#rwby gay alignment

[historyhermann]

Cherry Magic! Spoiler-Filled Review

Cherry Magic!, also known as Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?!, is a comedic boy’s love series, adapted from a manga of the same name by Yuu Toyota. There were previously TV drama and film adaptations. The anime is directed by Yoshiko Okuda and written by Tomoko Konparu. Tomoki Hasegawa is the music composer. The animation studio Satelight, known for Macross…

[bestworstcase]

i am revising my estimation on what rwby beyond will entail perhaps out of wishful thinking but: since they let the cat out of the bag on salem razed vale with the animatic that means salem razing vale is conceivably something that beyond might touch on. maybe not if her motives for doing so constitute a major spoiler (which is possible but seems unlikely), but that is a big “holy fuck” moment to drop in the Forbidden Eleventh Hour Episode Animatic and. hm. hmmm

i would really like to get a glimpse of the context. salem left atlas with herself and cinder; she can spawn hundreds of grimm per second but came to atlas with a giant whale and millions of grimm, which seems to have taken her several weeks if not a few months to put together. if the civilian retreat traveled very quickly southward to vacuo it’s conceivable that they arrive within hours of the destruction, which does leave salem time to have whipped up another storm.

but retreating so hastily would have necessarily meant leaving a lot of people to die (or be captured—depends what “there’s nothing left” means, really) and the longer it took the civilian retreat to get to vale, the less likely it is that salem stormed vale with a massive fleet of grimm a la atlas.

the other possibilities i can think of are:

salem and cinder flattened an entire city, which has horrifying implications as to how much salem has been holding back up to this point;

she cracked the wyvern out of gay baby jail and let it do the heavy lifting;

“there’s nothing left” means that salem encored her trick of ripping open the continental crust to make a grimm river, but under vale this time, cratering the entire city into a lake of grimm (which also has horrifying implications as to how much she’s been holding back before);

salem didn’t attack vale so much as she was seen approaching beacon tower and mass hysteria ensued, leading to the city being swamped by the local grimm again.

ponders.

or vale was a casualty of an extremely destructive attempt to brute force break through the extra protections ozpin arranged for the beacon vault. what that might look like practically is an open question, but… i mean, i’ve been thinking for a while on the possibility of ozpin weaving traps into those protections.

there is also the more interesting question of why. beacon fell -> grimm pulled out of vale within days -> surgical strike on haven -> held her forces back from attacking mantle -> no grimm in atlesian subway tunnels -> (ironwood forced the fall of atlas while salem was taking a dirt nap) -> razing vale to the ground apparently. what changed?

“people saw salem and panicked” seems like both a copout and also the explanation that tracks with what we’ve seen from her before and what we know of the situation. “something happened that made salem decide it was necessary to delete vale” is the more narratively punchy option and the one i hope they’re going for. in pursuit of a new world, no cost is too great, and all.

sighs. when glinda lays siege to the emerald city, the witch mombi magically disguises herself in the form of a rose, and general jinjur aligns herself with mombi in a bid to remain in power. salem has put a lot of trust in summer to hold beacon for her, never doubting her loyalty after a year or more without progress. if that trust were betrayed…

(<- NERVOUS.)

the other obvious possibilities is brutal overreaction to a perceived threat to cinder (“if anyone even looks at cinder wrong i will break this wyvern out of its shell” WAS A JOKE I WAS JOKING–). or she’s removing vale from the equation specifically to broaden the search radius for the crown, and/or now suspects that the vault is in vale. that glynda “emblem is a crown” goodwitch is being kept offscreen still is interesting in that regard, obviously.

i don’t think it’s a matter of salem feeling emboldened by possession of two relics, if only because she wasn’t emboldened by having the lamp in atlas, and also her character arc in v8 was firmly oriented around cinder and the beacon relic, in that order. that was the basis for my thinking that she would make a beeline for vale next, which is exactly what she did. my assumption was that she planned to dig in and wait for a counteroffensive to become necessary to hold the vacuo coalition together, which i did not guess would include razing vale—because i thought she might take a gamble on pitching her side to vale, to remove a pillar of support from the vacuo coalition; razing vale is a different tactical approach to the same end.

so it’s possible that salem simply made the calculation that razing vale was the most effective way to achieve her longer term strategic goal (eliminate vale as an ally to the vacuo coalition and prohibit a siege while she digs in at beacon). it comes at the cost of hardening the vacuan coalition by demonstrating that she’s capable of flattening two kingdoms in a span of weeks and giving mistral more reason to be nervous, but it also tells the world in no uncertain terms exactly where she is, which removes an obstacle to the counteroffensive she is probably counting on to deliver the sword to her.

narratively i think it’s a really exciting choice. the pressure it puts on the salem-summer-cinder dynamic stands to be very interesting and i would like to see it.

[astertimberwolf]

RWBY WhiteRose Canon Rewrite

I am struggling to articulate the feelings I'm experiencing right now...

...I want to make a comeback as a WhiteRose fanfic writer after being inactive for over 5 years (save for editing stories for my best friend and my ex in the past).

I have these inexplicably strong feelings- the need to rectify how much a show that I used to love has been ruined over time by bad directors and writing teams, as well as Rooster Teeth's greed- following Monty's death, ages ago.

I want to make sure Weiss is there for Ruby when she needs it the most.

