#queer representation in rwby

[maxiemumdamage]

I think that with the kiss Bumbleby has become one of the best queer relationships in modern media like. Ever.

We never get slow burns for queer romance, is the thing. Very often the couples get together suddenly, or else at the very end of the show. And that’s no fault of the creators of those characters — generally what happens is just that they can’t make the relationship explicit without risk of cancellation and accordingly will keep it in the background or as subtext until the very end of the series.

Yang and Blake, though?

They’ve had nine seasons where their relationship was significant. Little moments that built up. Blake choosing Yang as her partner at Beacon, Yang defending Blake to Weiss when they learned about the hidden identity, everything that happens in Burning the Candle, everything that happens with Adam in Volumes 3 and 6 where he is textually being Blake’s jealous ex, and then all the flirting it Atlas and again in the Ever After.

Point is, it’s been a long time coming. We really felt confident Bumbleby would be canon. But they didn’t just end up being canon — they became canon at a midway point in the series where we’ll still have time to watch their relationship develop and grow. They had the healthiest confession of any romantic couple in the series - where others were moments of haste and tragedy, the universe bent over backward to make the Bees confess. They said I love you and had the tenderest most beautiful kiss imaginable.

It already feels like a victory, and there’s so much left to look forward to.

#queer representation #Bumbleby #blake belladonna #yang xiao long #rwby spoilers #rwby #rwby9 #max.txt

[jasontoddssuper]

"Headcanoning your m/f ships as bi4bi and t4t isn't representation because the characters aren't canonically bi and trans!"Then pray tell why don't get on anybody's case when they ship same gender ships with characters who also aren't canonically gay

🚫Pro shippers dni🚫

#we get it you think bi and trans people are less lgbt than lesbians and gay guys and that we're 'overreacting' when we tell you to stop #if your real issue was lack of queer representation you'd seek out media with canon queer rep instead of whining about other peoples hcs #cut that bullshit out💀it's weird! #izuocha #bakujirou #todomomo #kirimina #tetsukendou #kataang #maiko atla #ichihime #naruhina #saiino #huntlow #legitallurance #kallura #rwby rosegarden #dickkory #damimaps #perachel #💌 #letters from summer

[akiakianna]

We all know we’re living in a weird timeline when the Total Drama Reboot has better representation in all accounts than RWBY ever did.

#total drama #tdi 2023 #RWBY #queer representation

[kodirox]

the bumbleby kiss has brought out so many feelings in me about sapphic relationships in cartoons/anime and it really makes me happy that we’ve graduated from “we’re popping big bottles when makorra happens tomorrow” and f/f kisses not even being allowed to be shown on screen to the sapphic relationship being the main canon couple of the entire series and having the majority of the cast talk about it in context!!! i am just so ecstatic to be able to see stuff like the relationships in she-ra and rwby exist in the way they were intended to exist. could not be happier today

#monologue #rwby spoilers #rwby v9 spoilers #rwby #obviously this isn’t the apex of representation in media. there are still many things that need to be changed systematically for good rep #rooster teeth as a company is a very good example of that being the case (seriously fuck them) #but i’m so happy that we can call bumbleby a win. and not have it turn out like the tens of other sapphic relationships that were cut #from tv shows and movies that so many queer ppl were looking forward to #a win is a win. and boy am i fucking celebrating

[toasterdrake]

im expecting more queer rep from the main cast in rwby simply because queer people group together <3

for legal reasons this is a joke, but fr it would be unrealistic imo for queer characters to be the minority in this friend group. they're at the age and point in their character arcs wherein they're figuring themselves out and settling into their identities. that's gotta trigger some Realisations

what's my point of reference? myself, my friend groups over the years, and many many many queer people who've spoken about the same thing occuring

#im not saying mf ships are invalid or should be shunted in favour of queer ships btw #one or both (or more) partners can be queer and still have a relationship with someone of the opposite sex #characters can realise Gender Things and not have that negatively affect their relationships #representation is valid in more ways than mlm/wlw ships 🔫 #and ofc shipping doesnt have to have a single thing to do with a character's queer identity #rwby #tbh expecting to get attacked for this post but. die mad i'm sticking to my opinion

