YMMV / Forged Destiny

• Adorkable: Ruby is as dorky as always. She treats her weapon like her child, geeks out over her companions' gear, and is so excited to be invited into a Dungeon that she glomps Jaune.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Jaune a truly good man simply trying to fulfill his dream of being a hero or is he actually an insane Glory Seeker attempting to go against the natural order of the world and would go to insane lengths time and time again in his pursuit of his goal to the point at which it wouldn't be strange to think him suicidal? This ultimately gets addressed in story by Jaune himself during his Heel Realization in Book 5, though given his usual self-depreciation and how much of a contrast it is from his past depictions, even this is not reliable.
  • Is Ruby just a kid with a bad case of Hero Complex? Or is the fact that every single future Reaper's fate rests on her shoulders what drives her to push the limits, with failure on her part potentially dooming an entire class to mediocrity? Even Ruby herself questions her motives when she wonders if her drive to become like her mother is leading her down a path that will put every Reaper after her in needless danger that they were never meant to face. However, the issue of her being burdened by setting an example for every future Reaper to follow is not even hinted at prior to The Reveal that it can come off as OOC, if not a Retcon of Ruby's character itself in the fic. A lot of readers have also noted that Ruby has been reduced of a cliché parody version of her canon characterization.
  • Did Jaune really love Blake, or were his feelings ever more than base attraction? While the first half of the story goes to length setting up their relationship, the other half is entirely focused on breaking them up to the point of mere friendship that's no deeper than other characters Jaune rarely interacts with, and where little to no effort is made by him to salvage their romance. It all results in Jaune's initial interactions with her coming off as more shallow lust, that once ended sees him move on with little fuss.
    • Likewise one can interpret whether Ruby is actually supportive of the above relationship, or secretly working to sabotage it as many incidents of conflict between the two comes at her suggestions. Word of God insists on the former, but the poor handling of events and pairing decisions makes it highly ambiguous.
• Ass Pull:
  • The revelation of most of the Hunters' Levels, as they receive so little focus, their growth rate not being shown due to the First Person Narrative, and they aren't thrown in as many specifically dangerous situations as Jaune has throughout the story, that their Levels once revealed come off as mostly made up on the spot.
  • Raven's monstrous Level also comes off as this, since it ignores most of the whole mechanics of the Leveling system that's fleshed out throughout the story (specifically in regards to growth curves and "diminishing returns"), that it's just a number that was used to make her too invincible for anyone to normally beat.
  • The existence of 'Leveling addiction' in the later Books is also this. It's a rather egregious instance given that not only does the RPG mechanics of growth curves make Leveling far easier and frequent in the beginning, and was seen as such in the early Books, but was never hinted of being a thing till it's needed in Book 7 for personal melodrama. Its full implications also causes problems for the story. See Plot Hole for details.
  • The revelation in Book 8, where Blake reveals Ruby's mother, Summer, lead an attack on her home, and personally killed her father, Ghira. This coming after several years in-story of Blake and Ruby interacting with not a single hint of tension from this fact, as the similarities between Ruby and Summer are too stark to be brushed off as Blake not knowing they were related, is an example of a questionable twist with no foreshadowing support or story justification behind it.
• Broken Base:
  • The overall quality of the story. While not universal, there are a number of people who feel like the story has degraded in terms of quality, especially in Book 5 and the latter half of Book 6 to a lesser extent. Complaints include a sense of regression for Jaune’s character in a number of critical scenes, poorly handled or rushed character interaction and major events Like The Reveal and the ending of Book 6, a steadily increasing number of seemingly forgotten details and noticeable inconsistencies, and an overall sense that the author is forcing the story into a specific direction rather than allowing the story to occur in a more organic fashion, resulting in arbitrary cliffhangers to build anticipation, story elements feeling haphazard, noticeable Plot Holes and contrivances being formed for the sake of momentary and pointless drama, and the messages and themes of the story beginning to harshly conflict with each other at best, or just outright resulting in a Broken Aesop at its worst.
  • The Reveal of Book 6 Chapter 10 and the characters' reaction to the fallout.