I want them to bond over this harsh world they live in, over the many losses, the grief, the pain... Everything they went through.

They are best friends. They are partners. They deserve better than whatever the hell Volume 7 to 9 were supposed to be.

I don't know how I will manage this with everything I have going on in my life right now, but I want to at least try.

I owe it. To myself. To anyone who enjoys WhiteRose and has been left high and dry all these years.

As a tribute to Monty, to those I loved who are no longer here. As a tribute to RWBY itself- to Weiss and Ruby. To how much they all meant to me and how they have changed my life for the better... or for worse.

If I have any self-respect left, this will be the one fanfic I will post and invest the most time in, if I ever make it back into the WR fanfic writing scene.

And to hell with whatever everyone else thinks. Feel free to disagree, feel free to block me, take the piss or whatever- I'm not doing this to please anyone. I'm doing this for me and what I value, which will likely never align with whatever every other rando on the internet thinks or feels.

Weiss will protect Ruby and help her get back up on her feet. They will talk, they will show all of the f*cking gay shades and colors of their friendship, relationship, and partnership. And I will be damned if I don't go down with this ship.

[shippingk8]

RWBY Gay/Queer Alignment Chart

Lesbians: Coco and Winter might be interchangeable for distinguishes and functional lesbian. But I feel like Winter has her shit together more than 90% of the time. That number drops to less than 10% though if Qrow is around, which is why I agree that they could be interchangeable. Weiss is without a doubt a disaster lesbian. I can’t think of a single Fan fiction I have read where she isn’t a complete and utterly useless lesbian. I can’t even image such a thing.

Bisexuals: I feel like Glenda is hands down the best person for this spot. In fact, I am struggling to come up with any other character even from another fandom that would be a better fit. Yang seems the best fit for functional bisexual. If she doesn’t end up dating or hooking up with Blake or Weiss in cannon I will actually be shocked. And though she hasn’t shown any interest in any of the dude characters to date there was that line at the start of Volume during the sleepover. So unless the retcon it, I am saying Yang is our best functional bisexual. Blake on the other hand is an utter disaster. She has a harem... that she doesn’t even know exists. Either that or she does know and only has about 5% interest in doing anything about it. The fact that she has a harem is actually pretty hilarious, because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of need or much of a reason for her having one.

Gays: Ozpin (original version) seems like the obvious choice for the distinguished gay, same for Doctor Oblek. While Neptune probably isn’t gay, this picture is too good not to use. Neptune in total dismay with two girls standing behind him.

[nexyra]

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH EVERYONE

I took full advantage of the lack of precision each RWBY character has regarding their orientations or gender; and I made use of that fun template I found.

I'm putting the blank at the end : don't hesitate to reblog with your own headcannons. With or without the templates tbh, you can just tell me "I headcannon X as Y", that's still interesting !

This is a big mix of what I headcannon, what I can imagine best, and also just trying to complete the template in general x)

(Trans here encompass ftm, mtf or NB ! So go wild with your headcannons !)

As a bonus that I wasn't able to put here : my main headcannon for Ozpin is Agender Ozpin 🖤🤍💚 I like asexual Ozpin too but I'm really not picky and I like most content with him. Agender Ozpin is always super nice to see on the other hand ;;

Blake & May are both canon LGBTQ+, good for her ❤

Other than that I feel strongly about asexual Ren, bisexual Qrow & Pyrrha, gay Clover and bi/pan Sun ! I put the Aro/Demiromantic spots late into the making, but I'm pretty satisfied with the three I put there honestly. Weiss & Mercury here stand as Demiromantic, and Harriet as aromantic !

[wixhing0nastar]

I have a very out there, never going to be canon theory about Blake and Yang based on a bunch of semi-canon side content and some minor theme destructuring. (This is a 100% serious theory, despite what I’m about to say).

What if Blake and Yang really are secretly the reincarnations of the Faunus Princess and Human Warrior from the V4-5 comics? But not in the way that Oz reincarnates, but more in a your soul is reborn kind of way.

Now there are several things at play here, and the biggest is “how the heck would the princess/warrior have started reincarnating in the first place??” and to answer that, I point to Fairy Tales of Remnant, where in the two Faunus origin stories we were introduced to what is likely the other two gods of Remnant, the Gods of Knowledge and Choice.

These gods are rooted in Faunus oral history and are not part of Human mythology on Remnant at all, just like the princess/warrior story is part of the Faunus oral tradition. So, it’s likely that while the brothers were wholly focused on Man, the other two gods were busy creating the Faunus.

How does this tie into the whole Blake and Yang reincarnating theory? Well, to start, the brothers were the ones who started the reincarnation/never ending life cycle for Oz and Salem, and RWBY is a show that works in fours (which is why there only being two gods also doesn't make a ton of sense). With that alone it wouldn’t seem unreasonable that there might be two other characters on the show with this ability and with two other Faunus gods it’s not that weird to imagine they could also make people reincarnate separate from the brothers.

However, getting into the implications of there being other gods whose goals didn't necessarily align with the brothers opens the door for having equally powerful figures upset that the planet they were watching over was suddenly destroyed (and if they were helping to regrow the planet without Salem’s knowledge it might explain how the planet managed to produce humans again when the likelihood of evolution playing out that way naturally is... unlikely...)

