selfish from the perspective of humanity, they just don't care, when in the show their actions speak for themselves and them being deliberately cruel is at best only hinted at. Especially Light, who in canon always presents himself as a benevolent god (which often means downplaying the bad things he does), but is written by Coeur as openly acting like an arrogant child frustrated that his "toys" aren't working right.
  • Adaptational Nice Guy:
    • Adam gets this treatment in a lot of Coeur's stories. He's still a violent terrorist, and the stories never whitewash his brutality, but he displays a wider range of emotional depth than indiscriminate rage. The author has admitted that he believes Adam was wasted in the canon series, especially since his Freudian Excuse was revealed right before his death in Volume 6.
    • Done very mildly with Jacques Schnee, who is canonically an abusive father and Corrupt Corporate Executive with no real presented depths. In Coeur's works he's still all this, but also often given Even Evil Has Standards moments driven by Pragmatic Villainy is nothing else; his business acumen prevented the SDC from going under from Nicholas Schnee's unflinching generosity, and the very worst issues (such as Faunus labour and enslavement, including Adam's branding) are institutional problems that at worst, simply fall below his active notice (because he knows how self-destructive they are). Additionally, his arguments towards restricting Weiss' ambitions (to be both a Huntress and then take over the SDC) have him deliver some valid critiques, albeit without ignoring his emotional Gaslighting and habitual cruelty. In Dating What Daddy Hates, Coeur justified these changes of the ground of making Jacques more interesting and human.
  • Adaptational Sexuality: Emerald is depicted as lesbian, while in canon her sexuality is not confirmed yet.
  • Adaptational Superpower Change: Several of his fics center around what would happen if Jaune unlocked a different Semblance to his Healing Hands from canon or drastically change whole setting to tell a different story:
  • Adaptational Sympathy: The canon villains tend to be given much more sympathetic traits and backstories than they're given in canon. Whether that's Jacques Schnee actually caring about his family and/or having harsh but valid arguments against Weiss's ambitions, Adam caring about the men under his command and being a lot more genuine in seeking equal rights for the Faunus, or Cinder being troubled by her past and commonly turning good when given the chance. This even extends to Salem herself: whereas the canon Salem is made out as being the one most at fault for everything that happened in her Start of Darkness because of her petulance, and she shows little to no remorse for killing her and Ozma's daughters in their crossfire; works which reference Salem's backstory make her fall into evil out to be a more complex affair, oftentimes treating the Brother Gods as the ones most at fault for cursing her, and it's explicitly stated that Salem's accidental killing of her and Ozma's daughters completely broke her and is the crux of her present day self's evil.
  • Adaptational Villainy:
    • Ozpin is hit by this in most of the stories that feature him. The comedies tend to lean more towards Adaptational Jerkass, but the dramas often make him just as bad as the enemies he's trying to fight, either by taking his questionable methods to their logical conclusion or by outright turning him into a selfish and callous monster willing to do absolutely anything to defeat Salem. Justified, as these stories point out that Ozpin has attempted to stop Salem for centuries and has become desperate to stop her, and he's the only being on Remnant beside her who's been forced to endure the trauma of immortality for millennia.
    • Jax Asturias is already a human trafficker in canon, but there's no indication that he uses his slaves as anything other than forced labor and soldiers - his appearances in Coeur's works take them to a logical conclusion with sex slaves and child slaves.
    • Most works describe the Brother Gods as deliberately trapping Ozma in a Forever War against his wife as punishment for what she did after he died, which is not one of the bad things they can be said to have done in the show. As written, Light offered Ozma to come back to help humanity in general (however backhanded that may have been), it wasn't considered a punishment at first, Salem wasn't a problem because she'd been living in isolation as a hermit, and Light specifically warned Ozma to ignore her because trying to get back together would only end badly. Ozma proceeded to seek her out against that warning, and his ill-advised actions are what caused Salem to become humanity's invincible enemy.
  • Adaptation Expansion: As seen in the flashback in the show, Ozma and Salem's stint as King and Queen lasted only one of his incarnations before the relationship broke down and they became arch-enemies. When that period is relevant, Coeur usually expands that to multiple lifetimes, and even describes some of the logistics of how the Queen regularly needed to get together with seemingly random men who were secretly her husband's reincarnations.
  • Adaptation Origin Connection: Coeur's works go with the headcanon that Roman Torchwick and Professor Oobleck, two characters who never shared a scene together in canon, were formerly on the same team during their student days as huntsmen-in-training. They're also connected to the Mountain Glenn incident, as their other two teammates were killed during the event (which led to Roman's Start of Darkness), whereas there was no indication in canon that Roman had a connection to the disaster itself. Roman has also, within the shared multiverse framework, been responsible for Jaune's forged transcripts; this was initially mentioned in passing in One Good Turn and was expanded on in later stories.
  • Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
    • A common trend in many stories is Ruby and Pyrrha becoming fast friends, sometimes partly because they wind up on the same team. While they got along in canon, they apparently weren't particularly close as, well after Pyrrha's death, Ruby stated that she didn't actually remember much about her.
    • In some stories, Ruby never meets Penny and they don't become friends. (Not this time, Fate, The Beast of Beacon, A Rabbit Among Wolvesnote  , The Self Made Man, In Your Wildest Dreams)
  • Ambiguously Bi: Jaune. In A Rabbit Among Wolves he blushes a bit when Sun winks at him, in In Your Wildest Dreams he kisses with Adam and thinks he's better at kissing than Yang, in Arc Royale "Fate Jaune" tells that he dated with Ren in one of his past loops and finally in The Self Made Man Jaune has a male love-interest.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: While the majority of Coeur's works focus on Jaune Arc as the main character, there are a number of stories that focus on a different protagonist, with Jaune as a more supporting role.
