History Fanfic / InYourWildestDreams

* DeadpanSnarker: After rediscovering his youth [[spoiler:via being magically de-aged to his prime]], Ozpin does his best to embrace modern generational slang instead of worrying about [[spoiler:the long-term implications of his sudden youth]]. Glynda, for her part, doesn't appreciate his nonchalance.

* AmbiguouslyBi: Thanks to a rather unique dream scenario, Jaune ends up having to kiss [[spoiler:Adam Taurus]] and can't help but note that he's an even better kisser than Yang.

* ClingyJealousGirl: Completely averted with Yang. She's not just doesn't get jealous over possibility of Jaune cheating on her, but she is the one who teases him about this.

** As per usual for Creator/CoeurAlAran[='s=] works, Salem is treated more sympathetically in her StartOfDarkness than her canon self. It's pointed out that she was never explicitly forbade from going to the God of Darkness to get her wish granted after the God of Light turned her down, the event which led Light to curse her with immortality. Ozma's canon reasons for falling out with Salem -- she'd gained an appetite for total warfare and was plotting a FinalSolution of all magic-less humans -- are retconned, and her and Ozma's falling out was a slow affair which took centuries to boil over and which Ozma is portrayed as sharing fault for. Finally, unlike her canon self, whose possible remorse for OffingTheOffspring when they were caught in the crossfire of her lashing out at Ozma is ''at best'' only hinted at; in this fic, Salem explicitly broke down the moment that she realized she and Ozma had killed their own children, and Ozpin believes that the trauma completely broke her and caused her present day self's evil.
** In "The Lost Fable", the monarchs who allied with Salem's rebellion against the Brother Gods did so for ultimately self-centered reasons like attaining immortality for themselves and their immediate loved ones. In this version, Ozma states that was only ''one'' of the reasons -- in truth, many of the wishes that the God of Light had granted worshippers based on his BlueAndOrangeMorality, such as a child wishing to be queen and political rivals being wished dead or defeated, had de-stabilized and jeopardized entire kingdoms, and Salem's monarch allies wanted to put a stop to the God of Light's reckless wish-granting to secure their own kingdoms' existential safety.

*** As per Coeur's other fics, the Brother Gods only succeeded in wiping out a majority of the first human race rather than every single one before they left, and the survivors are the current human race's ancestors; and rather than the second human race already having a moderate civilization before he and Salem set themselves up as rulers, Ozma and Salem were entirely responsible for dragging humanity back from the stone age.
*** Whereas canon indicates that the Relics only came to Remnant at the same time the God of Light resurrected Ozma, in this fic, the Brothers sent the Relics to Salem sometime ''before'' that, and the main reason why the God of Light resurrected Ozma was because none of the surviving humans on Remnant wanted to use the Relics to bring the Brothers back at all.
*** Whereas "The Lost Fable" states that Salem instantly recognized Ozma in his first reincarnation when he sought her out, Ozpin mentions in this version that he had to prove to her it was really him. Unlike the canon version where Ozma and Salem's reunion, rule and falling out all occurred within Ozma's first reincarnation's lifetime, and they fell out because Salem had gained an insatiable appetite for destruction and was plotting mass genocide against the magic-less humans; in this version, Ozma and Salem were together for several centuries, and their falling out was a gradual affair which started with Salem growing frustrated at the static of their royal life, and Ozma turning down her pleas that they take one of his lives free of their royal duties.
*** Lastly, whereas Salem showed no remorse in "The Lost Fable" for her and Ozma's daughters dying in their crossfire before she spitefully ended Ozma's life too; Ozpin recalls in this fic that she completely broke down as soon as she realized that they'd killed their own children, and that it was the last straw which drove her to her present day evil on top of everything else she'd endured up to that point.

** Salem in her and Ozma's backstory. Whereas the canon version of Salem showed no immediate remorse when she killed her and Ozma's daughters in the crossfire of their falling out, and any remorse she had afterwards is at best only hinted at; Ozpin states in this fic that Salem broke down as soon as she realized she'd killed them and that this was the final straw which drove her into madness and made her the genocidal monster that she is in the present.

** As per usual for Creator/CoeurAlAran[='s=] works, Salem is treated more sympathetically in her StartOfDarkness than her canon self. It's pointed out that she was never explicitly forbade from going to the God of Darkness to get her wish granted after the God of Light turned her down, the event which led Light to curse her with immortality. Ozma's canon reasons for falling out with Salem -- she'd gained an appetite for total warfare and was plotting a FinalSolution of all magic-less humans -- are retconned, and her and Ozma's falling out was a slow affair which took centuries to boil over and which Ozma is portrayed as sharing fault for. Finally, unlike her canon self, whose possible remorse for OffingTheOffspring when they were caught in the crossfire of her lashing out at Ozma is ''at best'' only hinted at; in this fic, Salem explicitly broke down the moment that she realized she and Ozma had killed their own children, and Ozpin believes it completely broke her and caused her present day self's evil.
** In canon, the monarchs who allied with Salem's rebellion against the Brother Gods did so for ultimately self-centered reasons like attaining immortality for themselves and their immediate loved ones. In this version, Ozma states that was only ''one'' of the reasons -- in truth, many of their kingdoms had been de-stabilized and were under existential threat from many of the wishes which the God of Light was granting his visitors, and they wanted to put a stop to the God of Light's reckless wish-granting and the chaos it sowed.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Ozpin states in Chapter 44 that during the time when the Brother Gods dwelled on Remnant, the criteria by which the God of Light decided whether to grant or deny a request that his visitors made of him was completely incomprehensible to humans -- some times he granted wishes to end wars, famines or diseases, and other times he granted wishes to kill rivals, take away free will, gain riches and force love onto an unwilling person. Ozpin comments that the chances of him granting a request felt like a complete coin toss to those who approached him.