Considering the conflict between Humans and the Faunus was likely going to prevent humanity from ever uniting (and thus being wiped out when the other gods returned) having the Faunus gods decide to grant a semblance of reincarnation to a Human and a Faunus who’d miraculously fallen in love might not seem that weird.

After all, if their souls were always fighting to be together, then the systemic racism issues would have to be addressed, which could go a long way in uniting Remnant and sometimes all it takes is two people to make a large impact.

Plus there's the whole thing with them practically being soulmates in canon on top of that, with the whole “eyes the colors of each others souls” thing that’s just... really gay y’all.

[itsclydebitches]

Please, when you get the time, watch “Unpacking RWBY's 'Fair Game' Queerbaiting Controversy”.

Thanks for tuning me into this, anon! I decided to watch instead of going to bed at a decent hour because why would I want a good sleep schedule? XD

Great vid though. For anyone looking for a neat summary of both the in-text coding and the fandom's reaction to everything, this is a good, easily digestible hour to get all that. Something that struck me and that I wanted to expand on a little bit is acknowledging the malleable nature of our terms like "queerbaiting" and "bury your gays." "Queerbaiting" evolved during a time when many characters' queerness was being kept to coding and coding alone. That was the point. The possibility of that being a confirmed part of their identity was never on the table, generating our frustration, yes, but also making it pretty easy to spot and define this phenomenon. We knew queerbaiting when we saw it. Yet as queer rep has progressed, by inches as opposed to miles, the use of that term gets... messier. Supernatural is, currently, the perfect example of this. Is it still queerbaiting if one half of the pairing admits their attraction, but the other never responds? And if we're uncertain about the authenticity of the queer rep, can it really be bury your gays? Bury your gays is (mostly) built on explicit queer rep. You can't bury your gay character unless you've got one to begin with, yet situations like Dean/Cas blur both lines. Back when we developed these terms, we weren't imagining situations where creators would go part of the way and then pull back. Queerbaiting made sense a decade ago. They coded their characters, maybe talked up the relationship in a joking manner, but there was never any chance of it coming to fruition. We know how to be mad about that. But one character coming out while the other watches him die and then seems entirely unfazed by his passing only to then die too? In the finale? What the hell do we make of that?

These are the confusing, murky waters that Fair Game is swimming through. It has received accusations of both queerbaiting and bury your gays, yet according to generalized knowledge of the definitions, they can't both exist. You either didn't provide queer representation, or you had queer representation to kill off. And yet, Fair Game does manage to edge into both territories, with the added complications of the media hype and ongoing debates about the status of Blake/Yang. If Blake bashfully looking away at Yang's compliment equals queer rep - and a very large chunk of the fandom considers the coding we've gotten thus far to be "canon" - then it should mean the same thing when Qrow looks bashfully away at Clover's comment. Either that coding is enough to signal queer representation and RWBY thus killed off a queer character in the form of Clover, or it's not enough to signal queer representation (you're reading into things) and the Blake/Yang dynamic remains in a state of potential queerbaiting. It's a lose-lose any way you slice it, yet anger tends to turn more towards other members of the RWBY community for using the "wrong" terminology rather than simply expecting better of the creators. No one should be having years-long debates over how queer or not two characters appear on screen. At this point we should just have queer characters, no guesswork needed.

Frankly, I don't think there is an easy way to fix the miscommunication going on here, so I suppose my only point right now is to be aware of it. These terms have never had rigid definitions - "queerbaiting," as the vid's author points out, is particularly complicated, but "bury your gays" runs into problems with canons that deal with the afterlife and resurrection. If Penny were to have been written as queer, would it be "bury your gays" to kill her and then bring her back? - but these terms have become even more complex than their original creators could have ever imagined. The popularity of social media and this inching towards better representation has resulted in situations that simply do not fit our previously neat ideas of these issues. But that doesn't mean there's still not a problem at play. When people use "queerbaiting" or "bury your gays" to describe Fair Game yes, there may be differences between this situation and the examples on which those terms were created, but the fact that we don't yet have new terminology to describe these complex situations doesn't mean there's nothing for queer fans to be upset over. We don't really have a term yet for, "There was definitely coding for those who spotted it, but pretty subtle coding for a time when there is a lot of overt queer rep in our media, including the same show (queerbaiting often accompanies no other queer rep at all) and the creators teased it, but many of them were no longer officially connected to the show, and then the character was horrifically killed off, but can you bury your gay when you didn't confirm him gay in this first place?" That's a particularly awful paradox we don't have a catchy phrase for yet. But the answer here isn't to dismiss all these new situations with, "Well, it doesn't fit my exact definition, so it's not a problem" but rather to expand our vocabulary. As a community we need ways to describe these new cases we're seeing, not dismiss them because they don't perfectly align with what we came up with years ago.

[haltraveler]

Guys Clover is literally not a person. Stop acting like criticism about his story can be dismissed with he made a choice. No he isn't real he can't make choices writers animators and marketing set up everything about the character and story. Clover deserved better isn't about Clover the person it's a larger cry against how the RT company handles LGBT rep and mlm rep in general.