[saintjosie]

transphobic entertainment company roosterteeth gets shut down

me sitting here laughing at all the people who called me a terf even though i’m a trans woman because i said rwby can’t be good queer representation cause it’s written by queerphobic people. now you will never get closure 🤗

[chaoticevilspacewitch]

Why Bumbleby Matters

Yesterday was the first anniversary of one of the biggest kisses in queer media. Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long, of the cult hit web show RWBY, confessed their love and smooched on March 25, 2023, and I was totally normal about it. I don't have all the manga and figures and a tattoo and half a million words of fanfic; that would be *crazy*, especially compared to socially-acceprable normal fixations like season tickets to sportsball games or thousand-dollar concert tickets. 

A lot of things make RWBY an important show. It's an animated action story that puts its four heroines unambiguously front and center, with arcs that are about *them*, and not as set dressing or motivation for make protagonists. It's increasingly represented sapphic, trans, and nonbinary characters across its nine seasons, and its won awards for taking its silly, cheesy origins and developing a complex story about broken heroes and traumatized villains finding themselves and struggling with love, loss, disability, abuse, and a whole spectrum of human experiences, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. 

But what's important about Blake and Yang was that they got a real romance that, across nine seasons, they had to fight for. In an era where queer representation is largely still a diversity checkbox for most media (see: Disney crowing about having background characters looking at each other a little gayly while passing on movies like Nimona that actually revolve around queer relationships), or struggle to be more than titillation (Saltburn) and are swatted down by corporate censors (Legend of Korra and She-Ra were years ago, and this year's blockbuster Witch from Mercury was still officially "open to interpretation"), getting an actually romance cooked for nine seasons across ten years... y'know, like you'd expect from a straight slowburn... is huge. 

RWBY's studio was just shut down by Warner Bros, infamous for shelving projects for the tax writeoffs, so who knows if we'll ever get a conclusion to the story. But one year ago, we got a beautiful conclusion to Blake & Yang's love story, one that mattered to queer people around the world. 

cross posted from Patreon

#rwby #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #bumbleby #save rwby #save crwby #greenlight volume 10

[bubblinelovechild]

The RWBY fandoms treatment of Adam makes me very uncomfortable

This is very long sorry I was rambling <3

There’s something really odd about the dedication RWBY fans have to hating Adam. So much so that they’ll admit the writing of the WF is racist but refuse to admit that Adam a member of the white fang also suffered from that racist writing.

There’s this weird dedication to pretending there are no problems with the choices made around Adams character and vilifying literally everyone who tries to talk about it, for the sake of continuing to blindly hate him. The fandom seems to struggle with understanding that the show is fictional and everything that happens in it is a direct choice of its writers. Y’all talk about Adam like he is a real person who has personally offended you irl. Just a huge lack of media literacy tbh.

A white man wrote a civil rights group, that he admittedly based off the black panthers, as the generic bad guys of his shitty anime knockoff and made a central theme of the show the idea that fighting against your oppression violently makes you just as bad if not worse than your oppressors. Then he mad the leader of that group a generic abusive meanie bad guy. Who essentially is what white supremacists think civil rights activist are all the way down to being the fictional equivalent of a black supremacist.

When there was backlash to this he made a knockoff Malcom X and then killed her in her only scene and made a character whose ideology is basically sit down and lick the feet of your oppressors and had the audacity to say he was based off of MLK. How the fuck do you base a character off of somebody without doing basic research on them because contrary to what people seem to believe MLK was not a doormat and this is a conversation for a different day but I’m sick and tired of his memory being weaponised against black people.

What’s worse is that Adam is the only character portrayed as actually doing something to fight racism. Ghira’s faction is only ever seen fighting against other groups. I don’t know if y’all know this but that’s not how the civil rights movement worked. Most of the leaders didn’t agree on methods but they coexisted because the main goal was the liberation of black people and they knew they had to coexist. MLK did not go around calling the cops on revolutionaries he disagreed with.

