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aspoonofsugar · 2 years

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Why don't you like how Sun and Blake's relationship has been handled?

Hello!

Well, simply because it has not really been handled (at least imo) and that is the problem :’’’)

I think Sun as a character suffers from the same problem Adam has... aka they could not decide what role they wanted him to have in the story and so it ends up damaging the character.

Or to better say, they probably knew what kind of role Sun (and Adam) had to have, but they tried to convey/realize too many things with him and the end result is not the best.

First of all, I think Bumbleby was supposed to be the end result since the beginning:

Black the beast descends from shadows. Yellow beauty burns gold.

The Beauty and the Beast motif is linked to Blake and Yang since the red trailer. Moreover, Yang losing her arm because of Adam is something foreshadowed in the Yellow Trailer:

Scathing eyes ask that we be symmetrical, one sided and easily processed. Yet every misshapen spark's unseen beauty is greater than its would be judgement.

And in general, the Black and Yellow Trailers set up Blake and Yang’s foiling. Blake runs away from a conflict and disappears as a shadow, while Yang runs into a conflict and rises as the sun:

To top it off they are also each other’s partners, so there is no reason to think their fight with Adam in Mistral and its implications were not planned since the beginning.

And I am not even mentioning all the songs like BMBLB (vol 4 I think) and All That Matters (volume 5).

That said, Blake and Sun do receive a lot of romantic teasing, which is never really solved, was unnecessary and imo blurried both the set-up of Bumbleby and Sun’s character arc.

BLACK SUN - ROMANTIC TEASING

A quick recap of the romantic teasing between Blake and Sun, just in case.

Sun starts flirting with Blake the moment he sees her, Blake goes to the dance with him and blushes at him during the Vytal Festival (while a love song is playing, but we’ll get back to this song later):

After this, we have Blake and Sun’s interactions in volume 4 and 5. In these volumes, Blake stops showing any form of romantic interest in Sun (I think, it has been a while though), but it is implied Sun still has feelings for Blake:

Every smile, every glance Could be another chance That you'll finally see The love that is me So until that time I'll follow every day Every step of the way And continue to say Go where you need to Know I won't leave you I'll follow you like morning follows night

At the same time, though, their interactions are full of jokes/tropes usually found in slap-stick comedies...(btw this is also why the discourse about Blake “being abusive” for slapping Sun or Sun “being creepy” for stalking Blake is missing the context imo). Like, meeting the parents with the mother teasing the relationship and the father disliking the partner is a romantic trope.

LOVE TRIANGLE OR UNREQUIRED LOVE?

I don’t think the problem is that there is romantic teasig between Sun and Blake, but that nothing is really done with it.

The way I see it, there could have been two ways to solve this.

1) The classic love triangle.

You have two characters fall for the same person and in the end the person chooses one.

This trope is often considered cheap, but it really does not have to be. The way to have it work is to actually give the choice of the partner a thematic meaning... basically the protagonist of the triangle is not just choosing a partner, but a specific ideal or way of living.

For example, in the Twilight Saga (yep, we are using Twilight examples) Bella choosing Edward over Jacob is not just about choosing a boyfriend. It is about choosing the life of a vampire over that of a human.

Similarly, Katniss choosing Peeta over Gale in the Hunger Game is her choosing a specific ideology over another.

Like, triangles are actually pretty common in narratives, even when they are not romantic. In Arcane, we have Jinx having to choose between Vi and Silco and Vi will probably have to choose between Jinx and Cait. Similarly, in the X-Men- Days of a Future Past, there is Raven that must choose between Doctor Xavier’s way of life or Eric’s.

Now, the problem with the Blake-Yang-Sun situation... is that Sun does not really represent an alternative way of life compared to Yang. If anything, Adam does and Blake chooses Yang as a sign of her growth.

So, I think the point of Sun and Blake is actually the trope of unrequired loved.

It is actually pretty much stated in the two Black Sun’s songs mentioned above.