I’ve already addressed this and do not have the energy for an argument, so I’ll say my piece and wont respond to anything else. I really wanted Clover to be gay, and was beginning to think it might actually happen, but that was not what the story gave us. That’s not homophobic, it’s just the fact that it’s THEIR story and they get to decide where it goes. That’s not to say that we cant criticize actual homophobia, but fans reading way too much into things and being mad when their theories weren’t correct is not that. We aren’t entitled to a specific characters’ sexuality and people are REALLY stretching to try to make this a moral failing on the part of the writers. 

The arguments being made about how people were “mislead” are largely nonsense. There is the one case of an animator saying something, but the thing is that in a community like the RWBY fandom, which ships anything and everything, I can’t imagine it being easy for the crew to know for sure which ships people are serious about, and once again it’s a single animator. Lindsay Jones has mentioned playing Ruby’s scenes with Penny as if they were romantic in the past, but that’s not queerbaiting, it’s just one of many people in the production having a certain reading of the text. Queerbaiting is a specific, cynical marketing tactic, not a few people in the crew shipping it even if the main story doesn’t go that way. 

The other arguments that have been made are just... ridiculous. They sold a set of pins connected to them because of their contrasting motifs and close connection in-story, it’s no more queerbaiting than selling a pair made of Weiss and Ruby’s emblems would be baiting White Rose shippers. And no the fact that they’re character foils with contrasting motifs doesn’t mean there’s some subliminal conspiracy to hook in the gays because “all the other characters with contrasting motifs are romantic” in part becuase... no, no they aren’t. There are plenty of characters who deliberately and obviously contrast w/ one another without any romantic link (Weiss and Blake, Yang and Mercury, Winter and Penny, and Adam and Yang all spring to mind). It’s not a conspiracy, people just got over-excited and started looking for clues that could support the ship (something which I did as well)

It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to people who were let down by this, I myself am a queer dude (maybe? Not entirely sure about the “dude” part but I’m definitely masculine-aligned) who was very disappointed that they didn’t end up being a couple but the writers don’t have responsibility for that. Nor, frankly, do the writers have a duty to give us mlm content in a FEMALE-FOCUSED SHOW. It would be great, sure, but it’s not required of them. They’ve already done a lot w/ queer characters and all signs point to that representation expanding even further as the series goes on. Just b/c they don’t cover a specific subsection of the LGBT+ community doesnt make them secret bigots. 

[takashi0]

Maybe this comes out as a little controversial or even assholish but I'm noticing that too many people recently have this tendency to get attached to headcanons a little too much, like, if it doesn't perfectly align with the canon of the piece of media (even if its well written) then they would get angry to the authors. I write fanfiction myself and use plenty of headcanons, but I know I'm not the original writter. One thing is having reasonable critisim, but this new trend is worrying me a lot.

Mate, this isn’t a new thing. And it’s not assholish to say and it’s only controversial because some people won’t admit that you’re right. This has been a problem with every fucking fandom since at LEAST Voltron and it’s only gotten worse with every new thing that’s popped up. The RWBY fandom’s always had this ridiculous amounts of self-entitlement and it’s only gotten worse with every fucking volume and I blame RT for announcing they’d add Gay characters long before they ever actually did or had space to do so in between all the plot that had to be done. 

[tristis-333]

Sorry pal, still not good enough. A response to Eddy Rivas

So a while ago fairgame-is-canon shared a discussion thread he had with RWBY writer Eddy Rivas. And I feel the need to share my feelings on what Eddy said, because they are mixed. Some are sympathetic, but the vast majority are…not. So I’m just going to go down the list of what Eddy said and break it down.

So to start in regards to Clovers actions in chapter 12 Eddy states that Clover has always been envisioned lawful good. That while it does make more objective sense for Clover to work with Qrow to take Tyrion down that’s “not how Clover operates.” Eddy says part of Clovers character is that once you’re on the wrong side of the law there is no teaming up. He then sites Clovers actions in chapter 1 as an example of this attitude.

Ok, so first I can kind of see where he’s going with that. Like Robyn has been described as chaotic good, and Qrow can fit into neutral good. So you have this idea of people with different flavors of ultimately the same moral level having to work together. And the idea that Clover is so dedicated to law, that he sees authority and following rules as so important, that he would oppose anyone who didn’t align with the law as automatically an enemy is sort of kind of interesting. I mean it’s been done well before, early Suzaku from Code Geass is the first example that comes to mind.

But what many others have pointed out is that this doesn’t really feel like the direction Clover’s character was going. Clover doesn’t get much characterization at all, if we’re being honest. I’ve seen quite a few people respond to his death with shrugs because they weren’t really given enough time to form a connection. Even Fair Game shippers, I feel, are more upset about Clover’s death in regards to his relationship with Qrow and within the much larger context on LGBT representation than Clover on his own as a character. Which is another criticism I would throw at CRWBY, that they didn’t give enough time to develop Clover to where his death would be impactful even if the only thing you cared about was Clover himself and not his relationship to other characters. Like, if Pyrrah and Jaune were never a thing I would have still been devasted because I still loved Pyrrah just as her own character. And I don’t know if I could say the same about Clover unfortunately.