    • A chunk of the fanbase see it as the lowest point of the story in terms of quality, seeing it as a cliche and poorly written section where Jaune comes off as an Extreme Doormat and fails to stand up for himself in front of his team or Ozpin later on. Meanwhile the rest of the Hunters Guild are seen as essentially throwing him under the bus and treating him as a horrible person for daring to defy the natural order of their world, thus appearing to negate any Character Development and any sense of the group being True Companions in many people's eyes, and causing a number to label the group as Fair Weather Friends, especially considering the rest of the characters are in many ways not that different. Blake in particular comes off much worse than the rest due to ever mounting criticism of her tendency to expect Jaune to accept her while being quick to judge him and his actions in a questionable light and hiding a lot of her own past (see Hypocrite on the main page). It's rather telling that Cinder is seen as coming off as better by comparison due to her unexpectedly sympathetic reaction towards Jaune's predicament compared to the rest of his team.
    • On the flip side, there are a number of people who see the reaction as justified, even if the execution wasn't necessarily perfect, noting that the gravity of Jaune's lie far exceeds any of the reasons he could have given for doing what he did, that this was an inevitable scenario since he was defying centuries of conditioning that the Fantastic Caste System has instilled into everyone, and no amount of time spent being True Companions can suddenly deal with such a dramatic reveal. Additionally, The Reveal came at probably one of the worst possible times, after a very emotionally trying battle where Weiss lost her mother all over again, and Salem more or less helped blow the cover off Jaune's true nature and also revealed a very traumatizing element of Blake's past, resulting in everyone not surprisingly being less than amicable to Jaune's true nature. Additionally, as some reviewers have noted, there is the possibility of the characters cooling down after the fallout in the next chapter, and thus allowing for more nuanced and less irrational thoughts to be expressed.
  • Even the Author's Saving Throw in Book 6 Chapter 11 is under scrutiny. While it does show the Hunters Guild calming down enough to at least better articulate the reasons behind their anger towards the The Reveal, there is debate as to the quality of the actual argument in question.
    • On the one hand, the Hunters express the fact that they feel hurt over how Jaune apparently didn't trust them enough to tell him of his Dark Secret earlier after Atlas or Mistral, instead holding out until they had been involved very heavily in a multitude of ways that would make the secret hurt that much harder. Yang especially emphasizes how she would have not treated him any differently if he were a Blacksmith from the get go. Weiss to her credit at least apologizes for her behavior in the previous chapter due to her emotional breakdown.
    • On the other hand, it's seen by a number of people that the arguments of the Hunters was written in a way that makes it very one-sided, putting a lot of the blame on Jaune's shoulders despite the issue being far more nuanced than that. This notion is reinforced by the fact that Yang's arguments ignore: past events where the Hunters had difficulty interacting in a non-condescending fashion towards the Labour Caste (the buried Fang village, the inn in Caddin's Rest), the patronizing and insulting way they tried to keep Jaune out of combat once his secret was revealed, and the fact that they seemed to have no qualms about delivering him to the authorities despite them knowing that the reveal of Jaune's secret could very well lead to his imprisonment or execution. This all seems to show a severe lack of attentiveness and subtle lack of empathy towards him as a result of his class, thus undermining the point Yang makes that they wouldn't have cared about his class if he had been honest.
    • On top of this, it also ignores/glosses over how his secret is breaking a fundamental law of their government, so much so that if he is exposed, then the lives of him and his loved ones will likely be irreparably ruined or even ended in order to both make an example of him, and to reinforce the strength of the Fantastic Caste System. Additionally, the whole affair seems incredibly hypocritical considering that Ruby STILL hasn't told anyone outside of Jaune and Yang her secret, the latter of whom hasn't shown any anger at Ruby for not doing so despite how similar her situation is to Jaune's own.
    • It's also notable that Ren and Velvet do not elaborate on their own opinion on the matter, nor does Ruby properly speak up about Jaune's talents for Runesmithing, leaving the conversation feeling very rushed, incomplete, and somewhat lacking in nuanced perspectives.