    • Arcanum is an Alternate Universe fantasy story with Ruby Rose as the protagonist.
    • ARC Corp is a bit unique, as while Jaune is one of the two main protagonists, the story is primarily told from the perspective of Blake Belladonna.
    • The Beast of Beacon focuses on Adam Taurus' point of view as he joins Beacon Academy as a student while slowly earning redemption for his past.
    • Captain Dragon has Yang Xiao Long as the protagonist, as she leads a team composed of former villains to protect Vale.
    • Dating What Daddy Hates focuses primarily on Weiss Schnee and Sun Wukong as they fake a relationship that slowly becomes more and more real.
    • The Second Torch focuses on Roman Torchwick as he experiences a mid-life crisis shortly after the events of the first episode of the show, and his attempts to become a big name in crime again (while dragging Neo along for the ride, much to her chagrin).
    • Wise as an Old Qrow has Qrow Branwen as the main protagonist, after waking up in the past as a child and trying to change his and Raven's futures.
  • And the Adventure Continues: His earlier fan works tended to end with the characters knowing that the future is still ahead of them and the threat of Salem not stopped.
  • Anyone Can Die: As a general rule, if a character is not named Jaune Arc, they are not safe.
  • Approval of God: His profile page on FanFiction.net gives blanket permission for anyone to adapt or spinoff his stories as long as he's given credit in an author's note.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Lisa Lavender, in comparison to her minor role in canon, has supporting roles in Captain Dragon and A Rabbit Among Wolves, and frequently cameos in other fics as well, possibly stemming from being the only named journalist in RWBY.
    • In his first stories, Coeur gave minimal focus to Jaune's family, introducing Nicholas but not focusing on Jaune's home life. Following Professor Arc, as Coeur began making their characterizations consistent from fic to fic, Jaune's parents and sisters have become main characters in their own right, with Null, ARC Corp, White Sheep, and Not This Time, Fate (to name a few) having them play critical roles throughout the plot. Though Sapphire, the stand-in for the oldest sister, was replaced with the canon Saphron and her family after they were introduced, the rest have remained constant since Professor Arc.
  • Author Appeal: As written in both his bio and in several of his author's notes, Coeur has several personal favorites amongst the cast of RWBY: Roman Torchwick, Neopolitan, Yang Xiao Long, and Sun Wukong.
    • Both Roman and Neo play major roles in Professor Arc, with Neo even serving as a potential love interest and getting her own non-canon romantic spin-off. They also have supporting roles in Captain Dragon, Service with a Smile, Relic of the Future, and Null, rarely portrayed negatively in spite of their role as antagonists in canon.
    • Yang gets paired with Jaune in The Entertainer, White Sheep and In Your Wildest Dreams, and even gets to be the star of her own fic, Captain Dragon.
    • Sun is the co-star of his own fic, Dating What Daddy Hates, a romance pairing him with Weiss Schnee and has a supporting role in A Rabbit Among Wolves.
    • Blake has an interesting case of this as Coeur admits to not liking her much personally, but does find her to be an excellent character for writing purposes.
  • Badass Creed: Whenever someone unlocks another person's aura, they recite a short chant. Each one of those follows the formula similar to the one Pyrrha used in the show, but with several changes to emphasize the given character's personality and ideals.
    Roman Torchwick: For it is in our infamy that we achieve immortality, through this we become a paragon of deceitful glory to rise above all others. Infinite in potential and unbound by laws, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, set thee free.

    Nicolas Arc: For it is in our passing that we achieve immortality. By our example we become a martyr for the glory of others. Selfless in sacrifice, bound by duty, I release your soul... and by my hand... place this burden upon thee.

    Jaune Arc: For it is in failure that we achieve immortality. Through this, we are bound to our task, an endless quest with no pause or rest. Cursed by duty and unbound by time, I release your soul, and by my hand... condemn thee.

    Cinder Fall: It is in our darkest moments that we achieve strength. Through suffering, we gain the power to shape our own destiny. Infinite in potential and unbound by expectation, I release your soul, and by my hand, empower thee.

    Bartholomew Oobleck: For it is in duty that we become guardians. Through this, we prevent the mistakes of the past being made anew. Infinite in scope and unbound by pride, I release your soul, and by my hand redeem thee.

    Adam Taurus: For it is through sacrifice that we reclaim what is ours. Through darkness, we seek a path to a brighter future. Betrayed by society and left to die, I release your soul, and by your side, walk with thee.

    Penny Polendina: For it is in our birth that we shall reach for humanity. To this, we shall become protector and weapon, to serve and defend with no regard for our safety. Unyielding and infinite, untouched by life or death, let the first spark of this new soul reach out and touch yours, so that we might find common ground..
  • Bad to the Last Drop: A recurring element in Coeur's fics is Atlesian Black coffee, the cheapest and most widespread variety of coffee on Remnant. It's the most loathed on Remnant, with even most Atlesians being sick to death of it. The only character who professes to like the blend is Ironwood, out of what others can only assume is irrational patriotism and/or willful ignorance. Jaune, in his role as a Cafe owner, refuses to offer it on principle because he wouldn't serve it to his worst enemy — conversely, soulless slimy MegaCorp Café Prime serves nothing but Atlesian Black to keep supply and labor costs as low as possible.
