#anti-bb

[kitkatopinions]

You want to know what I think about why they haven't confirmed Yang as queer yet or had either Yang or Blake explicitly say anything about be attracted to women (unlike our "hetero" characters)? Because the writers know the bees are the beginning and end of their gay representation. We can have Arkos, Renora, some Rosegarden and maybe some White Knight now (bc framing), but when it comes to sapphic couples, the bees are it. And they see no problem with that either.

As I'm answering this ask, I will be heavily criticizing RW/BY and Bumble/by. Fans of the bees, please beware. If you can't stand to see criticism, just move along.

Here's what we have for confirmation of attraction to the opposite sex from our main characters:

Weiss asks out Neptune. Blake goes on a date with Sun and she and Adam had a prior romantic entanglement. Yang openly leers at shirtless men and verbally says that she approves of their shirtlessness. Jaune is romantically interested in Weiss and kisses Pyrrha. Nora kisses Ren and openly says she's in love with him. Pyrrha kisses Jaune. Ren 'melts into' the kiss with Nora and talks about his feelings for her. Qrow goes on about how he was undone by the sight of a female waitress's skirt length. That's eight out of ten main characters (the other two being Ruby and Oscar,) and if you count Sun and Penny as main characters, that's nine out of twelve because Sun asked out Blake.

The majority of this happened in season two. In the second season of the show, people were asking out people of the opposite sex, and the only characters that didn't have their interest in the opposite sex confirmed within the first three seasons were Ren and Nora. When Ren and Nora kissed after they were hinted at being romantically interested in each other for seasons, they were far and away not the only main characters to have confirmed attraction to the opposite sex and weren't even the first kiss between characters of the opposite sex. If someone wanted to prove that the ship between Jaune and Weiss was going to happen, they don't have to say 'Jaune looks at her, he was upset when she almost died, they go out with a group one time,' they can say 'Jaune has confirmed romantic attraction towards her' and 'At the very least, Weiss has expressed canonical interest in men.''

Here's what we have for confirmation of attraction to the same sex from our main characters:

Nothing. Literally nothing.

We have two very small side characters who appeared in a couple episodes of season six, a villainous character who is in love with her former friend who is described by her voice actor as straight in what looks like official RW/BY merch, and a transgender character who has only existed for two seasons as a more minor character. And then we have Blake and Yang, who have been coded as queer for years now with no canon confirmation so that even though they're clearly meant to be perceived as romantic by queer people, homophobes can pretend it's not happening and Yang can still describe Blake as her sister in side content like video games while Rooster Teeth the company with a huge history of bigotry can sell pride shirts. This is behind the curve of heavily censored cartoons made by big companies like Cartoon Network and Disney. There's no excuse.

When people say that there's nothing queerbaity about Bumble/by and that it's just a slowburn like Re/nora and therefore we should all say nothing about it, they're really ignoring that Re/nora is the exception, they were some of the only main characters who hadn't expressed confirmed interest in the opposite sex, while even Ruby and Penny had seemed to want to talk about 'cute boys' in season one. And even Re/nora at this point is far more confirmed than bumble/by. People like saying that Bumble/by is a slowburn, but that doesn't mean that Blake and Yang couldn't have been confirmed as queer looong ago. Like, people act like Jim and Pam had zero confirmed romantic interest in each other or any other people until they got together and were shown dating in season four. Most slowburns don't look like this.

And people also are pretending like no outside meta matters at all, whether that's the history of a lack of representation for queer characters or considering the company's history of bigotry or the biphobia of one of the creators and lead writers Miles Luna. Despite the fact that there's no queer main characters in ten years, despite the fact that Blake and Yang's progression is unnatural because their tender moments are not allowed to be backed by even a discussion of feelings, despite the fact that the first male character who was coded queer was brutally murdered, despite the fact that there was wild heteronormativity in the early seasons where several characters just casually talked about their attraction to the opposite sex while the creator of RW/BY said that he'd be willing to include queer ships eventually maybe if he thought they were earned, despite the fact that Blake was described as straight by her VA as late as 2019, despite the fact that RW/BY is the biggest money maker for a company that is not only seemingly always struggling with funding projects but also constantly having controversies often about displaying bigotry and needing to get back into people's good graces, despite the fact that they've tried to sell Pride merch and Bumble/by merch that said like 'maybe they're a couple,' despite all of this... No one is allowed to suggest that there might have been intentionally stringing queer audiences along, or that it's a bit suspicious, or anything like that. No queer person is allowed to side eye a bigoted company. Because then we're 'ignoring the slowburn' and just being really unfair to Miles Luna the man who told an 'anecdote' about how hot he thinks watching girls make out is. No queer person is allowed to think that Bumble/by is badly done, because we'll literally get attacked, no matter how much we might like tons of other queer ships, including the canon queer ships from other shows like Adventure Time, Owl House, or Steven Universe.

