#on the one and only tifa lockhart

[lockedfighter]

i cannot cope with miss lockhart in her teen years . a lil brat bub —- when not getting her way ?! like are you kidding me ?! many a rambling ahead ; yeehaw .

it breaks my heart that she used to be so spunky & carefree back when she was younger . her confidence seemed to be showcased a lot more too , she was able to freely communicate what she was feeling without being too much of a closed book . perhaps that could be down to her own naivety also and she certainly was forced to mature at such a young age .

studying her micro expressions forever make me laugh tho !! for example this gif right here ( which is so damn cute 🥺 ) and how she legit STOMPS HER FOOT when she doesn’t get her way ?! like —- are you serious ? it’s really endearing because it shows her adolescence in a more realistic manner . she was like a typical teen , perhaps with a slight attitude problem .. ( didn’t we all have that tho ? lbr . ) and to me , it just adds that little more depth .

the pout be out too !!

in the nibelheim flashback , we really get to grasp how her character has changed —- not necessarily for better or worse but how the events happening between had a solid effect upon her . mannerisms like clenching her fists ( even when she meets sephiroth for the first time in pure excitement ) and the bright innocence within her eyes really adds that multi dimension yet such is taken away from her with a click of the finger . sweet , you really should not have gone into that reactor . why did you not do as you were told ?!

i cannot stop laughing at her little sassy flares of attitude —- like when she says to memory ! cloud ( zack ) when asking about if mako springs will disappear if they keep using the power & zack asked who told her that . her reply with her hands on her hips —- ❛ my dad . and the mayor , if you must know . ❜ you can really hear the boldness in her tone . esp for a fifteen year old .

another example such as from the gif above when she challenges sephiroth even after he explains calmly that no civilians are allowed in the reactor , she still whines and is like , ❛ come on !! ❜ in this case , i don’t think she’s being disrespectful , just a little cheeky in a childlike manner . not fully understanding the consequences & the dangers of the world yet having lived a fairly content life in a sleepy mountain village . even tries to march through behind zack , only to be stopped and then proceeds to have her mini meltdown and is a little grumbly mumble asking real ! cloud , ❛ you better keep me safe . ❜ with a huff .

this all being said , she’s well loved in the nibelheim community and is very helpful to her peers . in traces of two pasts , it’s narrated that she helps around the village and even teaches classes for the elders ( & whoever else wishes to join ) , she’s a delight to have around and with the help of some of the other women in the village , she is learning to cook and sew . if she was truly ‘ a brat ’ , i don’t believe her neighbours would give her the time of day . she’s just young & playful —- doesn’t have the true weight of the world ‘pon shoulders as of yet . ugh , i just think her development is wonderful .

thank you for coming to my teef talk . 💖

[moonilit]

Doodles and Tifa 🤍

[nosfelixculpa]

cloud jr is my favourite ff7 party member

[sir-adamus]

in the last scene, everyone gets something to say except Tifa - the only sound she makes at all are these tearful sobs. she's devastated over losing Aerith

when Nanaki senses Aerith's presence, Tifa looks up for a second, then just... drops her head back onto her arms in the most defeated way

someone give this poor woman a hug, fucking hell

[rabbit-rays]

i did what anybody would, that day.

[iniziareold]

/breathes calmly. Tifa—

[kisenth]

hc : kids

Yes, please! He’ll take three of those!

The last of her kind, the thought of a child has crossed Aerith’s mind before. However, the thought was banished as soon as it came, like it was a thought she shouldn’t have. All she could foresee was a child going through the very things she’d gone though: A life where they would be hunted down, different from all the other kids.

It was painful enough for her, and she certainly wouldn’t willingly inflict it upon others.

To compensate, and to still give her fondness for children a place in her heart, she likes to help out around the orphanage, and will often play with the children when she has the time and they ask her to join.

It may not be the same as having children, but it’s enough for her nevertheless. In a way, she thinks she might just prefer it this way without a solid responsibility, because she can never be sure of the continuation of her own life.

A born mother, Sephiroth’s sword piercing her abdomen made a swift end to Tifa’s chance at naturally bearing her own children. It’s definitely a bit of a sore spot for her; she’d always dreamed of a nice little family with two, maybe three kids of her own.

So it brings her great joy to be able to help with raising Marlene ( and, later on, Denzel ). Because even if seeing them is a slight reminder of what she’s lost, they are an even bigger reminder of what she now has.

[a-den-of-demons]

Cow for Sale (Open RP; Open to all muses)

"And next up is the lovely holtaur, Tifa Lockhart! Broken in, she is happy to serve you and be your sex slave! She'll do whatever you ask, and her body is one of the best in the world!" The announcer looked at the crowd, "For such a lovely specimen, we start at 100,000!" Tifa happily looked at the crowd. Her mind only craved to serve and the cow woman's tail swayed as hands shot up, loving how much she was desire.

(Go nuts on her)

@freeusemuses @asexxxualerotica @a-fantastic-time @chiefatticcreator

[missyandthemisfits]

FF7 Headcanons – Do They Like Their Partner Playing In Their Hair?

I write sometimes so Imma put some Final Fantasy VII headcannons here in honor of tomorrow’s release 🍷🍾

Cloud Strife – He absolutely does, he also absolutely won’t own up to it because he’s EMBARRASED. That said, if you really wanna hear him say it that badly, you can always threaten to never do it again. He’ll pout, complain softly, and confess. THEN he’ll immediately ask you to do it.

Tifa Lockhart – YesssSS, she adores it! But she makes you wait until you’re alone to do it because she is CONVINCED she makes questionable faces when you do it. She does. She does make those faces-

Aerith Gainsborough – You’d better believe she does and is happy to return the favor! She might actually be better than you at it though…awesome scalp massages.

Barett Wallance – Not really…? But he can be convinced. Especially after a long, hard day and a hot shower.

Cid Highwind – NOPE. Don’t even try it, you’ll get an earful and will NEVER hear the end of it, I assure you.

Vincent Valentine – He is FIRMLY on the fence about it. On one hand, it feels amazing and he really does love it. On the other hand, he’s still convinced he just doesn’t deserve that kindness, from you or anyone. You may or may not be able to get him to agree to it, depending on the day.

Reeve Tuesti – He does indeed like it and he is also not afraid to ask for it. Hell, he’ll ask for it mid-speech sometimes, right in the middle of the explaining something to the party members. You will probably say no.

Reno Sinclair – YES, for the love of God, PLEASE play in his hair. I cannot stress this enough, HE HAS NO SHAME. He will beg, with or without company, outside or inside your home. He does not care how it looks to those around him, he’s a man that knows what he wants an when he wants it.

Rude – I wheeze, but yes. He enjoys…scalp massages.

Elena – She actually only likes it when and if you wash her hair for her while you’re doing it, something about the combination of nails and water – she’s a little strange, but it’s cute.

Tseng – Another fence straddler, but he’s a lot easier to convince. For him, it’s about intimacy, something you two share that he doesn’t wanna share with anyone else so it stays in home – because he’s a little possessive.

Rufus Shinra – Oh yes, he definitely enjoys it – he’d ask for it more if it didn’t mess up his hair so much before meetings. He’s always got this smug look on his face when he teasingly asks though, so that’s a thing. Also possessive.

!! BONUS !!

Zack Fair – He’s got this lopsided grin on his face when you first ask him because he’s never had someone ask. But after the first time, he’s almost like a puppy.

Genesis Rhapsodos – He does like it, but he saves that sort of intimacy for after…‘The act’. Makes it more special. I think he’s just dramatic, honestly.

Angeal Hewley – Apprehensionnn, but if he’s feeling particularly stressed he may let you do it. It’s a hard sell though, be strong soldier.

Sephiroth – YES, thoroughly enjoys someone playing in his hair but understands they could be there for a while given the length of his luxurious locks – not that he minds. He could sit there all day, grinning and praising you for your time and effort. Unnecessarily suave, always.

——————————

Pictures aren’t mine, Headcannons are!

[fuckaroundandfindouttournament]

Hey there, girlies (gender neutral)! Welcome to the ✨fuck around and find out✨ tournament, where we find out who’s the cutest badass! Submissions will be open for a week! (until 09/11 @ 12 EST)

✨The rules:✨

“Cute but can kick your ass” characters of all genders are accepted. Just no one from overly problematic sources. Vtubers and MCYT are not allowed.

