âBut Bumbleby was rushed/forced to pander to the gaysââ
There are a number of glaring flaws in this argument, most of all the fact that no straight relationship is ever called âforcedâ or âpanderingâ even if people donât like it, let alone ârushedâ when itâs only on the verge of officially happening seven seasons into the show, but I want to break down all of the many levels on which itâs wrong in order to hopefully kill it once and for all.
âIt came out of nowhereââ
Jaune was crushing on Weiss the second he saw her, Sun was crushing on Blake the moment he saw her, Pyrrha developed feelings for Jaune in just one Volume and showed some interest from the moment she saw him, and Blake goes from being consistently annoyed at Sun throughout Volumes 1 and 2 to suddenly having a crush on him in Volume 3.
If Bumbleby supposedly âcame out of nowhere,â then so did W/hite Knight, A/rkos, and B/lacksun. But no one ever has an issue with the speed at which those characters started having romantic interest in each other. And Iâm not even saying they shouldâtheyâre all very valid ships and whether they came out of nowhere or not isnât the point of thisâbut thereâs a clear double standard applied to same sex ships as opposed to heterosexual ships here and it invalidates this point right out of the gate.
Blake and Yang are only just now close to becoming an official couple after more than six whole Volumes of knowing each other. There is no possible universe where this would qualify as ârushed.â Again, W/hite Knight and B/lacksun albeit both one-sided at least to begin with both became obvious things within literal episodes of the characters meeting, and Jaune and Pyrrha were showing blatant romantic interest in each other by Volume 2 before kissing in Volume 3.
In the last case you can argue that it went at a faster pace because Pyrrha was going to die, but that doesnât change the fact that no one complained that it went too quicklyâor about the other two ships I mentioned which were both initially based solely on one (1) instance of a guy showing interest in a girlâand yet people say itâs too soon for Blake and Yang to get together when theyâve had over twice as long for their relationship to develop.
âThe shippers forced it into the showââ
I donât think I even need to add any more here when the words of CRWBY speak for themselves.
âToxic shippers think everything is gayââ
I mean, Iâm gay and I only truly ship a handful of the possible same sex pairings in the showâcertainly far from the majority of themâand I also ship a number of straight ships, but go off I guess.
I already made a post on this here, but itâs insanely dismissive and ridiculous for heterosexual people i.e. the ones who usually use this âargumentâ to assume that they know better than actual LGBT+ people what is or isnât good LGBT+ representation, and for them to assume that just because they missed build up that it therefore isnât there.
I canât take someone seriously when they go into a discussion determined to believe that theyâre already right and donât listen to a word you say to prove otherwise, especially when theyâre debating on a topic which doesnât directly affect them and which they donât have the same level of firsthand knowledge of.
âThe wasps only care about Blake and Yang getting in each otherâs pantsââ
Actually, itâs the people who are most aggressively against Blake and Yang being a couple that tend to reduce their relationship to being entirely about sex even though they havenât had a single remotely sexual interaction in the show, but if this were true then surely Bumbleby shippers would be very unhappy with the show because Blake and Yang have still not âgot in each otherâs pants,â or âswapped clit juiceâ as I once saw someone tastefully describe it?
But that isnât right. Because in general us Bee shippers are currently exceedingly happy with everything thatâs happening in the show to do with Blake and Yangâs relationship. So how can that be if all we care about is whether they fuck or not?
The answer is of course that we donât only care about whether they fuck or notâin fact most of us couldnât care less whether itâs ever so much as hinted that they have sex, both because the show almost certainly wonât ever go there and because that isnât our priorityâweâre just enjoying watching them fall in love.
Honestly this argument is one of the most lazy because one look at RWBY will tell you that none of the romances are at all sexual thus far so any shippers who truly only care about that aspect wouldnât stick around very long when theyâll just end up disappointed. And of course the way that these people inherently view same sex relationships as sexual is homophobic and disgusting too.