I think that it is because Blake and Yang are likely to be the end-all-be-all as far as their confirmed queer characters, I think that's why fans are so defensive. Blake and Yang as a ship had juice before volume six and had a lot of people who shipped them, I'm not saying that the only reason they've been shipped is because they're likely to actually be confirmed. But. There's a habit in most fandoms to take what's either the only confirmed queer ship or the queer ship that's most likely to be confirmed and then instead of asking why there aren't more queer ships, people start acting like any fan who doesn't ship it or has any problem with it is trying to hurt queer people. Like if the content creators hear that the ship might not be popular, they just won't do it. Like we'll be punished for not being grateful for the scraps. So fans take it upon themselves to be knights and guardians for these ships, because instead of having grievances against the content creators who make queer ships so rare (and sometimes, badly done,) fans often seem to act like other fans are the enemy for not liking the one ship we have or might get. There's this element of...

A lot of rwde posters who care about queer rep wouldn't care very much about the relationship between Blake and Yang if they weren't the end-all-be-all of the main character rep in the show. If Weiss and Ruby or Weiss and Penny had been a thing, or Jaune and Neptune or Jaune and Ren or something, or other queer ships involving the main characters existed, then Blake and Yang's own status as queer wouldn't be as important because they wouldn't be the only (coded as) queer characters. Like, Lapis Lazuli and Peridot in Steven Universe weren't in an official relationship, but we had Ruby and Sapphire, and Pearl had been in love with Rose Quartz, so I at the very least didn't feel strung along by their 'roomies' language.

Another thing to note is that once again, what I at least care about is whether or not Blake and Yang are confirmed as queer, not whether or not they're in a relationship. People accuse rwde posters of not being happy with a slowburn queer ship and that we think that queer relationships should all be rapid paced (the defense against comparisons to Disney's the Owl House or Arcane having Vi out and out say that she thinks Caitlyn is hot.) But in actuality, this is willfully ignoring that they could've been confirmed as queer without getting in a relationship, just like Jaune talking to Ren about his feelings for Weiss doesn't mean they're destined to be together, and Weiss asking out Neptune doesn't mean they need to have an emotional journey with each other and have a passionate kiss at the end of the show. Yang could've gone to the Vytal dance with Velvet instead of with no one. Blake could've had feelings for Ruby before she had feelings for Yang instead of going on a date with Sun. Ruby could've had feelings for Penny before the Fall of Beacon the way that Pyrrha had feelings for Jaune. Neptune could've had a crush on Jaune during the Vytal dance, instead of having only turned down Weiss because he couldn't dance. Clover could've actually been confirmed as queer and wound up in a relationship with Qrow. But instead all we have is... Ten years of nothing but side characters who don't get much screentime and two main characters nuzzling foreheads and a bunch of fans screaming at us for saying 'we want more.'

It's disappointing.

[mochadust]

I’m seeing this dumbass argument that only cishet men are against bb floating around again, so here it is from an actual lesbian:

Bumbleby is a poorly-written and unhealthy relationship that reads more as a trauma bond than anything else, there’s no way it was planned from the beginning when there was so much build-up for a romantic relationship between Blake and Sun, and the writers at this point are just stringing the fans along and dodging confirming them as queer even though other characters were allowed to be attracted to the opposite sex with much less buildup

The ship in recent volumes is very watered-down and boring and mostly consists of Blake looking sad whilst Yang gets angry on her behalf, which has also stripped away Blake’s whole thing of fighting against faunus oppression in the early volumes and threw that whole subplot under the bus for shipping fuel in the fight against Adam. It overshadows their important relationships with other characters, like Yang and Ruby, or tbh either of them with any other member of team RWBY - many of their interactions with other characters (on the rare occasion that they’re not glued together) are centered around the other one