In Like Morning Follows Night, there is this:

See, you'll never understand What I feel, what I see (...) Trying to search for this happiness Lost in the lights But it seems that it's all Just out of my sight Just out of my reach, Can't seem to get it right Like I'm cursed with this turbulence (...) Yet I still believe in you Every breath, every word Every smile, every glance Could be another chance That you'll finally see The love that is me

While Not Fall in Love with You is basically an unrequired love song:

Girl of my dreams you would make my life complete But you're a distant dream to me Then I know and I know that you're-- Out of my league How could it ever be? What am I supposed to do- Just sit here and not fall in love with you?

The theme of unrequired love is also the one that fits Blake’s story the best. She is recovering from an abusive relationship with a possessive boyfriend, who is ready to kill her and her loved ones. Because of this, someone like Sun that openly flirts with Blake, but who is ready to help her selflessly and lets her go once he realizes Blake has feelings for another person... could be a great part of Blake’s healing plot-line (and he still is).

However, even if this is clearly what the authors were aiming for, it still does not come across as strongly for two reasons.

a) At Beacon Blake shows some kind of interest in Sun.

b) Sun’s unrequired feelings and him giving up on Blake are never fully addressed.

Ok, here we arrive at what I mentioned at the beginning aka how I think that the writers tried to do too many things with Blake and Sun’s relationship. They should have probably only focused on the unrequired love trope. However, they chose to do two additional things with Black Sun (imo).

TEEN IMMATURE LOVE

I think the writers have decided to use the Vale arc as some kind of happy childhood/adolescent phase arc:

Ren: It's been a long time. We've all grown in our own ways.

Ruby: You really think so?

Ren: Well, think back to when we were all at Beacon, would you say you ever did anything foolish or embarrassing? Or do you think you were perfect?

When it comes to love, they probably wanted to explore the idea of teen love and crushes, both very common in adolscence.

Have you noticed that (with the exception of Renora and maybe Emercury) none of the characters actually go to the dance with their true partner/love interest?

Jaune tries to go with Weiss and finally asks Pyrrha out. However, despite their relationship being deep, Pyrrha dies in volume 3 hence if Jaune has a final love interest, it won’t be her.

Ruby goes alone and states she dislikes dances.

Weiss shows interest in Neptune, but their relationship has not been mentioned since then and I am fairly sure Weiss is not ending up with Neptune.

Finally, Blake goes with Sun even if Yang is clearly the reason she goes in the first place. Moreover, she and Yang still dance together.

So, it is as if Beacon is a time to explore different partners and love stories, while they are still all growing. Honestly, it is the same idea behind how love stories are handled in the sit-com Alexa and Katie :P. Both girls there have two different boyfriends. The first one is puppy love, while the second one is linked to more serious issues the two characters have.

Here, it is the same, but while it works well for Jaune and Weiss, I am not sure it works as well for Blake.

I mean, Pyrrha is a central character in Jaune’s arc, but her premature death makes so that if Jaune were to finally find a new love interest... it would not feel forced or cheap. Especially because narratively a lot of focus has been given to him grieving Pyrrha and his arc keeps echoing Pyrrha’s throughout the narrative. Even if Jaune were to find a new love, his love for Pyrrha would not become meaningless.

When it comes to Weiss instead, Neptune is so not important to her arc and they have basically zero meaningful interactions (the only important one is actually about Jaune actually), that it is easy to read their relationship in volume 2 and 3 as a superficial crush.

However, Sun is an important character in Blake’s storyline and his feelings for her are not really solved in a meaningful way.

Moreover, we do not even see Blake’s relationship with him change. It is not that it is given space for the audience to see Blake develop a crush for him, get over it and truly fall in love with Yang. Everything happens all together and it is not elaborated on. So, we see Blake going to the dance with Sun, but also dancing with Yang and being desperate when Adam hurts Yang, etc.

This happens because of my next point.