One character per submission. You can submit multiple times, but only submit a character once! Please don’t spam.

No limit on characters from the same source.

Please be nice! Propaganda and feedback is allowed, but do not attack myself or others. You will be blocked.

This blog is rated M. Warning for potentially upsetting media. Let me know if you need anything tagged.

This bracket is for fun! Don’t take anything too seriously please. :3

✨Submit Here✨

Inspired by: @autistic-anime-girls-bracket @autisticgirliesbracket @girlygirltournament @pinkhairswagtourney@victimsofyaoipoll @morally-grey-girlbosses @best-kirby-character-tournament @controversial-blorbo-bracket @least-sexy-man-competition @most-datable-datable-bracket @leastdatablebracket @canonmisogynyvictimstournament @bi4bibracket @magical-mascot-smackdown @precureshowdown @precure-alphabet-showdown @mommy-daddy-issues-poll @uquiztournament @personasongshowdown @precuremusictournament @foundfamilyadoptionagency @ultimateanthropoll @ultimate-good-dog @ultimatepinkboy @magical-boy-bracket @guys-with-good-vibes-tournament @multicolorhairswagtournament @siblingtournament @tragicsibsshowdown @actually-insane-blorbo-bracket @favoritepokemontournament @favoritecapcomcharacterbracket @look-how-they-massacred-them (there’s more but i’m blanking lol)

Characters who are already entered:

all the Mew Mews (Tokyo Mew Mew)

all 4 Cures (Hirogaru Sky Precure, Fresh Precure, Mahoutsukai Precure)

Abigail (Stardew Valley)

Aerith Gainsborough, Tifa Lockhart & Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII)

Alice Liddel (American McGee’s Alice)

Alphonse & Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Alucard (Castlevania)

Alyssa Hamilton (Clock Tower 3)

Baby Bonnie Hood (Darkstalkers)

Barbie

Bibi the cat (IRL)

the DDLC girlies (Doki Doki Literature Club)

the Elsens (OFF)

Princess Fiona (Shrek)

Fiona Belli & Hewie (Haunting Ground)

Garnet & Spinel (Steven Universe)

Guillermo de la Cruz (What We Do in the Shadows)

Hana Nono/Cure Yell (Hugtto! Precure)

Haruka Haruno/Cure Flora (Go! Princess Precure)

Heather Mason (Silent Hill 3)

Isabelle (Animal Crossing/Super Smash Bros.)

Jeanette Voerman (Vampire: the Masquerade — Bloodlines)

Juliet Starling (Lollipop Chainsaw)

Leon S. Kennedy (Resident Evil 4)

Link (The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker)

Lisa Garland (Silent Hill)

Love Momozono/Cure Peach (Fresh Precure)

Kagome Higurashi (Inuyasha)

Kanji Tatsumi (Persona 4)

Kirby

Kotone Shiomi & Shinjiro Aragaki (Persona 3 Portable)

Madotsuki (Yume Nikki)

Mami Tomoe (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)

Marina (Splatoon 2)

Mega Lopunny (Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire)

Mimikyu (Pokemon Sun & Moon)

Noelle Holiday (Deltarune)

Opal (Pokemon Sword & Shield)

Panty & Stocking Anarchy (Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt)

Penny (Pokemon Scarlet & Violet)

Princess Peach (Super Mario/Super Smash Bros.)

Pyro (Team Fortress 2)

Rabbit of Caerbannog (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Prince Sidon (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom)

Sora & Kairi (Kingdom Hearts)

Spyro the Dragon

Terry Hintz & Buddy (Lisa the Painful)

Top Speed (Magical Girl Raising Project)

Toriel, Asgore and Asriel Dreemur (Undertale)

Usagi Tsukino & Minako Aino (Sailor Moon)

Whitney & Miltank (Pokemon Gold, Silver & Crystal)

Wirt & Greg (Over the Garden Wall)

Zoey, Rochelle & Ellis (Left 4 Dead series)

[illumoonated]

Analyzing Tifa Lockhart

*some spoilers for Remake/Rebirth/Original*

This interpretation is not dependent on her characterization from the original ffvii--i.e. this is focused on remake and rebirth.

Tifa gets a lot of flack for not being "interesting" or "complex". But to be honest, I think that's the point. If you don't care to look closer, you're just like the majority of the people she's come across in her life. You've fallen for the mask she's perfected to protect her true self.

Tifa is quick to help others but not quick to believe in herself. She has heard compliments about her appearance from googly-eyed fanboys like a Johnny for a very long time. But she is not vain and does not revel in it. Tifa clearly doesn't want to be known solely for her looks. In fact, I'd say she feels hindered by them.

Now, some people will argue that this isn't a "flaw". "Oh no! Poor girl is too beautiful! How hard that has to be...[sarcasm]." But for Tifa, it means that she's not taken seriously at first glance. She's somehow expected to be perfect because of how she looks. It's a label that others put on her. She is beautiful and therefore she MUST be good.

So what does Tifa do? She desperately tries to live up to that standard. She bypasses the praise and uses it as fuel to be as accommodating as possible. She is a textbook people pleaser. This leaves her feeling in debt to everyone that 'befriends' her.

I say 'befriend' because Tifa herself believes the mask of perfection she wears is who they really like--not Tifa herself. She feels she owes others the blind faith they put in her. In a way similar to Cloud, she's split in two.

There is the light-hearted, happy, accommodating, humble Tifa on the surface. But underneath, there is insecurity, anxiety, and a struggle with imposter syndrome. Still, whether on the surface or deep down, Tifa is always truly selfless, playful, and empathetic. The funny thing is, she doesn't seem to understand that these are what make her special.

She preempts her tears in front of Cloud in Remake by stating that she knows they're a waste of time. Even before Cloud has said a word, she doesn't want to burden him with her weakness--he is not owed "weak" Tifa and she has to apologize for it.

But then Cloud disagrees, and provides space for her to grieve. And that's why I think she is attached to Cloud.

Yes, he is a mystery that needs to be unraveled, and he's from home, and their promise etc. but Tifa can be imperfect in front of Cloud and not be punished for it. In fact, even within Avalanche, Tifa feels like the odd person out.

She is close to her team and trusts them, but blowing up the reactors in Remake causes her to feel emotionally weak and less like a team player. It is only when she's forced to take someone else's place that she can be allowed on another bombing mission.

In Remake, she openly cries in front of Barret after the plate drops. She mourns Jessie, and the others too. But those are 'acceptable' tears. Now, I'm not saying Tifa's cognitively saying "yes, I can now cry" but in a way, she can allow herself to be weak around more than just Cloud when she's grieving because it's not a weakness to care for the lives of others. Tifa unconsciously knows she will not be rejected for being openly upset about sector 7 because it is a shared grief with the rest of the sector.

Sure, Tifa can explain her hesitation to Avalanche about the bombings and be upset about it, but Cloud is the only one who doesn't pass judgement on her emotions. Barret and the others obviously still care for Tifa and value her, but her grey-area hesitation is not going to assist them in achieving their goal which is very black and white.

Tifa is excellent at picking up the nuances of the environment and people around her. She is the first to mention that there are average everyday people working for Shinra. And that nothing is as simple as Avalanche wants it to be.

This tact and empathy is how she leads Cloud out of his own trauma-induced personality rewrite. She doesn't blast her way through like a Barret would, and she doesn't pass judgement on Cloud like so many others have done to her. She simply sits with Cloud, gently guiding him until he can find who he is in his own time.

But there is fear about speaking up. Tifa doesn't want to break Cloud or shatter him. She is afraid that this one person who she can finally be imperfect around will go away, leaving that mask of perfection on permanently.

Cloud is the only person she is both selfless and selfish about. Cloud can handle and cares to see who Tifa is beyond what she projects. He uses their promise as a lifeline back to the person he thinks he is and wants to be. He wants to be a hero. But Tifa doesn't need one. Not in the traditional sense.

She is physically strong, loyal, and tactful. She doesn't hesitate to help othersand doesn't run away from righting wrongs. But sure, maybe back in Nibelheim pre-psycho-sepho she wanted a knight in shining armor. She asks Cloud to save her. But I think a part of this promise is a way to link Cloud to her. She wants to be safe from harm, yes. But to her, a hero is someone who sees her beyond what she can give. She wants someone who wants to know the true her. Someone who doesn't punish her for her kindness, nor abuse her empathy simply because they feel they are "owed".

