Facing the music (Professor Arc)

"Facing the music" is the ninth chapter of *Professor Arc* published by Coeur Al'Aran on 2015 June 29 after *Lifestyle choices* and before Chapter 10*.*

## Background

Coeur Al'Aran was the Managing Director, Editor, and writer for a magazine publishing company made up of two writers and freelancers. Coeur's partner, a dyslexic journalist, was identified by the British Broadcasting Corporation sometime between May and June 2015. This meant that Coeur was working alone and had to handle many aspects of the company including magazine publications, recruitment, interviews, judging resumes and CVs, and training a new journalist. Coeur's schedule did not provide much free time for extra writing or review, and he speculated he would need to work until 7 to 8 PM for several months. Coeur also reported a magazine crisis, as a printer error caused an error in the page order. For inspiration when writing the Jaune-Cardin fight scene, Coeur derived inspiration from the Team Fortress 2 short *Meet the Scout,* which Coeur found humorous.

## Synopsis

Jaune thinks Neo was flirting a lot. Depicted by Exvnir. Published: 2015 July 10.

### Performers

Jaune Arc, Neopolitan (Off screen: Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long)

### Location

Jaune's office

On Friday, Team RWBY were making their way to witness the Vytal festival at the behest of Weiss Schnee, although Ruby Rose, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long wished to enjoy their hour period before combat class with Professor Glynda Goodwitch doing other things. As Ruby inquired whether the group could watch a movie in the evening, Blake broke the bad news, revealing she and Yang had detention with Professor Jaune Arcne. According to Yang, she and Blake attempted to clarify the reason for the detention without mentioning they broke into Jaune's room, but Weiss and Ruby did not believe them. Ruby attempted ot express liberal social views, to which Weiss agreed was fine as long as it was not in their room, much to Ruby's confusion as exhibitionism was what theoretically got them in trouble. As Weiss and Yang argued, Ruby resolved the issue by setting terms that Yang and Blake would not engage in intercourse in their dorm room while Weiss would support the relationship. Ruby then pulled Weiss out of the room, but not before Weiss gave a final threat to Yang that she not disturb her bed, much to Yang's chagrin.

Jaune was worried about his situation, as he was unsure of how to deal with the combat class given his lack of experience in fighting. In an effort to bolster his skill before the class, he had Neopolitan engage in extra training, but still had about one week's worth of training compared to the four years from the other students. Jaune soon met up with Glynda and attempted to get more insight for the class plan. Glynda elaborated that the students were becoming arrogant and looked to have Jaune defeat them to give them extra humility. Eventually, the class started entering, and Glynda gave an introduction remarking students would have an opportunity to fight against Jaune. Jaune was concerned about potentially having to fight Pyrrha Nikos or Yang Xiao Long, but much to Yang's disappointment, Glynda informed her that Jaune would fight Cardin Winchester. The fight began with Cardin attempting a first strike to incapacitate Jaune, who dodged in terror.

Weiss watched the fight, mentally contemplating her approval as Ruby talked with Pyrrha and her devilish plan to troll Yang in retribution for poor puns and taking long showers. She soon started paying attention to the fight, noting that Jaune was dodging all of Cardin's attacks, resulting in Cardin's physical exhaustion. Weiss, and others in the crowd, started seeing the fight as nothing more than a cruel joke at the expense of Cardin. Weiss was concerned with the relative skill difference between the Beacon staff and the students. Eventually, Jaune used martial arts to take down Cardin and forced him to acquiesce by threatening to step on Cardin's crotch. Weiss, recognizing that Jaune exploited Cardin's speed weakness, believed he was a combat genius.

Jaune returned to his office, excited at his victory, noting that fighting Cardin was not as difficult as Neo. Eventually, Glynda arrived in the room, congratulating Jaune on his efforts to humble Cardin. The two engaged in dialogue, until Jaune realized he needed to depart to deal with Blake and Yang's detention. As Jaune ventured back, he did not see any students outside of his door, which gave him initial hope that Blake and Yang opted not to attend detention. To Jaune's disappointment, he found Neo let them in his office. The two silently agreed to tell a lie and Jaune started making up a story on how Neo was an old friend of his from Vacuo. Jaune realized Neo was reading a raunchy novel and inquired its source. Yang interjected, lying that it belongs to Weiss, much to Jaune's surprise. Jaune informed Yang that having books was not against the rules, to which Yang took the book from Neo, and handed it to Blake. Yang soon started probing for more information, asking if the two were romantically involved, to which Jaune agreed to explain why her clothing was in his drawers. Neo did not appreciate this development, worrying Jaune, as Neo took the time to stop eating ice cream to glare at him. Yang probed for more details, to which Neo started taking revenge by labeling Jaune as inadequate. Soon enough, Jaune could not control his hormones, much to Neo's silent outrage.