  • Black-and-Grey Morality: In general, while his works almost always have a very clear-cut Big Bad, Coeur goes out of his way to make it clear that the heroes aren't much better, either because they're becoming too much like the people they're trying to defeat or by simply having them commit a few morally questionable acts in the process. He says that he likes this type of story over Black-and-White Morality because it creates more tension and adds an undercurrent of "what are you willing to sacrifice to win" to his works.
  • Breakthrough Hit: One Good Turn Deserves Another was Coeur's first popular work, but it was Not this time, Fate that propelled him to the rarely-disputed title of #1 RWBY fanfiction author, a title that he has held ever since.
  • Broad Strokes: Notably with Ozpin and Salem's backstories. Once they were revealed in Volume 6, Coeur tends to incorporate that info into his fics when it's relevant, but he usually keeps the basic idea and heavy changes the exact details on a per-story basis. Headmaster Arc and Relic of the Future are two cases where the account of those events is noticeably different from what is shown to be true in canon, but the outcome is still basically the same.
  • Characterization Marches On: Nicholas Arc, the O.C. Stand-in for Jaune's father, was first depicted in One Good Turn Deserves Another as incredibly harsh to the point of being borderline abusive, being introduced lecturing the Beacon students as children playing in a sandbox after they fail a mission, cruelly rubbing Summer's death in Ruby's face, and with Blake and Weiss postulating that the reason Jaune turned out as such an awkward mess is that Nicholas neglected him. This characterization shifted almost immediately following his first appearance, and in every appearance after this, he's been consistently portrayed as a good man first and foremost whose harsh side only comes out in the absolute worst moments.
  • Comedic Sociopathy: This is present in a lot of his stories: characters on either side of the law can lie, deceive, maim, and manipulate. And it can all be strangely hilarious.
  • Covert Group: Coeur loves this trope. A secret organization with ties to the government that has a good intentions,but questionable methods: Vale's Secret Service, Chivalric Arms, White Arcana, ARC Corp.
  • Crack Pairing: Coeur loves doing this.
    • Jaune can start dating characters like Miltia Malachite (who he canonically never met), Glynda Goodwitch (his teacher in canon), or Salem (who is centuries older than him - and the Queen of the Grimm).
    • If Mercury gets to be more than just "Cinder's minion", then he gets his own romantic subplot with characters like Velvet, Ruby, or Blake (all students of the academy his boss was going to destroy and all characters who he barely interacted with in canon). It only ended with a victory for him once.
    • Velvet is often paired with a "bad boy" like Cardin (no, you did not misread that); Russel, or Mercury.
  • Creator's Culture Carryover: Coeur is from the United Kingdom, so his characters often spout British slang such as using "bloody" and "piss" as curse words, spelling a word as "arse", calling lower-body apparel "trousers", and on at least one occasion going to "the loo". They also use "mum" instead of "mom". This contrasts with RWBY itself which, while taking place in a Constructed World where Earth demographics don't apply, is generally written and performed in American English, simply by virtue of most of its creators and actors being American.
    • This becomes a bigger issue in The Unseen Hunt, which is supposed to take place in the United States on Earth. See that work's page for more details.
  • invoked Creator's Favorite: He admits that Roman is one of his favs of all the canon cast he uses, and it shows when you look at his roles across Coeur's various fics in the bigger picture. He'll often be more competent than in canon, loves letting everyone hear him talk as much as his canon self does; and the last that we hear of Roman in most (but not all) fics featuring him, he's usually alive, out of prison, unrepentant, and at best scrapes a happy ending for himself. He avoids hitting Creator's Pet by virtue of only recently being the lead for the first time and still being an unrepentant bad guy who at times puts the heroes through some serious pain.
  • Death by Adaptation:
    • Cinder Fall dies a lot during the story's climax. It would be easier to list the stories where she survives. Sometimes Mercury and Emerald can die with her, too.
    • Jax Asturias has been killed in both his appearances, when his source book has him survive (albeit in a vegetative state).
  • Creator's Oddball: Dating What Daddy Hates, a shorter non-Jaune romantic comedy without a larger scale threat.
  • Dark Secret: Every protagonist in Couer's stories has at least one. Either this protagonist pretending to be a someone more important (Professor Arc, Beacon Civil War, A Rabbit Among Wolves) or protagonist pretending to be regular person. (Not This Time,Fate,White Sheep,The Beast of Beacon). Arcanum zig-zaggs this by having Ruby pretending to be a rich noble (while being poor girl from streets) and pretending to be a Arcanist in training (while being a gifted Wildmage).
  • Deconstruction Fic:
    • He really doesn't like whip based weaponry due to considering them Cool, but Inefficient, an entire scene in Headmaster Arc being devoted to Sienna and Ilia, both whip users, fighting each other and doing barely anything to each other, Jaune needing to lecture them afterwards on why their weapons suck.
    • Blake's plethora of romantic interests gets mocked regularly. Characters struggle to believe just how many people are pining after Blake and said people's attraction is likely to be used as a comedy element.
  • Deconstructor Fleet: A large majority of his stories tend to take basic premises and then twist everything that he possibly can on its head:
    • Ozpin's Adaptational Villainy in many of his stories is a deconstruction of his status as an immortal Big Good who has had to fight a Big Bad and watch all his allies and close connections expire around him for millennia. He has become so desperate to finally be free from his burden and save humanity that is willing to resort to highly unethical means. The standout example is Null, where he kidnaps Jaune's sister because she could neutralise Salem's immortality and he still finds peace when she uses those same powers to kill him because it will free him; and in White Sheep and Relic of the Future, the heroes are appalled by his willingness to sacrifice a kingdom or two if he thinks it'll benefit humanity in the long run.
