Mastercard and visa have reported to a couple news outlets that they are currently being swamped with calls and complaints. Keep up the pressure and try to (politely) insist that you leave a complaint via phone instead of letting the rep direct you to emails. It's way easier to be overwhelmed by a much smaller number of calls so each one counts for a bit more!
This is what people are losing their shit over. This is what yall are really going up in arms against. Disgraceful and a perfect illustration of how much violent porn has influenced people that the restriction of purchases of porn displaying the above themes is considered fascist censorship.
I'm never not gonna find it funny how every single LGBT character on RWBY had merch, not because they give a fuck but because they know how many LGBT fans watch the show so they may as well profit.
Anyways I'm pretty sure there's plenty of LGBT people that can sell similar stuff for less or you can actually print those TSHIRT designs yourself.
Why are people so obsessed with "planned from the beginning!!" stuff.
Its not about whether its planned or not, its about the execution.
For example, on one hand we have Marceline and Princess Bubblegum, they have not been planned from the beginning but the creators realized they have great chemistry and potential and the execution is great. We get more insight into their backstory and their romantic development is perfectly paced and executed.
On the other hand we have Bumbleby. People say it has been planned from the beginning but the execution is shit. Back when I was new to this show the only arguments this ship had was the adam/yang symbolism and a wink from, back then, one of the most flirty/joking characters that could or could not mean it. There's not enough hints and the writers resort to splitting them over and over again and dramatically reuniting them instead of giving them proper romantic development. The only decent volume that did them justice was v6, afterwards they stayed in the exact same spot. The posts comparing the headtouch from v6 and v8 literally show it.
I dont get why people use "it has been planned from the beginning thus its great" argument with bumbleby. Its execution is shit, their romantic development is barely there and theyre stuck in the same spot. This "planned from the beginning" means nothing.
There's so much proof Bumbleby is most likely bait I dont understand why people deny it. Denying it will only make things worse for you. Writers see youre alright with it and keep doing it. I want to see the bees canon as much as yall but all this ass kissing yall do only make things worse.
Firstly Fairgame paralels since FG was bait as well:
There's more but I dont want to make the post too long. There's paralels in show and you should check out this post, with examples of how crwby hyped it out. I wonder what other lgbt ship gets hyped up like that as well.
Secondly: Miles, one of the main writers of the show, has said some pretty homophobic things and people ignore that?
He regrets not making Pilot Boi gay EVEN AFTER PEOPLE EXPLAINED BYG TO HIM. So he doesnt give a fuck about our feelings as long as the show gets popular. He feels bad because he thinks *his sexuality would've made him more popular and thus the show more popular as well*
He doesnt view wlw relationship as valid. There's this post where he jokes about how he and his gf got drunk and she made out with another girl. He enjoyed it and joked about it. Would he have reacted the same if it was a man instead?
I'm not saying harass him (OR ANYONE for that matter). But how about we hold them accountable? This show, those writers, have given you NO REASON TO TRUST THEM. Yet you give away trust so easily. On the contrary, there's literally proof on why you shouldnt trust them, both in show and outside the show. If you happily accept their crumbs and bones nothing will change. Keep enjoying the show and the ship, but how about yall start being a bit more skeptical and let them know that you wont have any of their shit and that youre tired of it? Why do people kiss their ass so much for confirming half the LGBT characters off screen and giving 2 irrelevant characters with 3 scenes in total a sentence that confirms theyre LGBT. The only *decent* rep was Ilia but even she was a bit controversial.
Seriously, y'all make it DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE for me to give VALID CRITICISMS of the show when you keep crawling out of the woodworks to rant and rave about IMAGINARY ISSUES while ignoring the ACTUAL problems with the show's presentation!
Like, the RARE occasions you guys have a point, it has LESS to do with your critical thinking skills, and more to do with the fact that you endlessly COMPLAIN so much, that you just got lucky enough to whine about the ONE thing that's actually an issue!
This is tagged the way it is because I am GENUINELY sick of your FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!
To start, I suppose I should put my cards on the table is that I do qualify medically and legally in my home country as having a disability. It's largely a mental one but it allowed me to qualify for disability benefits while I was in college. I wanna be upfront about this so you don't read this as an able-bodied person giving their thoughts on this. This comes from a somewhat personal viewpoint. Of course not every person with a disability is gonna share the same views as me, but this is just my take. I'm not trying to stomp on anyone else, I'm just saying this so you know I'm not stepping in a garden that isn't mine.
Anyway. Ever since the Volume 7 Commentary and the gross line about Ironwood's arm-flaying symbolizing a "loss in humanity," it's become more common for people to look at RWBY's history of depicting characters with disabilities and evaluating whether the show actually has a good run of depicting disabilities.
And now with Volume 8 done, I've been looking back, somewhat at Ironwood but also at the general depiction of characters with disabilities- not just in the context of how it's portrayed, but also their impact on the show. I don't have a better pre-amble then that so I'm just gonna get started and go through the list in alphabetical order (thanks to @jamesbranwen for helping put the list together).
Adam Taurus - Blind
Adam's brand, as seen in Volume 6
Adam's brand has inflicted similar scarring on his face to Cinder, so I am going to rule that his brand did blind him. In his backstory, he got the brand for being the victim of child slavery, until the Volume 7 commentary ignored his focus song and two phone game bios to instead say he got in an argument with someone at a Dust Mine.
Miles: we never say it so I guess technically it’s not canon or whatever but.. We had this idea that, you know Adam, as a terrible of a person as he was, when we was younger, potentially got into an argument with someone at an SDC place and someone grabbed a brand and just let him have it and that lead to the injury that we saw on his face in volume 6.
Regardless of how he got it, Adam is blinded on his eye, with the event being signified in his Amity Arena bio as being the start of his insanity and turn to darkness. It's quite heavy-handed on how Adam was just a sweet young boy before he was blinded- and don't get me wrong, hot iron to the face would certainly change one's disposition and worldview, but when said bio is point blank saying that the brand left Adam "cursed to forever remain a beast."
There's also the factor in that Adam's brand is one of the only ties his character has to the SDC and the wider plot of the White Fang, especially after his character regesses to being obsessed with Blake. He's blinded as part of a hate crime, and one that also ties into his Bull Faunus heritage- animals were often branded with initials to signify ownership and mark them as livestock, and the tradition goes back millennia to the Ancient Greeks and Romans. A more relevant example of it can be found in how during the height of slavery in the Americas, slaves would themselves be branded as a punishment for trying to escape. The SDC brand forever marking him as company property is thus a rather heavy-handed metaphor and attempt to tie things back to him being a bull. And the ultimate big problem with this is that Adam is a villain. He is presented as wrong for wanting revenge of being the victim of a racially-based hate crime, and later on, the biggest on-screen victim of bigotry in the entire show has his character narrowed down to solely be obsessed with his ex-girlfriend.
Even putting aside the White Fang side of Adam's character, he's a very problematic depiction of... just about everything under the sun.
Cinder Fall - Blind, Amputee
Cinder is another case of an evil character with a disability, this time being the loss of her arm and eye after Volume 3 when Ruby blasts her with the Silver Eyes.
Cinder's blinded eye, as seen in Volume 5, and her Shadow Hand, as seen in Volumes 5 and 7.
Cinder is the second alphabetical case of the "Evil Disabled" trope. Her villainy in fact arguably magnifies as she loses more of her original body, with the Cinder seen in Volume 8 being far more willing to throw her subordinates under a bus and leave them to die (as seen with how she betrays Neo and Watts). If we go off the logic of Ironwood's loss of his flesh arm to Watts as "losing his humanity" then Cinder is literally losing her humanity onscreen- as we can see the Shadow Hand progressing up to her shoulder by Volume 7. This on its own is not an issue- you are allowed to have cases in media where prosthetics can be used for a metaphor of losing humanity. But you have to nail the landing. Cinder's arc is incomplete, but the likely outcomes will either be that Salem strips her of her prosthetics through a killswitch, she loses them to a Silver Eye blast, or something else that strips her of her Grimm prosthetic so she can be made pitiable and artifically elicit sympathy from her fanbase.