Cloud is the only person Tifa actively puts in debt to her. She is always doing for others, but Cloud is the only person where she can both give and receive help without squirming.

After Tifa wakes up from being in the Weapon's materia stomach, she tells Cloud it's time for her to save him. This is an even promise. The proposal scene from Fullmetal Alchemist comes to mind. "I'll give you half of my life if you give me half of yours." We can save each other. We can support each other. We can be weak in front of each other which will only make us stronger.

As this is rapidly approaching a Cloti post, I want to circumvent shipping talk (even though yeah, I am a major Cloti shipper). I want to discuss Tifa and Aerith's relationship.

When the jealous non-girlfriend of Johnny's chews Tifa out in Rebirth at Costa Del Sol, Tifa simply tells Aerith she's used to being treated that way. This can be interpreted as Tifa simply not having many girl friends to lean on. She looked up to Jessie for being confident and she cares for Marlene like an Aunt, but for the most part, Tifa can be made into the villain of someone else's story simply for her looks and kindness.

Aerith's friendship is a boon. She actively stands up for Tifa. They joke around and laugh. They have what I would call "sleepover talk" about boys and Cloud. Aerith trusts Tifa with the truth about Zack just as Tifa tells Aerith that Cloud was never in Nibelheim (to her knowledge). Aerith is the first girl friend she can rely on and not be in competition with. Which is ironic since the fandom loves to pit them against each other for the title of "best jrpg waifu"....

Aerith is an ancient for chrissake! She is cute and bubbly and sassy. Tifa could very easily be intimidated by Aerith for being more honest and blunt about the things she wants and needs, but she isn't. She's inspired. Just like Cloud, Aerith allows Tifa to be insecure, but unlike Cloud, Aerith is able to be more vocal about it to Tifa's face. If Cloud is a man of action when it comes to showing Tifa he cares about her, then Aerith is the woman of words.

When we (presumably) lose Aerith at the end of Rebirth, Tifa reverts back to her shell. Her confidant/sister/best friend is gone. Her childhood friend/love interest/hero has not only lost his footing on reality, he is actively descending further and further away from it.

What is left for Tifa? She's gotten a taste of what it's like to be imperfect and cared for in spite of/because of that. And now she can't hide as well as she used to. Cloud tells Barret he can handle the heavy load (whether he knows that Barret is referring to Aerith's death is another post entirely), but Tifa knows he can't. She is more alone than ever now.

So what will Reunion bring? I hope to see Tifa take a more active role in her story. I know that in the OG she isn't as take charge as players wanted her to be, and I can understand that frustration. I just hope now, that with all this amazing character building, we see it come to a head. That we see Tifa accept her imperfections with grace and leadership.

[surgepricing]

RWBY Final Thoughts: Legacy

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. ... [Basically,] they behave like a cult.

This is a repost of a post I made February 1st, 2024 on another site. At the time, it was the final post of a deep-dive recap of RWBY and the history of the show, its fandom, and its direction under Rooster Teeth.

I felt this out with some of my peers and the feedback I got in relation to posting in on Tumblr was that, well, why not? It was my main haunt to begin with, and I may as well, since Rooster Teeth is closing its doors. I'm posting this mainly as a shot in the dark just to see how it gets received. Only minor edits have been made; I'm sure there's some stuff in here that would make people mad, but that applies to pretty much anything someone could say about RWBY. Click the read more to get a glance at how my time with RWBY ultimately wrapped up.

Nine years ago today, Monty Oum died of an allergic reaction. Today is a day of mourning for fans of his work, including RWBY. There’s no sense in waiting. Let’s finish this and heal.

The Showrunners

Miles and Kerry often received the brunt of the attention when it came to RWBY. As the writers of the show, they bore responsibility for the largest chunk of why it eventually went into the shitter, and fan anger against them was almost certainly not helped by the damn near idolization heaped on them by fervent stans. They are, undoubtedly, the focal point of RWBY fans’ parasocial relationship with the show.

Of course, despite sharing about the same credits space as his partner in crime, Kerry tended to fly under the radar a lot, with it being Miles who received the brunt of the fandom’s fury with each successive volume. It’s not hard to see why; the character Miles voices has been consistently over-exposed and is in many ways an obvious creator’s pet, with denials as to this fact falling on deaf ears as Jaune’s screentime continued to balloon past its merits, whereas the character Kerry voices could just about wrangle an average of ten seconds of screentime every three years. Certainly Miles has been in trouble with fans more often than Kerry for the shit he’s said and done. The Ruby body pillow and the Tifa Lockhart ‘prostitute’ comments come to mind. Oh, and the slurs, that one too.

But perhaps the reason Miles gets so much more flak than Kerry is that Miles just...acts like an asshole a lot of the time. Even aside from above examples, Miles’ flaws come out in his writing: he’s petty, holds grudges, can’t take criticism, and just overall has way more power over the story than someone of his caliber should. He’s very poor at disguising his real feelings and often lets them bleed through, and when he actually decides to voice them on purpose, things get ugly—refer to that Cameo about Ironwood.

But as tempting as it is to treat Miles as an out-of-control cockwaffle on the rampage and Kerry as his sympathetic ineffectual shadow, the reality is that they’re co-writers, have been for ten years, and anything Miles gets away with doing is as much Kerry’s fault as his. If the Gray Haddock situation has taught us anything, it’s that more people tend to harbor blame than the one individual that makes an easy scapegoat.

Since aside from aforementioned n-word business, Miles and Kerry are almost never connected to moral outrage, this makes it easy for the stans to uphold them, since all they really have to defend them from is accusations that they didn’t honor Monty’s “vision” for the series. This is only easy because the stans are fucking insane, but that’s for later on down the page.

“Vision” is in quotes because that’s how fans treat it, we all know they don’t really care. Miles and Kerry’s vision matters, and we know that much because of Calixyn’s interview where she all but begged to be told that RWBY Volume 5 was as bad as it was because the “good bois” had control of the show ripped from them. Nope, turns out all that racism, homophobia, and plain shitty writing is all on them. But at least they’re nice!

(Miles was 26 when he said the n-word. I’m 26 now when writing this. I think it’s pretty fair to call him an asshole.)

But the truth is that it’s objectively stupid to think that the direction of RWBY hasn’t changed since Monty’s passing, it’s impossible for it not to have. There are more writers on board than before, and it’s been a long time since he was alive to contribute his thoughts. The real question is whether they at least tried, and I don’t think they did.

I mean, Shane Newville never names Miles and Kerry in his letter, but he does state several times that the choices made for the show were not only not what Monty wanted, but “straight up just shitting all over what Monty made”. I find it very difficult to believe that that insinuation, and all of the people caught up in the net it casts, wouldn’t include those two. And like it or not, but the person who is able to compile tons of clips and interviews over the years as some sort of seeming immutable proof that “CRWBY” are good-hearted people determined to preserve Monty’s vision, isn’t really looking at any more evidence than the person who’s come to the conclusion, based on what they’ve seen, that that the opposite is true. And they’re certainly looking at less evidence than the people who actually did work there around Monty, Miles, and Kerry. The facts sometimes boil down to ‘if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and is implicated in the walls of text like a duck, it’s probably a duck’, guys.

Even in the best case scenario in which the work of Monty Oum turns out to have been treated with dignity and respect (and was just really shittily written from the beginning), the fact remains that Miles and Kerry did not put a quality product into the world. I will be very surprised if either of them manages to get a lead writing position ever again, because once the popularity of RWBY fades, so too will the goodwill they’ve somehow amassed among its fans. RWBY, much like Twilight, is inevitably going to taint the people who were in charge of writing it.

But Miles and Kerry are just two dudes. What exactly is going to happen to those fervent fans who hung on their every word and insisted they were the embodiment of everything pure and innocent? What, exactly, is going to happen to the RWBY fandom that once seemed to be unavoidably populous on the internet?

