silverswanqueen

[silverswanqueen]

Does… does clemprime13 not realize that they are, in essence, cherry picking in attempting to debunk this true statement?

The point of OP’s post was to point out that fans viewing a character’s morality based on their allusions is incorrect because the allusion of multiple characters go against this rationalization.

“Robin Hill is based off Robyn Hood so by association Robin must be a good aligned character in the show,” brings on the assumption that one can say “Cinder Fall is based off Cinderella so by association Cinder must be a good aligned character in the show,” which is canonically false, thus this justification of character alignment is wrong. There are characters that are the same moral alignment as their allusions but this is literally just coincidence as CRWBY doesn’t commit to the whole allusion helps define the character shtick. They cherry pick the details of the allusion assigned to a character to make references. A viewer of the show cannot assume that each character that has a “good” allusion is by association good because this has never been a rule the show has followed. That was the point.

RWBY Fans: “She’s based off Robin Hood, so she’s the good guy!”

The RWBY characters based off Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, the Beast, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Miss Muffet, and Hansel: (laughs in evil)

[silverswanqueen]

Chiming in after an eternity of being offline that this “explanation” is full of holes.

Ruby has used her silver eyes in the presence of three Maidens. Cinder, Raven, Penny. The first time, at V3 finale, where she fucked Cinder up, the second time, during the embarrassment that was the V5 finale where both Raven and Cinder were present and ONLY Cinder was affected, and the third time in V7 finale, where Penny didn’t react at all to it and Cinder ran.

Salem did say that it is because of the Maiden power that Cinder reacts this way, but the writers either A) forgot, or B) decided to retcon it, because at no point does a Maiden character aside from Cinder get hurt by Ruby’s eye beams. So yeah. Clears up nothing lol.

In regards to your Nitpick Nov 28, it's stated by Salem in canon that Cinder is particularly weak or vulnerable to Ruby because of her maiden powers. Why is that the case? Why only her arm and face? Dunno. I'm assuming that they're going to come back around to this with the whole Hound-Salem-SilverEyes plot line in a later volume. But yeah, if you're wondering why, that's why. Hope you have a nice day.

This clears up absolutely nothing, thank you

[silverswanqueen]

Yeah true, there really is nothing. I sometimes have to remind myself that any head canon isn’t actually canon since, yknow, I’ve made assumptions since V4 and there hasn’t been any elaboration so I’ve just filled in the blanks to make it make some sense. They just hot potato’ed it and left it. The only real indication as to how it works is from Qrow and his song which is summed up as “stay away from me I’m bAd LuCk!” and even then it’s vague.

That would be really interesting! Society ostracizing those who cannot control “bad” semblances and holding others with “good” semblances to high standards that are near impossible to achieve would be really interesting and would explain Qrow’s situation really well too. It puts even more pressure on “good” semblances that can’t be controlled and puts people in the awkward situation of “person X can do this just fine, but why can’t person Y have the same control?” and thus creates tension between the characters. It’s really weird how passive semblances are portrayed too, since in V6 it’s played as a joke (“lol Qrow leaned on a cart and the tire popped he has some bad luck huh?”) but in V7 there’s this whole shebang about Clover and Qrow’s semblances mirroring each other but it doesn’t… go anywhere? Like, is it a joke or is it being treated seriously, pick one please.

I personally like the whole “uncontrollable at first then fine tune it” angle just because it would let Qrow go somewhere with his semblance, since CRWBY kinda set his semblance up as “this is a problem” sort of situation imo. Granted, I think at this point in Qrow’s career, him just learning “hey I can control this and don’t need to turn to other vices to suppress it!” is still pretty bad, but it avoids the rabbit hole of, “well if he can’t control it, are they constantly going even if he purposely deactivates his aura?” since doing something like deactivating aura can be seen as a means of control over it. I dunno, it’s hard to think up solutions that make the characters not look bad at this point since it’s been so long for it to stew.

A severe issue is that lots of important info for character and world building, aren't being shown organically but revealed outside the show in stupid ways. A huge example is Ironwood's semblance, Mettle. Nobody brings it up in show and it's ambiguously canon to say the least. Sounding like they conjured it up out of thin air to rationalize Ironwood's behavior but failed to explain why it matters.