âCRWBY rushed it to give the rabid shippers what they wantââ
Like the last two points, this is a âcriticismâ that Iâve only ever seen levelled at same sex ships and never straight ships, so itâs yet another example of double standards and hypocrisy, but thatâs only the start of whatâs wrong with it.
The most galling thing about this is that these people insist that all LGBT+ people because as Iâve already mentioned that is always the group which statements like this are aimed at just want to see two characters of the same gender make out as soon as possible, which is simply not true.
No one would ever claim that straight people just want to see a man and a woman get it on as soon as possible and dismiss the worth of a straight relationship because of it. So itâs ridiculous to try and force that logic onto shippers of same sex ships, who are primarily LGBT+ people themselves.
If anything, we care even more about the quality of our shipsâhow healthy they are, whether theyâre well built up or not, etc.âbecause we hardly have any to begin with in comparison. If one straight ship is rushed or poorly written, then there are plenty of well-handled ones to choose from instead, but the same isnât the case for same sex ships.
We want to be represented well, which means that we want healthy relationships with plenty of development where the characters actually have chemistry and complement each other. We might still support rushed or badly-written same sex ships sometimes because itâs still representation which we are overall sorely lacking, but we donât want them.
âBut they ship baited with Blake and Sunââ
First off, straight ships canât be baited the same way that same sex ships can. Itâs simply not a comparable situation. But of course B/lacksun shippers are entitled to feel disappointed that their ship didnât become canon. Thatâs utterly valid and understandable. However, that doesnât mean that the writers or the show in any way misled viewers regarding what was happening.
âBut Sun winked at Blakeââ
And Yang also winked at Blake in Volume 2 while asking her to the dance, just like Sun winked at Blake in Volume 1 and then asked Blake to the dance. And Blake turned Sun down when he asked initially, specifically told him that they were only âtechnicallyâ going together when she ran into him outside, and told him definitively that she had chosen to give her first dance to Yang.
âBut Blake blushed at Sunââ
And now sheâs also blushed at Yang, in a far more intimate scene at that. Next point.
âBut Sun met Blakeâs parentsââ
And? Simply meeting someoneâs parents doesnât on any level automatically imply romance. Ghira didnât even like Sun, and while a lot of people like to claim that Kali âships itâ which would be extremely flimsy evidence to base the canonicity of a ship on anyway, sheâs someone who would do the same with anyone Blake brought home so it means nothing. If Blake had actually chosen to take Sun home with her herself then this would be a valid point, but she didnât, so it has no weight whatsoever overall.
âBut Blake kissed Sun on the cheekââ
And I kiss my mother on the cheek the exact same way every time I say goodbye to her. If you think that type of kiss on the cheek has to be romantic then quite frankly Iâm not sure what world youâre living in. If the camera had been close up, if there had been any shots at all of their reactions, any blushing or lingering looks, a more private settingâ literally anything to give it some actual weight and make it feel significant, then this might mean something, but itâs framed as a totally platonic goodbye with zero romantic coding.
And thatâs without even mentioning the fact that right after that moment Sun flat out states that his time with Blake was ânever about [romance],â which sort of kills the idea that anything about that scene was supposed to be taken as romantic. There was no reason to include that line except to make it clear to the audience that Sun and Blake parted ways as friends who now have no intention of ever becoming anything more.
Seriously, if they wanted us to think that there was still something there, then Blake would have been shown to be thinking about or missing Sun even one since they separated, but he hasnât been brought up for even a second. If they wanted to set up a continuation of anything romantic for them when the group reach Vacuo, say, then they would have started doing it by now.
Plus the reverse argument that Blake and Sun have never hugged or held handsâboth of which Blake and Yang have done multiple timesâworks just as well, perhaps even better since handholding is a well-established romantic cue in the show already thanks to A/rkos, R/enora, and O/zma and Salem.