F, N, D, M

We already went over “constructive criticism” and “worldbuilding”, so let’s add another eternally-misused word to our roster. You know, something I’ve occasionally thought about in terms of online spaces is that no one knows what a “comfort show” is. It’s one of those terms that became too popular almost as soon as it was introduced, to the point that it became meaningless, much like “hyperfixation” and “anxiety”. I see people refer to RWBY as their comfort show and I’m just like...how? A comfort show is supposed to be the show that always puts you in a good headspace, a show you rest easy with because you’ve always connected with it because the love was always there. A comfort show is a show that you watch in your down moments to feel better, not a show you think is just the greatest thing ever, the bees’ knees if you will.

A comfort show is not a show you force yourself to like, it is not a show you defend at all costs, and it is not a show you only still cling to because enjoying it once coincided with a time when you felt popular and among friends. Which, increasingly, seems to have been the case for RWBY fans.

RWBY’s Fandom

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. But I’m doing it now because the RWBY fandom, though now it’s a shadow of its former self, is still a sizable chunk of people and took a lot longer to die than most other fandoms.

The RWBY fandom itself was an especially big and very online fandom, and the show produced an abnormally large amount of big name fans who continued to use their own influence to push its success and keep its momentum going. As I’ve said before, the RWBY fandom is something that Rooster Teeth were able to extract an excessive amount of praise out of for minimal effort; it simply seems to be in RWBY fans’ nature to speculate and theorize and over-analyze and fill in blanks, and to perceive good writing and animation where there is none. But you know how fandom operates—the bigger its size, the more infamous it becomes.

Long since famed for being especially toxic, those who are in the know consider RWBY fans a different breed, really. They create and move narratives at high speed and act quickly to correct any perceived dissent in the ranks, casting out anyone that feels disillusionment with the product and insisting everything is peachy even as their world crumbles around them. To RWBY fans, the “CRWBY” are always separate from the “problematic” aspects of Rooster Teeth (which is basically the whole company) and it doesn’t matter how many of its flaws get highlighted; RWBY and the people that make it are always great, innocent of any harm done and fantastic, and anyone that dislikes them is a villain—even if those people were at one point part of the “CRWBY” themselves. Loyalty is everything. In other words, they behave like a cult.Those acronyms themselves have always bothered me, and I’ve grown a strong distaste for them. Originally they were just a quirk of the show; a format for team names that spawned the name of the show and eventually stopped being relevant altogether. But RWBY fans are simply unable to not use them. It’s not “the fandom” it’s “the FNDM”. They’re not “the RWBY team” or “the RWBY crew”, they’re “CRWBY”. Even people that the fans are actively trying to shame, shun, and harass don’t get to simply be people—they’re “RWDE” and, when that became an actual community of sorts unto itself, was switched to “HTDM”, short for “hatedom”. They remind me distinctly of code words that get formed and passed around in cult movements, identifying terms that quickly provide boxes to put people in and make it easier to sort loyals from disloyals. “Hatedom” itself is another one of those terms that spread and got so prolific it really doesn’t carry any meaning anymore. Real hatedoms are surprisingly rare, guys. Every fandom that becomes big enough for its respective product to become criticized eventually comes to believe it has a ‘hatedom’ because how could someone dislike something I like so much? But a hatedom on its own arises out of very specific circumstances and environments, and causes the spread of hate for a product based on broad foundations that are often unfair to the product and which creates perceptions that spread faster than the work, so that the work is often talked about in mocking reference rather than true dissatisfaction.

RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom guys, it never did. The Last of Us doesn’t have a hatedom. Fairy Tail didn’t have a hatedom. Blackpink doesn’t have a hatedom. Even Marvel doesn’t have a hatedom.

Paris Hilton had a hatedom. Nickelback had a hatedom. Hell, the website Tumblr itself had a hatedom. These were examples of people or products whose reputations spread too quickly and eventually swallowed rational perception of them, with people who have never experienced them or their work dismissing them and the fans who enjoy it wholesale.

Using the term “hatedom” is understandably common because (and in spite of the fact that) it allows for easy miscategorization. A hatedom is not composed of people that were actually exposed to the work, found it lacking, and expressed that. A hatedom does not occur in the wake of a product that was so bad it pissed off its fans and caused them to walk. People don’t hate Metroid: Other M because they can’t stand the sight of a woman being vulnerable and don’t understand challenging drama, they hate it because it was poorly written, badly designed, and tarnished a long-running and highly cherished gaming heroine’s reputation. People didn’t hate Fifty Shades of Grey because of some bias against women expressing their sexual freedom, they hated it because it was a wildly misogynistic and badly-written piece of dreck. People didn’t hate The Last of Us Part II because of homophobia and transphobia, they hated it because it was a misery fest with a tired moral theme that posited itself far more deep and compelling than it really was. And just because people with the above disingenuous views also hated these things does not discount the fact that the works got the reputations they did because they were getting back the exact amount of love and respect that was put into them.

Similarly, RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom. It does, in fact, have an ex-fandom. Those are also things you don’t see very often, but when you do, they almost always follow the same pattern, don’t they? A work which got wildly popular very quickly, took really deep nosedives afterward, and became disowned by the people that had formerly propped it up.

But that’s a discussion for later. What exactly makes RWBY’s fandom so toxic and cult-like, and why and how did it get that way? I think it’s a combination of several key factors that were baked in and collided badly.

The first was ease of access. RWBY was sold extremely well early on, and shared enough similarities with both anime and video games that it attracted many curious people from those communities. Combine that with vibrant colors, an attractive visual aesthetic, an air of badassery, and good music, and it gained a lot of loyal fans quickly—fans of anime and video games, specifically, being fans that tend to get more attached than to other mediums and are known for spending a lot on merchandise. These, in turn, morphed into nostalgic elements ripe for misremembering—people often have difficulty acknowledging that something they once liked isn’t good anymore even on its own, and I think RWBY fans in particular put way too much energy into the show to be able to admit that all the time they spent defending it (and harassing people who criticized it) was for nothing.

That skyhigh rocket to fame early on, of course, was attached to the reputation of Monty Oum, and once he died, he quickly became a martyr, which galvanized the loyalty of the show’s most toxic fans even further. To this day, talking about Monty at all, even for the right reasons, is seen as disrespectful or distasteful unless you’re trying to use him to prop up Rooster Teeth, a double standard I’ve unfortunately run into even in seeming safe spaces. I think if we’re comparing RWBY fandom to a cult, then Monty Oum and his memory can be compared to a central mythologized figure, the center around which are formed all of the pretty lies the members of the cult will tell you. Monty’s name is irreplaceably tied to RWBY, and as such, in order to defend Monty, its fans have to defend RWBY...and you can see where this leads. Attempting to talk about the mistreatment Monty and his family went through at Rooster Teeth is seen as using his name as a weapon—nevermind the fact that Rooster Teeth and their fans regularly use his name as a shield.

Of course, what this really reveals is that many such people don’t care about Monty, who he was, or who he went through, but rather his name alone. In fact, I’ve straight up seen RWBY stans say that people shouldn’t “take Monty’s name in vain”, as if Monty were in fact some sacred religious figure. It’s both bizarre and harmful.

A third factor was popularity. For a lot of the same reasons as, say, Supernatural, the perception of RWBY skews much more broadly between fan and ex-fan than that of the typical over-hyped show. The truth of the matter is that when a show gets popular, or really any work gets popular, enjoying it becomes a cliquey sort of thing. People that enjoyed being into something well-respected and widely known and basically the hottest trend are far more prone to become overly attached, put too much of themselves into it, and remain unequipped to deal with the fact of that trend’s eventual passing, especially if it’s a fall into disgrace rather than a quiet entrance into history. You can still find certain especially toxic big names from the RWBY fandom active and posting, pretending not to notice that their audience has become smaller and smaller over the years. Let’s face facts here, a lot of people that enjoy being part of the “in” crowd never manage to figure out how to accept losses and will do anything to try and regain lost popularity, or fool themselves into thinking they’re still on top of the world.

But we can reason and explain all day. Another truth of the matter is that it shouldn’t be other people’s problem that fans can’t accept reality and adjust, and that the RWBY fandom quite honestly deserves its reputation as abysmally toxic. The way terminal fans of the show have treated anyone who dissents, most prominently Shane Newville and other ex-employees, let alone other ex-fans of the show, is quite frankly disgusting. RWBY stans are difficult to look at in all of their bewildering, teeth-gnashing toxicity and forgive...so I’m not going to. People that still insist there’s nothing wrong with this show or the company making it are, as far as I’m concerned, beyond help, and are part of the problem. Many an ex-employee certainly thinks so.

