I've actually read a fair few. In order of quality:

The Games We Play by Ryuugi Shi fulfills one of your criteria, in that Jaune doesn't get a harem. Jaune is extremely overpowered - but it makes sense in story, and is written well enough to be extremely enjoyable. The version on Spacebattles is complete.

A Farmer or Something by College Fool is a 10 chapter Jaune/Pyrrha fic. In it, Jaune never became a hunter, and instead opted for being a farmer.

Not this time, fate by Coeur Al'Aran features Jaune stuck in a time loop - specifically focusing on one loop. Jaune is overpowered, but the story focuses more on character interaction than anything else. The author has a bunch of other stories - all of which range in quality from decent to pretty good. This, I think, his is best, however.

Auburn by Super Saiyan Cyndaquil has a solid plot. It's not amazing, and Jaune is a bit overpowered, but it's pretty decent. The author has few others stories, some worth checking out, as well.

Also, as Puzzled mentioned, Arc of the Revolution is pretty good too.

 

coeur is ymmv. most of his stories are varied enough that chances are good you'll find SOME premise you'll like, but they all revolve around jaune and some people really don't like seeing a borderline oc-stand in for him.

i don't label them as gary stus because his characterisations run the whole gamut from canon to wish fulfillment depending on the story. that said, the stories are technically well-written and if you don't mind the "Jaune as X" premise, they're perfectly fine.

 

Not this time, Fate by Court Al'Aran
This is one of the best time travel redo fics I have ever read in any fandom. It is similar to Wastelands in that it starts with an experienced time traveler who has done nothing but fail to fix things. Here though, Jaune is just trying to take a break from the fighting and reconnect with his family, but ridiculous circumstances force him back to Beacon and keep him there.

The biggest problem with it is that it starts off with a bunch of OCs that take center stage for the first 5-6 chapters. The author did a great job giving them unique personalities, but it did make me put the story down when I first read it. Get through those, and it is definitely worth a read.

 

There's not a huge amount of RWBY fics if you're looking to mostly avoid femslash like me, though here are some of the fics that I like & update pretty regularly. Most of them would've been recommended earlier but I assume you're looking to avoid a slog through the thread.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10855163/1/A-World-of-Bloody-Evolution RWBY/WH40k Yang centric. Yang ends up on an Imperium world and joins the army.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12011087/1/Remnant RWBY/Dresden Files Pyrrha centric. Pyrrha finds herself in Chicago after season 3.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11755899/1/Hazredous-Interruptions RWBY/Nanoha Ensemble from both shows. Nanoha's ship crash lands on Remnant.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11765215/1/Just-A-Few-Pointers Weiss/Jaune pairing. Jaune asks Weiss for combat training.

I also read everything else that Coeur Al Aran writes and if you like Professor Arc it's reasonably likely that you'll find some of his other works readable.

College Fool is good as well, though he only starts posting fics after he's done writing them.

 

Miracles of Ancient Wonder is an Exalted crossover/fusion that doesn't suck. Unlike basically every Worm/Exalted crossover ever, Miracles accomplishes the two things necessary to not be absolute garbage: Have interesting, empathetic characters, and place those characters into believable conflicts. The author accomplishes this by having actually put some thought into how the mechanics of Exalted would impact the world of RWBY (and also by not listening to the morons on SB). He also doesn't assume you know jack about Exalted, but doesn't use that as an excuse to include extended training scenes or pointless info dumps. That it's a well-written story is just icing on the cake.

 

Reading the RWBY/Dresden cross, am 6 chapters in and I really don't like it so far. Phyrra is docile, submissive, passive, apologetic, mind-whammied, unarmed and lost. Thank god she found Dresden who can save her...basically, it has the same problem as crossovers like this do where instead of two equal partners team up, it's one side dominating the other.

Hopefully, that will change.

 

How does that work? I mean, Pyrrha may not have the breadth of possibility that comes with DF magic, but she's a physical god by DF standards and within her Semblance she's strong enough to crush anything on the street. I mean, the first time we ever saw her in action was with her landing strategy, wherein she resolved being shot through the sky at a monster filled forest at extreme speed by simple ramming through trees until she stopped and brushing it off.

Without even mentioning the Cinder fight, how the fuck is she at a disadvantage to anyone in Chicago?

 

It's not even just that, the story just feels so damn bland. It's a big case of telling rather than showing urgency; we're supposed to be worried about the Grimm but they've been at most a random encounter. There's no reason to give a damn about any of the characters.

