Why The Events Surrounding Clover and Qrow Devastated a Large Part of RWBYâs LGBT+ Fandom
Firstly, I feel itâs important to state that my only intent with this thread is to offer information in hopes of creating a bridge of understanding. Many people donât understand why the situation with Qrow and Clover has caused such unrest and itâs difficult to explain in only a few words. There is no single explanation for it. Rather, it comes from an accumulation of issues, both historic and current, that for anyone outside the LGBT+ community may not be readily apparent.
Unfortunately, this lack of understanding often leads to a lot of harm, most of it unintentional, but detrimental nonetheless. People in real pain are having to deal with accusations of irrationality, emotional instability, and overattachment to a fictional character, all while trying to process an event that, fictional or not, impacted many of us severely.
In this thread, I hope to lay out the reasons for the pain and help others understand that the hurt here is not coming from a place of surface-level disappointment over a characterâs death or âa ship not becoming canonâ. Things run much deeper than that.
A Brief History of LGBT+ Representation in Media
First, I think a bit of history regarding LGBT+ rep in fiction (especially visual media) is good for some context. There was a thing called the Hays Code, which was a censorious set of regulations set upon the U.S. film industry from 1930-1968. It prohibited a lot of things, from âlustful kissingâ to interracial dating and, you guessed it, any positive portrayal of LGBT+ relationships. Because being gay was considered morally corrupt by most of society, the Hays Code required that any stories involving LGBT+ characters (or parts of stories involving them) end in tragedy. It was meant to be a warning to the audience: that being gay (aka being immoral) would only lead to suffering.
Anyone who has studied censorship knows that the impact of it often lasts much longer than the regulation itself. That is the case here as well. Even today we have trouble escaping the stereotypical gay villains and Bury your Gays tropes created during the era of the Hays Code. So many stories featuring gay characters have a tragic ending because thatâs how it was for so long and no one bothered to change it. Thatâs why movies like Love, Simon feel revolutionary. Weâre starting to move past the age where a movie focused on LGBT+ characters is guaranteed to end in tragedy.
Or we should be. Unfortunately, movies like Love, Simon are still an anomaly in our entertainment. So, while comments like âno character should be safe from death, even queer onesâ seems a fair argument on the surface level, when we have this history attached to queer characters paired with a very limited number of them actually existing in the first place, itâs not the same playing field. There is a weight here that goes beyond simple story-based decisions, and because of that, the death of LGBT+ characters needs to be handled with a very high level of care.
Queerbaiting, Queer Coding, and How They Relate to Fair Game
There are a lot of misconceptions regarding what does and does not qualify as queerbaiting, and the term queer-coding often seems to be pretty ill-defined. Understanding these terms, however, is key to understanding the core issue.
Wikipedia defines queerbaiting as âa marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at*, but then not actually depict, same-sex romance. They do so to attract (âbaitâ) a queer audience with the* suggestion of relationships that appeal to them, while at the same time attempting to avoid alienating other consumersâ (bolded for emphasis).
Queer coding, according to fanlore.org, is a term for when âcharacters were given traits/behaviors to suggest they are not heterosexual/cisgender, without the character being outright confirmed to have a queer identityâ (again, bolded for emphasis).
I really want to stress that both of these things rely entirely on the lack of official confirmation from either the story itself or the creators. A lot of detractors try to tell us that we have no right to label Fair Game as queerbaiting or Clover as queercoded, because the nature of their relationship and Cloverâs sexuality were never addressed directly in the show. But this is precisely the problem.
The other major part of the problem is that these techniques depend on the LGBT+ audienceâs capability to pick up on subtle hints that the mainstream audience wonât see. Again, this is steeped in history. Until very recently, LGBT+ people were not safe to be open about their sexualities and interests. In many places throughout the world, this is still the case. What this means is that members of the queer community had to develop certain signals and cues that would be invisible to mainstream society but discernible to those who knew what to look for. In other words, the LGBT+ community developed a code. Creators of fiction figured out pretty quickly how to incorporate this code into their characters. Again, never with the intention of actually following through, but just to draw in the LGBT+ audience with enough hints and ambiguity to meet (at the most minimal level) the desire for some sort of representation.