Unrelated, but Cinder is also the second case of a villain who's backstory involves being a victim of slavery and yet being treated as wrong for wanting revenge on her oppressors, but that's a whole other can of worms. I suppose at least unlike the other big example of a character with a prosthetic arm, none of her merch as of yet has erased that disability so... points I guess, but this is still a murky portrayal.
Fox Alistair - Blind
Yes, going off alphabetical order, you have to go three characters in before you reach a character with a disability that is not a villain. That sums up a lot of the issues with this show and its disabled rep in one sentence, really.
Fox is blind and situationally mute. He does not talk around people he does not trust and prefers to communicate via his telepathy Semblance that makes him a walking Discord group call. He's honestly not that bad a case of rep. But the problem, is that this is not in the show. Fox, his disability, and ADA (an earbud that uses sonar pulses to detect elements such as tripping hazards) are all only found in the Team CFVY books, specifically After The Fall. In regards to the show itself, Fox is just a dude with white eyes.
I wanna stress, I like Fox and he managed the impossible- being well written in material with EC Myers at the helm. He fits the setting well, he's never treated as lesser than the rest of his team because of his disability, and I think his sense of humor brings a lot to the books. But the problem with all that is that I can't give the show points for stuff that's done in books years after the character has left the show. It's similar to how you can't say RWBY has good mlm representation just because of Scarlet when Scarlet's homosexuality was only revealed in a side-manga. Given how Volume 9 at the moment may not even feature Vacuo and be entirely focused on RWBY (and fucking Jaune) exploring the Portal World, there's a chance we may not see Vacuo at all before Volume 10, and a part of me does doubt that Fox will return in any meaningful way beyond a cameo. At best he'll get a Team FNKI level of return where he shows up for all of two scenes and that's it. So Fox is fine. But he's not in the show itself, so if I was giving points for Good and Bad disabled rep, I'd give half a point here.
Fria - Alzheimer's, Impaired Mobility
Fria in her advanced age has come with a disease similar to Alzheimer's, which causes symptoms of demetia and targets the parts of the brain that control memory and eventually can physically impair its victims. When we meet Fria, she has difficulting holding a conversation and has lost large patches of her memory, clinging on to her duty as the Winter Maiden like a lifeline.
Fria is overall a well-handled character given her lack of real screentime and only one scene to establish herself before her death. I like her and I enjoy her final scene with Penny. Would have liked to have seen her in her prime.
James Ironwood - Amputee, PTSD
I wrote this one last because Jesus Christ it's a lot. Ironwood's writing after Volume 7 is I think when a lot of people began to really look at how RWBY handles disability and where it falls miserably flat a lot of the time. I will say upfront, that I do think post-Volume 7 Ironwood's writing (including meta text and statements made outside of the show by the crew) makes his narrative an inherently ableist one. There is no way to salvage Volume 8 Ironwood.
Prior to the series, for unknown reasons, Ironwood lost over half his body and had it replaced with cybernetics. The experience left him with trauma and battlefield hallucinations, as he relates when speaking to Yang after her fight with Mercury in Volume 3. Following the Fall of Beacon, Ironwood's latent paranoid tendencies cause his PTSD to flare up, causing him to blockade Atlas and initiate an embargo to try and keep Salem's infiltrators out. During Volume 7, Ironwood sacrifices his remaining organic arm to stop Watts, and his PTSD is further pushed in by the warning of Salem's arrival, lack of recovery time after flaying his arm, and having several pieces of bad information either told to him (Salem's immortality) or dragged into the limelight (Robyn knowing about the Amity project). As a result, Ironwood's fear overtakes him, and he decides to abandon Mantle. For Volume 8 he is a villain who opposes team RWBY from the beginning up until his potential death in the Vault.
Ironwood meets many of the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, even prior to the Fall of Beacon. He shows signs of having chronic pain, issues with sleeping and hallucinations. After the Fall, he develops a specific trigger in the Black Queen, with his insomniac tendencies magnifying.
Ironwood at the end of Volume 7 is an interesting antagonist to consider, someone who had a lot of potential. A former hero who through no one person's fault, succumbs to his fears and is left a broken man barely hanging on to his duty to protect Atlas, even as he sacrifices more and more to keep the people safe. I was interested in seeing where they took him and if the series would address his actions in shooting Oscar. Given the commentary expressly says the Ironwood debate was meant to be a morally gray affair, that was meant to divide the fanbase, I was interested in seeing it develop.
At least, I was until CRWBY opened their mouths after Volume 7 wrapped. The commentary, when talking about Gravity and Ironwood's sacrifice to stop Watts, says the following: (video source)
Kerry Shawcross (Director and Writer): And then of course Ironwood now losing.. another part of his humanity. Get it?
Paula Decanini (Episode Co-Director): (Chuckles).
Kerry: Oh man. I was.. I lost it.
Miles Luna (Writer for the show): (Laughs).
Yeah they straight up laugh as they say what's a genuinely ableist take on the character and his sacrifice. Because this wasn't isolated and this bled into the show. The writers and directors did treat Ironwood's arm flaying as him losing his humanity, and from the second I saw the comment, it just... took the wind out of my sails for interest in Ironwood's character. And then they made it worse.
At RTX 2020, the final question presented was what Ironwood and Watts' Semblances were. Alongside the dud lore that was "Watts doesn't learn his Semblance because he's too busy sciencing to take the time to unlock it," we learned about Ironwood's Semblance, Mettle. Mettle lets Ironwood "strengthen his resolve, which allows him to carry through with his decisions, helping James hyper-focus."
In short, his Semblance is basically injecting a bottle's worth of Adderall into his veins.
Mettle is without doubt, the worst Semblance in RWBY. And I'm not alone in thinking that, it has topped several fan polls for "Worst Semblance in the show," including a video by Judgemental Critter that has gained nearly seventy thousand views (and the top comment, with over a thousand thumbs up, has the commenter simply saying "I never even knew he had a Semblance until this video"). On Reddit, many a thread has complained about the handling of Mettle's reveal, that it was dropped near the end of a panel that not everyone would have watched, and that it has no visual tells to identify when the Semblance is even active, meaning it's impossible to tell which actions Ironwood undertakes are of his own volition and how many are Mettle forcing him to ignore alternatives. The RWBY Wiki specifically highlights this:
Mettle is the only Semblance that's effects are never shown or mentioned by any character at any point throughout the show. Because of this, it is difficult to determine which actions are a result of his Semblance or not.
And that's the other big thing; because Mettle is never mentioned in the series, people don't know about this! It's a crucial piece of lore needed to understand Ironwood's character and a strong argument can be made that it's not even canon! The one example given of it being in effect at the RTX panel- Ironwood pulling his arm free of Watts' ring trap- can't be true because his Aura's broken so that means no Semblance! And because of how much willpower that action contains, it means his Semblance is functionally worthless.
The kicker about Mettle is that it reeks of an addition made to Ironwood's character following Volume 7 so that alongside the "Losing Arm = Losing Humanity" message in the commentary, the writing team could just point to Mettle to cover their asses for when people criticised Ironwood's turn as a villain. And in fact, I am 100% sure it was a late addition. Why? Because Ironwood's own voice actor had to be told about Mettle by a fan:
Arryn Zech: What is Ironwood's Semblance? I've never figured that out.
Jason Rose: A fan told me, like very specifically it was the ability to hyper-focus on anything and uniquely get it done. He's obsessive-compulsive that's the... *laughs* that's even better.
We only learned about Mettle during the Volume 7-8 hiatus and I refuse to believe that Jason didn't at least ask about Ironwood's Semblance so that he could bring it up in his performance. Jason was also a close friend of Monty (close enough that Monty used a facial scan of Jason for Ironwood's face), so if Monty didn't tell him personally... yeah I'm gonna they came up with it after Volume 7 to cover their asses. I could talk a lot about how Mettle is terrible- I might just one day- but in regards to this topic, without getting off-topic severely and speculating on whether Mettle can be read as an allegory for neurodivergent-type behavior: It's not a great look for Ironwood's Semblance to basically be a morality off-switch when the meta text has already compared him sacrificing his arm to losing his humanity. And by great look I mean "Jesus Christ this is just ableist."