âBut why was Sun even there in Volumes 4 and 5 thenââ
Because Blake needed a friend who she could exposition to about her thought processes and personal problems so that the audience could understand what she was going through, and she wasnât as likely to open up to her parents about that stuff right away when she was convinced theyâd hate her for leaving.
Sun was there to support Blake as she developed and to tell her that running away hurt the very people she was trying to protect. That was his narrative role in that arc. There was nothing to indicate that a romance was being built in those more than twenty episodes they spent together and if it was going to happen that would have been the time to do it.
On the other hand Blake and Yangâs shared arc together is built on the fact that Blakeâs romantic ex, who Blake had already directly contrasted with Yang and whose Semblance was already a foil to Yangâs, maimed Yang specifically because Blake loves her. The basis of that arc has romantic weight, which is what makes the difference here. Though the scene at the end of Volume 3 where Adam takes Yangâs arm isnât romantic in and of itself, I should clarify, it just has romantic significance in that it makes it clear that Blake and Yangâs feelings go beyond mere friendship.
In short, the summary of this whole section pretty much boils down to: two characters spending time together doesnât inherently equal romantic development, and it isnât in any way âbaitingâ if those two characters donât then get together.
The charactersâ feelings follow a fairly logical progression over the course of the show, with Blake showing interest in both Sun and Yang in V1-V3, then ceasing to show interest in Sun after that as their relationship becomes totally platonic by Volume 5/the beginning of Volume 6 at the very latest, while the events of the Fall of Beacon only solidified how strong her feelings for Yang were and once she reunites with Yang their relationship begins to head towards romance.
Itâs a pretty realistic depiction of how human feelings work, and a far less messy situation than in a lot of other shows where there isnât the same massive level of hatred and vitriol towards the âvictoriousâ pairing, because this was never even really presented as a love triangle or rivalry.
To conclude, I just want to list some of the contradictions that Iâve seen within the arguments made against Bumbleby, because I think itâs very telling that the people who are against it canât even settle on one coherent narrative on why itâs bad.
âBumbleby has no development, but also the show focusses too much on Bumbleby.â
âMonty wouldnât have wanted Bumblebyâit goes against his visionâeven though I didnât know him and have no idea what his vision actually was, and he explicitly stated that he wanted LGBT+ characters in the show who might already be in the main cast and that he wanted Blake and Yang to have a shared arc together, as well as being responsible for the set up of that arc with Blake and Yang being introduced as Beauty and the Beast while Adam canonically represents Gaston.â
âThe Bumbleby shippers have so much influence that they forced the writers to make the ship canon, but theyâre also just a vocal minority who donât matter.â
âBlake and Yang hardly interactâtheyâre barely even friendsâbut they also interact too much and itâs making Bumbleby take over the show.â
âArryn is a victim of the toxic wasps who harrassed her and sent her death threats for saying that the song Bmblb doesnât automatically make the ship canon, which there is zero evidence of, Â but Arryn is an unprofessional cunt for expressing her support of Bumbleby.â
âNone of Blake and Yangâs scenes together are romantic so Bumbleby is forced, but even when they have undeniably romantic interactions Iâll ignore them or deny that they mean anything so I can still pretend it has no build up.â
âBumbleby is bad because Team RWBY are a sisterhood, but all of the other straight relationships within teamsâeven those whoâve flat out called each other âfamilyââare fine, and Iâll just pretend that there arenât other definitions of the word sisterhood which have nothing to do with actual sisters and are the ones that actually apply in this case.â
âBlake and Yangâs relationship could be seen as romantic or platonic, but I personally think theyâre just friends so Bumbleby is bad and came out of nowhere.â
Iâve seen all of these countless times with my own two eyes and itâs absolutely hilarious to be honest. Anyway thatâs it. I have yet to see a single logical argument as to why Bumbleby is bad that isnât made in bad faith, fallacious, or just doesnât hold up when you actually look at the show. Itâs about to be canon, and at this point to be honest anyone who doesnât like that can simply accept it or go and watch something else that will pander to their specific tastes instead.
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