    • That being said, there are fans who see the weak argument as a result of the situation not being properly resolved due to the immediacy of the confrontation, and that the extra two weeks Jaune spends away from Vale may give them enough time to really think over the whole ordeal, or may be put into a situation that Jaune would have helped in that leaves them severely weakened without him, thus hopefully giving them some more perspective on the matter.
  • The story attempts yet another Author's Saving Throw in Book 7. While the arguments are more detailed and hashed out, it's noted that the timing is far removed from the initial conflict, taking place after major events where the Guild continued to work together with no issues, that the inter-Guild tension comes off as being dragged out in reaction to reader complaints over the unsatisfying first attempt. The stark contrast between Jaune's passivity to the Guild's behavior when it was occurring, and being upset enough to say something only long after the fact, as well as the Guild's outrage and callous acts, only for some members to turn around and be remorseful without any argument makes it worse. Overall, for all the major issues and anticipation the story brings up over Jaune's secret being exposed, the whole thing comes off much like Ron, Harry, and Hermoine's brief spat in The Deathly Hallows that's merely told from Ron's perspective, and with all the lack of consequences it entailed.
  • Ultimately everything gets brushed aside and dismissed by the end of Book 7 both in terms of all the implications of Jaune's defying Class roles, as well as the relationship conflict within the Guild without any of the nuanced debate or personal confrontations the entire build up was leading towards; largely due to the author's admitted frustration with reader's criticism and dissatisfaction (especially in the pairing debate), and conceded Book 7 was originally two Books that was rushed to appease certain readers. The overall affect leaves much of the whole storyline feeling largely pointless in terms of character drama and plotlines.
  • Another occurs over who Jaune should ultimately end up with romantically. The author stating that the original pairing was supposed to be Jaune/Ruby, as seen in chapter one's author's note, but was changed to Jaune/Blake as early as the first five chapters without the previous note ever being amended has only made things worse. It reached the point that Coeur al'Aran was considering putting up a poll to either determine the pairing or modify it in some way.
    • One side states that Jaune should mend his relationship with Blake seeing as: they were the first couple in the story, have a good degree of chemistry, a large portion of Forged Destiny has been devoted to their relationship, and scenes with Ruby and Jaune have never hit it off quite as well. Additionally, a romantic relationship between the two could become rather unhealthy due to Ruby's Chronic Hero Syndrome from mimicking Summer, potentially leaving Jaune in the same situation as Taiyang.
    • The other side argues that Jaune and Ruby would be a better couple as the intricacies of her Class, her nonjudgmental attitude towards his own, and the reveal of her insecurities and self-doubts largely mirroring Jaune's own thought process has lead to a good degree of chemistry developing between the two. They also tend to see Jaune and Blake's relationship as either unhealthy(see above and Hypocrite on the main page), or needlessly long and dramatic(see Romantic Plot Tumor below).
    • There are also those who feel that this romance situation has become so much of a clusterfuck and mess, and that the situation is so heated between those who support Lancaster (Jaune x Ruby) and those who support Knightshade (Jaune x Blake), that it would ultimately be better that a threesome occurs, or that Jaune ultimately decides not to have any relationship at all, for the sake of focusing on squandered story and worldbuilding elements rather than continually drag the whole thing out.
    • Also occurring again in Book 7, where the Guild once again tries to resolves the conflict of Jaune's Class reveal. Blake in particular is near universally noted for her hypocrisy in not showing an ounce of sympathy at Jaune for keeping secrets about his Class, while absolutely nothing is known about her past. The conflict comes off as so blatant it appears that the author is merely trying to force a permanent end to the relationship, while setting things up for the Jaune/Ruby pairing. Word of God has expressed that no romance is really intended for Book 7, and that any inference is just reader's fixation, however the contradiction to the initial pairing statement at the start of the story, the author's admittance that things are open to change again should he decide, and that such issues go beyond a single Book, tosses the whole thing into such ambiguity and uncertainty that readers are justified in reading subtext whether it's imagined or not.