Thatâs what we mean when we say Clover was queer-coded. It might not be obvious to anyone who has never learned how to pick up on these covert clues, but to a large portion of the LGBT+ audience, it was abundantly clear that Clover was not straight. Everything from his behaviour (particularly towards Qrow) to his design threw out all the right signals that we, as a queer audience, picked up on immediately, and Qrowâs behaviour towards Clover threw out those same signals. Itâs one of the many, many reasons Fair Game got as big as it did as quickly as it did.
And this brings us to the matter of Fair Game itself, only Iâm not talking about the ship here. Iâm talking about the relationship between Clover and Qrow as it was depicted on screen and as viewed by an LGBT+ audience. Iâll be referring to it as Fair Game for the sake of simplicity.
Romantic Coding in Fair Game
The most common, and the most obvious, example of the romantic coding in Qrow and Cloverâs interactions is the wink and âlucky youâ line in episode 3. By itself, maybe it wouldnât have been enough, but it was a scene that was written and animated to directly parallel the winking waitress in volume 4. This was a moment that was seen as unambiguously flirtatious. No one in their right mind would try to claim that it wasnât. With that precedent, this scene canât be taken any differently.
Then you have Cloverâs subsequent showing-off later in that same episode and again in episode 9 (this time with verbal acknowledgement from Qrow). A lot of people have claimed that this might just be his personality, and that would be fine if he were depicted as being this way in front of anyone else, but that wasnât the case.
Cloverâs character design also feeds into all of this. His design was altered from its original to complement Qrow, which has always been a signal in the RWBY universe that two characters are deeply connected to one another. We have the arm band (something echoed in Bumblby, Taiâs armband for Raven, and even in Blakeâs parents) and the complementary eye colours (also seen in Bumblby and Renora)
Then we get to the more nuanced aspects of their interactions, the things that might be up for debate, but considering weâre looking at this with queer-coding in mind, the subtlety should make a lot more sense now. So many things about the way Clover and Qrow were framed together and animated radiated with romantic tension. The focus on their hands in the truck scene, their facial expressions, Qrowâs reaction to the compliment (another parallel with Bumblby), the way their gazes linger on each other, the way they are set in the framing of the scene so that theyâre depicted on screen together even when theyâre not standing right next to each other, the absolute pointlessness of their scenes together (except to establish their relationship)⊠All of this and more contributes to those little signals that visual media creators have been sending out to queer audiences for years.
Again, if this was all there had been, you could make the argument that it was all a mistake, and you know what? It still might have been. But CRWBY inserted several larger romantic moments/tropes between these two: the slip and catch in the cave, Qrow calling out to warn him, Cloverâs showing off, being paired together constantly (both visually and in the plot), having a connection that gave them intimate moments even when they werenât alone (think the scene in Jamesâ office and the Schnee manor especially), Clover smiling at him just before he dies, Qrow sobbing over Cloverâs body, Qrow keeping the shamrock badge. All of these have appeared in film and television throughout history and they have become closely associated with romantic relationships.
Parallels with Other Romantic Couples
A lot of people have covered this particular aspect far better than I, so I wonât go into a whole lot of detail here, but there is a rather lengthy list of the ways in which CRWBY paralleled Fair Game with other canon/implied-canon romantic relationships. I already mentioned the complimentary eye colors, the arm bands, and even the visual parallel of Qrow and Blake getting flustered. Qrowâs decision to keep Cloverâs badge also parallels Arkos. Even Cloverâs death scene was animated in the same style as Yangâs dismemberment by Adam, a style seen absolutely no where else in the show.
But there are heavier parallels as well, especially between Fair Game and Bumblby. This post here for covers many instances. In a lot of ways Fair Game mirrors even the dynamics of Bumblby. Blake and Qrow struggle with similar issues: the inability to develop relationships and get close to people, doubt over their own self-worth, and self-imposed isolation. Their personal stories hit a lot of the same major points. Then you have Clover and Yang: personable and likeable, and very used to presenting a face to the world that may not entirely match up with how they are on the inside. Yang (especially in volumes 1-3) and Clover both throw a lot of confidence out there as a mask to keep people from seeing too much. They only break down when in the company of people they trust/desperately want to trust (Yang with her team and Clover exclusively with Qrow in episode 12). You could even argue that they both struggle with a blindspot: Yangâs temper âblindedâ her in her fight with Adam, while Cloverâs loyalty to James blinds him. Both Blake and Qrow have to learn to love themselves and let people in, and Clover and Yang both have to learn to open up, be vulnerable, and take an emotional step back from things. Such staggering parallels with the showâs biggest queer relationship was not done by accident, or if it was, the fact that the writers missed it is amazing.
