There’s been a very odd resurgence in the idea that bumbleby is not a done deal lately, and I’m not talking about from the usual crowd. I’m talking about from people who either do ship it or ship other non conflicting (ie not f/reezerburn m/ono or the likes) wlw or mlm ships. Frankly it’s baffling after everything Blake and Yang have been through and how they’re being written.
But I want to talk about this idea that they aren’t guaranteed with a scenario: what does it mean if bumbleby doesn’t happen? What implications does that have?
First I want to talk about f/airgame and the accusations of queerbaiting there. There has been an attitude that just because f/airgame didn’t happen that means bumbleby is less likely. However, these are two very different ships. F/airgame existed for one volume, and not even a full volume at that. There is a level of plausible deniability that the writers didn’t realize how popular it would become and how it would be seen. I’m sure they expected that some people would ship it because this fandom will ship anything that moves (and some things that don’t), but it’s reasonable that they didn’t expect it to blow up like it did.
And when it did blow up, there wasn’t much they could do to tone things down because of the way the show is made. Any changes to make things more explicitly platonic wouldn’t have been able to happen until volume 8 (had Clover survived). Even if they could’ve adjusted minor things in later parts of volume 7 the arguably most egregious moment happens in their first big episode together. Because f/airgame only existed for a volume they didn’t have the chance to make adjustments to their interactions based on how fans were interpreting them. Even so, the writers have still been accused of queerbaiting for how they handled them in volume 7. But any backlash they got for Clover would pale in comparison to what Bumbleby not happening would garner.
With Bumbleby there is no plausible deniability. They know exactly how their interactions are being interpreted and they’ve known that for years. And they know exactly how much it means to people. Volume 6 is where I’d argue they lose the ability say that they didn’t intend for their relationship to be read romantically. In volume 5 we have Alone Together and Yang talking through her complicated feelings for Blake as well as just how focused on Yang Blake’s reunion with her team is. Blake and Yang’s relationship is singled out, and the writers know how that was received. So they have two options going into volume 6: tone it down and make it clear they’re meant to be seen as platonic, or keep writing them in a way that’s setting them up romantically. And what we got was a combination of heartfelt moments, a lot touching, and Adam making it very clear how he views their relationship.
Volume 7 doesn’t stop there and comes after one of the writers is asked point blank if they’re a couple and doesn’t deny it. He wants us to experience it, and we get Blake and Yang constantly flirting and any pretense of their relationship being subtext is gone. When Nora says “I think there’s more going on there” it’s just straight up text. It tells us, the audience, that Blake and Yang’s interactions are meant to be interpreted romantically, especially when no one actually disagrees with her (even Ren just says “Maybe one of them feels that way but the other might be worried” which doesn’t actually deny that they have feelings for each other).
So for Bumbleby not to happen is to go back on all of that. There is no “we didn’t realize people would take it that way” because the text itself contradicts that. They have had literal years to switch gears if Bumbleby wasn’t the plan. Which means that if Bumbleby somehow doesn’t happen all of this would’ve been a deliberate and incredibly malicious deception. It would arguably be one the worst queerbaiting instances ever. So why would they choose to do that? What do they gain from it? And what writer in their right mind wants to be known as “one of the guys responsible for one of the biggest queerbaiting scandals ever”?
We’re talking about a company that isn’t a stranger to including LGBT rep and that has earned some goodwill from the LGBT community with characters like Val/entina, Ilia, May, Saphron and Terra and others. They have LGBT employees like Lindsay and Arryn and Kdin, and that’s just RWBY voice actors. RWBY especially has a massive LGBT fanbase. The idea that the writers would deliberately choose to queerbait the bees knowing all of this as well as how important it is to the community is ludicrous. I can’t even put in to words just how cruel the writers would have to be purposefully queerbait bumbleby. Especially when the only thing that could be gained from it is a few homophobic fans that were already pissed off just by the existence of characters like Ilia and Saphron and Terra. And I doubt any of that gain can outweigh the huge loss of support they’d see.
But even if you still assume Bumbleby isn’t happening I want to talk about what that would mean for a lot of the outside teasing of it from cast and crew etc. Specifically, I want to talk about Arryn. Arryn, who is an openly bi woman. Arryn, who until the end of volume 6 had always been very clear that she shipped Blake and Yang as a fan of the show and not to take that to mean anything. Arryn, who was the one person to tell us that BMBLB wasn’t something the writers knew about so that we wouldn’t be expecting something that might not happen. If Bumbleby isn’t endgame that means that either a) Arryn suddenly changed her mind and has decided that she’s perfectly fine queerbaiting people which goes against all of her previous actions or b) the writers straight up lied to her about her character, which not only could lead to backlash from her but also would affect how she plays Blake (because whether or not Blake has feelings for Yang is going to change how Arryn voices her in scenes with Yang!). Neither of those scenarios makes any goddamn sense.
What I’m trying to say is that the idea of Bumbleby being queerbaiting at this point is ridiculous. It requires a level of pointless maliciousness from multiple people that frankly isn’t realistic. I get being cautious, I do. But at some point you can’t believe the worst in everyone, because that means believing the writers would be cruel for cruelness’s sake even when they gain no benefit at all. The writers aren’t conspiring to hurt people; they have a story to tell and they’re telling it. And that story is team RWBY saving the world and includes Blake and Yang falling in love.
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