And even the characterization for Clover we do get doesn’t really support this idea. Clover comes of a very laid back, levelheaded, and confident. Which makes sense his semblance ensures the odds are always in his favor. Yes he’s a bit more stern around Ironwood but that can be seen as professionalism, Ironwood is still his commanding officer, regardless of how close they are. So this idea of someone who believes so much in law and authority that those who oppose it are always in the wrong and can’t be teamed up with just never comes across. If anything Clover comes off as exactly the kind of guy who would question bizarre orders like this. Eddy tries using “pre-winter soldier Captain America” as an example but Steve has always embodied doing the right thing, because it’s the right thing. In the first movie Steve launches an unauthorized rescue mission to save his fellow soldiers.  

And as for his actions in chapter 1, A. Clover doesn’t actually do that much in the chapter besides arresting RWBY & Co. and B. there is more explanation for these actions than we get for those in chapter 12. From Clovers perspective, his kingdom is on high alert and a bunch of strangers have shown up armed to the teeth in a stolen airship. Of course he arrests them, he has every right to. And once the situation is cleared up he’s happy to work with them.

Meanwhile in chapter 12 Clover has no context, at all. He just gets his orders and is like “well orders are orders,” and turns on the person he’s been working with for at least weeks if not months. At least the Ace Ops have the excuse that they were there for Ironwoods turn. They got caught up in Ironwood’s paranoia and even then, some of them, Vine and Marrow at least, are still hesitant. Clover doesn’t even have that going for him.

 Next Eddy goes on to apologize that other felt hurt by what happened and that people are working hard to make sure we feel heard. He explains that as a writer he does not greenlight animation, or work for voice actors or anything like that. And from there we get a bunch of back and forth but I’ve narrowed down what I want to talk about already.

First of all I actually agree with what Eddy says when he points out that he’s just a writer. A lot of people are trying lay the blame for this squarely on Eddy and that is not the right thing to do here. Don’t get me wrong Eddy has a part to play in this, but he is just one writer, on a team of writers, who themselves are part of a large production staff within a bigger company. And that company is just a small piece in the bigger systems that have let these problems thrive. That is why I’ve addressed CRWBY as a whole as opposed to signaling anyone person out. Because this isn’t a problem you can lay at the feet of one individual. The treatment of LGBT characters is a larger systemic issue that spread to nearly every facet of the media industry. And those problems bleed out into other areas, from day to day life for LGBT people, to politics and so forth and so on. 

But that’s where my sympathy ends because Eddy’s apology and promise that “we’re being heard” without actually giving concrete answers as to what that means are not good enough. First of all, Eddy’s apology is for other people “feeling hurt.” He is apologizing for the people’s reactions instead of what was actually done to cause those reactions. Eddy has said he sees this as an opportunity to learn but this already showing he’s not learned much. He didn’t apologize for that the show baited audiences, and he didn’t apologize for pulling a Bury Your Gays. And before people respond, I know A. It’s not Eddy’s job to do that, but he’s the one putting himself out there. And B. before you say “but they didn’t mean to do that” I. DON’T. CARE. When you hurt someone, especially a group of people who are used to being violently erased from representation, what you meant to do doesn’t matter. What matter IS WHAT YOU DID.

And these promises “that we’re being heard.” Empty platitudes. Too many creators, and company have promised the same thing and have give nothing to show for it. Hell Marvel is currently pushing how it will have it’s first gay kiss in the upcoming Eternals movie. I expect it to be a split second scene in the very last scene of the film that can easily be edited out for foreign audiences. And then Kevin Feige will be completely shocked when I, and other LGBT fans with two brain cells to rub together, say what we’ve been saying for years. This isn’t good enough. Until we’re given concrete answer as to what “being heard” actually means, it’s not good enough. Until creators stop jerking us around and baiting us, it’s not good enough. Until LGBT characters are given the same amount of characterization, visibility, and respect as straight and cis characters, IT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

[larksinging]

are there any canon characters/ocs you're considering trying out on denny? if so, what could you see them getting up to and what types of dynamics would you like to make with them?

okay jay also asked this a while back, but! these are all SUPER hesitant because i have trouble picking up characters, but

after thinking of an alignment swap for maive (chaotic good->chaotic evil) i actually considered taking that basic concept and making an oc of that? someone from maive’s pack who also suffered under the regime, but instead of reacting by trying to be a good person and make things better for people like maive did, they reacted by wanting to just burn down EVERYTHING. maybe the thought of a total destruction of the political structure makes sense when you come from THAT kinda pack. i’m still mulling it over, but since that’s an oc and a sparklewolf it wouldn’t take much for me to jump in. they could be a villain, but one of a different sort than we have on denny right now.... idk what they’d do exactly, but yknow. most of the denny villains get power through political structures rn. what if we had a denny villain who, at best, just made their own gang and was bent on terrorizing things? some wolves just wanna watch the world burn

i said that after poison jungle i MIGHT rp sundew from wings of fire, since i really liked her in the hive queen. i need to pick up poison jungle now that it’s out before i decide for sure, buuuut as i remember her in the first two books she was part of a revolutionary but intense movement because of her parents and learning to see a... bit of a wider picture. also i hear her gay subtext was maybe??? turned into explicit gay text? so like. gimme that lesbian dragon. though ive always had trouble adapting dragon characters to denny, but eh

now that youve mentioned it im REALLY thinking of rewatching GDW or GNG. i was always.... really fond of weed as a character and how devoted he to his ideals? but i also really liked gng era gin and how like. absolutely bold and unflinching that kid was. i feel like id probably app one of them, depending. though again, id have trouble, since except for maive a lot of animal characters from animal societies... dont mesh great with denny as a whole, at least not without plots ahead of time. maybe if they had canonmates.... or maybe id just try and see? idk

i might change up my RWBY roster sometime, theres a few other characters ive considered trying, or maybe waiting and seeing what happens in volume 7....