Way to much is revealed via word of God rather then organically as you said. James’s semblance is….a thing CRWBY pretends exists and they wrote well into the show. But they didn’t, as you said they had to use word of God to tell everyone it exists. Heh most people agree that it was something they made up last minute to try and justify the crap they pulled with him and it makes me sick.

Anytime fans call out bullshit the authors pull something out of their ass and claim ‘it’s been planned from the beginning’ refusing to see how that makes them look like worse authors not better. I get sometimes you run out of time and have to throw something together and not have time to refine or edit or sometimes you accidentally write yourself into a corner again it happens we get it. But when you say shitty writing was planned from the beginning? It just makes you look incompetent or lazy.

Worse these word of God revelations just leave us with more questions then answers like with James, who knew about his semblance? Did anyone? How did it affect him? What caused it to activate? How much did it control James vs James controlling it? How in general do passive semblances work? These are all questions we have with no answers and not much hope to ever get those answers and it’s extremely frustrating.

[silverswanqueen]

i’m not saying she went off, but she went off.

[silverswanqueen]

Okay yes to all this and I know this post isn’t just about passive semblances but the word of god bs but can I just say the way passive semblances work is stupid and actively damages the few characters that have them?

Qrow is #tragic because he’s a bad luck charm and even though he’s been a huntsman for at least two decades he didn’t think ONCE he could maybe idk control how his semblance affects the environment aside from that ONE time he used his luck to get one over on Tyrian but actually his luck immediately got him right back?

Clover is so cool and perfect because he’s a good luck charm and everything just works out for him and he “became a crutch for the Ace Ops” (writer’s words, not mine), THE BEST HUNTSMEN GROUP IN ATLAS, and it’s implied by how Qrow’s semblance works that he literally doesn’t influence anything himself his semblance just gives him hand outs. And then he dies, fun.

Ironwood is evil~ because his semblance exists except it doesn’t in show unless the fans that want to argue that everything is #perfect think it benefits their “argument” and no one can actually figure out if it fucking exists or not because on one hand, Word of God shouldn’t be the go to canon-izer of vital facts but on the other, this show is held together by retcons and Word of God retroactively “fixing” fucked plot lines so why not. Ironwood’s semblance is a light switch that the writers can turn on and off whenever, cool cool cool.

We still don’t even know what the hell a passive semblance does. Does it consume aura, is it uncontrollable, is it “off” when the user has no aura left, we don’t know any of this, but this can be easily fixed for the most part by making passive semblances uncontrollable at first until the user gets a finer tune on it and then can manipulate when the semblance goes into action and where, but hey, that’s too complex of an idea for CRWBY to implement and they’re too happy leaving this thread as it is, unraveled from its stitching and slowly but surely ruining the hem because the longer the questions sit, the worse it looks.

As to why this makes the characters who have passive semblances look bad? Well, it makes them kind of idiotic that they don’t know how to handle their semblances after literal decades of experience. Hell, our first passive semblance user’s “method” to deal with it is to get sloshed every day to the point he’s dependent on it, the second just sort of thrives off it because it’s a “good” passive semblance, and the third we have no clue beyond the fact that he’s super determined and since we have no clue where Mettle is supposed to be in action, he’s just… doing normal shit. It does not exist for him, he’s just depressed and traumatized as his kingdom falls and makes increasingly unhinged plans like bombing half his kingdom for no reason. Like, really? If passive semblances are basically a genetic luck of the draw and if you get a bad one, “whoops guess you’re supposed to be miserable for your whole life,” then that’s horrible?? And it looks like that’s what they went for???

Sorry I ranted lol passive semblances are just so stupid to me and I lost it 😅

A severe issue is that lots of important info for character and world building, aren't being shown organically but revealed outside the show in stupid ways. A huge example is Ironwood's semblance, Mettle. Nobody brings it up in show and it's ambiguously canon to say the least. Sounding like they conjured it up out of thin air to rationalize Ironwood's behavior but failed to explain why it matters.

Way to much is revealed via word of God rather then organically as you said. James's semblance is....a thing CRWBY pretends exists and they wrote well into the show. But they didn't, as you said they had to use word of God to tell everyone it exists. Heh most people agree that it was something they made up last minute to try and justify the crap they pulled with him and it makes me sick.