Hype for Fair Game from Official RWBY Sources and CRWBY Members
And now we come to the aspects outside of the show that contributed to the queerbaiting. Again, this is something that has been covered by so many people and in great detail, so Iâll again give a summary and provide some links to posts and Twitter threads that cover all the finer points.
There were multiple individuals (both former and current members of CRWBY/RT) who hyped the ship. Highly suggestive tweets between Kim Newman (a former animator) and Adele (a current animator) as early as episode 3 contributed to the queer-coding of both Cloverâs character and the Fair Game relationship as a whole. Adele also participated in the fandom as a Fair Game shipper, creating art for it, reblogging posts about it, and basically hyping it up.
Really quick, I am fully aware that a member of CRWBY shipping something does not make it canon. No one that I know took these tweets or Adeleâs involvement as any sort of proof that it would be. But when it comes to a ship that represents a minority group (in this case mlm) a certain level of tact should be implemented in how you approach it. To my knowledge, neither Adele nor Kim are mlm, and I presume they both knew or at least had some idea of where the story was going with them, Adele even being the one who animated Cloverâs death scene, specifically asking to be the one to do so. At the very least, their active hyping of the ship shows a complete lack of cognizance for what Fair Game would have actually meant to the queer community and to mlm especially. In other words, considering that their onscreen relationship ended with character death, and the fact that it would have represented a minority group who, to this day, still lack proper rep in RWBY, Fair Game should not have been the playground for two animators who clearly didnât consider the pain episode 12 was going to cause.
Itâs also worth noting that because animators were shipping it, when scenes with those two were put in their hands, because they were reading them as romantic, they also no doubt put further hinting into the relationship by putting in things like eyebrow waggles, suggestive stares and the like, that the queer fandom then also picked up on, further contributing to the whole baiting situation.
The official RWBY Twitter also focused heavily on Fair Game throughout the volumeâs release, using the scenes in the mines in episode 3 and the Schnee manor scene especially to highlight the interactions between Clover and Qrow. The only other pairing to get that much focus was Bumblby.
The âlucky you~ ;)â line, which was highly suggestive in it of itself, was further brought to attention by Amity Arena. Amity Arena used this line to promote the release of Clover ingame, whose card info has over half of it dedicated to Qrow and how âthis is the first time we hope Qrow is defeated by someone else, because this might be the only chance for him to catch a break.â, putting emphasis on their relationship, and just how important it is in regards to Qrow finally finding happiness.
Hereâs a post covering the various instances of out of show baiting that further enforced fans belief this was completely intentional queer coding.
The âBury Your Gaysâ (BYQ) Trope in Fiction
As mentioned earlier the Hays Code required that any stories involving LGBT+ characters end in tragedy as a warning that being gay would only lead to suffering. Which is where the trope of bury your gays came from. If you want further reading on the trope (and other harmful queer tropes) you can look into here.
One notable example of this trope is Lexa from The 100. Her relationship with Clarke was built up over several seasons, and in the same episode that they officially got together, Lexa was later killed.
As far as Fair Game goes, as I already covered, Clover was never officially confirmed as being gay. However, because of the extensive baiting, the emotional and psychological damage caused by BYG does still apply. RWBY is a show where, until volume 7 episode 12, a lot of LGBT+ fans felt safe getting emotionally involved. We trusted that CRWBY not only realised what they were doing with Clover, but also understood the implications beneath it. Many mlm fans quickly identified with Clover, and so when he died, those same fans saw the same thing they have been seeing for most of their lives, both on-screen and in real life: a gay man being murdered in the most brutal death scene in RWBY to date.