  • The issue of Jaune's Class change into Swordmaster is also a source of great contention among readers. While some see it as a cool twist to allow Jaune to continue at Beacon, others see it as directly undermining the whole point of the story, with the whole argument about Labour Classes being just as capable as Hero Classes rendered moot by Jaune needing to be a Hero Class in order to succeed.
    • Made worse as more details about Jaune's stats and skills are revealed. Word of God initially denied the Class Change was a Next Tier Power-Up, but in reality it's quite text book. However, his stat increase are only marginal in areas where he should receive better ability (his Dex stat in particular), and his Skills are noted to have some kind of twist that doesn't fit their written descriptions. The whole thing ends up coming off as if the full implications of Jaune's Class change wasn't realized, and is now being crippled as much as possible in order to preserve Jaune's underdog status, while objectively he should be far more capable.
  • Again with the story's narrative style. After 93 chapters of writing in Jaune's First Person, the chapter switches to the Third Person simply for dramatic effect. The author then indicates the story will change POV frequently to give other characters more attention as the lack of characterization for all but a few has lead to heavy criticism. While the switch does address several weak points in the story, the choppy narration makes for a very inconsistent flow of reading and destroys story immersion to the point that it's wished that the author would just make the change permanent. Ultimately, it's utilized less to give other characters more attention, but rather to better express critical scenes the author is unable to write through Jaune's POV, indicating how unsuited the author is at first-person narratives.
  • Yet another issue occurs with the Power Leveling system that is utilized in the story. While the Leveling system seems fairly consistent through the first half of the story when told from Jaune's perspective, as the story continues it becomes increasingly erratic. Other characters of the Guild are given similar Levels to Jaune while ignoring the fact they have neither worked as hard as Jaune (as he gains EXP from both fighting and forging), nor been placed in singularly dangerous battles as often as he has. And when a Greycloak is seen Leveling through killing a person of a similar Level the growth rate is greater than Jaune has received in similar situations with foes of an even greater Level gap.
    • Special mention also goes to Raven being a Level 112 that's presumably nearly 30 Levels higher than the strongest characters, as even with the method of actively killing people of high Levels, it completely ignores the issue of Level growth curve as well as the concept of "diminishing returns" that is frequently invoked in the story for why other Classes are at such low Levels despite working constantly.
  • The final epilogue of the story is also near universally criticized. The Romantic Plot Tumor takes center stage after Jaune and Ruby are forced to become Vale's King and Queen, leaving Blake hurt and heartbroken. Not only is how both Blake and Ruby behave a complete 180 from their almost off-handed dismissal of the relationship conflict with Jaune at the start of the Book, but most readers note how after all the character's adventures and hardships they've gone through, the characters are reduced to immature children and that the drama is both cliched and forced simply for the sake of drama. Not helped is the fact Coeur bizarrely invokes high school anime drama as some kind of justification, but which has nothing to do with a medieval fantasy RPG story. As one person notes - the romance has been a dumpster fire, that the author refuses to own up.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The details of the Resilience Stat, is finally laid out in Ch 99, though most, if not all, readers already figured it out by the end of Book 2. Acknowledged as such by Word of God at the end of the chapter.
• Complete Monster: Raven Branwen, the leader of Greycloaks, is a murderous sociopath obsessed with becoming the "apex predator" of the entire existence. With that goal in mind, she resolves to summon and kill Salem, uncaring for the disastrous consequences this plan could entail. In order to gain enough power to fulfill her perceived destiny, Raven kills numerous people across Remnant and eventually murders her own brother for the sake of gaining more experience. Once she deems herself strong enough to defeat Salem, Raven attempts to torture Ruby to generate enough negativity for the ritual to be performed. When that fails, she instead decides to brutally slaughter all her followers, seeing no further use for them, an act which allows her to finally summon Salem into the material realm, endangering all mankind with extinction. Uncaring for anyone other than herself, Raven ends up killing thousands of people and causing untold destruction in her quest for power.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Ellayne. She has had only brief appearances in Books 5 and 6, but a large portion of the fanbase finds her to be one of the best characters in the series so far with her seeming to be more popular than even the majority of the main cast.