In a lot of ways, you could call the fandom one of the driving forces of the show’s failure, mostly because they had an abnormally large amount of influence over the show. Pleasing the fans has always been a major goal of the RWBY team (unless you like characters Miles Luna doesn’t, I guess), but it’s almost disturbing how the Rooster Teeth strategy has been to lead them along and bat their eyelashes at every turn and how the fandom laps it up.

Of course, Rooster Teeth feeds the parasocial engine by engaging with the fans as equals, and I was given a disturbing reminder of how many of the people who worked on the show—the ones who aren’t pissed and digging themselves out of trauma ditches—behave exactly as the fans do, tweeting twenty times a day about their favorite ships and memes. By creating the perception that RWBY’s team is just like the RWBY fanbase and wants the same things they want, they tap that line of excess energy that’s kept this fandom going so long despite how far it’s fallen. It’s that “hey! my friend said my ship is going to be canon and he works on the show” feeling.

Of course, a probable reason as to why so many employees who worked on RWBY behave the way RWBY fans do is because a lot of them started out that way. As in, student hires. This has long been an open secret of Rooster Teeth’s M.O. for a while now, hiring people who look up to them and engage heavily with their content. Many an ex-animator has lambasted this tactic because it’s insidious, and purposely designed to make the incoming staff feel honored and indebted and excited so they won’t notice how they’re being fucked over. Arryn Troche, who made the ‘gays greenlighting volume 10’ tweet, rings up as a particularly eerie example considering they have the same rather-uncommon and unconventionally-spelled name as the voice actor for a ship they’re obviously very attached to. A quick search reveals them to have been a longtime fan and cosplayer for the show before being signed on as a junior animator.

And it is the fandom who ultimately makes the legacy for any given work or body of work. So what is RWBY ultimately going to be remembered for?

Legacy

I thought about it for a little while and found five things that are most likely to be associated with RWBY in the public’s memory after its death. The first should come as no surprise to anyone.

Bumbleby

The only part of RWBY that will likely be carried on by fans who stuck with it until the end is, of course, the only part of it that mattered, to many of them. You’ll know from my earlier recaps that shipping was always a big deal in fandom, but due to key choices (or if you prefer, mistakes) made during Volumes 2 and 3, one ship grew larger and more promoted in fandom circles than any others.

This is a combination of the unique features of the RWBY fandom and their one-track mind. The fans are well-known, as I said, to fill in the blanks in a pattern that best suits their narratives, and this works out with Rooster Teeth because it means that any sudden changes in direction they make will always be excused and praised rather than critically examined. Unsurprisingly, Bumbleby’s fandom, now that their victory has been cemented, have doubled down on their narrative that this was the intended goal from the beginning, despite it being plainly obvious that early RWBY was angling for Sun Wukong as the love interest and threw the occasional bones to Blake/Yang shippers to try and play nice.

This used to be one part of the fandom, of course, but as the show continually bombed with viewers and made more and more decisions that pushed them away, all competitors were slowly filtered out as their fans left, until Bumbleby shippers were the fandom. It’s no coincidence that Blake and Yang suddenly started acting unusually touchy and sentimental in Volume Six, following on the heels of a volume of RWBY so wildly unpopular that it woke up the company execs and forced them to acknowledge that the biggest part of their fanbase was only going to remain loyal in exchange for one thing: their ship.

The sad thing is that you can tell Rooster Teeth wanted to explore other options. Volume Five features a rather sudden shift into Yang and Weiss interactions in what I remain positive to this day was an attempt to sway shippers into a potential second choice while Black Sun was still in the oven, and this really represented one of the major errors of Rooster Teeth, in that they failed to understand the audience they were trying so hard to please.

Bumbleby became what I call a “Big Red Button” ship, and it is only the second of its kind that I’ve seen. The first? Destiel.

Yes, there’s a reason I kept comparing RWBY to Supernatural whenever Blake and Yang’s relationship came up. I admit I wasn’t a part of the Supernatural craze in its heyday and have never really enjoyed the show, but I’ve watched enough of it to connect the dots from what cultural osmosis I had to the eventual downfall we saw in November of 2020.

Both Bumbleby and Destiel were held up as the gay ship that would change everything, the biggest ship in the fandom and the one that would’ve been a major push for LGBT visibility, at least during their heydays. The problem was that its fans were not really that interested in LGBT visibility and were simply obsessed with the ship itself, applying it value as a win for LGBT audiences purely to bolster its perceived importance. Fans like this were not ever going to accept any alternatives regardless of the sexual orientations or gender conventions involved. Hence, the metaphor that is “the big red button”. You have a big red button that says “canon gay ship but not the ship you want” and ask the fans you’re trying to court whether they’d press it or not. Whatever they might say out loud, you know none of them is pressing that fucking button, ever.

Both of these Big Red Button ships became what they were due to showrunners being forced into courting an audience they really didn’t care for, and how could you blame them when both were infamously very, very over-active and annoying in general. Just like with RWBY’s well-intentioned but misguided Freezerburn phase in Volume 5, Supernatural also tried to gently shut down fans who then managed to obliviously ignore any and all hints that their ship was not meant to be endgame, and I can say that because “he’s like a brother to me” in any fandom but Supernatural would’ve been a tactical nuclear strike that sent the shippers packing. Once it failed, the gay bait came out in full force. It’s well known by now that, contrary to what one would imagine, the CW was not pulling a profit off of Supernatural’s minor mainstream success pushed by a cult following, so it’s no wonder they eventually resorted to desperately baiting the one audience that was going to stick it out no matter what, provided they had the right relationship dangled in front of them. RWBY went through the same thing.

The main problem with these two ships is that for all its diehards insisted that it was all about the gay representation, their respective shows teased and baited for so long that the world outside the little bubble these shippers lived in had moved on by the time they came to fruition. Gay visibility in media these days, at least western media, is easily available, to the extent that sometimes people believe homophobia is totally over when it really, really isn’t. If you’re looking for gay representation, you can find it plenty of places, and the first place you look probably isn’t going to be Supernatural or RWBY. So the huge wave of viewers that these shippers expected upon their victories was never going to occur, which might could’ve been avoided if the writers had simply grown a pair and made moves towards canon much sooner than before the shows were on their last legs and due to be scrapped.

Or, you know, just been honest. Diversions and alternatives were never going to work. The only thing that these shippers were ever going to understand was a hard no, a “sorry, this ship isn’t going to happen”. But the execs in charge of these shows were never willing to take a hit like that, so instead they dug their own grave.

And where does that leave the shippers, those people who devoted their whole lives to these fictional characters, only to find the show that bore them into the universe dead in a ditch? Well, nowhere good. Much like Supernatural, RWBY is heavily associated with its booming period, the heavily online portion of these shippers’ lives in the early and mid-2010s when it was all the rage, and yet in modern day, it’s seen as a bad neighborhood to hang in, an abandoned mansion at the corner of the street where awful things happened. These shippers don’t have many friends except each other.

Just like RWBY, Supernatural also exists primarily as an ex-fandom now. Much of its former fanbase remember the good days fondly but make no secret that they stopped following it once the writing tanked, and this left the shippers without many allies to associate with since so many of them had been pissed off with the way their shows ultimately became the Destiel Show and the Bumbleby Show, respectively. Contrary to an unfortunately popular idea, these shows did have actual LGBT fanbases, only a lot of their LGBT fans were not on kool-aid and avoided being sucked into a trap called “if you don’t ship this, you’re homophobic”.

You will find that the Bumbleby fandom are often looked on with disdain by quite a number of viewers of RWBY who have accused them of speaking over minorities, sexual and otherwise. Many fans have noted that, aside from Blake’s bisexuality being a seemingly late addition (Arryn Zech is noted to have cast her as straight when discussing Ilia Amitola’s ill-fated crush on her as late as 2019), Blake was very swiftly removed from all faunus characters who held romantic connotations in favor of Yang, implicitly saying that Blake was better committing to a white human woman than to an ethnic faunus male. There are obvious reasons why this left a bad taste in peoples’ mouths. Not to mention, other LGBT fans that invested in the show were not exactly welcomed with open arms.