The problems with Adam and the WF are not separate and cannot be. Most of what’s wrong with the Faunus plot line is the way the show handles Adam. The choices made with his writing cannot be separated from those they made with the WF overall. Adams choice to kill his attackers to keep himself and other Faunus safe, from people literally trying to kill them, is treated the way it is because of the stance they took with WFs writing. When Adam kills a human supremacist trying to kill Ghira you’re supposed to see it as an extreme and the beginning of his turn to evil. Adam isn’t a real person every descisiom he makes is informed by the white writers of the show. Why would the bias they displayed writing the WF not apply to him?

Some of you have been abused and relate to Blake in that sense, a lot of you seem to be projecting your abusers onto Adam. I’m sorry you went through that but you are not excused from buying into racist rhetoric. It’s incredibly uncomfortable as a black person to watch people talk about how “healing” it was for them to watch a civil rights leader admittedly inspired by black people slapped around and killed by two white women. It is anger inducing to watch fans celebrate “queer representation” dancing on the corpse of a monumental disrespect to black people and our history.

RWBY doesn’t even handle abuse well tbh and most of the queer rep is not that great, there are many shows that do it so much better, there is actually no excuse for hanging on to the black people are bad for fighting against racism show.

#before you start no i don’t give a shit about bumblebee #this really isn’t about them #i wouldn’t have had a problem of killing the civil rights leader wasn’t treated as a bee moment #this is probably the only post I’ll make on that show #im going back to strictly reblogs #let’s hope this doesn’t get me death threats #rwde

[ninadove]

In defense of Huntlow

A love letter to Dana and the Owl Crew

Recently, I have been witnessing an increase in anti-Huntlow rhetoric on Tumblr, which I originally ignored, knowing how intense shipping wars can be.

Earlier today, however, I came across a very inflammatory post accusing Dana and the crew of bad - if not intentionally hurtful - writing for seemingly leaning towards making the ship canon.

As an ace, demiromantic lesbian who deeply cares about queer representation in media, I decided to share some thoughts on the matter, by addressing and hopefully debunking the main accusations I have seen out there.

I. A deliberate jab at the aspec community

Due to the dreadful lack of representation in mainstream media, many aspec viewers, myself included, headcanon Hunter as being somewhere on the spectrum.

Some erroneously believe that Hunter’s obvious crush on Willow invalidates this understanding of his character, and have even gone as far as to imply that the writing team deliberately deprived them of representation - ignoring the fact that Hunter’s arc was most likely fully fleshed out long before he was introduced to the fandom.

The thing is, we do get canon representation in the form of Lilith, who might be willing to boogy down to history town, but definitely isn’t willing to boogy down with you or anyone else for that matter. And let me tell you, she is *great* representation - a complex character who is in no way demonised or infantilised.

Additionally, and perhaps even more importantly, Hunter’s crush does *not* negate his belonging to the spectrum - key word here being *spectrum*. He might not fit the specific label you had in mind, but that’s alright - remember we come in all shapes and sizes!

II. Pushing a queer ship out of the spotlight

The argument here is that Huntlow has been distracting both the audience and the narrative itself from Lumity, an explicitely queer relationship that has been providing groundbreaking representation in the otherwise desperately heteronormative world of kids’ television.

I’ll be honest - I don’t really understand where this comes from. Huntlow might have been getting more fanart and fanfic lately due to the novelty factor, but in no way does this pose a credible threat to Lumity, which absolutely remains the main focus on the show as well as the most popular ship in the fandom ( in fact, most TOH artists seem to ship both pairings! ).

As of now, Huntlow is nothing more than a one-sided teenage crush, while Lumity has been getting in-depth development throughout season 2, culminating in their iconic kiss - I’m sure the team had to fight very hard for this scene to stay in, so let’s show some appreciation!