Anytime fans call out bullshit the authors pull something out of their ass and claim 'it's been planned from the beginning' refusing to see how that makes them look like worse authors not better. I get sometimes you run out of time and have to throw something together and not have time to refine or edit or sometimes you accidentally write yourself into a corner again it happens we get it. But when you say shitty writing was planned from the beginning? It just makes you look incompetent or lazy.

Worse these word of God revelations just leave us with more questions then answers like with James, who knew about his semblance? Did anyone? How did it affect him? What caused it to activate? How much did it control James vs James controlling it? How in general do passive semblances work? These are all questions we have with no answers and not much hope to ever get those answers and it's extremely frustrating.

[silverswanqueen]

“Let people enjoy things” and “You should be willing to recognize that the media or celebrities you like are flawed, especially if the ways they’re flawed are in ways that are harmful or offensive to women or minority groups” are NOT opposites, and in fact they can and should work together.

“Let people enjoy things,” is what you say when you see someone harassing a twenty year old for wearing a Lilo and Stitch backpack because ‘Disney adults are so immature,’ it’s not what you say when someone is criticizing the large and harmful pattern of antisemitism in Disney works.

“Let people enjoy things,” is what you say when someone starts ranting about how women who drink pumpkin spice coffee are vapid basic followers, it’s not what you say when people call out a harmful organization for being harmful and you don’t like that.

“Let people enjoy things,” is what you say when someone is trying to gatekeep the character of Spider-Man from people who liked Andrew Garfield’s interpretation, it’s not what you say when people are criticizing the MCU for their pro-military rhetoric or their history of sidelining the women characters.

“Let people enjoy things,” is what you say when you’re blogging about liking a ship that puts Yang from RWBY with someone other than Blake and someone comes into the notes talking about how much better Bumblebee is. It’s not what you say when people criticize the writers for their horrible fake-racism plot, or their mishandling of (most) of their queer characters, or anything like that.

If it ruins your viewing experience to see someone criticize the media even in meaningful ways then you need to take a step back from the media and re-examine your priorities. Fans trying to silence people about the problems in media / problems with celebrities is one hundred percent something that can and will be weaponized. And the people who make that media and the celebrities people defend will use their fans and the passiveness of their fanbase as a shield and as a means to just keep on doing the exact same toxic shit they’re doing now. It’s not ‘preventing people from enjoying things’ to ask people to put a bit of critical thought into what they consume and what they like enough to see the problematic elements.

And much less important, but still worth noting; ‘let people enjoy things’ also can and should go along with ‘let people dislike things’ too even if the reasons are all subjective and opinion based. People are allowed to post on social media about what they like, and people are allowed to post on social media about what they don’t like. It’s up to you to cultivate your own online experience, not up to everyone else to stop talking about their experience with something in public because you might hear it. If they aren’t coming into your comments or ask boxes or reviews or so on, them posting their opinion is not an attack on you or an attempt to force you to change your mind. If seeing someone dislike media you like disturbs your viewing experience and makes you unable to enjoy the thing, you should step back from that piece of media.

[silverswanqueen]

This is so fucking disturbing.

I remember one of my first interactions on Amino was some guy a decade older than me (I was 15) direct messaging me after I commented on one of his posts asking to be my boyfriend and he would “role play any character I wanted” as long as I “stayed committed” and “put in my part” (what the FUCK does that mean). I didn’t know what to do. I never talked to him. Never spoken to him. I literally commented on one post and I moved on. I was horrified and terrified. I blocked him and forgot about it, then my profile blew up because of my character poems and analysis posts that made it to the featured page a lot. All the sudden, I get messages asking if I was really “[guy]’s girlfriend”. Then I get a direct message from the same guy with his profile name different by like 1 character (think it was a 0 instead of an O). He launches into a role play without even a fucking hello as my fav male character. To preserve thy holy virgin eyes I shall not delve into what he said. Had to step away from the app for a week because of that. Gotta wonder how many times he visited my profile until I blocked his new ones enough. By the way. Guess which fandom amino this was on?