 

Ryuugi Shi : Pyrrha arrives in Chicago naked, confused with memory issues and meets Dresden within a minute of her arrival and he kinda takes charge from there. OF course we have the usual Dresden disposition towards young girls and since Pyrrha is not on her best and lacks her weaponry and she is wholly inexperienced with magic, things tend to catch her on the wrong foot for a while.

To be fair, later on she does kick ass but meh.

Thing is, I don't necessarily want Pyrrha to curbstomp her way through the Dresden cast as the physical goddess of destruction that she might be there, but I would appreciate a bit of agency on her part.

Think the story would have been much better served if Pyrrha had been on her own for a while, trying to arm herself, to gather intelligence on where she is and fend for herself in this world, maybe even clashing with Marcone there.

Meanwhile, on the Dresden end, he would investigate the Grimm and what have you and they meet later on.

That I would have found more interesting rather than Dresden and Pyrrha meeting in the first paragraph of the story and Dresden taking care of her while she is at her weakest and most disoriented. It doesn't stay that one sided but enough that it left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

So yeah, it's a bit bland and cookie cutter, and quite hasty.

 

As soon as she gets her weapons back she murders everything she touches. Even before she isn't especially worried about physical confrontations. The power levels might be a bit off, but she easily handles Thomas, Harry and Murphy while deliberately holding back. There are criticisms to be made of the story, but I don't think underselling hunters' abilities is one of them.

 

(1) Myareska's Technician was mentioned before once, but I'll like to recommend it again.

The draw of the story is twofold. First, the plot is refreshing and original, completely avoiding the usual stations-of-the-canon - instead, it's a story of a younger Jaune's time at Signal. This leads us to the second draw - which is the character interactions between Jaune, Yang, Ruby, Qrow, and many others. They all feel very real, and between Jaune and Yang there is real chemistry - watching them interact is genuinely fun.

(2) That aside - anyone else have recs for such stories that aren't just Beacon rehashes, or at least have a great deal of original material?

(3) As a follow-up to (2), I did try College's Fool stuff, which are indeed the furthest things from canon rehashes. But while CF is extremely talented as a writer (An Affair or Something is straight up genius), they all suffer from the same problem that so many promising ASOIAF fics fall to - Outlinetitis. Basically, instead of showing, you tell - instead of writing a real story, you provide an outline; instead of bringing us along for the ride as the characters live through the events of the story, you instead say "X did Y and Z occurred", or something similarly brief. And while you can say this poetically, and evocatively, ultimately it's all empty; like reading a summary and not the thing itself, or like having foreplay without the sex.

 

My problem with the Technician is the fact that it should have gone Jaune/Ruby. The chemistry was off the charts.

Gonna recommend a guilty pleasure of mine. Though, it wouldn't be a lie to say that i consider it somewhat above that level.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11720739/1/Polarity

Its basically an overpowered Jaune and Ruby trying to appear as incompetent as possible. But the characters themselves are pretty OC with alternative histories, so , if you don't like that sort of thing, you probably won't like this one.

 

The whole premise would have made that first cousin incest though.

 

Probably should spoiler that.

Regardless, as ASOIAF showed us, incest is wincest.

 

fire, you don't quote something you believe should be spoiler'd.

 

Are there any sources for generating team names? I'm trying to figure out a combo with Team RWBY that doesn't have Ruby as the leader/first character in the acronym.

 

I don't think there's a software or site that can help you. You would probably just need to go through a list of colors or something.

 

BYSR--> Bistre or Boysenberry
BWRY--> Blueberry or Burgundy
BYRW or BYRS--> Bittersweet

YSBR--> Iceberg
YBWR--> Ivory

SYBR--> Silver
SRBY-->Strawberry
WRBY--> Urobilin
WBYR--> Wild Blue Yonder


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors:_N–Z

 

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh, that was never going to happen. It was heavily implied from the get go that Jaune's aunt was Summer, so a Jaune/Ruby pairing would have been incest. If you expected it to go that way, either your kinky or weren't able to pick up on the extremely obvious tells of who his aunt was.

Also, Jaune/Yang is love. Jaune/Yang is life. Not enough of it, and this fic is basically my only real source for that bit of satisfaction.

 

If so, you might be interested in The Entertainer. It is fairly recent so no clue how good it will be but it is a Jaune/Yang that gets a new chapter every 15 days.

It is about Jaune paying his way into Beacon as a masked stripper.