• Franchise Original Sin: Coeur's earlier works faced some criticism for having inconsistent themes (Professor Arc), making the characters more selfish and obnoxious than they are in the original (From Beyond (RWBY)) and using Deus ex Machina to conclude plots (Not this time, Fate). Most of these complaints, however, were limited to singular instances and rarely ruined the readers' enjoyment of the stories. This story took all the above-mentioned flaws, multiplied them and combined them together, resulting in a story that is frequently accused of featuring Ass Pulls, enforcing messages that heavily contradict each other and having an entire cast of Unintentionally Unsympathetic characters.
• Fridge Horror: There are several locations near Beacon that constantly spawn Grimm, even after decades of farming by generations of students. Considering a town that was eradicated by Grimm was cleared in just a few hours, what kind of catastrophe must have occurred for such long-lived spawning sites to even exist?
• One True Threesome: Amidst an intense Ship-to-Ship Combat between Lancaster and Knightshade shippers, a sizable portion of the readers decided to Take a Third Option and ship Jaune, Ruby and Blake together.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • The author has admitted on several occasions to changing the plot so as to appease the fanbase, and has also admitted that there have been times when this negatively affected the story. See They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot for more details.
  • Ultimately the Lancaster pairing at the latter Books is driven by this, as it's based less on the relationship as shown in the story, but is carried out only because the author conducted a poll and wishes to appease the lowest common denominator of readers.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: While not as bad as some works, the romance between Jaune and Blake formed a significant amount of Books 3 and 4. Given that the story is told entirely from Jaune's perspective, this meant most interactions in the story were between the two, to the exclusion of the other characters. The author has admitted it had gone further than he intended and he's been trying to be more inclusive of the rest of the cast. Despite this intention, it's arguably worse in Book 5, as the majority of the story is centered around interjecting conflict into Jaune and Blake's relationship. Comes to a head in the Magnis Arc as the entire plot seems to revolve around setting up Jaune and Blake to break up due to Jaune acting out too much. Most of the other regular characters are still regulated to extras.
• The Scrappy: Blake. Initially well-received for her banter with Jaune and endearing flirting. It begins to fall apart after they become an Official Couple. Their interactions are reduced to constant disagreements that sometimes escalate to heated arguments with Blake having the moral high ground whereas Jaune is reduced to an Extreme Doormat. She doesn't show any sympathy or support to his problems nor tries to do anything to reconcile with Jaune when their relationship faces obstacles and leaves him to do all the work to regain her affection. The fact that the author justified Blake's hypocritical actions after The Reveal only made more apparent that the narrative was on her side. Additionally, readers were already starting to perceive that the author was overusing Blake as a love interest and major character in his stories. The fact Ruby was originally planned to play these roles and was better received despite her minor role certainly didn't help Blake's status.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • What a portion of the fanbase considers Book 5 to be due to its Hollywood Tactics and the breakup of Jaune and Blake due to juggling of the Idiot Ball and various plot contrived disasters.
  • Keeps on going into Book 6 and as the story continues from there. With the story becoming rushed in order to finish things, thus leaving for little real exploration or development of the world or characters, and devolving into one of the worst written and cliched character conflicts when Jaune's secret is revealed, an increasing laundry list of inconsistencies and contradictions, a number of Hand Waves, dubious reasoning to justify decisions both in and out of story, Plot Holes and contrivances being developed frequently in later chapters solely for the sake of dramatic effect, a Romantic Plot Tumor that's all but consumed reader's outlook of the story, a sudden back-and-forth change in narrative style, and finally Jaune receiving a Next Tier Power-Up that's downplayed and crippled to maintain his underdog status, while Big Bad Raven is introduced as an invincible villain that can't be challenged due to her high level.