    • One Good Turn Deserves Another: Fire-Forged Friends. By the end of their second traumatic adventure together, Blake and Jaune are so emotionally dependent on each other that they can't even be out of the same room for more than an hour without panicking. It takes a lot of time for them to have a healthy relationship, platonic or not, because they can't tell how much of their feelings are genuine emotions and how much of it is a trauma marker.
    • Null: Clear My Name. Not only is Jaune genuinely guilty of many of the crimes he's accused of (instead having a sympathetic motive), but every single thing that every character does only makes the situation worse.
    • A Rabbit Among Wolves: Fantastic Racism. The racism against Faunus present in canon is taken to its logical conclusion, and a large amount of the problem is humans feeling good about themselves for simply not participating in it instead of actively trying to prevent it.
    • Not This Time, Fate: Groundhog Peggy Sue. By the time Jaune's in the final loop, the people around him are barely people to him, they're more pieces on a chessboard he tries to control. It's not out of malice, but when the people he knows have done the same thing every single time for as long as he can remember, he physically can't consider them as people. Continued in Arc Royale, where he discusses with Ozpin the emotional strain and how little he can actually do in each loop: most of his problems stem from something that was already in place before he went back, such as Cinder's plans, and a few months is not enough to stop them. Furthermore, when Jaune finally escapes the loop for good and accomplishes the objective he spent it trying to complete, he has no idea how to function or what to do with the rest of his temporal life after two-thousand subjective years of reliving the same couple-year time period.
    • Relic of the Future: Peggy Sue. First of all, Salem offered to send Jaune back in time because Jaune may unintentionally make things worse and allow Salem to win.note  Jaune's trauma and personal biases from the original timeline compromises his thinking in regards to how he approaches things the new one all the time, and he's forced to talk himself out of many dubious actions that could make the timeline better (such as killing a young Emerald Sustrai).
    • The Beast Of Beacon: Adaptational Heroism/Heel–Face Turn. Adam attempts to redeem himself at Beacon for Blake's sake, only to find that no one there trusts him due to his past crimes, meaning everything he does is always under suspicion, and Adam is constantly having to hold himself back to prevent himself from falling into the same sadistic desires that drove him to villainy in the first place.
    • Captain Dragon: Government sanctioned Villain Team-Up, a la The Suicide Squad. The public hates the idea, and Yang spends the entire story fighting primarily against government officials trying to shut the team down without even giving them a chance first. The team may be trying to combat the Fang virus, but their biggest and most dangerous enemy is politics.
  • Demoted to Extra:
    • Ruby, more often than not, due to most stories focusing on Jaune instead. Despite being the protagonist of the original show, in most fics she's a supporting character at most and an extra at least, and she frequently gets written out of the events she normally plays a significant role in. The most noteworthy exceptions are Coeur's Contextual Reassignment fics, which do feature her as a major or main character in a vastly changed contextnote , because they enable Coeur to give her more internal conflict than canon.
    • Pyrrha, in spite of being Spared by the Adaptation quite often, tends to be relegated to the background or Demoted to Satellite Love Interest. Whereas canonically she played an important role in Jaune's character arc after he came to Beacon, most fics have him already going through said arc before the story begins, or give Pyrrha's role to a different character. In addition, the author has stated that he prefers less common pairings because they're more exciting to write, meaning Arkos (Jaune/Pyrrha) rarely appears in his works.
    • Oscar usually doesn't appear at all due to most of stories ending after the events of Volume 3, while most fics that cover the Fall of Beacon omit Ozpin's death.
    • Sun and/or Penny. In several of the stories, the events that lead to the fight at docks are different enough that the protagonists never meet them.
  • Dies Differently in Adaptation: In a lot of early stories, Adam often dies during Fall of Beacon: ways in which he's kicked the bucket there include being eaten by the Wyvern Grimm, being dueled to the death by Jaune, and being toasted by Fall Maiden lightning. He can still die in modern stories, just during different circumstances.
  • Does Not Like Spam: Coeur writes Glynda Goodwitch as not especially caring for coffee, preferring tea, and not liking Beacon's in-house blend. Given that the rest of Beacon's staff practically drink coffee like water to survive the job and almost worship the "teachers' coffee", whenever it comes up they look at her like she's grown a second head.
  • Doorstopper: Part of the reason why he is so popular is that all of his works are novel-length. For context, his shortest work that isn't a one-shot or spinoff is Dating What Daddy Hates; it is still 13 chapters and 81,000 words long.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: His earliest works were The Equalizer, The Entertainer, and One Good Turn Deserves Another, which very obviously stand out from the rest of his works - while his writing style has not drastically changed over the years, they're still incredibly different from the uniquely connected novel-length works that he would go on to write. Professor Arc and Not This Time, Fate would go on to make him known in the fandom and create the unique style that he's known for now.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Coeur uses this trope whenever he possibly can. He dislikes writing completely unsympathetic characters because he feels them to be very one-note, so he prefers to give his evil characters standards to further flesh them out. These include Cinder Fall, Jacques Schnee, Neopolitan, and even Salem herself. It's averted with characters who participate in rape and human trafficking though. Ever since the Crown was incorporated in his fanfictions, starting with Relic of the Future and more recently in Knight Of Salem, Jax Asturias tends to die quick and horrible deaths, with the rest of his organization completely demolished in one fell swoop. Other past antagonists, such as mooks in Relic and Chivalric Arms in Null, get the same treatment.
