The Queens of Remnant - Commentary - Ch. 3-4 (Patreon)
Content
Allllright, we’re back for another go-around at this commentary thing. It’s been two more busy weeks of writing for me, which is a good and bad thing. It’s good because I’ve made a ton of progress on my next, next, next story, but it’s also bad because all the typing means my hands are yet again tired. But they’ll be fine eventually - let’s focus on the good things today.
I have a working title for the White Rose Mob Boss AU story now - The Family. The Schnees are obviously the family, but it’s more like the family. This title might change once I have a better idea of what themes actually made their way into the chapters, but that’s what I’m rolling with for now!
I’ve been having an incredible amount of fun writing this version of Weiss, and that’s probably the biggest reason why I’ve made such quick and steady progress. She’s extra sassy, extra thirsty (for Ruby only), and has a lot of lessons she needs to learn. Sassy Weiss + growth opportunities? Sign me up.
Technically, I already signed myself up for this. I’m excited about how it’s coming together so far, too. I’ve written the first 6 chapters, so I only have 12 to go. ‘Only’ 12 to go…that’ll probably take me another 6-7 weeks if I can keep up this pace, and I don’t know if I can do that. I’ve been writing for about 3 hours per day during the week and then 4-5 per day over the weekend. So…23-25 hours per week going into this story? It’s a part-time job, basically.
BUT, it’ll be awesome when it’s done! At least, I hope so. I think it’s going well, so it’ll all be about sticking the landing…
Anyway, that’s what I have going on writing-wise outside of proofreading Queens of Remnant. The ‘prologues’ are out in the wild! Now, we’ve seen one chapter from each of our main characters, so we have a bit of a glimpse into how they’re starting out the story. Their mindset, their wants, wishes - their villain origin stories, basically. Or hero origin stories, I suppose, though Weiss and Blake could go either way.
Several people commented after Blake’s chapter that I got the usual villains out of the way early. I most certainly did! Goodbye, Jacques and Adam. You won’t be missed. Their influence, however, will continue throughout the story as Weiss and Blake heal from their respective traumas.
I don’t like having the main girls kill people, so I tried really hard to make it justified. If you’ve read Boundless recently, you probably noticed that Weiss didn’t accidentally kill her dad in that one - he just died in some undefined way (so I guess she could have killed him, but she was handling it awfully well). I decided to put in the accidental death because…well, it will be a very pivotal moment in her life and tie into the person she will become.
Blake, on the other hand…Yang called her an assassin in Boundless, so I had to find someone for her to kill. And who better than Adam, who she already canonically killed? Also, he’s another character deserving of death, so it doesn’t take too much work on my end to justify his end.
Backtracking a little - Blake’s character at the beginning of this story is probably the closest to her canon character. What with the Resistance, fighting for the little guy, and finally realizing that she can’t follow Adam’s orders anymore. She’s very similar to Ruby in the way she wants to help people, but she doesn’t have the same opportunity to do so. Also, she’s willing to get her hands dirty while Ruby’s being all regal and ‘queenly.’
I should really create a map or something to show locations…but I tried to keep it fairly simple. Vale is on one side, Atlas is on the other, and the Badlands are shoved in between. Like a rural farming community sitting between two metropolises. And when the metropolises decided to go to war, guess who got caught in the middle?
Yeah, Blake’s not happy with Vale or Atlas. One might say she’s a little pissed at both of them for destroying the area she calls home.
When I started writing this story and came up with the idea to give each of them different ‘element’ type powers, I was happy with how everyone’s ‘element’ almost matched with their RWBY semblance…except Blake.
Blake has shadows! That’s not an element. What am I supposed to do…give her wind like Ruby? Give her something like ‘darkness’ and try to figure out how that would work when everyone else can make some sort of physical manifestation of their spark? Her semblance is literally to un-physically manifest herself.
So I thought it would be ironic to give her the opposite of her semblance - earth. The girl of shadows is now one with the rocks and soil. I didn’t really want to do this, but it started to make more sense once I started fleshing out her character. Plus, it matches her upbringing in a farm-heavy, rural area.
She gets to be special, I guess, is all I can really say. She’s so special, in fact, that I gave her a special companion for this story - Sun!
I adore Sun as Blake’s BFF, so I relished the opportunity to bring him back into the fold. (I also really love writing Yang and Pyrrha as BFFs, Yang and Winter as unlikely friends, and the Schneeblings as close family/siblings. I’m sure Ruby has a really compelling friend, too, but I just haven’t found it yet. Penny seems like the obvious choice, but I haven’t written enough of Penny to get a good feel for that.)
Anyway, Blake has Sun, which is good because she’s going to need his support. Especially after the events of this chapter. I really, really, really did not enjoy writing the parts with Adam. He’s like…skin-crawling creepy, manipulative, skeezy, and cruel. I don’t know what Blake ever saw in him!
As if those traits aren’t enough of a reason to stab him in the heart, he’s going to kill a bunch of innocent people - again as Blake subtly tells us. So she decides that, hey, maybe we don’t do that.
Oh, he’s also possessive and abusive, so there’s that too. But he’s an egotistical idiot, so Blake tricks him into letting his guard down.