Fair Game, or as I tend to call it, Qrowver? Qrow x Clover? Yeah, that was huge in Volume 7’s airing days. It very much experienced a rapid ballooning in fans and fandom love...but we all know how that ended. Many a fan who felt heartbroken and, importantly, betrayed by Clover’s sudden and rather pointless death turned on RWBY and Rooster Teeth and accused them of gaybaiting, which is of course exactly what happened. They received no sympathy from Bumbleby shippers—because of course they wouldn’t. If Rooster Teeth would gaybait with Qrow, a popular male character, that would mean they could potentially be gaybaiting with Blake and Yang, too. That was unacceptable, and so ironically the part of the fandom that had always crowed about the importance of extending a hand to LGBT viewers turned on LGBT viewers, valiantly defending Rooster Teeth as they always had.

And because Bumbleby fans had no room in their hearts for anything about RWBY except Bumbleby, and were hostile to anyone who didn’t ship it, they ended up being their own best friends and everyone else’s bad memories. When RWBY has faded from the public’s memory and is no longer a source of active income at all (so, basically right now), one of the only relics you’ll find of this show will be the two women making out in all the fanart you’ll find on the occasional Tumblr blog.

The Bigotry

You could call this section “the Racism” since that’s the biggest part of it, but we’d be remiss in neglecting the harm done to other minorities as well. We’ll get to them in a minute, but race is the thing that’s going to pop to mind when we talk about one of the other things RWBY left behind in the common memory.

One of the longest-running subplots that RWBY ever went through with was the racism subplot. Its basis is one of the things that so severely dates RWBY: creating an in-universe stand-in for people of color through the existence of people with animal traits was something you would absolutely not get away with after 2020, and even by 2016 was something liable to be seen as tacky. Nonetheless, RWBY openly used the faunus as stand-ins for black Americans and the struggles they faced in a white world.

Except that the company, based in Texas and headed largely by white staff, did not feel the importance of that. What slowly started out as a main character’s attempt to redeem an organization she felt had been driven too far and was no longer her home was slowly transformed into a means by which some incredibly racist people could spout off about what they felt were the real issues to be talked about, which were the condemnation they felt was deserved by activists that turned to violence, labeled, a little too quickly, as terrorists.

The 2010s saw a shift in social values, and much as with gay audiences and gay characters, black audiences and black characters—as well as other racial minorities—were experiencing something of a renaissance, with efforts to put the voices of these people into the public’s feeds. It wasn’t just George Floyd in 2020—the unexpected and frankly traumatic reign of Donald Trump as president of the United States galvanized the divide in America and social awareness became a bigger thing than ever, and since Trump was a flagrantly racist person with racist beliefs who enacted racist policies and was uplifted by racist Americans, people pushed back as they felt their lives and existences being threatened by a racist establishment...an establishment which Rooster Teeth came down on the side of very firmly.

No quarter is given to the fictional stand-ins. Sienna Khan’s policies are never examined in-depth, and the only close looks we get at the sorts of activism the White Fang does are at Adam, who is obviously condemned by the narrative and made into everything but a mustache-twirler, with delusional and frankly baffling beliefs of faunus superiority spelled out at length. No matter what concessions Rooster Teeth might’ve tried to make with Sienna’s beliefs before they stuck a sword in her, the fact of the matter is that their beliefs came through in the voices of Ghira and Blake, who made it very clear that the individual motives and experiences of people like Ilia, Corsac, Fennec, Yuma, and the rest simply don’t matter in the face of what they’d been driven to do by them. The whole ‘blacks can be racist’ tone of the final scenes involved in this subplot are both miles removed from the more cautious and neutral tone of early RWBY, and also just a very alarming red flag overall.

I went over this in my Volume 5 Final Thoughts: the shoddiness of the volume does not lie solely with the animation department. Miles and Kerry are known to have had generally sole control of the show up until Volume 7—but we also know that they didn’t have to, if they were writing anything company execs felt wasn’t to their tastes. The sudden twisting of Adam into a homicidal incel ex-boyfriend, along with his mutation into a faunus supremacist, when he was the face of the faunus movement as a whole, along with Sun’s blatant ill will towards the White Fang when he’d previously been willing to give them a chance on Blake’s word, all imply that Miles and Kerry endorsed the worst possible interpretations of racial activists and felt free to condemn them and place responsibility onto the faunus—and by extension, the real-life minorities they represented—to take a stand against the bad seeds within their causes, and the fact no one stopped them from airing this implies the higher-ups felt the same way.

People didn’t just leave RWBY after Volume 5 because of some really badly animated fights—they left because they’d felt too much of the authors’ racism coming through in the narrative and couldn’t comfortably continue watching. Every member of the faunus that had “bad” views was either killed (Adam, Sienna, Fennec), arrested (Corsac, Yuma), or “redeemed” by choosing to fight the first two (Ilia). All of these combined factors, with no room for charitable interpretations…not a good look.

And once Adam was defeated in Volume 5, and the White Fang reformed, that was the last anyone saw of that subplot, which had taken five years to wrap up and somehow still ended too early. Miles and Kerry had washed their hands of it, and references to Blake’s place in society were sparing from then on. This subplot’s inescapable presence throughout the show, combined with how it was dropped out of existence, left no room for redemption, either. No one was going back and saying “maybe this looks really, really bad”.

And so, that’s what a lot of people carried with them as their final and most relevant memories of RWBY: it’s astounding levels of racism. This is a bitter subject for many an ex-RWBY fan, many of whom aren’t white and, even among those that are, it’s simply inexcusable. Meet someone on social media who talks about RWBY at all, and isn’t one of the Bumbleby stans we’ve already discussed? You will find some mention or other of RWBY’s racist elements somewhere within their sphere. And so, that becomes a part of RWBY’s legacy, as a feature of the show that was simply too big to ignore and too poorly-handled to forgive. People don’t get over this shit, man.

This is of course not to mention the well deserved shitty reputation RWBY has for its other bigoted elements, as well. Bumbleby, as we’ve discussed, encompassed pretty much every RWBY stan left standing by 2020, but that left quite a few ex-fans that were fed up with the company’s obvious ploys when it came to sexuality and gender. Remember when I talked about Qrowver up above? Its ballooning and immediate fall from grace was a much-condensed version of RWBY as a whole, and pretty much featured as Rooster Teeth blowing their last remaining patience from LGBT fans to smithereens. The fact of the matter is that when you get down to it, every RWBY volume after Volume 4 was not a good time to be a minority. If you were gay, the show seemed to either ignore or despise you—between the background gays that warranted mockery, the mixed reception Ilia generated, and the outrage that finally boiled over when Clover bit it, part of RWBY’s legacy is how utterly unpleasant it has been for LGBT fans who expected and deserved better.

And so despite entering the scene in 2013 as a supposedly progressive show all for being led by four women, the show died known as a low-effort half-baked cringefest whose politics were always on display and always several years behind the trend.

The Good Days

Of course, another major part of RWBY’s legacy is the early days when everyone actually liked it. This is, again, something the show creators brought on themselves and something fans assisted with. I did mention the nostalgia for the Good Ol’ Days as a significant part of the RWBY fandom’s more cult-like elements, after all. The fact of the matter is, on some level, everyone knows that RWBY has spent several years going downhill. The ex-fans lament this fact, and the diehard stans insist that it’s all just as good as it used to be, primarily by doing what they do quite a lot, and linking completely coincidental elements back to things characters said or did in previous volumes as some sort of evidence that this has been the plan all along.

I’ve run polls on this matter before; even though I’ve recapped Volumes 1-3 thoroughly and shone lights on some pretty significant flaws, you ask anyone what they think the best volume of RWBY was and they’re gonna tell you Volume 3. Yes, even with all of the stalking incel Adam and the deaths of Penny and Pyrrha. It’s the last time RWBY felt cohesive and even though some obvious derailing was in effect, and Shane Newville has openly said that the behind-the-scenes matters were pretty ugly, it’s still the golden child. Shane’s only one person, and it’d be a while before RWBY scandals would become consistent and begin to overshadow the show as a whole.