  • Everybody Lives: The more light-hearted stories tends to avoid character deaths, even among no-named civilians.
  • The Everyman: The reason why Jaune is his main in most fics is because of how he finds it easy to work him into any potential role. Coeur has noted that he doesn't even like Jaune as a character all that much, but he's very easy to rework and tweak because his initial character is so bland.
  • Fallen Hero: Pre- and post-RWBY: Roman Holiday, Roman Torchwick is depicted as a former Huntsman-in-training at Beacon, who became disillusioned with the profession due to his first-hand view of the fall of Mountain Glenn: he and his team were deployed to help the exodus of civilians to Vale, only to be sealed in the tunnels and left to die along with thousands of un-evacuated, by the council of Vale's orders (and in at least two fics, by the hand of one of Roman's teammates who was working for the Vale Secret Service). This resulted in Roman witnessing the deaths of thousands of the innocent people he'd been sent to save plus two of his dear teammates, and losing all trust in the surviving third teammate who sealed the tunnel. Roman got the councilman responsible for sealing the tunnels arrested through illegal means, in the process permanently destroying his chances of ever leading a non-criminal life in Vale, but after the guy unceremoniously killed himself in his cell, Roman had no further outlet for his rage except thievery.
  • Flanderization:
    • His comedy works are guilty of this across the board; Jaune's awkwardness is all-consuming, Weiss' bossiness never ends, Blake only thinks about the White Fang and literally nothing else, Neopolitan is an absolute minx, Salem is a royal womanchild who happens to be a Physical God, etc. It's part of the reason why his comedy works are so popular, even in comparison to his other stories.
    • Even in his dramas, Jaune's general patheticness is also often taken to an extreme, often to the point that he comes across more as a child in an adult's body who never worked a day in his life so that Character Development can set in.
  • Friend to All Children: Surprisingly enough, Tyrian of all people is good at befriending and handling children (those often being Jaune's relatives) in works where he's played even slightly for laughs rather than pure horror — though whether or not he's a good influence on those kids is a different matter entirely. Fics which show this side of him include White Sheep (where he aided Salem's other councilmembers in raising her children as their "uncles"), Knight of Salem, and finally Raise.
  • Freudian Excuse: Coeur gives one to Roman and Cinder, before the two of them were given official backgrounds in canonnote :
    • Roman, Oobleck, and the other two members of his Huntsman team were present at the fall of Mountain Glenn, and Roman was Forced to Watch two of his teammates and all of the civilians die once the tunnels were sealed. While Oobleck managed to move on, Roman was consumed by vengeance and successfully, but through illegal means, got the councilman who ordered the tunnels sealed arrested. When the man unceremoniously committed suicide in his cell, he found that Vengeance Feels Empty and became the suave criminal mastermind he is now known as.
    • Cinder's village was attacked by a Grimm horde after a group of cowardly Huntsmen used the village as bait for a horde they provoked. Cinder herself barely escaped with her life, but in the process she had to watch and listen to the entire village (alongside her mother) being slaughtered by the Grimm these Huntsmen brought to them, explaining why she's not only so heartless but also why she's so dedicated to gaining power and destroying the Huntsmen organization.
  • Generation Xerox: His expansion of Summer Rose's personality in fics like Relic of the Future and Wise as an Old Qrow show that she's very similar to Ruby in more than just looks: from profound compassion, idealism, stubborness and an ability to read people's feelings, to being socially-awkward and easily emotional, Ruby inherited a lot of quirks from her mother.
  • The Ghost: Anytime Coeur's timeline changes result in a Beacon team not being made entirely of canon characters, the non-canon characters go without as much as a description, much less an appearance or lines.
  • Graying Morality: Often time, the "bad" guys are in Coeur's works are often made more sympathetic while the forces of good are often depicted as deeply flawed, if not outright threatening to society itself.
  • Hard Truth Aesop: A lot of stories have unfair but harsh morals: sometimes you have to lie for the greater good, the bad guy has to be let off the hook for the sake of peace, etc.
  • Has a Type: Taiyang's canon ex-wife Raven Branwen is outright stated to have a thing for blue-eyed, "strong" blondes like Tai. In Relic of the Future, she has chemistry with and falls for a Future Badass Jaune, and in Wise as an Old Qrow, a teenage Raven crushes on Jaune's spitting image father, Nicholas Arc.
  • Hate Fic: While none of his fics are full-on hatred, there's a distinct undercurrent of contempt for certain aspects of canon in his works. By his own admission, he doesn't really like most of the characters or the plot; only the basic setting and premise. As such, he tends to throw away, derail or ignore the canon plot points ASAP while taking jabs at said plots and the characters when the chance comes up. The Rule of Cool nature of the setting also takes a few hits, usually with the normal methods being treated as Awesome, but Impractical in the long term while the day is saved by Boring, but Practical real world techniques. Take a look at the number of Take Thats below for proof.
  • In Spite of a Nail: Several fics indicate that the VSS exists in all of his fanfics whether or not they're mentioned or appear. This includes their history regarding the Mountain Glenn incident - namely, that they had Oobleck seal the tunnels early, condemning hundreds if not thousands to death, including Oobleck's own team, and led to Roman Torchwick becoming the criminal mastermind he is now - unless it's actively contradicted.