me and the others who tried out gen:lock characters said “well we’ll see what happens in s2″ when we dropped our claims, so. after that maybe cammie again, or maybe miranda or yaz? we’ll see! 

when i was watching lost i HESITANTLY considered playing kate, but id need to get into the swing of marathoning that again

[ryoshan]

whew this idea came so spur of the moment so scuse the reused banner. so it’s christmas right? i hope you’re all having a wonderful day regardless whether you celebrate or not, and to those having rubbish days: don’t worry, it’ll be over soon, and in the meantime there’s always wholesome videos of an elderly british gay man who loves dogs on yt! this christmas also marks a year (ish, since i don’t remember the exact day we opened blogs) since me and @gainhope​ joined rwby rp on tumblr. back then we were just a yang and a ruby, now we here covering most of the cast between us!  

now, i know the rwby rpc has had its up and downs over the last year, but for me (despite the few months where the hiatus totally got the better of me) it’s been a majority of ups. i don’t think i’ve ever connected with a community so strongly since 2012 dragon age rpc before inquisition came out. i don’t think i’ve ever made so many close friends so fast, and it’s those that make an rp experience, in my humble opinion. so here’s a little list of the people i personally want to thank. please don’t be sad if you’re not mentioned!! this isn’t a follow forever, it’s not a bias list, it’s a shout-out to the friends that have made the last year in rwby rp as fulfilling as it has been. 

best friend squad

@gainhope​ / you’re the ruby to my yang, the rose to my white. there’s so much i could say about you that can’t fit in a single paragraph. i wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for you, but it’s so much bigger than that, because our friendship has been a staple in my life long before you introduced rwby to it. i wouldn’t be half the person i am without the love and support you’ve given me, and it’s been a damn pleasure to watch you grow in every aspect of your life too. we’ve seen each other through some tough times in the last year, and we’ve had some of the most fun i’ve had all year too. life isn’t nearly as big and scary, no matter what’s going on, while i have you by my side. i love you more than anything, and here’s to another year writing infinites together. 

@galateian​ / again i cant fit everything i could say about you in one paragraph. you’ve supported me through some incredible bollocks, you’ve suffered through glasgow on friday night with me, and our discord pins are a source of such utter joy i’ll never be sad again. i can talk to you about anything, and i fcuken do, and i don’t know where i’d be through more than just this last year without you. can you believe it’s been what, six years? i sure can’t, and here’s to six more, possibly in guam, definitely with no less than 16 dogs and an absolute shed load of ugly furniture, loved like only we can. ily jen. 

@nvvrrmorr​ / holy shit can you even believe it’s been almost a year since i drunkenly dragged you into a long conversation where i danced around the ‘hey maybe winter and raven should fuqqq 👀’ thing? we got so close so fast and i can’t thank you enough for sticking around past some Weird Relationship Drama you got roped into so early in our friendship, cause frankly, this year would have been a lot emptier without you in it. i love you to bits, i love our late night overwatch sessions, i love the unerring support you give me even when i’m legitimately being shit, and i love how easily we write,,, anything and everything together. bring on 2019 aye? 

@liluura​ / we’ve come so far from me (anxiously) and jess dragging you into some cracky banter (and you being too dang FAST for our punchline) to walking down the streets of amsterdam telling you about the last time i took a shit. it’s incredible how quickly we became close, and even more incredible that not an inch of that closeness has been lost in a year where our interests have aligned, and then not, and then come together again. thank you for being you, and for being there for me, especially through one of the scariest few days of my life. i would have made it home without you after the netherlands debacle, i’m sure, but not nearly as calm having spent almost the whole day with you. i love you, soph, and i hope we’ve got many more years of friendship ahead of us. 

the rarest of peeps / @washuman, @herguidance, @thuskindlyiscatter​ / you guys are absolute treasures to me. we don’t talk every day, but i’m always comfortable approaching yous with the most ridiculous of things. all three of you have written such fantastic stuff with me from sad siblings, to multiple developed ships. the things you have in common? fucken rarepairs man. pour one out for cinwin, glynter and catrilia to be quite fucken honest. also, all three of yous support my need to talk about charlie nonstop, so thank you. 

horny bastards / @gcrdens & @hoardofheroes​ / ofc i had to mention you two together. it’s been pretty recent that i’ve gotten to know you two, but i couldn’t not include yous on this post because of the sheer impact you’ve had in such a short amount of time. you’ve both made me a braver smut writer. it’s not the only thing i love about your writing by far, but there’s something so refreshing about seeing yous unashamedly write your muses making babies (literally) all over the dash. yous are inspiring, and i hope we stay friendly for a long time. 

team rryp! / @veiliisms, @paramithi, @ancestryfated​ (and dee, whose blog i can’t fucken find) / listen guys, we might not all talk as much as we did once upon a time, but team rryp will always hold a special place in my heart as being a time i dove into social interaction with (almost) strangers and lived to tell the tale. it might not seem like a big deal, but sending dabbing asks of all things as part of a group made it so much easier in the long run to approach people in future and man, what a great way to do it. i love you guys so much. 