* AdaptationalBackstoryChange: Creator/CoeurAlAran usually incorporates updates to ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'' canon's worldbuilding such as character backstories as they come into his later fics' mythos (it's even exemplified in this fic by Cinder and Neo's backstories in this fic being mostly canon-adherent) -- but in the case of Roman Torchwick, Coeur in this fic made an exception, as he keeps his pre-''Literature/RWBYRomanHoliday'' backstory for Roman (as a [[FallenHero fallen ex-huntsman from Beacon]] instead of a Mistralian ascended pickpocketer who was still on the streets when he was 18) intact.

* TakeThat: One of Blake's books, featuring "[[Literature/TheTwilightSaga sparkly vampire erotica]]", gets destroyed by Atlas during their second attempt to arrest Jaune. Yang considers it to be not that great of a loss and Ruby chimes in that even ''she'' thought the movie sucked.

** Chapter 43: After ending up in just about everyone's dream at one point or another, Jaune finally lands in one of Ozpin's dreams. [[spoiler:It's of one of his past lives, showing a time when his relationship with Salem was beginning to degrade because of their different desires in life. Given how many secrets Jaune can accidentally stumble on, Ozpin decides to tell Jaune the truth of his past, beginning with the fact that he's thousands of years old]].

** The first rule that Jaune makes when he realizes what is Semblance is is that he'll never use it to make sexual advances on anyone.

* RedRightHand: Jaune invokes this idea when [[spoiler:he's chasing down Cinder in her dream. Because she's wearing a hood, he doesn't know her identity even though he knows she killed Amber, so he uses his power in the dream to burn half of her face to a crisp. When Cinder wakes up, the injury carries over to real life, and since he'll know what he did to her, she has little choice but to try to kill Jaune to silence him before he can identify her]].

* AdaptationalSuperpowerChange: Instead of HealingHands, Jaune's Semblance is [[DreamWalker dreamwalking]] and [[DreamWeaver dream weaving]], although he can only activate it while asleep and thus far he can't control whose dream he enters.

* INeverToldYouMyName: After Pyrrha has a nightmare about the time she accidentally ended a friend’s career on the tournament scene, [[spoiler:Jaune accidentally says too much when he’s trying to comfort her; he says Ashley’s name, which he only learned in the dream because Pyrrha spent the whole conversation dancing around it. The chapter ends with [[{{Cliffhanger}} Pyrrha asking him how he knew Ashley's name]]]].

* YourMindMakesItReal: Jaune's semblance quickly evolves to have this effect. [[spoiler:While in a dream of Amber's killer, Jaune conjures a weapon of pure Aura and hurls it towards the killer before they wake up. Cinder jolts awake with a real injury corresponding to the one in the dream, and she realizes that Jaune needs to be taken care of. Later on, when a vision of Cinder slashes Jaune's neck during one of Neo's nightmares, he wakes up with a real injury as well. On the flipside, healing Nora in one of her nightmares heals a real injury she got earlier in the week from sparring]].

* PetTheDog: Though Jaune refuses to tell Winter what he saw in any of Weiss's nightmares so as to not violate her privacy any more than he already had, he does tell her that she was never in any of them, which gives Winter some relief.

* PsychicSurgery: Chapter 28 reveals that Jaune's Semblance can heal others. When he heals the wounded hand of Nora's dream self, the real Nora wakes up to discover that a wound she got during training (which, by Nora's estimation, should've taken her a week to recover from) had completely healed overnight.

* DesignatedLoveInterest: Yang can come across as this. Despite her and Jaune starting to date early on in the story, there are rarely any prolonged interactions between the two after that first date at the school dance; anything beyond Yang's occasional teasing is alluded to have happened offscreen. Even Jaune himself admits that they didn't do much since dances and he's not sure if he actually in love with her.