  • Irony: Blake's ridiculous number of romantic interests gets mocked frequently in Coeur's stories, particularly in Professor Arc and White Sheep, which is rather funny considering that two of his earliest and most popular works, From Beyond and One Good Turn, are Jaune/Blake stories. Furthermore, as is lampshaded in Arc Royale, the fic where you would most expect Jaune and Blake to hook up, A Rabbit Among Wolves, has Blake hate his guts.
  • Karma Houdini: A number of his stories have various bad guys get away without punishment or even better off than they started. This is justified as actually punishing those people would be incredibly hard if not impossible and/or the best thing for the good guy is to make peace with them. This forms a fairly consistent theme that helping the innocent is more important than punishing the guilty. This includes Jacques Schnee (Relic of the Future), Cinder (Professor Arc), Salem (White Sheep, Professor Arc, and Knight of Salem), and Roman Torchwick (Arc Royale). The standout example is White Sheep, where peace with the Grimm is possible, but a lot of civilians want to wipe them out in revenge or have a functionally-retired Salem answer for her past atrocities — it is the huntsman population, who have actually fought Grimm, who are willing to make peace if it means no more dying to Grimm.
  • Mad Doctor: Played for Laughs with Beacon's recurring on-site eccentric medical officer Tsune, who's a little bit more interested in the studies of pain and anatomy than is healthy. Though she will do her job, suffice to say that her personality and reputation make sure no-one in Beacon tries to get off sick unless they actually have something that needs treating.
  • Mistaken for Badass: A number of his storiesnote  have either the main premise or a notable subplot revolve around people thinking Jaune is far stronger and/or more clever than he actually is, with Jaune's reaction being anywhere from desperately trying to keep up the charade to being completely clueless about the whole thing.
  • Mood Whiplash: His comedies are not afraid to get serious whenever he feels that they need to. To wit, Service With a Smile fully introduces Roman and Cinder's troubled pasts, late chapters of White Sheep focus heavily on just how traumatized Ozpin and Salem are because of what the Gods did to them and on the existential threat of annihilation by the Gods returning, and A Rabbit Among Wolves manages to still function as a comedy even as it delves deep into the horrors of systemic racism and abuses of power.
  • Mythology Gag: As a bit of a Running Gag, Coeur often references his own works within other works; Relic of the Future features Jaune joking that he might as well have named himself "Jaune Salem Arc" as he was called in White Sheep, A Rabbit Among Wolves features the same Atlesian Black coffee that Jaune despises in Service With a Smile, and Captain Dragon has the VSS from In The Kingdom's Service make an appearance in the climax.
  • Named by the Adaptation: To differentiate between Amber the Fall Maiden and Jaune's youngest sister Amber Arc, Amber from canon is given the incredibly common fanon last name of Autumn.
  • Oblivious to Love: Jaune was already bad at reading people's feelings in canon, but his appearances here take this up to eleven consistently. It's a constant Running Gag in almost every fic that features Jaune (which is the majority of Coeur's works) that when any character shows romantic interest in him, the audience will figure it out about ten chapters before Jaune does.
  • O.C. Stand-in:
    • A lot of his fics focus on Jaune and deal with his family, which has a headcount and gender breakdown in canon but no other info revealed until late Volume 6. Coeur made up the family members' backstory and characterization (which are consistent across all of Coeur's works) basically from scratch and keeps them generally consistent between fics, the main exception being replacing "Sapphire" with Jaune's canon sister Saphron in fics written after the latter was introduced to canon.
    • Jaune himself varies wildly depending on the story and how Coeur wants to characterize him, with the end result often having little-to-no resemblance to the canon Jaune beyond his name. This is primarily because Coeur finds his canon personality dull, but very easy to alter depending on what he wants for the story in question.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted with Hazel and Amber, names used by Jaune's sisters and canon characters Hazel Rainart and Amber the Fall Maiden; his father, Nicholas Arc, also shares his given name with Weiss's grandfather. In all three cases, Coeur's characters came first, as all three were initially created before Volume 3.
  • Original Character: In Coeur's works, there are a small handful of recurring original characters, including Tsune (a fox faunus and the nurse of Beacon Academy), Grey Sullivan (a police officer of Vale in most works, and a knight in Forged Destiny), Mira Ash (the chief of Vale Police Department), Tony (a member of Junior's gang), the Lumen crime family (who exist in at least A Rabbit Among Wolves and The Self Made Man), and Roland (an ex-military bandit in the Branwen Tribe). In addition, there are also a small handful of original characters created specifically for each individual story as either an ally or an enemy, such as the antagonistic Alexander Sterling (Service with a Smile) and Matthew Fields (Null).
  • Outdated by Canon:
    • Early stories like the first parts of Professor Arc assume Neo's Semblance to be teleportation, based on its use in Volume 2. Volume 3, and then 6 and 7, would reveal her Semblance to be the creation of hologram-like illusions, which can be used to fake a teleport away by hiding herself from sight while moving on foot.
    • One Good Turn Deserves Another was started before Volume 3 released, and depicted both Blake being an orphan (as her backstory wasn't yet established), as well as Ren and Nora being Like Brother and Sister instead of having Unresolved Sexual Tension. It also depicts Qrow as a silver-haired Parental Substitute to his nieces, as he and Taiyang hadn't appeared yet to establish their canon relationships; part of his personality and being The Alcoholic was written into the story midway (after his debut), if not depicted with its canon severity.