  • Book 8 similarly takes a noticeable dip, as the entire basis of the Book is predicated on Blake abandoning her friends to go on a suicide mission solo just to "save" her birth place. The whole thing also is coming from a character who has expressed zero attachment or sentiment about where she's from (and has actually explicitly dismissed her origin as something she was getting away from), but is also from the character who has been the most vocal and consistently critical of making suicidally idiotic decisions throughout the story, unequivocally cementing her status as a Hypocrite of the highest order. When addressing the issue the author merely points to canon for justification rather than the story itself, implicitly acknowledging this fic to be untenable on its own merit.
  • By the end of Book 8 a portion regards it as generally unsatisfactory with the Guild largely accomplishing nothing but being impotent observers to events, nearly every reveal and story twist falling flat due to being too predictable or simply done for "shock value" without any real relevance, and too many of the inter-character relationships being brushed aside or forced along in poorly attempted timing.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat:
  • Due to Coeur's originally stated intent to make this a Lancaster story, but ending up with several scenes playing Jaune off with Blake, a split was caused in reader's opinions in who Jaune should ultimately be with by the end of the story even after Jaune and Blake do become a couple. Word of God later revealed that the romantic focus of the story had firmly shifted from Jaune/Ruby to Jaune/Blake after liking the latter's first few interactions too much to leave it at that.
  • Comes to a head by Book 8 where Jaune assures Ruby that he and Blake are just friends and has no intention of pursuing her romantically any more. Thus the author's signal that he's given in to the loudest reader demands is the final nail in the coffin of the debate. Much to the dismay of Knightshade fans, and rendering a lot of the story's efforts utterly pointless.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The plot of Book 7 was supposed to entirely center around the infiltration and attempted preservation of the emerging Labour Caste civil rights group, New Dawn, as well as the investigation of who ordered the attempted assassinations against their leader. Many consider the parts of the book actually devoted to this plotline to be the highlight of Book 7. Unfortunately, before the infiltration and intrigue had even begun, Book 7 had had an incredibly Slow-Paced Beginning that put-off a large number of readers, something the author took note of. This lead to him subsequently aborting the rest of the New Dawn arc in favor of the Greycloak captivity arc, with the resolution of the original plot haphazardly tacked on during the book's last chapter.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: It can be argued that the story suffers this starting from Book 5. While the first 4 Books of Forged Destiny has elements of darkness and each Book had a Bittersweet Ending, there was usually still enough of a balance between the darker moments with moments of levity, worldbuilding and character building moments to counteract it. However, from Book 5 onwards, many of the arcs end with progressively darker and more bitter consequences with very little levity or time to relax and process the events properly in between. The end result is that the story feels like it's determined to drag Jaune through the dirt, breaking down his friendship with the Guild, putting him into an environment of extreme paranoia and distrust, killing off several people who he had come to respect and trust and overall undermining any sense of growth or levity for the sake of drama. The current arc in Book 8 only seems determined to continue this trend with the reveal that Blake's family might have been attacked and murdered by Ruby's mother, a person who for all intents and purposes was seen as a decent person with, at worst, a bad case of Chronic Hero Syndrome. This element stands out in particular since it does not add or change the circumstances between the characters or have any notable influence on the plot, coming off as extremely superfluous as a result.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Blake is considered to be this to a fair degree. Books 1 through 4 helped to establish a lot of sympathy for her and implied an interesting and complex past for her while still highlighting her genuine strengths and capacity to be a great teammate, friend and lover. However from Book 5 onwards, she's begun to be stripped of a lot of the positive elements, and a poor handling of her character results in her being seen as a self righteous hypocrite who seems to expect others (Jaune especially) to treat her secrets with gentle hands, while she oftentimes is shown to have a disturbing lack of sympathy or understanding for others' issues or secrets (again, with Jaune). While the author has gone out of his way to try to establish her reasons for doing so (some more reasonable than others), the questionable logic and reasoning combined with a lackluster showing in the story, Jaune's sometimes excessive self-deprecation mixed with borderline Character Shilling of Blake's character has arguably only made her seem even more insufferable as a character. Made all the worse in Book 8, where her abandoning the Guild in order to rush off and kill Raven on her own, and for reasons that either were never hinted at, if not expressly contradicted, cement her as a Hypocrite of the worse possible kind.

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