special mention / @lunyrd​ / not only have you been like a happy cheerleader behind me constantly throughout my rp experience, you’re a gem in my twitter feed as well. a day i wake up and you’ve tagged me in a tweet is a good damn day. lets do more writing this year, aye? i’ll get my finger out and get some starters up! 

honorable mentions! / last but not least, maybe we don’t talk a lot or rp a lot (which should change js), but you guys have blessed my rp experience in some way, be it liking mosts or just filling the dash with inspiring content. i love you guys. / @tadmean, @wellbloomed, @canefought, @tyriannical, @becomeshield, @becomestorm, @gracedly 

[smokeybrand]

A Very Bad Time

I wrote an essay about the discourse around High Guardian Spice because i thought it was missing the point. A lot of people were focused on it being too woke and my concern was how the woke stuff was executed. I’m not mad about having LGBTQ+ representation in my content, as long as it’s done in a way that doesn’t define the narrative or characters. The sexuality of your main characters shouldn’t be their defining points of reference. That makes for a lame cast and pigeon-holds the narrative to preachy nonsense. You ant to make your show gay, make it good. Write it well. execute your agenda in a way that is entertaining and not just bludgeoning. And that’s for all agenda, not just the gay one. Well, i got called out about it and the criticism was fair. I had no plans to watch this show because i am not interested in it in the slightest, I'm definitely not the target demo, but @seeingspades​ told me “Dude just watch the show. It’s good.” That’s a direct quote. I replied with “Not really my flavor.” but i get it.  My take wasn’t on the show, specifically, but the noise around it. It’s not fair of me to have an opinion about the onions of others, when i don’t particularly have one about the show, itself. So i did “just watch the show.” and i hated every second of it.

High Guardian Spice is f*cking annoying. None of these characters are likable. None of them. Admittedly, i could only make it three episodes in so they might get better but from all of the other reviews I've seen not given by someone who identifies as part of the Queer community or counts themselves an ally, it doesn’t. I can see the length of this season having spikes of really good but mostly just settling in the mediocre. The main issue i have with this show is the writing. It’s bad, man. This is basically a magical girl narrative, and a very derivative take on it to boot. If you’ve been a weeb for as long as i have, you’ve seen this genre executed in a number of ways. Sailor moon is obviously the biggest and most influential one but there have been others. My personal favorite is Puella Magi Madoka Magica and, interestingly enough, a lesbian romance s the driving conflict of that entire narrative and it somehow works fine, but I'm getting ahead of my self a little bit. Magical Knight Rayearth, My-Hime, PreCure, Revolutionary Girl Utena kind of, and Kill la Kill even more kind of, are all great examples of the genre bu the one that most closely aligns with is show is definitely Little Witch Academia.

Now, the Magical Girl thing might feel like a tangent, or a rehash of my previous argument, but it is very important because, after watching HGS, i am absolutely sure this thing is someone’s interpolation of f*cking Academia. Spice feels like someone saw LWA, loved it, wrote a fanfic about it, and got Crunchyroll to bankroll their OC laden love letter. That’s why this thing sounds like it does. That’s why this thing watches the way it does. That’s why i had this sense of complete deja vu, and not in a good way, as i trudged through these first few episodes. The entire time I'm watching High Guardian Spice, I'm thinking of Little Witch Academia and how well it did what this show is trying to do, so much better. Twice, actually. In LWA, you follow two different protagonists depending on what season you clock into. I've heard that my LWA correlation is a bit glib and a better comparison is calling this thing a “stronger” RWBY, but I haven't seen that show o I can't say for sure. I have seen Academia, a few times, and HGS smacks of that sh8t pretty hard. I could absolutely be coloring this with my bias because the Magical Girl genre is one of my favorite in anime. I mentioned Sailor Moon before but that was one of the first anime i ever watched in serialization because it earned on my version of Fox when i was young. I’ve held a special place in my heart for the entire genre ever since and make it a point to check them out when they air. Japan has thousands of these things and they all feel unique in some way but High Guardian Spice doesn’t and it can’t even make up for it in other ways.

I touched on this earlier but the characters are insufferable. No one is compelling enough to lead this show and all of them are forgettable tropes. The leader chick, i think her name is Rosemary? Yeah, she’s the worst. She’s every bad take on this type of character; The headstrong, naive, go-getter. She’s the Harry Potter of this group, the POV character, and chosen to be the audience favorite and she’s borderline petulant. Like, how do you write a character, a lead one at that, this bad and expect people to take to them? More than that, the performance from Briana Leon is poor. Like, i can tell she’s trying to make this sh*t work but it just doesn’t. Every time Rosemary opens her mouth, i die a little bit inside. That might not be entirely the writing’s fault, though, because f*ck is this show ugly. I was aghast at how very Tumblr-y this art is. We are about a decade outside of that Cartoon Network Renaissance and so to have HGS going head first into that style of animation sh*t, is like revisiting childhood trauma. This art style does not help the whole derivative situation at all. Also, the editing kind of sucks. What even was that first episode, man? 