Most people who dislike bb are not homophobic, many of us are LGBT+ ourselves, and not liking a fictional ship (especially a badly-written and queerbait-y one) is not automatically homophobia

Yang and Blake aren’t written as individuals anymore, the writing surrounding bb is terrible and tbh, while I don’t ship it myself, Blacksun was better

[kitkatopinions]

Heyyy so yangs VA never shuts up and said it has been building for ‘ten years’ but I have a bug in my brain bc wasn’t there a rwby art book from around the 15-16 era with an official statement from Blake’s VA comparing Illia and Blake’s relationship as ‘the lesbian pining after her /straight/ friend’ (their words, and the absolute toxicity of that dumpster fire of lesbian rep) Let alone the recent RT game still using ‘sisterhood’ language *think*

Yep! Here it is:

Honestly when it comes to Barbara Dunkelman who was name-dropped as a bad RT higher up amongst all the recent scandals coming out and who said she "got it" when her coworkers were defending their misogynistic objectifying 'connect the hots' game who also starred in the horrifically bad Internet Box... When it comes to her, I neither like nor trust her. If they did plan Blake and Yang from the beginning, I think it was probably more likely a tossed out idea that just was a 'yeah maybe, but don't talk about it' kind of thing, and never got any firm planning because... Very little in rwby seems to get any firm planning. If it was planned from the beginning, they shouldn't have done things like have Blake referred to as straight as late as 2019, and like have Yang refer to Blake as like her sister late last year. But tbh, whether or not it was planned from the beginning really doesn't matter to me.

Main characters being queer - whether or not it was planned from the beginning - is a good thing. I wish it had happened at the start, I wish more queer characters existed in RWBY, I literally do not care if it was something they set out in the planning for the course of the show, because if it wasn't then it should've been, and if it was, it still shouldn't have taken this long (because Blake and Yang's 'slowburn' does not mean the characters had to stay unconfirmed as queer for ten years.)

The ship between Blake and Yang - whether or not it was planned from the beginning - was not very well done imo. My opinion on it actually gets worse with the knowledge that it's been planned from the beginning because I feel like in ten years they should've figured out how to write it better. I literally do not care though if it was endgame from volume one or not, I only care if it's well done. It's made lots of other people happy, but it wasn't made in a way that I personally wound up liking it or thinking it was well written.

Like if it wasn't planned from the beginning for them to be queer or together, then okay. Glad they eventually decided to include main character queer rep whether or not it was in their original plan. And if it was planned, then okay. Wish it was done differently, but in the end it literally makes very little difference to the end product whether or not it was something they came up with when they were in the early stages of concepting the show or as recently as volume 6.

The result is the same. Queer rep that's better late than never, and a romance that I feel like could've been done better.

[kitkatopinions]

I do think it's rather hilarious that of all the RWBY girls, Blake has the most love interests yet she's never confessed to loving or kissing ANY of them. Even when she was canonically in a relationship with Adam in the flashbacks she's never seen in any intimate scenes that can't also be interpreted as platonic. Ironically Sun is the only one to get a kiss from Blake but blacksun is all but sunk.

Yup, Blake’s relationships are all so... Okay. There’s literally no ship with canon backing for Blake that isn’t full of problems, but one of the (more minor) problems is that Blake always seems like the less interested of whatever couple she’s in.

Some minor ship bashing for most of the popular Blake ships, but most notably for Bumbleby, which I don’t really like. The tumblr tagging system might make it show up in bees tags despite my best efforts and tagging it as anti eight ways to Sunday. Any bees fans, please don’t read this and especially please don’t tell me to take it out of the bees tag, because it isn’t in it.

Don’t get me wrong, I ship BlackSun and I do think that Blake liked him back, and I do read Bumbleby as having romantic feelings on both sides no matter how much I dislike the ship. But Blake always seems less invested.

As for BlackSun, Sun is usually the one to make the moves. He winks, he talks to his friend about her excitedly, he asks her out, he gets flirty after his V3 fight, he decides not to abandon her, he wraps his tail around her waist, he reassures her, he has a friend who talks to him about her in more explicit terms. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not intending to bash Blake with this, and she does display interest. She opens up to Sun more than anyone else, she goes on an explicit date, she blushes when he flirts, she gives him these fond looks, she actively kisses him on the cheek... I’m just saying that Sun drives their relationship a bit more than her. For them, I don’t think it’s really a bad thing, since Blake does reciprocate and do things, she just takes her time with it and is less obvious about her feelings. It’s still just a fact of their ship though.