Interestingly, Raeda also benefited from the novelty factor when it was first introduced, and didn’t receive *nearly* as much backlash. The reason for this difference in treatment? Raeda is an explicitly queer ship.

And the thing is, in a series with so much representation, Huntlow might very well turn out to be as well ( cf point 1 ) ! There is a longstanding bias in the LGBTQIA community against « straight-passing » relationships and people who do not look « queer enough ». In all likeliness, we won’t get any confirmed labels for these two ( which is *fine* - they are kids! ), but it would be very interesting if the show actually took us down that road and forced us to confront our own biases.

( Also, people are allowed to be cishet. But that is not my point here. )

III. Underdevelopment and « bad writing »

As a RWBY veteran, I have grown used to Bumbleby-antis claiming the ship overtook the plot while paradoxically getting no development. This flawed logic seems to be repeated here, so let’s explore a couple of possibilities.

Personally, I would prefer Hunter and Willow’s relationship to stay as it is as of the end of season 2 - celebrating the important role first crushes can play in shaping one’s identity, even though they might never lead to any concrete romantic fulfillement. But, in the very likely occurrence that something *will* happen between these two, there is plenty of material to back them up.

A. Lumity parallels or the tomato syndrome

Some argue that Huntlow lacks development because all we’ve seen so far is one-sided blushing on Hunter’s part - completely overlooking the fact that this is exactly how Lumity started out!

The parallels do not stop there, however, as many excellent posts have pointed out. Both Amity and Hunter grew up in physically and emotionally abusive households, and connecting with their respective crushes helped them gain a new understanding of the world. In his « Captain », Hunter has found a person he can experience healthy admiration for, something that is also significant for Willow who has a history of being overlooked and underestimated.

In fact, one might even argue that Amity predicted Hunter’s crush - remember that one scene in Eclipse Lake? This is great foreshadowing!

B. Caleb parallels or the radical act of love

Now that we know more about Belos’ backstory, a key theme of the show is starting to emerge: love as a vector of rebellion, freedom and systemic change - a message that the LGBTQIA community as a whole is very familiar with.

While Hunter and the previous Golden Guards are all unique individuals with a mind and heart of their own, the fact that every single one of them ultimately chose to rebel against Belos is a strong sign that Caleb’s influence has persisted throughout the centuries. And what was Caleb’s biggest crime, exactly?

Falling in love with a witch.

The point here is not that Hunter is condemned to fall in love with a witch himself by virtue of being a clone with no agency of his own. It’s that Caleb’s hardships and bravery in the face of bigotry opened the door for him to proclaim his own independence through the radical act of embracing a form of love that the powers in place deem demonic and unnatural.

And what an amazing message to send out to a young audience.

IV. But… But the age gap is predatory!!!

I might be gay, but I can still do Maths. So let’s do just that.

Hunter is canonically 16. I don’t believe Willow’s age is ever outright stated in the series, but I assume she is around Luz’s age. Had it not been for Disney being, you know, Disney, our girl would have celebrated her quinceañera in season 3, so we can extrapolate that at this point in the story, Willow is around 15 as well.

That’s a one-year difference. Come on, guys.

Final thoughts: maybe stop being mad about everything all the time

Look guys, I get it, I really do. We have all been starving for queer content our entire lives, so when we finally get it, we expect it to match every single one of the expectations we’ve been desperately holding on for so long.

But the thing is, harassing a queer creator who is fighting tooth and nail to provide kids with life-changing ( and potentially life-saving ) representation is only going to hurt us further.

Use this energy to write fanfic, draw fanart, create a story that will inspire others the way this show does for so many of us. Campaign for more representation in media. Question your own biases and be a little kinder to one another.

And, most importantly - watch The Owl House!