* DesignatedLoveInterest: Yang can come across as this. Despite her and Jaune starting to date early on in the story, there are rarely any prolonged interactions between the two after that first date at the school dance; anything beyond Yang's occasional teasing is alluded to have happened offscreen. Even Jaune himself admits that he's not sure if he actually in love with her.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: [[spoiler:While watching Professor Port's dream in Chapter 37, Jaune wishes he could understand how his stories are supposed to relate to killing Grimm. He even notes that Ren once spent hours analyzing Port's stories in search of some kind of hidden meaning behind them. By the end of the dream, he learns that rather than secretly explaining how to kill Grimm, the stories are traumatic anecdotes about his failed missions. He's forbidden by the Council to properly prepare students for the horrifying reality of being a huntsman, because telling people that they're more likely to perform a MercyKill on a dying child than heroically save a village would hurt recruitment rates. So he tells grandiose versions of these stories with happy endings in hopes that, eventually, a student will be able to figure out the {{Hard Truth Aesop}}s behind his boring stories ''before'' graduating. The following day, Jaune realizes that the story of Port valiantly protecting a "puppy" from a Grimm horde is a cleaned-up retelling of another story; in reality, the "puppy" was a child and the last survivor of a village, but despite Port's best efforts to protect him, the child got scared, ran away, and was killed by the Grimm. When class ends and Jaune sees Professor Port sitting on his chair staring at the ceiling, he realizes that Ren was right that their teacher's stories had hidden meanings - and he wishes he never knew about them.]]

* CannotSpitItOut: Deconstructed in regards to Pyrrha’s inability to confess her feelings for Jaune. Jaune suspects that Pyrrha might have a crush on him, but given what just happened with Weiss, he doesn't want to presume anything and potentially ruin their friendship if he’s mistaken. So he just starts heavily hinting to her that he’s interested in going out to the Beacon Dance with her instead, but Pyrrha's timidity causes her not to act on said hints. [[PoorCommunicationKills This convinces him he misread the situation and he should ask out someone else]], to Pyrrha’s consternation. Ren does confirm that Pyrrha has a crush on him when asked, but since he's already started a relationship with Yang by that point, he reasons it's not fair to him, Yang, or their teams to openly acknowledge Pyrrha's feelings until she finally does.

* AdaptationalContextChange: One of Qrow's nightmares implies that he was present at the fall of Kuroyuri but arrived too late to actually save anyone.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: [[spoiler:While watching Professor Port's dream in Chapter 37, Jaune wishes he could understand how his stories are supposed to relate to killing Grimm. He even notes that Ren once spent hours analyzing Port's stories in search of some kind of hidden meaning behind them. By the end of the dream, he learns that rather than secretly explaining how to kill Grimm, the stories are traumatic anecdotes about his failed missions. He's forbidden by the Council to properly prepare students for the horrifying reality of being a huntsman, because telling people that they're more likely to perform a MercyKill on a dying child than heroically save a village would hurt recruitment rates. So he tells grandiose versions of these stories with happy endings in hopes that, eventually, a student will be able to figure out the {{Hard Truth Aesop}}s behind his boring stories ''before'' graduating. The following day, Jaune realizes that the story of Port valiantly protecting a "puppy" from a Grimm horde is a cleaned-up retelling of the nightmare he saw. In reality, Port and a team of Beacon students were called to a village destroyed by the Grimm, wherein the only survivor was a child with both of their legs missing. When one of the students walks into Port putting the child out of their misery, her shock and horror ends up attracting a swarm of Grimm. The student is killed, and one of her teammates runs into the woods in a panic, [[KilledOffscreen unarmed and followed by several Grimm.]] When class ends and Jaune sees Professor Port sitting on his chair staring at the ceiling, he realizes that Ren was right that their teacher's stories had hidden meanings - and he wishes he never knew about them.]]

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Ironwood [[spoiler:arresting Jaune just for entering Penny's dream when he clearly learned no classified information in the process]] pisses Oobleck off so much that he threatens to ensure Ironwood is either arrested or loses his job. Glynda notes that normally she'd be betting on Ironwood, but Oobleck is personally invested in this one, and he tends to find a sneaky way to win once he's invested. [[spoiler:That night, he reveals in his dream that he called in powerful friends, presumably the [[Fanfic/InTheKingdomsService VSS]], to make sure the Vale Council doesn't go along with any extradition if Ironwood even follows through]].

** Chapter 35: [[spoiler:After waking up from Cardin's nightmare, Jaune wakes up to find Neopolitan - who, as far as Jaune knows, is on the run with Amber's murderer - perched atop him and holding his mouth shut, making Jaune unable to cry for help]].

** Chapter 36 (which Coeur himself admits to being somewhat of a filler chapter) is another example. After witnessing Cardin's nightmare and [[spoiler:waking to Neo sitting on his bed]], nothing too crazy happens to Jaune, and he gets to hang out with his friends. Yang, Weiss, Blake and [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness Pyrrha]] do decide to pay Junior a visit that results in the four of them getting detention (and some AmusingInjuries in Pyrrha's case) but the whole thing is largely PlayedForLaughs.

** Chapter 36 (which Coeur himself admits to being somewhat of a filler chapter) is another example. After witnessing Cardin's nightmare and [[spoiler:waking to Neo sitting on his bed]], nothing too crazy happens to Jaune, and he gets to hang out with his friends. Yang, Weiss, Blake and [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness Pyrrha]] do decide to pay Junior a visit that results in the four of them getting detention (and some AmusingInjuries in Pyrrha's case) but the whole thing is largely PlayedforLaughs.