Ironwood's PTSD is scarily done very well throughout the show up to the end of Volume 7, but with how Volume 8 tanks his character, it brings into question if it was even on purpose to show it well, to make him sympathetic. It makes one wonder "Was this even on purpose, or did they luck into making him a sympathetic character, or did they knowingly make him sympathetic then tank his character to vindicate Team RWBY's choices?" Either way, it's a terrible look, and one they go all in on in Volume 8 with his new arm.
Ironwood's new limb is deliberately designed to stand out from his usual look. He's always worn white and red, so an all-black arm stands out, contrasting his color scheme and emphasizing the inhumanity that the crew intended it to have. Compared to other prosthetics, Ironwood's second arm is deliberately made to not even resemble a human limb beyond necessity- you can see the specific wire joints that control his fingers, and he's rolled up his sleeve to let be on display. That last part is especially notable because James has always hidden his prosthetics from the world- Glynda even points out how paranoid he is about people seeing his prosthetics that he woke up in the middle of the night and got fully dressed up for a midnight stroll. We only saw them in Volume 3 after he was in a plane crash, but now he specifically rolls his sleeve so that you can see the whole thing and how Evil it is. I don't know why they made such a perplexing character design choice beyond rubbing it in but there we go. His first actions on-camera in Volume 8 are to inspect this new arm, speak with Winter, then execute a man in cold blood in front of seven witnesses.
This show has a pathological fear of moral complexity, I swear.
Sleet's death serves no purpose in the show, especially as Ironwood later gets to execute another civilian in Jacques to show how over the edge of morality he's gone. It has such little impact, that the execution is never referenced again for the rest of the season- it's a Big Lipped Aligator Moment, with its sole purpose being not to advance the plot in-show, but be an explicit message to Ironwood's fanbase.
And from there, Ironwood's villainy only continues. He lets Watts out of his cell to coerce him into hacking Penny. He reacts to the news of the whale's destruction with plans to use Qrow and later Yang/Jaune/Ren as hostages to lure Ruby and Penny out of hiding. When that fails he plans to drop a bomb on Mantle to force them to open the Vault, and when Marrow opposes this he nearly shoots Marrow in the back. When the bomb fails, he decides to get revenge on Winter. And worst of all:
He loses his badass revolvers for some dinky BFG wannabe from Doom that just feels like a cheap way to nerf Ironwood's fighting style.
Ironwood was the section of this post I wrote last for a reason. Because his turn in Volume 8 took what Volume 7 set up as an interesting antagonist opposing RWBY, and made him a boring villain to fill time until Cinder was ready to take the spotlight again. What made him an interesting, nuanced and tragic character is stripped away, with Ironwood being the largest to-date casuality of RWBY's protagonist centered morality that sees any character oppose RWBY or even call them out on their actions be dragged through the mud or made into a one-note villain so that their arguments have no weight. That's bad on one hand, but what makes this sting and feel like a poison-coated knife is the extra layers to his fall- between "Losing his arm symbolizes losing his humanity," his stupid Band-Aid plothole Semblance, his new prosthetic, and the show's complete lack of sympathy for Ironwood's trauma and PTSD feeding into bad stereotypes about military veterans who struggle with their trauma, all while everyone else is allowed to have excuses made for actions, such for Hazel "Litreally tortured a child during this season" Rainart and Emerald "Aided and abetted in a terrorist attack" Sustrai. The Ironwood in the Beacon seasons, and even at the end of Volume 7, would not have stooped to bombing Mantle out of spite. Volume 8 ruins Ironwood, making him dull, forgettable, lacking everything that made him a good character in the first place, squandering all of the potential setup in Volume 7 for a tragic antagonist and ultimately it is:
Ableist. His arc in Volume 8 is fundamentally, irredeemably ableist and ruins his entire character- I can no longer go back and enjoy the Ironwood in the show prior as this season is like a nuclear fallout in how badly it taints him. I am only glad Ironwood is dead because now his ableist plotline can no longer continue. I hate that I have to say that about what was formerly one of my favorite characters.
Klein Sieben - DID
Klein was confirmed at RTX London 2017 to have DID, or Dissociative identity disorder. To fit his fairytale reference to the Seven Dwarfs from Snow White, this manifests as seven distinct personalities that are shown by Klein's eyes changing color and his voice adopting a different accent. Klein was fairly cool and he helped make Weiss's Volume 4 plot better. I generally like Klein, but his DID seems to have been controversial. Some folks seem to like it but from what I've seen, a lot of people have been unhappy with his depiction of DID, particularly the unrealistic speeds of his transitions between personalities and his primary usage as a comedy character.
Maria Calavera - Blind
As part of her last battle as the "Grimm Reaper," Maria lost her eyes to the swords of an assassin hired by Salem named Tock.
Maria joins the cast on the Argus Limited due to needing to go to Atlas for a check-up on her prosthetics, during which time she's roped into the war with Salem. She teaches Ruby how to use her Silver Eyes, flies them to Atlas, then spends most of Volumes 7 and 8 off-camera with Pietro because... well Volume 8 is kind of a mess like that.
Maria on her own, just looking at her in a void, is a good character. I like sassy people and I like that Maria doesn't pull her punches when it comes to Team RWBY- the show can be a bit guilty of having anyone who criticises the protagonists be turned into giant monsters. She has a good design, I like her flashback, and her VA does a good job. The big problem with Maria isn't really her fault, it's more a case of how the Solitas Arc kinda just... forgets about her.
See, Maria wasn't meant to be in Volume 6- she was meant to be in Volume 5, as part of RNJR's plotline in Mistral. Qrow would have met her during his Huntsmen search, she would have a cat, and presumably would have stayed in Mistral following Volume 5's original planned ending, having taught Ruby about her Eyes and being able to rest assured that the heroes were going to do their best. But because Volume 5 was... a mess... Maria and most of RNJR's plots got pushed back into Volume 6 and beyond (hence the Pyrrha statue scene in Argus and presumably this is why Renora's relationship stalled between Volumes 4 and 7). With Maria, they just added her to the train, but due to the fact that Volume 6 was a travel season, there wasn't a place where they could just leave Maria without the plot having to awkwardly explain why- she was on the train to Argus, so let's just say she's going to Atlas.
But evidently, they hadn't considered what to do with Maria after reaching Atlas. After the premiere, Maria goes through huge chunks of Volume 7 without being seen- roughly every four to six episodes is how long between appearances for her and Pietro. It's a problem that the Volume 7 commentary acknowledged as the team regretted shafting Maria as hard as they did. But the problem is that for Volume 8, they doubled down on this. Following Episode 5, where Maria is with Pietro as Amity crash-lands, she is not seen for the remainder of Volume 8.
Maria as a character is fine, but she's let down by the narrative not knowing what to do with her following Volume 6 because her original purpose in the story was not to join the gang. She served her purpose in regards to the Silver Eyes, but now what can they do with her? She gets a silly fight with Neo which pathetically has some of the best combat animation in the entirety of Volume 8 in it, but that's really all they can give her, leaving Maria quite literally out in the cold for the entire Solitas Arc. But rather than just accept that Maria had no real purpose narratively to stick around after Volume 6, she's now hanging off the series like a kid tugging on a coat. What does this matter in regards to rating her and her disability? Not a ton admittedly, but is unfortunate that Maria, one of the most visibly characters that we've met in the series, is in a halfway house between getting put onto the bench and being onscreen. CRWBY really need to either pick up the hot potato or drop it is what I'm saying.
Mercury Black - Amputee, PTSD
Ah, Mercury. The first onscreen disabled character in the show. I do like Mercury, even if he's gotten so little content since Volume 3 that being a fan of him gets tiring. Man watching him leave midway through Volume 8 did sting.