    • Not This Time, Fate! and other works published around the same time turned Cinder into the Big Bad; this made sense at the time since Salem hadn't been completely introduced yet, but nowadays it comes off as a massive case of Adaptational Badass (and the story premise would have required extensively rewriting the story to accommodate Salem, hence why he didn't adjust his plans to accommodate her).
    • Most early stories have been made at least partially contradictory to canon after Volumes 6 and 7 of RWBY came out. Jaune's eldest sister being named "Saphron" and Adam having horrible facial scars are the most obvious examples, with less obvious examples being Salem's relation to Ozpin, Jaune's true semblance, the way Atlas looks, etc.
    • White Sheep is Zig Zagged; it actually made more sense after the major reveals, retroactively turning from a crackfic into a comedy AU, but it still had quite the few inconsistencies, largely in relation to the Kingdoms of Vacuo and Atlas. Coeur regrets trying to integrate the revelations into the plot.
    • Volume 8 would end up causing contradiction with a lot of the villains' motivations and histories:
      • Some of his fics, especially his later ones, attempt to give Cinder a degree of backstory since she had none for so long. Volume 8's revelations contradict information given earlier in Service with a Smile (Cinder being picked up by Salem immediately after being orphaned in a Grimm attack) and Relic of the Future (Cinder being with Salem since the age of six).
      • Many fics treat Hazel's entire motivation for working with Salem as just being out of revenge on Ozpin for Gretchen's death, to the point everyone is Disappointed by the Motive. First hinted at in RWBY: Amity Arena and fully elaborated in Volume 8 however, Gretchen is only part of Hazel's motivation. He's actually The Fatalist and sees Salem as a force of nature incapable of being stopped, is being led to believe she will create a new world order where people won't have to die because of Ozpin's war with her, and despises Ozpin for giving people false hope. It also revealed that he did try opposing Salem originally, even repeatedly killing her, but he failed due to her Complete Immortality and eventually hit the Despair Event Horizon.
      • Several fics have the other villains aware of Salem's goal for getting the Relics, with them still following her for their own reasons. Volume 8 however would establish that Salem is actually keeping them in the dark about her motives, instead manipulating them in to thinking they can get what they personally desire if they help her. The only one seemingly aware of her true motives is Tyrian, who sees her as "Destruction Incarnate", and it's unclear if this is just him coming to the conclusion on his own or if Salem told him.
    • Since his earliest stories, he's depicted Tean CFVY's partnerships as being Coco/Velvet & Yatsuhashi/Fox; RWBY: After the Fall later revealed that Velvet's partnership is with Yatsuhashi (and was an important moment of growth for her).
  • Platonic Life-Partners: Coeur loves Jaune and Ruby's friendship. Even if it's a complete alternate universe (Arcanum, The Unseen Hunt) or Jaune doesn't enroll in Beacon (Service with a Smile not The Self Made Man), Jaune and Ruby always will find each other and be best friends if they aren't lovers.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Often times, Roman is depicted as a man whose crimes only extend to theft, and he only goes along with Cinder's plans out of pure fear of the woman.
  • Running Gag:
    • His works often poke fun at Blake's Paper-Thin Disguise and her obsession with the White Fang, with the latter often seeing someone threaten to get a restraining order on the White Fang's behalf against her.
    • Many of his stories make use of One Dialogue, Two Conversations, where poor word choice leads someone to believe Jaune has had sex with a girl. Penny, having No Social Skills, tends to be involved.
    • Any time where Sun shows up, you can pretty much guarantee that someone's going to poke fun at his constantly-exposed pectorals.
  • Self-Deprecation: Most stories mention journalism at least once purely to describe it as corrupt, dishonest, opportunistic and something only done for the dull masses to have cheap entertainment. Coeur is a journalist by profession.
  • Series Continuity Error: One of his most prominent weaknesses as a writer is that many of his fics tend to suffer in-story continuity errors, wherein he forgets previously-established fic lore and timeline details if too many months pass before a fic is completed, and then he ends up contradicting it in later chapters.
    • This usually happens prominently when Coeur tries to incorporate an update to RWBY canon's lore into the already-established setting of a fic that began writing before said canon update occurred — i.e., incorporating Salem's canon origins and backstory that were established by Volume 6 into White Sheep, after early chapters outright stated that she'd never had children before and that the Grimm would cease to exist if she died (both of which are stated and implied respectively to be untrue in canon as of Volume 6); and zig-zagging a lot in Relic of the Future on the lead-up to Salem's death, the nature of the Relics' use against her, whether or not Atlas was destroyed (before and after the release of Volume 8, before he settled on the V8-divergent account of Atlas in the Bad Future being intact and under a Spared by the Adaptation Jacques Schnee's control), and whether or not all of Jaune's family in the Bad Future were slaughtered by Tyrian; as well as making an early mention of his pre-Saphron O.C. Stand-in for Jaune's eldest sister Sapphire Arc in Relic before later chapters of the same fic posted after Volume 6 replaced Sapphire with the V6 canon sister Saphron Arc.
    • However, there was also a prominent instance in the aforementioned Relic where Coeur forgot over the course of about 40 chapter updates about Velvet and Coco in that fic being established members of the ASH Gym, and he failed to rectify all the continuity contradictions in their later appearance once he caught on to the error despite assurances that he gave in the A/N. Likewise, Not this time, Fate and Arc Royale heavily go back-and-forth without much consistency on what the Jaune of that fic's universe has and hasn't done during his millennia-long Groundhog Peggy Sue backstory — although some of the inconsistencies that Fate!Jaune's Arc Royale appearance has relative to his original appearance can be hand-waved by the fact that in Royale, he's actively deceiving everyone around him for most of the fic.