The RWBY team themselves have certainly nurtured that very much on purpose. That tactic started with them, of course. Many elements that were either unpopular or predicted to ruffle feathers were stated to have originated in earlier volumes, even in situations where this wouldn’t have made sense or where it’s an obvious lie—such as Maria Calavera. They know full well their seasons post-Volume 3 were unpopular and receiving blowback, and tried to minimize it by linking them to more well-respected seasons. Suffice to say that this simply didn’t work. But it does make people remember those earlier volumes. Because so many ex-fans lost their energy for RWBY after its most active period, much of the hype from the hype era is all that you’ll see when you encounter one. Nostalgia wins out in the end, and at least RWBY can say that, as a show, it had enough of a headstart to leave an impression that lasted in a positive way. Although that’s only one side of the coin...

The Scandals

Let’s face facts here, the biggest part of RWBY’s legacy, period, is that it fucking died. It didn’t die instantly, but rather took hit after hit, blow after blow, and slowly had its image tarnished alongside that of the company, which failed to contain repeated scandals as ex-employee after ex-employee after ex-employee spoke out about the abysmal ways they’d been treated.

RWBY is Rooster Teeth’s biggest IP by far and, really, their only one worth talking about. Every other show was either eclipsed by it or unofficially canceled after bad reception. So when Rooster Teeth suffered the consequences of their actions, so did RWBY. It really can’t be overstated how the last few years of RWBY’s existence have been absolutely bombarded by a barrage of terrible Glassdoor reviews and bombshell exposure letters. Fans managed to stay strong through the first few rumblings of ill will, but after Volume 5 shook the fandom loose, discontent entered enough of the fandom sphere to be normalized, and once that happened, it was all downhill. Once people were actually allowed to talk about not liking Rooster Teeth’s content, they sure as hell weren’t going to be dissuaded from talking about not liking Rooster Teeth as a company or its practices.

Separating the art from the artist is a very difficult thing to do and only really appropriate in certain situations. Don’t fall for any kool-aid, guys, it doesn’t make you more mature or ‘above all the drama’ to actively ignore the damage done to real people in the process of getting fictional content out into the world.

If you’re still able to enjoy the Harry Potter books and look back on the good times they gave you in fondness, then fine. If you actually purchased and played the Hogwarts Legacy game programmed by antisemites and which puts money in the pocket of the transphobic owner of the franchise, then yeah, people will be right to give you shit for it. There’s a difference between quietly enjoying a product in a manner that doesn’t hurt anybody, and actively ignoring the people hurt to make that product while feigning concern. The gap in the fandom widened as the repeated leaks and scandals continuously ate away at the protective bubble around Rooster Teeth and it became clear that whatever fans might bleat, Rooster Teeth wasn’t going to ‘learn their lesson and do better’. The habitual cycle of using whatever recent scandal had occurred to cast disappointment and anger on a particular figure and uplift the rest of “CRWBY” (see also: the Gray Haddock issue) gave diminishing returns as the bombs kept dropping. This is part of why RWBY has such an ex-fandom, because if they aren’t enjoying the product and people were hurt to make it, why stay?

Crunching employees so hard they struggle to sleep and suffer debilitating health issues? Writing the n-word on a white board knowing a black employee will see it? Goading someone into trying to kill themselves? Calling an LGBT employee a slur and then making up a public-friendly nickname in place of that slur just to get away with continuing to call her that? Laying off people without warning or a means of letting them stay afloat until another job is found? Not paying or crediting employees and cultivating an environment where those in charge do what they want and those in the public eye reap all the benefit while those without a consistent spotlight get treated like dirt?

Just some of the things I thought up off the top of my head. There’s plenty more in the details. And you can’t blame Fullscreen, you can’t blame Warner, you can’t just write it off as something that happens at animation studios, because it isn’t. Yeah, the work environment in general for animation studios in America is lacking because, ya know, late-stage capitalism hellscape, but that’s dismissive of the point. Rooster Teeth are a bad company and hurt their employees and lie when called on it. It’s impossible to separate RWBY from Rooster Teeth (despite stubborn stans’ best attempts, which themselves have been called out by these same ex-employees) and because of that, RWBY’s legacy is one of corporate abuse and utterly vile behavior towards people that just wanted to make something cool.

People have refused to associate with the show over these things and honestly, they’re right to. RWBY’s ultimate legacy, if we’re honest, is the show that became a shadow of its former self, still trying to dazzle with reminders of its former glory and promises of gay relationships, all while trying to squeeze money out of both the employees who made it and the fans who upheld it. It’s the show that cost hundreds of people their physical and mental health and didn’t even have anything to show for it at the end of the day. It will live on in history as the most bitter of pills to swallow, that something you once liked and wanted to succeed can and will be ruthlessly twisted for profit margins and might actively hate you on the side. And speaking of…

Monty Oum

The biggest travesty of RWBY’s legacy is that Monty Oum is ultimately only the smallest part of it. He’s there, but barely—he’s a name in the credits that quite frankly is only there to keep up the facade of loyalty, when the show had stopped being Monty’s show before he even died and by now can be safely said to resemble nothing he would’ve made.

It’s a shame that for all that Monty was held up as a genius of his craft and a genuinely good man who inspired so many people, all he’s going to be remembered for is...this. A show people only attach his name to in an effort to insist it’s actually worth sticking by. Yes, Monty did other things, had other works, but none of them ever achieved even a fraction of the fame and respect that RWBY had from its first baby steps in 2013.

Maybe this could’ve been avoided if the real carriers of Monty’s legacy—Sheena, his wife, and Shane, his pupil—hadn’t been cast off as they had.

Shane seems to have found a new life and is working with Dillon Gu on animation, but I think we’ve all noticed his name hasn’t gone mainstream yet. I’ve tried to get in touch with him; from what I’ve gleaned, I frankly just advise leaving him alone. He wants to move on and I don’t think the RWBY fandom, which was so awful to him for telling the truth, is ever going to be a place he can feel welcome.

Sheena has mostly been quiet and done her own thing, cosplaying and watching anime and hopefully enjoying herself, although I notice posts on her Twitter feed from last year calling for a New Deal in the animation sector and castigating corporate abuses.

She also plays Hades, a much better product than RWBY with more love put into it and much better LGBT representation, which means her taste is excellent. She has a site now that you can go to, and the about section doesn’t mention Monty, her late husband, at all, for obvious reasons: Sheena doesn’t want to be connected to RWBY. Though, there is something there that’s noteworthy, in the last paragraph:

Still desiring a social element to her career, the animator turned professional cosplayer also has a history in the live stream world. Past broadcasts have included creating costume pieces, playing games with community members and subscribers, RPGs and more. No matter the project, peers or problem, Sheena strives to keep moving forward.

That powerful phrase we all associate with Monty.

It’s a shame that this show had to be Monty’s legacy, and that years off from now, his name isn’t going to mean anything to the public because the project he was passionate about and died making outlived him and his passion. It feels like his legacy was stolen, and his own part in the show’s legacy is held up purely as a pedestal on which the show should rightfully shine.

Every time I think about Monty, I think about how much I don’t want that to be me. For all the years I’ve spent here, with my graphics certifications being wasted since I earned them while I slave away in retail, I wonder if I’m the lucky one. If I were to enter the workforce and do what I loved, would it be worth it in the end? Would what happened to Monty and Sheena and Shane happen to me? Not sure I wanna know.

Snipped here.

[theclotizine]

"Oh, Cloud…! It's really you, isn't it?" "Yeah… Tifa… We finally meet again."

Happy Birthday to the only person Cloud wants to be a special existence for, the one and only Tifa Lockhart 💫💛

Thank you to our amazing promo artist @astrakamii for the beautiful art! ☺️💚💛

[lockedfighter]

happy mothers day to tifa !! 💖✨

despite losing her own mother when she was only eight years old , she always held her dear . thea lockhart was a treasure to nibelheim . ( i’ve many headcanons for another time as i wanna focus on teefs being a mumma ♡ )

due to circumstances beyond her control , she ended up looking after marlene whom she came to love —- even started introducing her as her daughter to people around the slums and created a special bond . she took care of her often at seventh heaven , cooking her meals and making sure she was able to be free as a kid . after they moved to edge , tifa officially adopted marlene .

when denzel found cloud’s phone upon one of his visits to the church , tifa wasted no time in telling him to bring the boy home . an orphan who was homeless and suffering with geostigma —- broke her instantly . she vowed to care for him ; never wishing to take the place of his own parents who had sadly passed but wanted him to feel loved and know he was safe .

at the tender age of 22 , she became a young mother of two wonderful children who may not have been her own by blood but she did everything in her power to bound their makeshift family with the power of love . worked endless hours tending to 7th heaven and even took on the work load of strife delivery service while working around the clock ( with the help from little marlene ) to care for denzel’s sickness . despite her concerns of if she’s a good mother having not been able to learn much from her own mother passing when she was so young , she yearns to do everything right for the kids .

i have so much to say about these events but just wanted to post a lil something for mothers day . but omgosh wait til the headcanons start pouring out !!