Once a friend pointed out to me that Mercury's legs shouldn't join to his body like this without a connector joint I did die a little not gonna lie
Mercury clearly has a lot of unresolved trauma and emotions surrounding his legs, as they were taken by his abusive father Marcus (or at least, in the act of killing him, Marcus wounded Mercury enough that he lost his legs) alongside his Semblance. Mercury puts up a brave front of being unaffected and uncaring about the world, but broiling underneath the surface is a person who is very painfully aware of how cruel and violent the world can be, but is stimultaniously too afriad of the conditions he's been dragged into by Salem and Cinder that he sees no way out of the cycle of violence he's now gotten trapped into.
I don't have a lot of negative things to say about Mercury- yet, though let's be blunt here, it's still not great that he's a villain like Adam and Cinder before him and you can read into it that Mercury visibly gains his prosthetics after embracing villainy and go "ehhhhhhhhhh that's a bit sketch." His arc will decide ultimately how the depiction of his disability is weighed, especially if it includes any subtext about his legs, so it's hard to evaluate it in general without seeing at least enough of his arc to get a reading on it... something that has been difficult given how hard Mercury's been warming the bench since Volume 3. I'd like to hope (albeit I won't be seeing this for a while due to not planning to watch Volume 9 onwards) that Mercury's arc will involve him escaping Tyrian, hooking up with Em and walking into the desert together to get out of the violent life Cinder forced on them. But RWBY has a particular fondness for taking my favorite characters and shoving them in a wood chipper, so I won't hold my breath.
Though really at this point I'll take hearing a friend tell me "Mercury finally got a goddamn fight after six years."
Doctor Merlot - Blind, Amputee
For anyone wondering "Who's Merlot again?" He's the villain from Grimm Eclipse.
Merlot has no real personality or motive so it's not worth going too deep here, but his designer certainly enjoys playing on stereotypes. "OH YOU CAN TELL HE'S A BAD GUY BECAUSE HE'S GOT A GLOWING RED EYE. AND A ROBOT ARM THAT'S BLACK AND RED." Yeah, black and red look great together, just ask Ruby, Adam and Raven. Again, Merlot's not an individual deal-breaker, he's just another case of the show leaning in on harmful stereotypes in an isolated incident. But the problem is that these isolated incidents keep stacking up. And that they tend to keep giving their villains disabilities.
Neopolitan - Mute
Neo has been confirmed to be at least selectively mute, wih the most sound she's generated across the show being several mocking laughs in Cross Tag Battle. Her song "One Thing" also includes a lyric indicating her muteness- "Lost without a voice, and on my own." Through the power of being mute, Neo has been spared the most debilitating debuff in the world of Remnant:
The writers can't give her crappy dialogue.
I like Neo, even if I think she's a little overhyped by the fandom. She gets mostly good fights so no complaints on that end. And for the most part, the fandom respects her mute status. However, again, same rule as Mercury; just because they're cool doesn't mean it excuses being yet another villain with a disability. It's also disappointing that the series doesn't seem to care to have Neo communicate through sign language. I get it's probably hard to animate but... come on guys at least put in the extra work for this.
While we're on the subject of Neo, I'm going to add in Roman on the side due to a friend telling me Roman potentially has a limp in his right leg, as seen in the first episode. I debated adding Roman purely because looking at it I can't tell if it's a limp or just an awful walk-cycle animation that makes it look like he's limping, but it does look like a different walk-cycle from his goons and other characters in that episode so maybe? Either way, if we're adding Roman- he's cool, but still a villain.
Penny Polendina- Neurodivergent Coded
OK let's get something clear- yes, CRWBY never officially confirmed Penny was meant to be coded as autistic or neurodivergent blah blah blah blah blah. You can unintentionally code someone as something- ie, look at how many people genuinely thought CRWBY were queer-coding Clover. With Penny, almost all of her fans bought the idea that Penny was coded as, or at least shared traits with neurodivergent people, specifically with Autism/Aspergers, and the idea that Penny was coded as a transgender narrative, particularly after Volume 7 revealed that Penny got her Aura from her father yet identifies as female. It's a common thing in media with androids for them to be given traits that allow for this to happen- Data from Star Trek is a similar case, as often in media, androids are given arcs about learning to be more human and emotive. It's easy to look at those arcs and go "Yeah I can read them as being neurodivergent."
So most of Penny's fans would have told you that they were at least cool with her being coded as neurodivergent, if not fully all-in on the idea. And then Volume 8 makes the whole thing a little... icky.
I will say, that I am biased against the Penny-Watts hacker plot. It feels very contrived as an artifical way to get Penny out of the plot for a few episodes and then have a problem that limits her combat power so that she doesn't instantly stomp every problem the team faces thanks to her Maiden Powers. Or alternatively, it's there so that Penny gets benched and then the team come up with the idea of making her human so that Cinder has an easier time killing her. Either way, I really genuinely despise the hacker plot, especially as it doesn't even lead to a cool Hacker Battle between Watts and Pietro like the opening implied would happen (or really, Watts interacting with Pietro period because this season clearly had more cuts than Liam Neeson doing parkour). But the end result of it, the scene with RWBY negotiating with Ambrosius regarding Penny being made human, we get a line from Yang that goes as follows:
Yang flexes her arm, drawing attention to her prosthetic.
Yang: The mechanical parts are just... extra.
You can tell the writing team were very impressed at this line and pat themselves on the back, but it falls into a weird thing the Solitas arc does of framing prosthetics and mechanics as BAD, and that only full-bodied flesh and blood people are GOOD, but if you have a disability you have to not consider it a part of you, it's just something you have to overcome to be treated as a real person. Ironwood for example is a case of this, but in regards to Penny, how the Ambrosius scene and her becoming a Real Girl (which she already was, they did this in Volume 7, it was way better than, this was stupid). Penny's mechanical nature (and thus the source of her divergent tendencies) is framed as a prison, holding the real Penny back. And when Penny is made flesh and blood, she now enjoys hugs.
But... she already enjoyed hugs. All the way back to Volume 1, she's always liked hugs. Now suddenly she's all OH I NEVER REALLY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE LIKE like... fuck off. Like, the show feels like it's saying the source of what makes Penny diffent is what made her feel not-human and now she's an able-bodied flesh and blood real girl now she's "cured" of these issues. That Penny didn't "count" as a real girl until what made her different was taken out of her. It's actually disgusting.
Like it does feel like you can easily look at the Penny virus plot and her being made a real girl, and get a conversion therapy metaphor out of it. The more I think about the resolution to this plot, the more I get violently ill. It flies in the face of everything good about Penny and her plotlines just for fanservice and so some freaks in CRWBY could model her bare feet. It is kinda weird that after Penny is shed of what makes her different, it means that Penny is immediately fetishized after becoming "normal" because Ambrosius never heard of thigh-high socks I guess.
To be honest, the "Penny being made human" plot just feels like the writing team coming up with a way to do "Penny is validated by an outside party as being a Real Girl" for like... the third time because they evidently thought Ruby and Fria weren't enough. It feels like all of her plot in Volume 8- the virus, her wanting to commit suicide so the powers go to someone with control of their body, making her human- is all just there because they realized, even in a show with as flagrant a hatred of power-scaling as RWBY, Cinder realistically didn't have a chance in hell of fighting off RWBY and Penny without Penny being made human. So Penny got made human (and Ruby had to take a nerf in how long the Silver Eyes take to activate again) so Cinder could win, essentially.
I liked Penny up to Volme 7's finale. She really shone in that season, but Volume 8 kinda... taints her across the whole show. Both in regards to how her death just feels like shitty shock value as part of them copy-pasting Volumes 3 and 5, how it wastes a lot of plotlines that could have been done with Penny besides "I'M A REAL GIRL" for the fourth fucking time, and in how in feels like a slap in the face to people who viewed Penny as neurodivergently-coded. Most narratives about these kinds of characters don't end with them being made flesh and blood Real People only to die 20 minutes later is what I'm saying. Volume 8 failed Penny. And I wouldn't consider it dramatic to say it failed her fanbase as well. Her treatment in the finale alongside Ironwood's Volume 8 treatment has played a huge part in why I'm dropping the series now. I have no intention of seeing what few characters I like tainted further.