As for Bumbleby, for the first five seasons, it’s much easier to read Yang being interested in Blake than it is to read Blake as interested in Yang, which makes them feel very one sided (and even Yang’s behavior is easily dismissed as not romantic.) And then when they do start getting romantic coding, it’s after Blake has been super guilty and then swears to stay with Yang in a very traumatic and triggering situation, now in volume seven and eight, her and Yang’s romance feels forced enough that it’s really hard for me to read Blake as actually in love with Yang and wanting to be in a relationship with her, and instead she just feels... Stuck? Like she’s trying to be in love with Yang, because she feels like she should be. I get that it’s not the only definitive reading, this is just how I feel personally.

And obviously, Blake was already done with Adam prior to the start of the series, and there’s really nothing that says she ever felt anything more than friendship for Ilia, while Weiss and Ruby are the next more viable options and again, Blake has showed less interest than they have. Once again, it’s not bad, but it does make the whole concept of ‘having to justify ships’ that I was talking about really difficult, because people can easily dismiss Blake as not caring at all, and it just adds onto the other problems of most of Blake’s more popular ships.

Blake’s most believable relationship was with Sun, but you’re sadly right about the ship’s chances.

[kitkatopinions]

More memes, but I have deemed these too rwde to be seen by the general RWBY FNDM.

[kitkatopinions]

Blake has nothing going on for her now or in the future except Yang and to a lesser extent her team. These are the consequences of bungling the faunus storyline and replacing it with nothing. They've cleaned their hands of Blake's personality and goals. Like you said ship bait is all that's left.

Blake is honestly the worst treated character amongst Team RWBYJNR + Oscar imo, and tbh, I think even Qrow gets a better rep than her. And that’s saying something, because Qrow has been so badly handled.

The worst thing about this for me is the wasted potential. Blake was really wrapped up in their horribly bungled racism/faunus allegory even more so than Weiss. There are obviously problems with how CRWBY continues to try to use the racism/faunus allegory in some problematic ways rather than dropping it completely, without seeming to put in any effort to actually fix it. Blake’s story being so wholly wrapped up in the faunus racism arc had made her character problematic (for instance, she looks hypocritical for being totally against reactive violence in the case of the White Fang, but is training to be a Huntress and is just fine ripping through White Fang members.) Blake has a lot of good to her character from volumes 1-5 if you can separate her from the bungled allegory however (although I totally understand when people just can’t do that.)

Removing Blake from the faunus/racism arc doesn’t have to leave her with nothing as a blank sheet that must be built from the ground up, her character should’ve stayed the same. Blake’s base character at the start of the show that remains pretty dang consistent for five seasons is cynical, stubborn, defensive, active, passionate, focused, someone who has more life experience and a bit of a darker worldview than her friends, someone who has a hard time making friends anyway, a fairly quiet, independent girl with a tendency to run when things get to be too much and tends to self-destruct and push people away, but is still brave and selfless, with a moral code she believes in (although misused, a character that believes things like ‘stealing is always wrong’ is not an uninteresting one. Blake’s moral code was just used badly.) Blake also has a more subdued way of expressing her affections. A few things about Blake - like her tendency to run, many of her insecurities, pushing people away, and self-destructing - started to get worked through and addressed in an actually meaningful way during volumes 4 and 5 (although her resolution with Yang was wonky, but I could talk more about that in a different post.) However, in good narratives, these traits don’t just go away because they start getting worked through. For instance, just because Zuko in ATLA turns to the good side and starts addressing his trauma and working through his anger issues doesn’t mean he isn’t snippy, hotheaded, and prone to outbursts anymore. And for another instance, just because Yang starts trying to control her temper doesn’t mean she’s no longer prone to anger based reactions, snapping, being defensive, and getting into fights.

While Ruby, Weiss, and Yang read as more consistent even if there characters are going in a bad direction - Ruby’s always been reckless and considered her team the end all, her character now is the incredibly frustrating result of this never getting checked or worked through - but Blake is severely lacking in many of her old traits.