#the owl house #toh #toh spoilers #dana terrace #the owl crew #hunter toh #willow park #huntlow #luz noceda #amity blight #lumity #eda clawthorne #raine whispers #raeda #lilith clawthorne #emperor belos #belos #philip whittebane #caleb whittebane #evelyn clawthorne #lgbtqia representation #character analysis #plot analysis #shipping wars #random ramblings #Thank you Tumblr for making the formatting literal Hell! #Unfortunately I am tougher and smarter than you #And thank you @dragongutsixofficial for reviewing this for me 💖

[tumblingxelian]

There is something very amusing and frustrating about how jackasses who want to have a go at RWBY regarding Queer representation can only do one of two things.

1: Lie

2: Speak in utter vagaries that end up just being "Its bad bro, trust me, don't look it up for yourself bro, I told you it was bad, so don't question it any further bro, just blindly trust me!"

Its funny because its kind of pathetic, but frustrating because a lie, be it overt or by omission travels the world before the truth has its socks on and thus it ends up being repeated by malicious jerks or those who don't know better.

#RWBY #BMBLB #Bumbleby #Like I am sorry if long form story telling confuses you #But that doesn't make it bad jackass.

[kdinjenzen]

Hi Kdin!

I don't want to support RT because of what they put you through and the general work culture there, but a lot of my friends love RWBY, and I did too but I've only seen the first few seasons. Do you think it's still worth watching after all the shit going on with the company that made it, or should I continue to boycott?

This isn't your fault because maybe you missed it, but this is far from the first time I've gotten this message.

So I'll say this again... you all have to stop asking me about this.

I cannot solve any moral dilemmas you may be having about it, not only is it not my place but it's not right for me to do that. You're your own person and you have to figure out where the line is for you.

As a side note... asking me about this stuff feels like that's all people have ever cared about me for... my affiliation to some company that treated me and others poorly, run by people who actively sabotaged and hurt people, and a good chunk of a fandom that attempted to undermine and erase real queer people and representation with death threats. I'm done with it. I've moved on. Please do not drag me back.

If you want an answer to your question, I sadly don't have it. You're in control of yourself and your own choices, I don't even know you or your situation, so it's not right for me to tell you what to do. I'm sorry.

[maxiemumdamage]

IT HAPPENED. Nine seasons of this. Over two hours of screen time in a not-all-that-long series dedicated to them. All that time watching them grow closer, start to trust and bond over and over.

And we got it. Not just a kiss when the series was ending, nothing simply implied. All that buildup and tension and bonding ended with an I love you, with a kiss that their own universe bent over backwards to make happen.

After all that time hearing people say it was queerbaiting or that it’d never be canon, that one or both Yang and Blake were straight…we won. This feels like everything.

#in other words: BEES CANON #bumbleby #blake belladonna #yang xiao long #rwby spoilers #queer representation #rwby9 #rwby #max.txt

[citadelofmythoughts]

Isn’t it enough for the characters to simply exist? I mean, I’m all for great writing, amazing characters, and plot relevance, (especially if they’re apart of the main cast) but isn’t the most important thing that LGBTQ+ characters show up in the show at all and aren’t just awful people or terribly stereotypical representations?

Like Saphron and Terra were a wonderful representation in my eyes.

Did they have relevance beyond three episodes? No.

Were they complex characters? No.

Were they kind, helpful, and loving? Yes.

RWBY can never win. Either characters are outspoken about their queerness or they simply exist and we learn about them through them living their lives. One means that they're "shoving an agenda down our throats" and the other means "poor representation".

As someone who is three letters of LGBTQIA+ I have felt very seen by multiple RWBY characters and I've very much appreciated it.

#rwby

[lunaefall]

Bullying and harassment culture in the RWBY fandom only gets worse and worse, and quite recently, a 17 year old sapphic Asian got bullied off Twitter for a really harmless post: asking for more MLM representation in the show.

She is genderqueer and I saw that poor child get misgendered by many people, accused of being a fujoshi, and so on, and it disgusts me that this fandom's support for queer people is so limited.

For years in the early stages of the fandom queers were getting called delusional for liking WR and BB, I was in that stage of the fandom as an active myself and I remember clearly. Now queer people are bullying each other like this and causing so much pain.

I've seen so much toxicity here, is this never going to stop? What priorities do you have that you will harass a 17 year old like this?