Pietro Polendina - Impaired Mobility
Pietro is one of the most visibily disabled characters in the series, using a mechanical wheelchair adapted for the cold climate of Solitas, presumably as an after-effect of shaving off his Aura to fuel Penny's life. As a character, he exists. Like Klein, most of my issues with Pietro are more meta-textural or how he's used by the writing instead of the character themselves.
Pietro's disability does stand out in regards to how in-your-face it is, but it's hard to really talk about because he's... kind of a nothing of a character. The show teases that Pietro has an interesting history due to rubbing shoulders with a lot of power players such as Ironwood, Watts and Maria, but Pietro as-is is a bit of a bumbling dad with a few death flags tied to his chair after he mentions bringing Penny back a third time may kill him. With Penny's flesh-death it's likely Pietro won't be able to do this and as such his impact on the series is largely confined to the offscreen creation of Penny and keeping Amity afloat in Season 8. Much like Maria, the sheer abruptness of how hard he's dropped appearance wise following Amity going down does lessen the quality of his representation. Presumably Pietro had to get kicked out of the show after Amity got shot down because he would have solved the Penny virus plot too easily (i do find it very disappointing that the opening teased a Pietro/Watts hacker battle and dropped the ball on that. Thanks Volume 8), but that's not really an excuse for shafter two of your darker-skinned and more visibily disabled characters just because you can't come up with a good work-around for Pietro solving the plot.
I cannot see Pietro having a big impact on the series after this unless they actually do the unthinkable and bring Penny back for a third time so that Ruby can be given a cheap happy ending. If that happened it would be... bile inducing, to put it mildly, not to mention stake-endingly cheap. Otherwise with Atlas gone and Penny dead, Pietro has no real narrative purpose in the series. To avoid character bloat he should go... but it doesn't help the situation regarding representation to lose one of the few remaining heroes with a disability.
Tyrian Callows - Amputee
Tyrian gets his tail cut off by Ruby during Volume 4, and when we see him again in Volume 6 he's gotten himself a shiny new metal tail thanks to Watts. Originally it was meant to have a far more clunkier and unsettling design before the sleek version seen in the show. Tyrian's one of my favorite characters so I am a bit biased in his favour but there's nothing overwhelmingly bad about his specific portrayal in having a prosthetic limb.
This is like the seventh verse so same as the first, but: It's Still Not Good How Many Disabled Characters In This Show Are Villains. Yes, Yang is a main character with a prosthetic, but she's one character. Maria is a recurring main, Pietro will not be important after Volume 8, Ironwood is made a hero, Fox is largely explored in side material. It is ethically not OK to act as if Yang and Maria are catch-alls for the numerical disparity on display here. I'm not saying CRWBY was intentionally ableist in how many villains it gave prosthetics and disabilities to (outside of Ironwood because... they were being ableist there), but just like how CRWBY didn't intend for Penny to be read as trans/autistic, you don't have to be intentionally trying to have an ableist message in your story to still have an undercurrent to it.
Following Volume 7's finale, Winter was so badly damaged by Cinder's assault that she requires a medical brace to properly move for the duration of Volume 8. She seemingly had it colored so she could cosplay as a Mass Effect character in the process. Winter very clearly needs this brace to move, as even opening her hand in the Volume 8 premiere hurts enough to drive a wince out of the normally-stotic Schnee.
In the finale, things get... weird. When Penny dies, she chooses Winter for the powers and we get a scene of them in a dreamscape so Penny can get a last goodbye off and resolve the Penny-Winter dynamic from Volume 7. The stuff I mentioned in Penny's section about how the show has a weird anti-machine slant comes across very strongly here, as Winter is not only shown in her Volume 7 attire (ie, she has her disability glossed over for this scene), but she tearfully laments that Penny was always the real Maiden and that she was "Just a machine."
The issues with Winter's line go beyond the matter of RWBY's disability as this is also a crossroads where that subject matter meets up with RWBY's depiction of the military. The issue, however is that three of the most important characters in the Solitas Arc- Ironwood, Winter and Penny- are intrinsically linked to the military. It's difficult to talk about anything in regards to these characters because, especially for Ironwood and Penny, the two arcs are like peas in a pod. For Winter, this line hurts the idea established from Volumes 3-7 that her joining the military was a choice she made herself, that she never seriously thought for herself as either a Schnee or a Specialist. The line also edges in on implying that anyone still following orders and doing their jobs are no better than the machines, that despite Penny's robotic nature she was able to "rise above" that, and, loosely, that the man giving those orders is no better than a machine too.
It's not normally a connection that can be made, but Volume 8 makes that connection possible. Given where the rest of the season leans on these topics, it's a lot of the surrounding context of Volume 8 that taints the line, rather than the line proper.
Qrow Branwen and Willow Schnee- Alcoholism
I'm lumping Qrow and Willow into the same group because they largely have the same issues in regards to the depiction of their alcoholism (and in case you're wondering, the Assisted Disability Act does list alcoholism as a disability so I'm technically not stretching here when I include them). Both are characters with a lot of pre-existing trauma (Qrow his shitty upbringing, self-loathing due to his Semblance and the destruction of Team STRQ, Willow over realizing Jacques used her marriage for money and his abuse of their children).
Qrow's alcoholism is treated as a joke from Volumes 3 to 5. In his first full episode Glynda even points out "He's always drunk!" with it being used for comedy alongside a shot of Qrow downing his flask. Miles specifically highlighted getting to do the motion capture for Qrow in Volume 5's premiere when he gets utterly wasted as being one of the highlights of the season's production in the commentary track. In Volume 6, Qrow's drinking is hard-right veered into being taken seriously. After Jinn's revelations, Qrow completely shuts down and tries to drink himself to death at Brunswick. When the party falter in Argus, his first recourse is to go find a bar and get wasted again. It fits for Qrow to resort to drinking here, especially after his faith in Ozpin was shattered (still no excuse for punching Oscar into a tree and never apologizing Qrow). It fits his character to resort to a bottle for comfort, that's not the problem. The problem is what it's used for in a meta-angle.
See, you have to remember that after Volume 5, a lot people were angry at RWBY for how Ruby was being poorly done as a protagonist. It had been brewing after Volume 4, but Volume 5 and the Mistral House alongside Ruby being shafted for much of the Haven Fight meant a lot of people were just done with how the show was writing Ruby. And another part of the problem was that Ozpin and Qrow were hogging the limelight. They had more connections with the main villains, they knew more about the setting and perhaps most importantly: CRWBY were actually willing to give them fight scenes. So for Volume 6, one of the stated goals by Miles was to give Ruby the limelight. And as such, Oz and Qrow need to get benched. So Oz leaves after the shaming he gets for the Lost Fable, while Qrow's alcoholism reaches its peak. Now he's worthless in a fight, he's just whiny and sullen.
This also means that when Qrow criticises Jaune's plan to steal an airship, Ruby is automatically on the high-ground; not literally mind, as Qrow's halfway up a staircase and Ruby's small enough that she legally qualifies as luggage for an airline flight. But Qrow telling everyone that Jaune's plan stupid and pointlessly risky and very dangerous doesn't matter: He's drunk and hungover. Ruby and Yang just found him KO'd on a stairwell outside the Terra-Cotta house. He's a whiny loser and Ruby is the real hero for maintaining her pluck and grit to keep moving forward.
Effectively, Qrow's alcoholism was only taken seriously by the show when it needed to take Qrow down a peg and prop up another character. Otherwise up to that point he was WACKY WAHOO DRUNKLE QROW. But hey, Volume 6 sets up that Qrow's gonna put his flask down now and that he can't drink his problems away. So how does the Solitas Arc follow up on this? It uh... doesn't.
Qrow gets one line in Volume 7 to confirm he's stopped drinking (and it's said in such an offhand manner I wouldn't be shocked if people missed it), and then he turns down a glass of wine at the Schnee Manor. That's it. There are no references to his alcoholism or him seemingly going cold turkey after this. That one shot of him turning the drink down is the closest we get to him struggling with his addiction. He suffers no symptoms of withdrawal, he never relapses or is severely tempted to keep drinking. For all we know he still has the flask. RWBY handles Qrow's alcoholism recovery by... not talking about it.