So while the label of the Bury Your Gays doesnât exactly apply to the events in episode 12, the emotional fallout certainly does.
This Whole Thing Gave Power to Even âBenignâ Homophobia in the Fandom
Many people who had also picked up on the romantic undertones of Clover and Qrow (also believing this was CRWBYâs intent) were kicking up a fuss at the idea of Qrow being bisexual. Cloverâs death brought them relief and even caused many to celebrate the loss of mlm rep. If you donât like the idea of a character being gay, it is because on some level you consider being gay a detrimental trait, and that is homophobic. Itâs the quietest form of homophobia, which is why itâs a commonly overlooked aspect, but it still is in fact homophobia.
âIâm not against gays, I would never attack a gay person, I just donât want to see themâ - I have the exact same response to spiders, because Iâm arachnophobic and Iâm working on changing my mindset on that phobia. So if this is your mindset in regards to any of the identities in the LGBT+ spectrum being applied to a character you like, you need to understand that your mindset is in fact homophobic, and that you can change that mindset to be a more accepting person. Acknowledgement of a problem is the first step for change.
What Clover and Qrow Would Have Meant for MLM
Having a well respected pre-established older main character who has absolutely no stereotypical gay tropes attached to them being revealed to be mlm would have been such a huge statement of support of LGBT+. Older representation is such a rarity. Depictions of mlm are rare to begin with, most of the time being presented as younger stereotypical teens/men, so this would have broken the mould in that respect. Their older and respected characterisation is also reinforced through their high ranking professions and skills and having our identities be portrayed in this way is important in showing we can and do exist in respectable positions.
The young âgay disasterâ trope is not the only way we should be depicted. Mlm are as widely varied as cishet individuals, but we are often pigeon-holed into only a few select roles/stereotypes: the comic relief, the flamboyant effeminate, the overly-dramatic best friend. Qrow and Clover stood in stark contrast to these stereotypes and, before episode 12, it seemed that CRWBY was making a sincere and educated effort to provide representation that actually felt real and natural.
âBut rwby has plenty of wlw repâ, or so the argument sometimes goes. The unfortunate reality is wlw has always been more acceptable to general audiences. The homophobic male fans who complain about gay-friendly media being sjw, homowashing, pandering etc., often still find enjoyment in fetishizing two women who are romantically involved with one another. (This subset of the fandom, by the way, is the exact subset that creators try not to alienate through use of queer-coding, so make of that what you will). This is why wlw are not as uncommon even in media with a very male dominated fandom, while mlm is never dared touched, albeit the wlw in most of these cases just being fetishable portrayals that do very little for actual wlw representation.
RWBY having mlm rep as front and centre and respectable as Qrow and Clover would have been an outright declaration of support from them for LGBT+. Media is still slow on the uptake with queer depictions so genuine portrayals of this nature in the main cast really would be groundbreaking, helping to pave the way for more of itâs kind.
Roosterteeth has no superior above them that has to approve anything, no one who will tell them âno, you canât have gay charactersâ, and the constant promises to depict us should mean they favour showing support for us over the worry of homophobic backlash, which is unfortunately what stops depictions of us being included in many cases of mainstream media.
A few examples of this include:
The Legend of Korra creators worrying about depicting same-sex relationships due to an âunwritten ruleâ, leaving the ending and Korrasami relationship ambiguous, relying on subtext to let the audience know this was their intent, then confirming the relationship off-show.
Steven Universe and the struggle with Cartoon Network censorship.
Bubbline in adventure time, concerns of the producer that having a same sex kiss would âbring too much attentionâ to the show, and they included only at the series end where risk of cancellation wasnât a concern and only after a great deal of push from a storyboard artist Hanna K. Nyström and Rebecca Sugar (creator of SU).
Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsh tells of how Disneyâs censorship stopped him putting even minor representation in Gravity falls.
The MCU issues with a lack of queer characters, outright ignoring the canon LGBT+ status of characters within the comics or even changing queer characters to straight in their movie adaptions. Their heavily hyped gay character in their films also being an extremely subtle blink and youâll miss it case and a character so irrelevant they didnât even have a name.
The film The Transporter included small nods to the main character being gay as a subtle challenge from the director to change the view of a homophobic audience without outright depicting it.