It was RWBY.

twitter this, tumblr that, reddit whatever. we all know what the worst and most toxic social media platform actually is

[silverswanqueen]

Someone comparing RWDE posters with Madoka magica fans, for some reason: “ah yes these people are all the same! They would support such a sexist anime where the girls are idiots while shaming a feminist show where men write a 17 year old girl flirting with men in bars, of cause Madoka fans would hate rwby! They hate how girl empowering it is because like Madoka, they want girls to all be idoits who can never do anythin-“

RWDE posters who never even heard of Madoka Magica:

[silverswanqueen]

This is some of the stupidest writing advice I’ve ever seen. Just because something is expected doesn’t mean it’s “bad”, and when things are expected in a piece of writing, it makes the twists all the more pleasant and fresh.

It’s like what George R R Martin said. If you’re writing a murder mystery, and you write it so the butler did it, but then you see someone has figured it out and then you change it to the maid did it, all the previous build up and hints do not make sense and it weakens your story. There are red herrings, but red herrings are planted with the explicit purpose to lead the audience astray and a good writer will write a red herring and hint toward the actual answer at the same time to make the story actually make some damn sense. Do not write with the intent to subvert expectations just so you can subvert expectations. It is not an inherently good or bad writing technique, and sorry Kiersi, V8’s “subversion” was convoluted, nonsensical, and idiotic.

Constantly writing the unexpected isn’t the go to. Constant subversions make your storytelling on a functional level unreliable, and that’s exactly what RWBY is. An unreliable, convoluted shit show where only the newest episode is a trusted source of material, since information can flip around episodically, let alone by volume. Sometimes information changes between scenes! This applies to general plot advancements or character actions. Like ironpines said with GoT, this is the result. “Jon Snow was always the hero and we thought eh not this time, how bout Arya kill the Night King even though this has been Jon’s story since day one?” “How about Dany snaps and murders over half the civilians in King’s Landing after Cersei surrenders even though we haven’t properly developed Dany’s slow mental descent into madness and this Dany, the one that we have not developed any further, is still proclaiming that she wishes to not be Queen of the Ashes?” “How about Jaune be the one to stay by Penny’s side as she dies even though Ruby is the only character to have an actual relationship?” “How about we make Penny the Winter Maiden instead of Winter, only we’ll give Winter the powers one volume later and perma-death Penny after we make her a flesh suit?”

What a joke.

now the inconsistent, incoherent mess that was v8 makes more sense in context. kiersi, “surprising” stories doesn’t equal good & actions still have to make scope in the sense of the story, even if they’re “predictable” in your eyes.

this train of thought is how we got the finale for game of thrones. mkek, try subverting the expectation that you’re a shit writing team & surprise us with something fresh & good. ♥

[silverswanqueen]

I stg whenever I see a mega fan invade the notes of a rwde post and I try to read wtf they’re saying my IQ drops by 20 points. But hey, @why-i-hate-rwby-now ‘s summarization of their points has me cackling despite the ridiculousness of canonseeker’s “logic”, so at least I got a belly laugh.

[silverswanqueen]

“RWBY was planned from the beginning!”

So you agree? RT’s racism, sexism, queerphobia, ableism, suicide apologia, anti-semiticism and their mishandling of all abuse victims was all planned from the beginning and one hundred percent intentional, and not one big “accident”. Which would in turn make your precious writers those things. Interesting.

[silverswanqueen]

rwby’s queer representation.

opening out of the way, i’m a queer nonbinary bisexual & have been out for over a decade, blah blah, let’s get to the meat & potatoes of this post. i want this to be a fairly nuanced post but let me just be honest & say it’s not going to be kind to rooster teeth, rwby or mkek. if you don’t want to see that, scroll ahead.

the queer cast.

out of over 250+ named characters  —  while including the novels which has to happen to include half the rep on this list  —  we have “16″ queer characters ranging from confirmed to word of god. those are;

blake belladonna ; bisexual. appeared in 2012, however not confirmed in canon yet. was “confirmed” by writer eddy rivas in a reddit comment that didn’t really confirm it & has been pushed by her va arryn zech for years.

coco adel ; lesbian. appeared in 2014, was confirmed as a lesbian in the rwby novel after the fall in 2019.