PLAYING WITH BIAS

As many people have noticed, Blake’s story is basically a deconstruction of the cute kitty girl stereotype (and this is awesome).

She is a cat faunus and her story is full of romantic tropes...

She has an ex and mysterious boyfriend who is initially presented as a an anti-hero.

She also meets an energetic selfless guy who falls for her on sight and follows her around to help her.

These are two very common romantic storylines set-up, but they are both subverted. On one hand Adam is not a broding anti-hero Blake has to heal, but an abusive and manipulative stalker. On the other hand Blake does not have to fall for Sun as a reward for him helping her.

Blake instead falls in love with Yang and both characters grow on their own as people, so that then they can be together despite their past traumas.

The idea is great really, 10/10. However, the execution is not flawless. Like, subversion is actually hard to make. You have to build things up and to play with people’s expectations.

Blake’s arc has a lot of romantic subversions and they were supposed to be all strongly set-up in volume 1 and 2. We are talking of the narrative setting up 3 (Adam, Sun and Yang) and I say 3 romantic relationships at once. In the two shortest volumes. With eps that are 5 minutes long. In an ensembled cast show.

A really ambitious project :’’’)

I would not say the end result is terrible (a 6-7/10), but it is not even as strong as say... She-ra’s handling of hetero-ships... that is an example of a successful play with people’s bias and expectations. It is smart, tongue-in-cheeck and meaningful. The hetero relationship as treated with the same care of the queer ones in the series. They even foil the queer ones. But in the end the same sex coupld all kiss, while none of the hetero ones do. It is a way to convey how it usually is for LGBTQ people to see their ships built up, but without a final cathartic kiss XD.

Anyway, I think Black Sun as a relationship wanted to do something similar, but I think it is not so neat.

SUN’S ARC

The problem with filling Blake and Sun’s interactions with romantic tropes is that they take away screentime that could be used to actually give proper development to Sun.

Like, I think Sun and Blake’s time in Menagerie is not really used effectively when it comes to Sun’s character. This is probably partly because volume 4 as a whole is the weakest one and has some structural problems (basically I think they tried to adapt the same structure of their shortest eps to longer ones and it failed).

Anyway, the point is that in volume 4 we could have had Sun’s arc set up in a much stronger way than it is in the series.

We could have had a moment where Sun is openly turned down by Blake. Or a moment where Sun realizes because of something Blake does or says that she is in love with Yang. Both situations would have >>>

1) Cleared the Black Sun confusion and changed people’s expectations

2) Driven home the point of Sun’s character in Blake’s story more clearly - he is not the brave love interest that wins his lady’s love, but a turned down boy who is still a good person and a loyal friend

At the same time, we could have had Sun’s flaw which is hinted at in volume 6 and explored in Before the Dawn explored more.

In BTD we are said this:

Sun didn’t rise to Scarlet’s bait, which was pretty strange. But it also wasn’t his style to devote himself to a cause like this. He usually went wherever his whims took him, whether that was across the sea to help a friend or to get noodles at three in the morning. To pledge to fight a big cause with no clear solution or end in sight? That really didn’t sound like Sun. Maybe his time with Blake in Menagerie had changed him.

This is an example of telling and not showing... really in the series this never comes up nor it is ever explored. It does not contradict the story. It actually makes sense when considering what little we know of Sun and if we reread some interactions with Blake using this interpretative key. However, it is surely not one of the main topic explored in Blake and Sun’s relationship, while I think it could have been great if it were.

And these are my main thoughts on the whole Black Sun/Sun Wukong topic. Like with Adam, I don’t think the end result is terrible or the basic idea is not good. But I also think this is not where the series writing shines and I am not surprised people invested in a ship that was teased and never properly addressed are angry for how things turned out. You should not give people a reason to care if you are not going to pay off the build up. In this case paying off did not have to be a SunXBlake is canon, but a way to solve their bond similarly to how Jaune’s crush for Weiss is solved in volume? Yep, I think that was due and would have made things less blurried. People would still be disappointed probably, but at least they might have felt less cheated.