It was just all yuck so I don’t really have much to say about it. But! I realize ‘assassin’ is a misnomer for what she did. People would actually be calling her a murderer, but that just sounds horrible, so let’s believe that other people think that she actually infiltrated the Resistance in order to kill Adam and take control for herself. Adam’s gone, Blake’s in charge. Brilliant.
Then we can move to Blake’s sweetheart…
I really started this story with the thought of, “What if I killed my favorite character?” And…voila. The last few chapters show how horrible the phage is, and Yang’s chapter kicks that up a notch.
At the end of the prologues, we have:
- a princess who accidentally killed her dad, for which her sister took the blame
- a queen trying to find a cure to a horrible disease, who’s probably dying inside from seeing so many people suffer
- a resistance fighter who just killed her…let’s call him a business partner…over a difference in…opinions
- another queen suffering from said horrible disease, who’s kind of burning alive from the inside out
Excellent! The gang’s all here and appropriately scarred for life.
One of the best parts about having all four POVs is that everyone’s about to embark on a different journey. If you think about their paths like a line chart with four different color lines on it, some will trend up, some will trend down, and some will zig zag until the ending. I don’t think I need to tell you which direction Yang’s is trending.
Of course, she’s going to suffer in silence. That’s so like her, isn’t it?
I’ll tell you though…I loved imagining her and Ruby leading Vale together. You probably picked up a lot in Yang’s descriptions about how they lead and how seriously they take their roles as queens. We saw some of this in Ruby’s chapter already, but Yang expands upon it in the context of Vale-proper.
Vale is obviously meant to be a very glaring contrast to Atlas, which we’ll see much more of in future chapters. I didn’t set out to write about the logistics of running a made-up kingdom in a fictional world, but that’s kind of what I got into!
You probably caught Dr. Oobleck’s appearance in this chapter as one of Vale’s top advisors. But Yang calls him ‘Bartholomew,’ which I thought fit the theme better. He’s a jittery fellow, which made him the perfect match for wind. Always running everywhere, fluttering papers in his wake. I actually wrote this role as an OC at first, but I ended up with too many OCs so decided to search my memory banks for RWBY characters who could sub in.
I try to keep my OCs to a minimum these days. I’ve used a lot in the past, but I think it’s just better to stick to RWBY characters wherever possible to reduce confusion. I used James with Ruby since I’m fond of him from Rush, and I have a new OC that Yang mentions several times in this chapter - Cecelia.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I prefer to use OCs when I need a blank slate, so that readers won’t automatically assume ‘good’ or ‘evil’ based on who the character is in the show. Sometimes, I want to keep their intentions hidden so that we’re wondering what their particular goal is, and that’s the case with Cecelia. What does she want? What will she do to get it? We can’t rely on her RWBY character for hints or answers.
Anyway, Bartholomew delivers a grim prognosis - with the way things are going, Vale has only 6 months before they’ll be forced to surrender. I gave them such a short timeline to emphasize that this is the depths of their suffering. They’re literally at the breaking point. Something has to give.
And somethings are about to give. Somethings already have, actually, though Yang only receives word of one of them during this chapter - Adam’s death. I had to deliver this news to Yang somehow because in Boundless she already knows who Blake is. So…a messenger arrives with news!
It’s interesting how Boundless somewhat trapped me into certain events while I completely disregarded others. It was fun to work off of that idea though and see how it expanded when you want to inject more drama into it.
I want to point out how sweet it was for Yang to describe Ruby as the ‘heart of Vale.’ That sums up Ruby nicely, don’t you think? Add Yang and Ruby as sisters to the list of other relationships I love to write. I adore how much Yang treasures Ruby in this particular story though, so I hope you feel the same as we see more of their interactions. They’ve been through a lot together, and they’re about to go through even more, but their love for each other never fails.
The ending of this chapter is kind of awful, and I’m really sorry for that poor guy who…you know, died, but I wanted everyone to see the type of end Yang’s looking at. It is not pretty. Also, it is by far the worst of the others we’ve seen so far. Turned to stone? Gone with the wind? Literally burst into flames?? I’m sorry, but I’m trying to switch with someone if I have a fire spark.
Big sister Yang though…has to be strong. Can’t show weakness. Inwardly terrified and resigned to her fate, outwardly calm and stoic.
I love her to pieces (or ashes? XD), and she should be mad at me for what she’s about to go through. They all probably should be, to be honest. But they’ll grow so much! It’s worth it, right??
I’m sure they would disagree but, unfortunately, they don’t have much choice. Their fate is already set in…well, in words on my screen.
I’m excited for you to see what happens next as we ease into the bulk of the story. There’s so much left for us to see…so much to talk about! So many good/horrible/sad moments to read. We’ll be taking a bit of a step back first. The prologues were pretty heavy since…that’s kind of how prologues are? Now, we get to deal with the repercussions and start moving forward.
I’m really excited. When I think of moments I can’t wait to share, a lot of them spring to mind. The best part is that there’s moments for each of them. The chapter where Ruby [redacted], or when Weiss finally [redacted], or when Blake and Yang [redacted]. All great stuff in our future!
Also, Harlivy sometime?
So much to write, so little time…
Until next time,
Miko