ilia amitola ; lesbian. appeared in 2016, was confirmed as a lesbian in 2017 while confessing to a bound blake.

scarlet david ; gay. appeared in 2014, however he was confirmed in a non canon manga by miles on twitter to be gay in 2018.

sapphron & terra cotta arc ; unspecified wlw. appeared & were confirmed in 2019, however what sexuality they are is unconfirmed.

may marigold ; trans woman. appeared in 2019 & was said by her va to be trans in a tweet, this was further confirmed in 2020 in the episode war.

the noncanon / questionably canon queer characters we have are;

yang xiao long ; unspecified wlw. yang has been teased to be in a relationship with blake belladonna for the past half a decade & was confirmed to be attracted to men in the earlier volumes of the show. she has also been featured on pride merch both solely & related to the ship bumblby, yet with no canon confirmation of either her relationship or sexuality, she remains in the void.

team ndgo ; ace. this team was a fan creation submitted & used by crwby for the vytal tournament, their creators & va’s have said that they headcanon the girls as on the ace spectrum but that it’s not canon as they have no further creative control over them.

matte skye ; nonbinary. the va says that they headcanoned matte as nonbinary like themselves, but there has been no canon confirmation from any of the writers.

nolan porfirio ; unspecified mlm. the wiki says that nolan is gay, however there is no confirmed relationship between him & scarlet in the novels, nor is there any confirmed sexuality for him that has been put into the text itself.

mistral gays ; unspecified mlm. these were two background characters from the montage that took place during volume 5 in mistral. there is no confirmed sexuality for either of them but they are holding a heart shaped bamboo plant together for 2 seconds on screen.

taking away the non canon / questionably canon characters out of rwby’s queer roster; as they have not been confirmed by either the writers or on screen, canon material; this brings the number down to 7. meaning out of 250+ named characters in rwby, we have less than 10 that are queer. & out of them, they only fulfil 4(?) of the sexualities / genders in the queer community.

& then there is the question of if these characters are still on screen. out of the 7 confirmed queer characters we have, only 2 are still actively on screen or contributing to the plot; which are blake belladonna & may marigold.

the treatment.

scarlet & coco have been written off to the novel land until we potentially see them in vacuo, ilia was written off to go be with the white fang, & saphron / terra were only ever side characters who weren’t meant to feature more than the three episodes they did.

mkek + monty when he was still alive have been on record saying that “queer rep needs to be earned”, an inherently queerphobic statement considering not only the preferential treatment of mlw / heterosexual couples in the show that far outweigh queer couples with little to no development; but also because of the fact that 4 / 5ths of mmkek are straight men. the only queer writer is kiersi & her own writing about queer people is questionable at best & harmful at worst.

& i would be remiss not to mention the favouritism towards wlw in both terms of how representation is handled & what characters are given as representation. in the almost decade rwby has been running, mlm have had only scarlet as their representation while being continuously queerbaited or overlooked time & time again. while mkek realized how they didn’t want to contribute to the queerphobic trope of bury your gays by making pilot boi gay, miles was then also on record wishing that they had done it anyways because of how popular he’d become. miles was then also the one to talk about the potential of jaune, a popular character in the main cast, being queer before quickly shutting that down after the fact.

there have also been plenty of arguments back & forth about the queerbaiting during the fairgame situation; however the fact remains that eddy himself acknowledged it was queerbaiting & that the writing team regard sexualities as “spoilers” to be earned, before changing his statement. both clover & qrow were heavily coded as queer & as it is, neither have been confirmed & the former suffered the most gruesome, graphic death on the screen so far.

mkek have also spent almost half a decade teasing the potential couple of bumbleby, blake & yang; however they have gone back & forth on romantic moments for them while heterosexual couples like renora have been able to have far more development in less time to confirm their relationship. all the while, mkek & the company have seen fit to use the ship to promote merch & entice people into buying it; a queerphobic action & something that is the definition of queerbaiting.

on a final note; there is also definitely the issue of intersectionality when it comes to the queer representation in rwby. nonwhite representation in rwby is fairly problematic already, but when looking at the landscape of who is queer in rwby, it paints a very white, conventionally attractive picture with barely any poc or genderqueer people. the queer face in media is already very whitewashed, it would do rwby well to not further contribute to this alongside their other issues.