At this point I'm actively rooting for V10 to never happen (and I LOVE this show, though I'm starting to feel conflicted thanks to years of shit I've seen in the fandom). Between the company being so terrible and unworthy of the support, and the fandom just not deserving good things, I'll honestly be celebrating if V10 doesn't get greenlit.

The anti culture of the RWBY fandom is worse than the Genshin fandom, I've been in the Genshin community since the game launched and the fact that this notorious community is something I find NICER should be telling of how horrible things have become.

#rwde #online harassment #cyberbullying #queerphobia #discourse #dani.txt

[kitkatopinions]

Just saw this today

And for the record, I don't know the person who posted this or anything about them or the 'fix-it' thing that they left this on, but I do want to talk about this.

Because never have I ever in all my time following RWBY and being involved in the community ever seen ANYONE not ONE PERSON even someone I've blocked use dialogue like "drain the swamp" in regards to RWBY or "make RWBY great again" just as a first of all. Like this feels like the very definition of 'make up a guy just to get mad at.'

Second of all, how hard to people have to try to justify that their opinion is the Morally Correct One and anyone who doesn't adhere to it is an Evil Heartless Immoral Monster? Doesn't it get tiring? I can't believe I have to say this, but writing fix-it fanfictions???? Is not a 'conservative' or 'liberal' stance????? Whether or not you want to think a cartoon is one hundred percent perfect has nothing to do with what political parties you follow?????? And honestly, this is rich, fucking rich considering A. that one of the founders of Rooster Teeth is like a 'conservative centrist' if I remember correctly lol and one of the prominant anti-Rwde people compared not liking Trump to wanting to murder people lol.

It's just fucking ridiculous. I think I get what this person is trying to say - that venom towards a show with (supposedly) representation for women and specifically queer women is something they affiliate with bigoted Republican Trumpian types. But this is willfully ignoring that a LOT of the people who criticize RWBY are queer people, and/or women, and/or disabled people, and/or people of color, and it's willfully ignoring that the criticism is of a bigoted corporation and writers that are majority cishet men some with trackable histories of bigotry writing for a show that's problematic at best and only somewhat recently has been able to provide the bare minimum in SOME representation. Although I won't speak for all fix-it fics and have had some problems with some RWBY fix-it fics in the past, a lot of people who write fix-it fics for RWBY are intending to make RWBY three times as diverse and have more and better representation. And I am just so fucking sick of the fact that Miles 'Said the N Word as A Twenty Six Year Old' Luna is held aloft along with the likes of Rebecca Sugar or held up higher than her and queer women like me will be compared to TRUMP SUPPORTERS if we dare to say 'actually I think that RWBY could be improved.'

I really wish that I could get a gif of Neku from The World Ends With You saying 'screw that' because that's how I feel. Like honestly, what the fuck is that stance, bro? People need to go touch grass about this RWBY issue before the 'actually it's morally wrong to think a cartoon could be better in any way' mentality infects the entire internet.

#rwde #vent post

[unofficialadamtaurus]

speaking of intersectionality with discrimination: it frustrates me how the larger fandom doesnt seem to acknowledge that not all representation within the show was created equal. sure, we have a canon same-sex couple of our main girls, at the cost of killing off the WF plotline with adam rebranded as an abuser because giving him an actual character made the white writers too uncomfortable. the vague idea of RWBY representation is "good" for queer rep, yet they have the wetfart that is the WF

It’s absolutely frustrating to feel like praise for one kind of representation drowns out critiques of another or, on a similar note, critique for one is somehow critiquing every bit of rep in the show.

You can scream from the header of your blog that you like the bees, but if someone sees you criticizing the WF, suddenly all that praise is cast into doubt. Which is, I have to make clear, absurd.

And just from a meta perspective…throwing the faunus plotline under the bees romance subplot bus was bad. You’d be hard pressed to more effectively pit two groups of marginalized fans against each other in this show.

#anon #unofficial adam answers #rwde