I saw some people suggest back during Volume 7 that Qrow was using his bond with Clover as a replacement for his addiction. That he was putting his chips in on Clover to keep him on the straight and narrow, and that Volume 8 would see him shifting that need onto his obsession with revenge against Ironwood. But then after Clover dies, there's no reference to this idea and Qrow drops his revenge quest against Ironwood because Robyn nicely asks him not to do the thing that the show itself was setting up for an entire year (seriously CRWBY you had one job in giving us the IronQrow fight how did you drop the ball this hard when you were three inches from touchdown?). The idea of Qrow using either of these elements to not focus on his addiction is, put bluntly, a headcanon, and RWBY fans really need to realize that they need to stop using headcanons to solve every plothole in the show.
Qrow may fall back into the bottle during Volume 9 as he realizes Ruby and Yang are gone, but after how hard the Solitas arc dropped the hot potato of his drinking problem after it served its purpose of "Making Qrow very difficult to root for so Ruby looks good by proxy," it likely won't be a problem, or it'll get another one-off line of Robyn or Marrow saying "Oh we have to be careful to not leave Qrow alone with a bottle just in case."
As for Willow, her addiction is more compressed due to having... all of three scenes to show it. She's a heavy drinker following Weiss's 10th birthday and we see this in how she casually chugs vodka from the bottle. Willow is an interesting character on-paper as someone who is aware of the role they played in what went wrong with the Schnee family due to her own shutdown, but feels that any attempts made at repartiation would come off as performative. In Volume 8, Willow has the sanest reaction of the cast to see Salem's giant Grimm whale in that she grabs a fucking distillery's worth of alcohol and goes to town. But after the Hound comes looking after Penny, Willow uses her Deus Ex Machina camera network to see it about to attack Whitley, with her instincts causing her to reawaken her Semblance to summon a Grimm to distract the Hound.
... At least I think that's what happens? I'm still not sure if that was Weiss or Willow.
But either way, Willow seemingly after this home invasion views it as a chance to clean up her act. She's seen in a few shots after this hugging Whitley and is not seen drinking for the rest of the season. So her alcoholism is just OK now. Not like I was expecting her to rubberneck a vodka bottle while hugging Whitley, hilarious an image as that is, but it does feel disingenuous that both major characters who suffer from drinking problems just... go cold turkey and are perfectly OK after their drinking serves its purpose. Nothing to worry about. Withdrawal symptoms? Pfft, who needs those?
Yang Xiao Long - Amputee, PTSD, Depression
Yang loses her arm fighting Adam in Volume 3, and during Volume 4, General Ironwood sends Yang a prosthetic arm for her to don starting near the end of that season. Yang struggles with PTSD from the Fall and the loss of her arm, leaving her initially unwilling to use the arm until a period of time after it arrives. Even after putting the arm on, Yang suffers from tremors in her left hand whenever her trauma flares up.
Yang is often cited as a catch-all excuse whenever RWBY is criticised for disability representation- that one of the title characters has a prosthetic and PTSD, and it's handled fairly well! And it is... somewhat. In Volume 4 it's decent, but Yang's arc is heavily truncated due to her having less than twenty minutes of screentime across the entire season. She goes huge chunks of it without an update, meaning we don't get Yang's recovery arc in Volume 4 as much as we get a Powerpoint of it. We have to go from "Yang is reluctant to put the arm on" to "Yang has the arm on and is ready to fight again" in two episodes.
Yang's trauma is not a problem that goes away overnight. This continues to be a part of her character going into Volumes 5 and 6, where she still has the tremors, and shares with Weiss that part of her would reject Blake rejoining Team RWBY due to Blake's departure in Volume 3 hitting too close to home for her abandonment issues. When Blake rejoins, a lot of the immediate awkward interactions are skipped over due to the two-week timeskip between Volumes 5 and 6, but tensions are still present on Yang's end. When Blake accidentally implies that she sees Yang as someone who needs to be protected, Yang disgustedly leaves her behind in a barn in Brunswick, which is the last interaction between the two until Adam's return. The implication is that during their time in Argus, the duo hashed out a lot of their unresolved tension (which I imagine alongside Oscar's offscreen adventures would have made for a great episode) which is solidified in their "Protecting Each Other" moment.
Side note: I've grown to find the Protecting Each Other moment as sadly funny, as following this point exactly, Blake has not protected anyone and all of her fights involve getting her ass kicked so someone can save her or do all the heavy lifting in the fight. It started with Penny having to save her in the Mantle Grimm fight, it happened with the Ace Ops, and it happened again during the fight with the Spitter. Heck, even for the Adam fight Yang does most of the heavy lifting after she joins.
But on topic, the big problem with Yang's trauma is that after Adam's death... it's cured. Yang never has the tremors again, she has no signs of suffering from PTSD, or any ill effects from her role in Adam's death. After Volume 6's finale, while she still has moments of being ill-tempered, she's largely fine again, and negative reactions have more to do with her trauma from Beacon. It's just... gone. Like Qrow's alcoholism, it's a disability that vanishes from the story once it serves its narrative purpose- Yang beats Adam and as such, she just doesn't manifest her trauma externally anymore. Even when Blake and Yang do acknowledge Adam's death in Volume 7, Yang only talks about it in the sense of doing what had to be done. She doesn't speak of resolution or how her depression/PTSD has been impacted, it's a black and white situation as she presents it.
While Yang's prosthetic and the depiction of her physical disability is commendable and generally OK, it's undercut by the treatment of her trauma and depression, which have largely been swept under the rug. With Adam's death, the meta-text of the show is that Yang "won" her arc during the Anima seasons, so now she's "won" not having to visibly display her trauma. Even if the Vacuo arc does back off on this and have Yang's triggers return, it doesn't erase that the Solitas Arc, the immedate follow-up on Yang killing the source of her trauma... doesn't talk about it.
And even then, it's hard to praise Rooster Teeth for its depiction of Yang's disability when their own official merch as supervised by Yang's voice actress has a shirt that doesn't depict said disability. Yang's right arm should not look like that, but somehow, the artist, the QA team, and Barbara herself all cleared it. And Barb's response to it was that it would be fixed... in event of a reprint. I'm not saying they intentionally did it... but you don't have to be trying to be malicious, for something to still hurt like it was intentional.
And again... this doesn't excuse Yang being the only main heroic character with a disability, especially compared with how many villains have visible disabilities.
Conclusion
I don't believe the people who make RWBY are ableist. But I think they can, and have, fucked up a lot during the show's production and leaned in on a lot of tropes that can be easily twisted to become ableist.
I didn't include everyone here- I could have included the robot-arm girl from Volume 7's premiere, Tock's metal jaws could have debatably made the cut and given Roman's addition a case can be made for Ozpin. But Tock would have just even more unfairly stacked the deck in terms of villains, and her jaws are very debatable in general, while with Ozpin it's unclear if his need of the Long Memory is based on an actual disability or just age- and given how he moves when he needs to, if he even needs it.
If one is to look at this list, through just a numerical lense, to determine the quality of RWBY's disabled representation, the facts would show:
This list overall comprises a total of eighteen characters (20 if you add Tock and Ozpin)
Of those eighteen, eight are or become villains (Adam, Cinder, Ironwood, Mercury, Neo, Merlot, Tyrian, Roman), with an additional one being a villain for a while (Winter). Had I added Tock, that would be a clean 10 villains, i.e. half the list.
The remaining ten characters include three main characters (Winter, Qrow and Yang). Ozpin would have made this four, Penny could make it five, so a quarter would be heroes.
The remaining six listed characters are either defunct due to being dead (Fria) or were minor characters who only had a mildly important role in a season or two (Klein, Fox, Pietro, Willow and Maria).
So yes, on a pure numerical level, half of RWBY's disabled representation is made of villains. And of the heroes, only two are what I'd consider main characters in Yang and Qrow- Winter is at the moment is on the precipece of becoming a main character, depending on where her arc goes from here, while Penny never really got past the monkier of "Supporting Main." Qrow's alcoholism, depending on your definitions, may not even qualify as a disability (Winter could lose her support braces as she heals from Cinder's wounds), which leaves the prospect that Yang is the only main character in RWBY who has a disability and is a hero. That, on a pure numerical level... is sad.