conclusion.

rwby has definitely never been at the forefront of queer representation, despite a fair amount of their fans being queer & just wanting to see that done well. with other shows now coming up behind them & overtaking in terms of genuine rep made by queer creators, all while fighting homophobic networks & people  —  something rt has never had to do as an independent company  —  it’s very clear that rwby isn’t even in 2000 & late anymore in terms of their queer characters, they’re in the 1500s comparatively.

they either need to do better by their queer fans or just admit that they don’t really care about us beyond the dollar signs they can see burning a hole in their pocket.

[silverswanqueen]

Just finished my first semester at graduate level and I feel like death.

Can’t wait for my brain to break over Algorithms next semester aha *cries*

[silverswanqueen]

[silverswanqueen]

notice how “girls mature faster” is never stated as a reason why girls should be given more positions of power and authority? It only works to hold girls to greater accountability than boys and to justify men’s attraction to them.

[silverswanqueen]

Thinking back I really don’t understand how the writers thought that episode was funny. As a Jewish person who was raised in a family where basically everyone said what they wanted and pushed the line when it comes to offensive material, rarely anyone ever got truly offended. There was the occasional, “Hey Aunt Pat, too far,” or the “Hey Uncle Skeeter, that’s a bit much,” but nothing egregious. And, well, we laughed at ourselves as we made our jokes, and if someone said something that went too far, we nipped it in the bud and moved on.

When I watched Reigny Day… I didn’t laugh once. Again, since I grew up in an environment where I never got offended from a Jewish joke, at first I was just like, “damn, these jokes aren’t landing at all.” But after the episode was finished I realized, they bulldozed over the fucking line. Nothing was funny because everything was waaaaay too on the nose and downright egregious when it came to sorta kinda enabling Nazism. I thought Dolph would be reprimanded by the end of the episode, but it never happened. When you write a joke, no matter the medium, you’ve gotta deliver it in such a way that you’re not enabling the shitty (or worse) behavior behind the joke. But Camp Camp didn’t accomplish this. What, was I supposed to laugh every time the characters raised their arms in the fucking Nazi salute? Was I supposed to laugh as Dolph got a damn award for turning the camp into a concentration camp where he hunted down Neil? How about no? When Neil was found in the attic with his diary, all I did was roll my eyes and go, “are you fucking kidding me?” How is that funny? Hur hur Ann Frank reference buy our merch. It was this episode that caused me to really look at RoosterTeeth and found all this problematic shit.

The Three Stooges nailed Jewish and Hitler jokes better. Know why? Because Moe, who always was the one to play Hitler, was a fucking moron. They didn’t poke fun at the Jews that were trying desperately to survive the damn Holocaust, they were making fun of the monster that put so many people through pain and turmoil. Yeah the Stooges had some problematic moments, but it was a product of its time and still enjoyable today (I watch the episodes often for a laugh!), and somehow, it still hits better than RoosterTeeth’s content. Like, what??? And yet, RT stands behind it. Yikes.

btw anyone who refuses to believe that Camp Camp is antisemitic has obviously never read Dolph's wiki page, or the wiki page about the episode "Reigny Day." Either that, or they have read both pages, and are just openly lying about it "not being antisemitic" so they can feel better about sharing those views.

Read both pages in full, but especially read the trivia sections and the comments. Rooster Teeth and their fanbase are DELIGHTED with their antisemitism, and to pretend any different is blatantly antisemitic as well.

Rooster Teeth is not hiding their views. They are openly and joyously proud of their antisemitism, and they're so goddamn proud of it that Miles Luna has been on record as having said that Camp Camp is his finest work and if he is remembered for nothing else, he wants to be remembered for - specifically - season one of Camp Camp (listed in his Wiki page under the section about his work as a writer) which is when the series is at its most antisemitic.

Anyone who lies about any of this in a blatant and transparent effort to defend Rooster Teeth's antisemitism, especially if they go so far as to additionally lie about and smear Jewish members of the audience who have spoken up about it in an open attempt to discredit them and invalidate their criticisms, is also antisemitic.

Just saying.