Blake has become an incredibly passive character who can’t stand up for herself and tends to just go along with whatever Ruby wants, and is more than willing to steal and lie and let others steal and lie. She’s lacking in passion, even her supposed stronger moments carrying a more passive tone. She relies on others to save her, both by relying on Yang and Weiss to defend her from mean anti faunus people, and constantly relying on others in fights, not able to land hits and begging Ruby to help her when she’s left without Yang to do her fighting for her. She doesn’t make choices herself, literally in the ‘will we launch Amity or defend Mantle’ conversation, Blake is one of the only people who isn’t shown out and out picking a side. She’s no longer cynical and no longer seems to mind waiting around - telling her younger, naïve teammate who’s spent hours doing nothing that it’s okay that she’s been doing nothing and hasn’t really helped anyone because Blake knows she’ll do something eventually and admires Ruby’s optimism. Blake no longer is independent enough to even be temporarily left by Yang without reacting like she did something she has to be guilty and ashamed of.

Like, what is this? Seriously, what is it? They didn’t even fight and they have her reacting like this.

It’s like the writers decided when they dropped her faunus arc that they could now create a new character from the ground up. A passive, supportive, co-dependent, damsel in distress character who can give the other girls a leg up and fuel their more compelling arcs. You know what? May isn’t Maid Marian, Blake is. She’s Disney’s Maid Marian. She’s the encouraging love interest/friend figure who can be jokey sometimes, occasionally tries her hand at convincing other people to do things, and to prove she’s not totally helpless, gets a hit in every now and again.

Look, maybe I’m being a little over dramatic, but that’s how she feels when you compare her to the other characters. Even Ruby, sitting around drinking tea and crying on staircases until the plot falls into her lap two different times, is a much more active character than Blake.

The closest CRWBY have gotten to making Blake an active character was when they had her react in anger to Neo knocking Yang into the void, but again, it didn’t amount to anything.

The writers could have made Blake the same character she was before while still deviating from her White Fang plot. She could have continued to be an independent, somewhat snarky, brave, passionate girl with more of a cynical worldview and a tendency to overwork herself in her hurry to get real work done that would help make the world a better place, while she tried to push past her more pessimistic tendencies and her struggles to connect with others in order to be there for them, because she believes in them and their purpose and herself. And you know what? I’m just gonna say it... That version of Blake, V 1-5 Blake, is the version that works best with Yang! Like don’t get me wrong, Yang and this new character have some cute moments and it’s... Lacking, but it’s at least something. But Yang and Blake as she was could actually be a compelling ship, they could fit well together. And Blake as she used to be could’ve interacted really well with the Atlas arc and the story in season six. She could’ve related to Ozpin when they find out about their past, she could’ve been on Qrow’s side when it came to stealing the plane in Argus and have to be convinced, she could’ve been trying to talk the Ace Ops into being reasonable, she could’ve been at Robyn’s rally, ready to help out in the fight against Jacques and passing out flyers, only to get angry and upset when she hears how Robyn talks to Marrow, she could’ve been on May’s side when May told them they needed to take action, she could’ve been right there with Yang telling Salem what’s what, or if they had to split the two (which I’m more than fine with,) they could’ve had Blake with the Mantle crew, but stay behind to help civilians, or they could’ve had had leave the manor with May. And if they were going to try and make Blake guilty for a fight, there should’ve been an established conflict where Blake and Yang disagree about Ironwood, and then that leads into a wider conflict about who was wrong and who was right. I don’t know, guys, I’m not a professional.

All I know is that Blake doesn’t feel like herself anymore and the writers won’t give her anything. It’s frustrating. This was kind of a vent post, but... You know what, I can vent about it. It feels like the writers are doing this on purpose at this point.

[jester-de-punyalada]

oh i get the outrage now.

the tragedy of grey fighting back against the chip too late to save depa but just in time to save caleb even if the kid never learns abt it>>>>>>>>>>>>>tbb minus crosshair never being affected by the chips for some mary sue reason

[jester-de-punyalada]

“Move Over, Person Who Should Be The Star Of The This Show And Has The Title Role In The Boba Fett Series Coming Later This Year, The Token New Zealander Bad Batch Cast Member Is The New Kiwi Star Of Star Wars Disney+”

hm. 😶🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪

damn. siri unlock the transtemporal portal to the timeline where some higher up realized we could have had 5-6(tbb + echo and omega) māori actors doing adjacent but distinct amd distinguishable voices fitting of a main cast.

ps. whats this from?