With numerous promises of LGBT+ inclusion from RT, there should be no reason why some of their main characters canât be LGBT+. Currently we have only had side characters and very minor LGBT+ characters. While these are nice, they are bread crumbs. Truly applaudable representation comes from having us exist as characters within the main cast, where the companyâs support for our community is on constant display.
While many have hope for the Bees (at this point, CRWBY not going through with them would be an even worse case of baiting, having strung along wlw for 7 years) they are not currently confirmed, we only have heavily implied subtext, and while this subtext seems undeniable, the subtext we picked up on in Fair Game also seemed very strong. So after being told this was us just seeing things with âshipper gogglesâ? A lot of us have genuine concerns for the bees. Will they ever be confirmed canon or will we just keep waiting with no real payoff? Weâve had various straight relationships/interactions with our main characters on full display, Arkos and Renora confirmed, as well as focus on Jauneâs Weiss crush and Weissâ Neptune crush in earlier volumes. But we have yet to receive any undeniable in-show confirmation that any member of our main cast is LGBT+.
Qrowâs Disrupted Recovery Arc
Even outside of the implied queer relationship between Qrow and Clover, this narrative choice has had further negative impact on many who related with Qrow and his recovery arc. A lot of people who struggle with depression and/or alcoholism see themselves in Qrow and were heavily invested in what seemed to be his chance to heal in volume 7.
This is then ripped away in the cruellest possible way and it hits especially hard that this was done to the character with the most ârealâ problems in the series (alcoholism, depression, difficulty trusting after traumatic life). When Qrow lost the only person he was starting to get close to after 6 volumes of being emotionally isolated, it felt like a statement on the futility of recovery for people who also struggle with the same issues. A character trying to change for the better should be rewarded, a promotion of recovery being a good thing, but instead he is punished and a positive relationship is taken from him in a manner that confirms all his fears about himself.
The show is self proclaimed âhope-punkâ and no one is watching this show to have the message of âlife isnât fairâ be drilled into them. We watch for the narrative that even in the darkest times there is hope, and this narrative decision went completely against that.
CRWBYâs Promise to do Better
If nothing else, please take this into consideration. We were promised more LGBT+ representation from CRWBY. In fact, the creators of RWBY have been vocal from nearly the beginning that this show was going to be different, that queer people would finally be able to see themselves on screen.
CRWBY asked us for our trust and then, it seemed, they earned it. They have spent several volumes building up Blake and Yang, have included characters like Ilia and Jauneâs sister and sister-in-law, and even actively avoided the Bury Your Gays trope with the pilot. So when Qrow and Clover started interacting in volume 7, we had no reason to think that our trust was misplaced.
We were promised representation, so of course we were going to be looking for it. And the second we got that wink parallel? It seemed undeniable that Clover was being presented to us as an mlm, as the connection to the waitress was not only immediately recognisable, but acknowledged publicly by Kim Newman, who also voiced the waitress. Then there was various official RWBY sources making a big deal out of that particular moment, the truck scene cementing Clover as a positive influence on Qrow, the emphasis on the developing relationship by having them share near every scene together. Then all the other indicators that further led us to believe that this was CRWBYâs intent - the complimentary eye/aura colour, yin yang dynamic, and the various parallels with other romantic couples. Itâs not a stretch to see why we so wholeheartedly believed weâd found the representation we were promised. The queers were baited, regardless of whether this was intentional or not, and weâre devastated with how this all played out.
Someone really should have picked up on things being romantically charged, and how that would be creating queerbaiting if that genuinely wasnât the direction they wanted to go with them. Coincidences such as the sunset of Cloverâs death and Qrowâs mourning invoking the colour scheme of bi pride flag could have been picked up with queer input, because those colours in association with such a devastating moment for many mlm only feels like a further slap to the face. Queer input is vital on ALL aspects when you have such a large queer audience that you promised to represent. The future should absolutely involve the hiring of external subject matter experts to extensively comb through anything that might cause problems as suggested in this stellar post on the whole thing.
To finish off, thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope you understand where the hurt is coming from better now.
This thread was created by skybird with the input and review of many others.
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