Of course, since Sun’s story is not over we might discover some other reason behind the choices made. Still, in an ongoing series pacing is still a thing, so...

Thank you for the ask! Analyzing Black Sun has actually been rather fun and it made me appreciate it, Bumbleby and Blake’s arc more tbh :’’’)

#rwby #rwby meta #blake belladonna #sun wukong #black sun #asksfullofsugar #stormmodblog #bumbleby

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knightofbalance-13 · 7 years

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We all are.

http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/163386771476/i-am-so-tired

Yeah, we all are, you two. Well, not me. I find this kind of logical deconstruction fun.

I am so tired of being told that I have to be The Good Gay™ and take all the homophobia and harassment and beatings and everything with a smile on my face in order to be respected. That I have to be grateful when someone laughs in my face because they noticed me!

Okay, let me break this down quick:

1. Yeah, you do have to fight for it. Respect is not entitled to you, it is something you earn. You earn people’s respect by doing the right thing, by being cool headed and logical in debates, by enduring. You can’t just have respect handed to you: That devalues the concept. Yeah it sucks but welcome to life.

2. What homophobia? What Harassment? What beatings? I’ve never seen that around here and if it is as common as you say it is, then surely you can prove it. How do I not know you are just crying wolf for attention or trying to make yourself look like a victim to do whatever you want or maybe you were being a dick about something that is only tangently related to your sexuality at best? Without context and proof, why should anyone listen to you?

And if it’s not happening directly to you: Then don’t talk abut it as though it is personally happening to you. Especially if it’s not happening in your country since who knows what the other country is like and the way you talk groups all of humanity together which we are NOT a hivemind.

And what does being a “good gay” actually entail? because with you Invested, it could mean anything from “taking abuse” to “not screeching homophobia at everyone who doesn’t exactly agree with you.” Because I have seen you attack people for saying you are looking too deeply into stuff when you YOURSELF agreed you were looking too deeply or when a content creator just thinks shipping has gone out of hand (http://invested-in-your-future.tumblr.com/post/161686615570/wait-can-i-ask-what-the-issue-with-murderofbirds). And BTW: Being called a bigot in this world of ours is worse than being black or LGBT or whatever, especially since minorities are treated as not being ABLE to be bigots and that the “majority” should just take the abuse with a smile.

Because unless you are one of The Good Ones™ who always is nice no matter what kind of privileged bullshit Straights™ keep spewing, then you are literally a demon for daring to feel awful and to want to have equal rights.

Exactly that: equal rights. Equality. That just means that people should stop caring about you and treat your argument about your sexuality and race the same as everyone elses: Nonexistent. People stop giving a shit about what you are both ways and treat you as WHO you are. And considering this is the type of person who screams homophobia at everyone who disagrees with you (including members of your own community!)

And you talk about the “privileged bullshit Straights” when you used a similar statement to be sarcastic about the situation with the Good Gays, meaning that you are being malicious towards straight people the same way you perceive malice being directed at LGBT people, especially since the context of this post stells me you want every straight person to support whatever you do because you are LGBT: You are literally being a bigot the same way you say people are being towards you. A straight person calls you out for calling a series creator(s) homophobes for not pandering to you immediately and not supporting your attacks on them? Well, then they are a bigot and not being a Good Straight and is wrong.