  • Shared Family Quirks: His works basically confirm the RWBY series' joke that Blake reads smut. As for how this is a family trait, well, his more comedic works like White Sheep, Knight of Salem and ARC Corp have made it quite clear that Blake's parents Ghira and Kali can be quite adventurous in the bedroom.
  • Shared Universe: Coeur's characterizations, backstories, lore, and original characters are mostly consistent across his various works' Alternate Universe storylines so long as they're not contradicted by later canon (and even if they are, he might adjust or incorporate them in anyway, as he did with Roman's backstory as a former Beacon student). Other examples of shared universe lore include Jaune's relatives, Cinder's Freudian Excuse, the Del'Ashari Tribe, and Atlesian Black coffee. His stories can still be enjoyed on their own, but those who read all of his works will catch gags and references that others won't. Arc Royale outright confirms as part of its premise that the various alternate universes within his works all share a multiverse.
  • Ship Sinking: Coeur loves writing unique pairings, hence why he's gone with Jaune/Blake, Jaune/Glynda, and Weiss/Sun, but he has said that he absolutely despises Blake/Adam and will never write it no matter what.note 
  • Ship Tease:
    • Fics that mention Team STRQ's past show that Qrow had feelings for Summer during their tenure at Beacon - Professor Arc has him say that if Taiyang hadn't married her then he might have tried, and Relic of the Future posits that it was Summer's death that knocked him off the wagon into a full-fledged alcoholic.
    • After show started teasing Yang/Blake after Volume 5, Coeur also started doing this. Like, Yang calling Blake "My Blake" in Service with a Smile or Matchmaker-app showing that Blake is Yang's soulmate in ARC Corp.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Even the comedic stories tend to be significantly more cynical than the original show, with characters being motivated by selfish goals and occasionally engaging in morally questionable acts.
  • Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: His comedies have a history of becoming more and more serious as time goes on. Service With a Smile is the biggest example of this, going from a coffee shop AU to a story where Jaune single-handedly prevents the Fall of Beacon, but White Sheep, Professor Arc, and A Rabbit Among Wolves also repeat this pattern. The only one of his comedies that truly stayed a comedy from beginning to end is The Entertainer.
  • Spared by the Adaptation: In the stories that re-adapt the events of RWBY Volume 3, the Fall of Beacon tends to cause fewer casualties among the main cast (if it happens at all). Pyrrha has thus far avoided her canonical death in Professor Arc, Captain Dragon, The Beast of Beacon, Stress Relief, White Sheep, In the Kingdom's Service, Knight of Salem, Raise, The Self Made Man, The Second Choice, Arc Royale, and—sort of—Not This Time, Fate!
  • Strong Family Resemblance: Jaune is often described as growing up to look near-identical to his father Nicholas, who is himself an O.C. Stand-in. Relic of the Future and Arc Royale in particular mention it frequently, since Jaune (or at least a version of him) is fully grown in those stories.
  • Sure, Let's Go with That: A Running Gag of his, especially in his comedy works, is Character A (usually Jaune) saying something, Character B managing to twist it around to make it sound more awesome than it actually was, and Character A just rolling with it.
  • Talking Is a Free Action: The villains are always happy to politely wait as the heroes discuss strategy, even in the middle of a battle.
  • Take That!: He regularly takes shots at canon regarding aspects he doesn't like.
    • His profile page freely mentions that he's not even a fan of the plot or story of the show itself, but he finds the world and lore to be interesting and likes to play around with it.
    • Multiple stories take potshots at Ozpin and his need for secrecy and ominous behavior, though how it's treated tends to vary. Some fics take the route of treating him like an incompetent moron, like Professor Arc, while others treat him with a case of Adaptational Villainy, like White Sheep (RWBY).
    • Sometimes he takes shots at The Twilight Saga. In ARC Corp the idea of attractive vampires gets mocked, while in In Your Wildest Dreams, characters call Blake's "sparky vampire erotica" garbage.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The premise of his one-shot The Equalizer is based around this, as Jaune's solution to even the smallest Grimm threat is to just scorch the planet with Dust.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Coeur loves using this. While most of his stories are told in the third person, they're still from someone's perspective, meaning everything that happens is clouded by that specific character's beliefs, desires, and morals, and it's up to the audience to interpret events objectively. Stress Relief takes this up to eleven, since the whole story sans the final scene is told by Cinder, who spends the entire story desperately trying to believe her own lies.
  • Villain Has a Point: In many of his works, the villains are given stronger motives for their actions beyond For the Evulz. Many works feature White Fang members like Adam Taurus and Sienna Khan making various points the ostensible hero characters can't really dispute. Other instances where heroes think that the villains had a legitimate good point include: Salem stating that humanity is better off with the Brother Gods gone, and Raven Branwen claiming that her teammates Qrow and Summer put an unhealthy amount of trust and faith in Ozpin which the latter isn't truly worthy of.
  • What Could Have Been: In the ending notes of In Your Wildest Dreams Chapter 16, he shared that he once outlined a story where a time-displaced Jaune adopts a young Cinder and thus prevents her fall into evil. He ditched it because he felt the ending — wherein she becomes a villain anyway to avenge his death after he's murdered as part of a corrupt government operation — was too bittersweet.

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