## Reflection

Coeur believed his recent chapters were rushed and not to the quality he would like, but decided to upload them anyway for concern of a several week delay. He was mainly worried that the work would seem too "crackish [and] out-of-character", but should have been otherwise accurate to the characters. Coeur's most eminent concern was whether Weiss would entertain lesbian rumors given her sense of humor, but would not sincerely believe them like Ruby would. According to Coeur, he intended to use a "drabbles" approach for PA, a term derived from *Monty Python's Big Red Book* denoting a 100-word long work. However, a tangible plot started to emerge, which Coeur found advantageous and disadvantageous since he did not want to delay the plot with filler, but also found the filler comedic. Coeur would start compiling the filler chapters into a separate work, *Staffroom Chronicles*, which he aimed to make canon while omakes would be non-canon parodies of PA, itself a parody of *RWBY*.

## References

1. ↑ **Anyway, as you may or may not be aware I am the MD of a magazine publishing company, but also the Editor and writer. It is a team of 2 writers, with some freelancers. (rest is sales/studio/accounts)**
2. ↑ **I have trained not only real-life journalists, but even mentored a dyslexic journalist who now works at the BBC, so I do think I'm fairly good at writing, and teaching.**
3. ↑ **Now unfortunately my partner has now been headhunted from me to work for the BBC… for the same money, but now in London where everything costs three times as much.**
4. ↑ **Because until I can hire and train up a new journalist, I have to write EVERYTHING on my own. Which for your info basically means 4 mags of 50 pages average each, and a fifth of 100 average, in a four week month. As well as handling recruitment, interviews, CV's, general running of the company and training a new person when I get them.**
5. ↑ **This doesn't leave me much free time, and I'll possibly be working til 7 or 8 every night for a few months.**
6. ↑ **Oh, and we have just had a printer error, where pages 60-80 appear in the middle of the mag, and then appear again at the end. Basically fucking up the entire magazine for the month, and no doubt costing us loads with clients. FFS!**
7. ↑ **As for the fight scene – try searching on youtube for "Meet the Scout" on TF2, the scene was based on that fight, which amused me.**
8. ↑ **Note: I'm not a major fan of this chapter - too rushed - but with deadlines coming up for magazines, if I don't get it out now, it could be weeks until I can re-do both it and One Good Turn...**
9. ↑ **This chapter felt a little crackish to me but I hope it was not too OoC.**
10. ↑ **My biggest concern is Weiss actually taking the time to taunt Yang. I mean, she has shown in the series that she does have a sense of humour, and that it can come across quite… sharp?**
11. ↑ **I just figured given the rumours going on about Yang and Blake, that she might very well pretend to believe them to rile Yang up. Certainly she's clever enough not to believe them outright considering she lives with them, and there's no signs of sexual activity.**
12. ↑ **When I originally planned this entire story it was to be a drabbles approach, a day in the life of Professor fake-Jaune.**
13. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20211129025839/https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/flash\_fiction
14. ↑ **But a plot has begun to emerge, which is good, but also in some ways bad. I don't want to delay it with needless filler episodes, but those filler chapters could have been pretty funny in their own right.**
15. ↑ **So I've been collecting those filler chapters on the side, and might release them as a separate fic titled "Staffroom Chronicles" – basically being typical day shenanigans of the teaching staff of Beacon, focusing more on the STAFF, than the teams, and the RWBY plot.**
16. ↑ **As for the reason why these OMAKES, and the upcoming "Chronicles" chapters won't appear in the main plot? Well, omakes are a little "too" slapstick to fit in the plot. Whereas the chronicles chapters can very much be considered canon. But they simply operate on the side, and serve no plot-purpose beyond entertainment.**