You want equal rights? Okay then: You are a liar since you lied about JAC’s video being anti-LGBT when it was anti-shipping, you tried to portray Murderofbirds as being a homophobe when eh just dooesn’tw ant to get into the whole shipping debacle. (http://invested-in-your-future.tumblr.com/post/161686615570/wait-can-i-ask-what-the-issue-with-murderofbirds) as well as lied about them being involved in the BMBLB controversy. Which brings me to my next point: you act like BBLB is being homophobic when this exact same thing happened to Black Sun shippers so by your logic it would be equal because they did it to the biggest hetero and homo ships in the fandom. (http://invested-in-your-future.tumblr.com/post/162372941890/you-know-its-funny-people-keep-claiming-rt-is-so) You misinform people by saying the person is calling you a crazy feminist when they were just asking you why you have to act like everything is political and they don’t want politics in their media, which is good considering how blatant politics ruin media. You are a hypocrite in saying that there are homophobes in the fandom when the top ships in the fandom are LGBT (Bumblebee, Sea Monkeys, White Rose, Freezerburn, Lady bug, Monochrome, Nuts and Dolts) and you are seen as weird for not shipping LGBT, a big compliant in the fandom is no LGBT characters and the big names are LGBT. You act like you are entitled to representation and such even as you attack and insult whereas if someone criticizes you, they are labeled with one of the most dangerous labels in our society. None of this is because you are LGBT: I would say this all to a straight person. What is going is that you are just not a good person and it becomes associated with your sexuality because you force the two together.

Its kind of hilarious because it all stems from the very same heteronormative bullshit of “normalcy” - unless you conform to the privileged heteronormative society and say “thank you, kind sirs” for every hit, the Straights™ will go out of their way to shame you and claim you are not normal or you are dangerous.

Heterosexuality IS normal: it is literal the norm being about 75-80% of americans at most (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation#United_States / http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/19-percent-americans-dont-consider-themselves-heterosexual) and around 5% at least (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-adults-overestimate-homosexual-population-much-tenfold) fact is: being heterosexual is normal. Not being hetero isn’t bad: it just means you’re not normal. And that’s not a bad thing for sake.

And homosexuals DO have more rights in some aspects than heterosexuals: If a baker doesn’t want to bake a cake for a heterosexual couple, no one would bat an eye. But if not for a homosexual couple, a controversy is created. If a straight person is stereotyped, it’s fine but you can’t be stereotyping gay people. This comes right down to phobia: homophobia has a lot of stigma behind it whole many people refuse to acknowledge heterophobia. Straight people are not the only privileged people on the planet.

And guess what? You, Invested, ARE dangerous. Not to straight people but to your own brethren. You keep talking this way, acting this way, speaking this way and thinking this way soon enough people will give up on trying for representation and equality because they will think the LGBT community is unpleasable and just not even bother anymore. And at time, real bigots will come in and take that one step further and start taking your rights away again. until the world you are talking about actually happens. All because you keep asking to be treated specially and differently instead of equal.

Well you are goddamn right I am dangerous threat to society - I have ALL episodes of Orphan Black and L Word on DVD and I am not afraid to watch it!

... You’re an idiot. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand. And if you want t live in your little bubble for the rest of your life: Well, humanity won’t be missing much except for another bigot,

And now for...Dudeblade.

The “Normies” should be afraid of disgruntled minorities. They should be very afraid. Nothing is scarier than a person who wants equality, and has nothing to lose. This is why the Civil War happened people. The African Americans weren’t going get their equality by being The Good Black™ and taking all the shit that they took back then. Why should the LGBT+ Community be the same?

First off: These people are not like African americans back then: They have rights now. They have equality now. Now, they are asking to be treated like delicate angels who should have whatever they want. And they are going to fuck it all up for everyone. Stop defending these people, Dudeblade: you’re just making things worse.

And you’re right they didn’t get their equality in the Civil War. Ever heard of Jim Crow laws? Segregation? the Grandfather Clause? All happened after the Civil War and all limited the rights of africian americans. The time they got their rights was, shocker, the Civil Rights Movement in which they acted EXACTLY the way you mock. The only thing that extremeists got in that time were fear and their cultural counterparts: When the Black Panthers went to far, the KKK rose up as a result. Do you WANT an LGBT version of the KKK? because that is what will happen when things go too far.

#rwde bullshit #invested in your future #dudeblade

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