[rune-writes]

Irreplaceable Memories

Fandom: Final Fantasy VII

Word Count: 1012

Rating: Gen

Pairing: Zack Fair/Aerith Gainsborough, Aerith Gainsborough & Tifa Lockhart

Summary: Having left Kalm, the party set up camp in the fields where, upon Tifa's prompting, Aerith reminisces about the person who gave her the pink ribbon.

Notes: written for @zerith-week 2024 Day 2: Irreplaceable Memories

Read on AO3.

~*~*~*~*~

“Who was he?” Tifa asked as she settled down next to Aerith. “The man who gave you your ribbon.” 

Aerith stared, dumbfounded. 

“Ah, sorry, I overheard your conversation with that stall owner in Kalm,” Tifa hastily added. She bobbed her head in contrite as Aerith recalled the woman—middle-aged and wearing a plain brown smock—who had called her over to her stall to peruse her wares. It had been an innocent remark, Aerith had to admit. Something about how pretty her hair was and that a new ribbon was just what it needed. The woman hadn’t quite spoken it, but Aerith had taken it to mean that her current ribbon was worn and old. She might have been a bit curt with her response, now that she thought about it. 

Aerith tugged at her ribbon and it quickly came loose. 

“Does it look worn?” she asked instead.

Tifa cocked her head to the side then shifted her gaze to the fabric on Aerith’s hand. “Did she say that?” 

Aerith shook her head. “Not really, but she said I needed a new ribbon, so I kind of wonder…” 

She kept it clean, of course—washed it every other day—but now that she held it out toward the fire light, she couldn’t help but think that the pink had indeed lost its luster, and how the fabric felt thin and brittle in her fingers. Six years, was it, since the day Zack bought the ribbon for her? Not a day went by when Aerith didn’t don it on her hair. 

“I got it from someone,” she said at last, then added, “A special someone.” 

“Your boyfriend?” 

Aerith smiled wryly at the word. “Kind of. He… left five years ago.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry.” 

“We didn’t break up or anything like that, just—” Her eyes flitted upward, scanning their surroundings. The only other presence in their small camp was Red XIII, who was dozing quietly on the other side of the fire. Once she was sure Cloud and Barret weren’t returning any time soon, she dropped her voice once more and said, “He left on a mission and never returned.” 

Tifa’s eyes grew wide as the implication dawned on her.

Aerith spread the ribbon between her hands, pulling it rather taut as she attempted to see the campfire through it. It really had gotten thin. All those washes she’d done, the sunlight it soaked. Elmyra had tried talking her into getting another ribbon—had even bought her one for her birthday—but Aerith had only let it air in the open, or use it to decorate her flower basket. 

They’d never talked about Zack in the years he had been missing. Or perhaps, Aerith had never let her. Countless times she’d seen concern lining her foster mother’s aging face, and countless times Aerith had chosen not to see. Because if she saw—if she acknowledged the gaping maw in her heart—the tides of pain and grief that would crash over her would be unbearable. She’d felt it when her mother passed; she didn’t want to feel it again. 

“It would be a stretch to say that I saved him, but that was what he claimed,” Aerith said with an attempt at being lighthearted, but the thought of saying goodbye to this ribbon—to this first gift she had received from someone she would call her first friend—was like a lead in her mind that she couldn’t keep the sorrow from her voice. She cleared her throat, and tried once more. “He offered me one date, but I told him that was silly.” She giggled, managed it, and smiled. “So when I led him to where he could reach the upper plate, we came across a stall with all the pretty accessories you could find in the slums. They had a collection of ribbons there, and he bought me the pink one.” 

Aerith had thought she had tucked all these memories away in a safe corner where nothing, not even her, could disturb them. But once the words rolled off her tongue, the doors to her mind burst wide open, and all she had hidden rose in perfect clarity.

The grit rolled beneath her soles as heat reflected off steel plates and even more steel constructions. They’d run around the marketplace trying to catch the boy who had stolen Zack’s wallet. He’d needed medicine for a sister, and Zack had dealt with it with a style that Aerith had initially found cute and later learned that that was simply how he was. She hadn’t thought he would let the kid use his money, that’s for sure—whether or not he had the money to begin with. The thought made her chuckle. Tifa looked at her inquiringly. 

“I’m sorry, it’s just…” 

‘To pay you back for the “hell-llooo”... I’ll buy you something. A memento, for today.’

A familiar feeling tugged at her heart, threatening to unravel her. Aerith’s breath shuddered and her grip on her ribbon loosened. 

Seeing her apparent disquiet, Tifa reached over and held her hand. She smiled when Aerith looked at her. “So what if it’s worn and old?” she said. “It’s important to you and you don’t want to let it go. Isn’t that right?” Tifa quietly took the ribbon and moved behind Aerith, whose hair had come undone and was spilling down her back in soft tawny waves. Her fingers were soft yet firm as she combed through Aerith’s strands, expertly braiding her hair back as though she’d done it a million times before. Tifa tied the ribbon back into its place, giving it a firm tug then a pat once she did so, then grinned at Aerith. “How’s that?” 

Aerith blinked, and in her mind’s eye, she saw Zack looking rather unsure after probably his first time tying a ribbon to a sixteen-year-old girl’s hair. 

‘Does it look right?’ she’d asked.

‘Uh, I think so… Yeah, it looks great!’ 

But it wasn’t Zack’s resplendent smile beaming at her. 

The corners of Tifa’s eyes softened. “We all have things we don’t want to let go. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

~ END ~

[fearlessmonk]

.Anastasia AU starter. | @myristicisms

Midgar was that of royalty. When Sephiroth ruined the royal family, there were rumors of only one sibling survived, after the other woman who had survived had made screen time. Aerith, the last cetra was alive and well, pleading the people to find her Lockhart. Even if it were merely the body, she placed a reward on the missing after the plate had fallen. Midgar had been torn to shambles.

Leaving the orphanage; the idea was one that Tifa had dreamed of for a while. Yet, when the time came, she was hesitant. She was fortunate to score a job not too far from town, but the trek was a frustrating one. Through the Junkyard filled with fiends and down Sector 5. Once she got on the road, she searched for a sign of any kind, continually asking aloud to no one. Was she going in the right direction? Life sure liked to play silly games, throwing people for a whirl when they least expect. The only belongings she held were the clothes on her back, and a special white materia that sat on a chain around her neck.

As if asking for the sign had been answered, a cat seemed to appeared from nothing as it jumped from the bushes. It didn't speak, but as it beckoned, it guided her. A sigh left her, hesitant to follow but swallowing her gut and doing so anyway. Focused on the feline, she didn't even realize when she bumped into a tall man with black hair. Apologizing, she rushed by to continue following the feline. Groaning, her arms fell to her sides. "When I asked for a sign, I was hoping for something a little more clear." Tifa murmured aloud.

Finally, the cat drew to a stop once at the stoop of an old church. The building was tall, wooden doors protecting the entry way. The cat pawed the doors, as if requesting entry. With a sigh, Tifa obeyed the request.

It was a lovely place, even with broken floorboards and roofing. At the center in the flooring, a bed of flowers seemed to shine in the light. Tifa cautiously approached, a ping in her chest triggering from the sight of the flowers. It was something of the royal family she recognized from photos and announcements that princess Aerith would make amongst the town. Gazing longingly, lovingly at them, Tifa imagined what it would be royalty; her body carrying itself as she explored her daydream. Raggedy clothing evolved into a beautiful gown as her feet moved as if she held a dance partner. There was something to a dream, but she was quickly dragged from it as she heard footsteps approach. Chest grew tight as she tried to find cover amongst the pews.