People look to media to see themselves in certain characters. It's why fans like to come up with headcanons or wonder if certain characters are LGBT. People who have lost an arm can look at RWBY and see Yang and go "Wow that's like me!" But if you're someone who lost your legs, you look at Mercury and his tragedy/inability to move on from his trauma and go "Oh wow that could be me if I don't move on." Or a veteran can look at Ironwood, see him grappling with his traumas and PTSD only to succumb to them and become so pathetic he's not even worth the effort to kill, and go "Is that how this show sees me? Not every piece of media has to be considerate of this- some media can be just made as escapism from the world. But when you make media that grapples with serious topics like loss of limbs, trauma, and how to move on, you cannot have it both ways. RWBY wants to alternate between a happy go lucky world where people can just Trust Love to overcome their boundaries, and a grim setting where sometimes, people just can't resolve their trauma, or their character arcs are cut short by their deaths. It wants Yang's story to be uplifting and show her highs and lows, but then Qrow and Willow's recoveries are just brushed aside with a finger-snap and now they're cured of their addictions. The show wants to say everyone deserves a second chance and even offers them to Hazel and Emerald, but Ironwood's left to die a cold, miserable death in the Vault because he wasn't deemed worth a second chance. It wants to show good characters who happen to have disabilities... but half their disabled characters are villains.
Again. I'm not calling CRWBY ableist (outside of Ironwood's arc, which I fully believe is ableist following Volume 8). I don't believe they're bad people who act out of malice or who enjoy hurting people.
I highly doubt RT will give a touching reunion for the main team that fell in the abyss, let alone if they come out and arrive in Vacuo. They’ve regularly shown they do not know how to write emotional scenes well and it’ll likely be brushed over immediately in favor of moving things along (or, y’know, just giving all that development time to Jaune).
If RT does do anything decently I’ll be genuinely shocked, because the bar is really on the floor. Have Yang give a shit about her sister. Maybe have the Big Ship finally fucking kiss or say I love you or, y’know, any firm evidence that they’re dating at this point. Have Weiss relieved her found family is alive and well instead of dead. Don’t give all the development time to Jaune and use Neo well.
I can bet they either find each other at the end of the volume (which would be very unsatisfying) or they find each other in the beginning but act as if nothing happens and brush everything off to move the plot and leave some space for Jaune's manpain and 2845th character development.
I'm 100% sure bumblebee was never planned and none of the writers have any real investment in it. That's why it's so poorly written. But it gave them the lgbt rep cred that they could use to advertise and (hopefully) draw in a larger audience. But that only works for so long before fans grow tired of it.
It’s really hard to say whether or not Bumblebee was planned. Obviously, I can’t get in the heads of the writers. But what I can say is that if it was planned from the start, it was carried out badly, and written in a lacking way and badly done.
Also I really don’t mind them wanting more LGBTQ+ rep at all - obviously, I think. XD Even if it’s added late, I think adding it in is a good thing. I just want it to be clear and confirmed. It feels like queer baiting when a show - with no cooperate rules keeping them from following through on the rep - continuously hints at rep without giving it, while promising we’ll get it later eventually probably. It’s even more frustrating to be told that Bumblebee was always the plan, only to be expected to still be waiting for confirmation of feelings after waiting eight seasons when pretty much every opposite sex relationship has gotten confirmation in some way.
I really want the ship to be better done, and think that writing a good, realistic gay ship is obviously better than a sloppily done one. But at this point, it doesn’t matter as much that Bumblebee started out badly done, or that it continued to be sloppily done. At this point, what matters is that CRWBY give the main cast rep they’ve promised and stop expecting fans to just wait around. It’s legitimately sad to constantly see BB shippers posting things like “Well, we’re sure they’ll confirm the bees this time,” only to come on an episode later with “Maybe we’ll get a confirmation next time.” It’s time the writers stopped toying around with their LGBTQ+ fans and pulled the trigger on this ship.
For the last 2 years I've seen so many posts of "they will kiss/confess next episode" and that says a lot.
I've been in this fandom for 5 years or more now and I can call myself a veteran bumbleby shipper.
The fact that those past 2 years SO many people made SO many posts about them kissing/confessing shows how the show is throwing bones at the shippers to keep them on the edge, but they've waited so much they cant help but beg for something. They just drag the ship as much as they can, throwing in a small scene to not make the fans question it or the homophobes mad.
Bumbleby had its arcs, issues, everything setup nicely in front of it since v3. They just did a piss poor job at fleshing it out.
Renora gets random problems (no hate on the ship, but it's just how it is) out of the blue at the start of v7 just to push their relationship and make them kiss and confess. Meanwhile bumbleby, who already had those things setup, stays in the same stage for 2 years.
Since when did Nora feel bad about not being a person outside of Ren? Since when did Ren have such different views from Nora? It just felt a bit forced on them in v7, simply because it came out of nowhere. They never adressed stuff like this before.
Meanwhile you had SO many things for bumbleby. From Blake not trusting Yang in v3, to the shared trauma, separation, them being awkward in v6. ALL those things could've easily led into a romantic route, it would've been so smooth, those things were already there! But nope, gotta drag it as much as possible.
Why can Arkos get a kiss after 3 volumes, why can Renora get random problems just to kiss the same volume and confess the next, but bumbleby cant get shit with all the existing setups? Its just queerbait to me (ill make a post about this), and honestly so many fans expect the bees to kiss on their *third* reunion but I doubt it will happen. Even so, it took 9 years and 3 reunions for you to do that?
Lool at social media. Animators, VAs, writers, RT themselves, VRV. They tease bumbleby THE MOST. For a ship thats not canon to get so much tease its just weird. Renora is canon and people love it, where's their tease? Once you look at all those things its hard not to connect the dots on why and how its queerbait. It just gets treated too differently. Its the most teased but at the same time the least developed. Has the most setup but the least romantic scenes and outcomes. Some things just dont add up.
Hey RWDE, its been awhile. I’m someone that used to post here around a year or two ago but stopped because of certain individual (you know who it is) and it looks like that problem is happening again. Anyway I’m going to put something here that you may have already seen but I’m specifically tagging/putting it here because its tangentially relates to RWBY and because i would’ve put it here, but like I said I didn’t want to deal with shit at the time. A couple of months ago, I put forward google docs that I’ve made along with one that was made with help, each one having a different thing to talk about. Y’all might be interested in these. lets get started.
So the first one is a compilation/list of things Rooster Teeth or some people under their employment have done. whether its crunch in animation, not paying its VAs if they are already have a position in the company, or a RWBY VA defending a sex pest and not apologizing. There is a lot.
The second is about Shane Newville’s open letter. Its something that tends to get dismissed but I found some stuff that points that more happened and that it really was something that should’ve been look into at the time. Like there is literal proof of some of the stuff he alleged at the time.
The last one is something that I tried doing back in 2019. I tried to do a investigative type thing to look into the company, and while I didn’t get far I did have some people speak to me about their experiences. This was made with their permission.
that’s all I got. Also before someone who has problem with this tag says something, listen, what you call “spreading negativity” I call spreading awareness because people should absolutely know about this stuff.
General request here for the entire fandom: can someone send me screenshots/links to the tweets from the twitter team/other crew members about Fair Game and/or Clover and Qrow’s relationship in general?
I’m not as active in fandom spaces on Twitter and I’ve seen multiple people here saying that the RWBY marketing team/crew members were supporting or implying stuff about Qrow and Clover that led people to support the ship more. Since these are from months ago and they post multiple tweets a week (and I don’t know the crew members that tweeted about this) I don’t know where to look or how far down to scroll.
While I am inclined to believe that (the PR team for RWBY is a joke more often than not with not knowing when to shut up and keep things under wraps to get people to support a ship to get more viewership), I’d still like to see the tweets myself instead of just blindly going off of what others are saying!
It pretty much kicked off as soon as V7C3 aired. A quick jump back to the first few eps (and this is only Twitter, plus I didn’t scroll through the weeks following), and.. it’s hard to deny the egging on. Even harder to deny they didn’t know the nature of the reactions they were getting. Note none of this is license to attack CRWBY personally. Only to show that it wasn’t crazy for people to have raised expectations of where these two characters were going.
RWBY animator, liked by RT comm manager and other animators:
(now former) lead RT animator, animated RWBY up to V7C9:
Another animator who did the ‘Qrover catch’. Just some of the Qrover quips here, here, here:
You’re welcome. On top of all that, a little bit more scrolling on OfficialRWBY and you get Bumbleby flirting parallels. I’d missed this before. Damn. No other ships get focused clip promos (Bumbleby/Fairgame)
@crxssed-hybrid I’m not entirely sure if I’m part of the crowd you’re addressing, but I’d like to make this clear: I did not make this post to attack the animators or anyone working on the show. I simply wanted to see proof of people claiming they felt led on by the crew.
Which, after reading the tweets, is a valid way to feel. It’s not justification for attacking people, but people are allowed to feel angry and betrayed following Clover’s death, whether they shipped fairgame or were just a fan of Clover in general.
I know that the animators and community members were not the ones who wrote the show, and I know that M&K likely don’t run the official RWBY Twitter. I do feel that the writers could have seen this coming with the scenes they wrote, but I digress. People felt led on with the ship/that Clover was going to be safe, I wanted to see what led them to believe that Clover wasn’t going to be suddenly axed for shitty shock value.
Either way, I don’t want people reading my post to believe that this is justification for harassment for anyone, and if they are doing that, I don’t agree with it. That was never the intention of this post, and I don’t support it.
You cant tell me theyre not queerbaiting Bumbleby as well.
You just cant.
Why are only bumbleby and FG teased like this on social media by animators, vas, the company itself. Why arent straight ships getting the same treatment? And why are straight ships getting canon (all the kisses and love confessions are straight) meanwhile the most teased, hinted and focused pairing (bumbleby) doesnt get shit and has been in the same relationship stage for the past 2 years?
Wake the fuck up. Stop saying its slowburn. Its queerbait, learn the fucking difference. RT aint your friends, stop trusting them when they gave you NO reason to trust them.
If MKEK were smart they would’ve used team rw//by falling to the void as a way to do a soft reboot of the show. The macguffins plot is repetitive, boring and requires the characters to be stupid for the sake of the plot (why do Salem’s job for her?) But one of the biggest offenses of the macguffins plot is that team rw//by, the title characters, aren’t the protagonists. Protagonists by name and merch but not in the story.
In MHA, you cannot remove Deku from the story because it’s his story. Removing him from the story and you’ll get a completely different story. Same can be said for Ed and Fullmental Alchemist, Naruto from well Naruto, Aang and ATLA, Adora and Catra from Shera, Akko from Little Witch etc.
You can easily remove team RW//BY from the plot and barely anything relevant and I repeat relevant would change. The only times they get to do stuff and be important is in sub arcs and filler arcs. Outside of that, when it’s time to move the plot forward they’re shuffled to the background. Ruby in volume 8 alone wasted her time on the Amity plan that went nowhere and sat in a mansion drinking tea whilst Oscar, the true protagonist of the story, deals with the main big bad Salem. RW//BY isn’t about Ruby or her team. RW//BY isn’t Ruby’s story. It’s Ozma’s (and to an extent Oscar’s) and Salem’s.
If MKEK were smart, they would’ve took Volume 9 as an opportunity to write a story that’s about team RW//BY for once. And the fact that all of their character arcs are done is a great thing. They’re empty canvas, waiting to be filled. Again, if MKEK were smart, they’d give the girls new character arcs that actually contribute to this new story!
But I do not have any faith whatsoever that they did this. They already screwed up by including the black hole of screen time and attention, Jaune mother-fucking Arc. Even if they crafted a new, better plot, Jaune screentime stealing generic shounen protag Sokka clone Arc is gonna be center stage because MK (not sure about E and leaving out K) can’t write woman.
Here is part 5 of my RWBY thread, which will be focusing on the homophobia and queerbaiting present in RWBY. This part of the thread honestly tired me out yesterday because it’s so disheartening to see a show praise itself for its inclusivity only to contradict itself 20 minutes in, especially since RWBY helped me realize that I was gayer than I thought and to stop treating that part of my identity as a joke. It’s tiring.
Two things I wanted to point out because I feel I need to clarify/forgot to put in the thread. One was that I said the whole thing with Ilia carried racist undertones because I thought Ilia was a POC but, while her skin is a different color than most of our white protagonists, she could still technically be white so I’d ask to disregard that part of my statement. The other thing was that I meant to put in the thread that RWBY had something of a niche going on with Fair Game but of course, they refused to capitalize on it because reasons.
We all know he was supposed to be gay before the writers asked around and changed it after learning it would be BYG.
Miles said (and there's screenshots of this) that he regrets not making pilot boi gay after seeing how popular he got.
Let that sink in for a moment.
After he got informed it would be BYG, after he was taught what BYG was probably and how much it hurts LGBT fans, he regretted not making Pilot Boi gay cause he got popular.
This is why I truly believe Bumbleby is queerbait. Even if its been my favourite ship and I've been here shipping it for 5 years now. Miles himself basically admitted to wanting more popularity at the sake of LGBT fans. So why wouldn't this happen to Bumbleby? Why wouldn't they drag it out to the VERY END of the show so homophobes wouldnt drop the show since its already done and LGBT fans wouldnt complain since it happened.
We are in 2021. Confirming your LGBT pairing at the very end of the show while multiple het pairings have been canon for years is queerbait. There's fucking kids cartoons on Cartoon Network that show LGBT relationships and characters, and we all know how much they had to fight for it cause of censorship. Now RT couldnt freely do whatever they wanted with their show because? This aint 2014, its way below the bare minimum. They can do it ANYTIME they want, they can introduce gay characters and relationships ANYTIME. But they dont. Let it sink in how the only love confessions and kisses in show are straight, meanwhile bumbleby, the MOST teased and hinted at pairing has been in the same "shy looks and a blush once a volume" stage for 2 years now. No development at all, meanwhile Renora gets a kiss and random problems out of nowhere. They had time to give Renora additional angst that wasnt there before (since when are they so different, since when does Nora care about being a separate person from Ren? Everything started in V7, and one volume later they got a confession and a kiss), but they dont have time to develop a ship that already has those things?
Fuck it. I dont care how many idiots say its a "slowburn". When straight ships that have been less focused and hinted at take way less to become canon I will call it queerbait. Why the fuck does bumbleby get treated so differently? Why the fuck do I have to see desperate posts with "they will kiss next episode!" every single week since volume 7? Why the fuck do I have to wait almost a decade for a main LGBT pairing to be canon when the 2 het pairings took 3, respectively 7 years? And again, they have been WAY LESS FOCUSED, HINTED AT AND TEASED.
I’m fine with people liking rw//by but this worship, stan culture, intense adoration in the fndm worries me. Add to that the parasocial dynamic between the writers/ crew and the fans. The idea of writers interacting with the fans isn’t the issue, it’s the whole “we’re you’re fwriends! we care about you” schtick that RT does is what’s concerning.
Stop worshipping these writers/crew members . They don’t deserve death threats and the harassment but they’re not children needing protection.
RT and RW//BY has being around long enough the fans are becoming employees, and with all the controversies RT has found themselves in, you wouldn’t think they wouldn’t exploit that loyalty? The crew that the fndm loves so much - they’ve been lied to, gas lit, manipulated, underpaid, made uncomfortable by the frat boy culture and shown the door when RT is done with them. And the ones who dared to speak out on the mistreatment, they had to stay anonymous in fears of being blacklisted.
These people don’t care about you. They like the idea of having hundreds of people blindly loving them and RT is aware of that. As one insider revealed, someone said - “We’re RT. People will pay us to clean our toilets!”
You CANT tell me that this show doesnt suffer from EXTREME toxic positivity. You either kiss it in the ass, act as if its perfect and that everything the writers do is a masterpiece or you get harassed and people wishing for your death.
You know you can love a show and point out its flaws at the same time, right?