I have a long list of complaints i could get into about what little of this show i did see, most of which i think would probably run through the entire series, but I'm not here to dump all over this show. High Guardian Spice is someone’s baby and, if you know anything about this show’s production, the fact that it made it to air, is a miracle in of itself. There is some stuff to like here. I love the fact that the representation is so rich and doesn’t head you over the head with their agenda. I enjoy the expanded narrative they’ve built, tons of potential for story there. I like the setting, slice of life stuff is always fun to casually get into. I like a lot of the world building stuff, overall. I just think the chosen focus and the narrative execution should be better. There is nothing in this show that you haven’t seen somewhere else, done better and more uniquely. If I'm being honest, i can’t even call this a “bad” show because it does nothing to stand out. It’s not it’s own thing. It’s barely A thing. High Guardian Spice is a collection of anime tropes, slathered with a Cal Arts animation skin. It’s uninspired My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It’s Americanized Little Witch Academia. It's the disowned cousin of The Owl House. It’s a nothing burger of a show. I still don’t understand all of the ancillary discourse about this sh*t, the LBGTQ+ stuff is fine, but the show, itself? Not so much. Too much focus on the gay and not the production, i think. I'm told that the second half is much, much, better and It might be, but there's no way I'm fighting my way through the first half this sh*t just to get to it. F*ck all of that. All that said, i am neither gay, female, or the target for this sh*t so take everything i said with a grain of salt.

[magicalzombiegirl]

RWBY OC profile - Oran

Name: Oran

Age: 17

Gender: Male

Race: Half white tiger faunus

Hair colour: White & Black

Eye colour: Blue

General appearance: Hair is naturally both white and black. Sharp blue eyes, pale skin. Tall with a slim but muscular build. Facial scars and multiple body scars. Black and white tiger’s ears.

Personality: In the beginning he’s an asshole. Super untrusting and tries to do everything himself. Only cares about himself and his mother. Doesn’t like humans. After bonding with his team he opens up and shows a dorkier, caring side. Very protective of people he cares about.

Skills: Good at cooking, cleaning and other basic household chores. Good at taking care of other people.  

Occupation: Huntsman Academy Student

Family: Mother (terminally ill), white tiger faunus. Father, human (deceased)

Sexuality: Gay Demisexual. Ends up in a relationship with teammate, Nite.

Backstory: His father died when he was very young, so he doesn’t have any memories of him. He resents him for leaving him and his mother, and is partially responsible for Oran’s distrust of humans. Growing up he and his mother faced a lot of discrimination, both from humans who dislike faunus, and from faunus who disliked that his mother chose a human and his half-human status. When his mother grew ill there was no one else to take care of her, so Oran quit school to become her caretaker. His scars come from the many fights he’s been in over the years, mostly started because someone’s said something about his mother. He was approached by the huntsmen academy but originally refused, however his mother convinced him to go and he finally agreed with the condition that the academy would help him find someone to care for her.  

Influence: The White Tiger of the West (Myths & Fairytails)

Weapon: Gloves with retractable claws

Semblance: Temporary invisibility

Team: OPSN (Opalescent)

 Bonus, quiz stuff:

·         Myer-Briggs: INTJ

·         Hogwarts house: Gryffindor

·         Four temperaments: Choleric

·         Soul type: Hunter/Thinker/Leader

·         Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

·         Dark Triad: Equal Machiavellianism & Psychopathy

·         Inner animal: Weasel

·         God/Goddess most like: Hades

[itsclydebitches]

My response to there's not enough art with (insert thing) is to first, make it yourself. Be the change you want to see. Ok you aren't interested making art. that's fine. Support people who do make it financially. Give them money. Show everyone that you can make art that has this in it and can be financially viable. Art made on big budgets for big audiences needs assurance it can make that back. Niche art exist for that very reason. To please a smaller audience with a more specific thing.

Hard same, anon. I mentioned this in another message to someone else, but just to reiterate: I never intend to come across as antagonistic, aggressive, etc. Though I’m also fully aware that can easily happen when you have no tone of voice/body language to draw from and you’re discussing subjects that everyone is already passionate about lol. So yeah, not in any way here for insulting anyone. 

I already laid out  that same stance you hold: art should be allowed to exist, even if we end up critiquing it later. Broad-stroke censorship is definitely not the answer here. 

And I 100% agree with the idea to “be the change you want to see in the world,” with the caveat that everyone acknowledge how difficult that can be. Meaning, it’s easy to say, “If you want [X Representation] just write your own book.” So you do... and then no one wants to publish it.*** Because (as you mention with Hollywood) the major industries tend to be dominated by certain demographics and they also tend to be stuck in their ways. Change is hard and, sadly, very slow moving--so when we see a foothold in anything substantially popular, like RWBY, it’s sometimes good to make the most of it, pointing out where representation might be improved upon (which is again admittedly subjective) so that the next time someone manages it we take another step forward. 

(***Granted, we are living in a digital age where the lines between mainstream and personal publications are blurring. We can also say, “If no one will publish your book with [X Representation] just publish it yourself,” but we also have to acknowledge that self-publication will never get the traction that mainstream publishing does. Certainly not the same money, the same chance at adaptations, the same chance at impacting people, etc. We do see the occasional self-published hit, but I think of those like airplane crashes. Meaning, we THINK there’s a lot of them because only the crashes are reported on the news; no one emphasizes the thousands of planes landing safely every day. In the same way, we might THINK there’s a lot of self-published hits because those are the ones that get all the attention. No one is pointing out the thousands of novels out there with forward-thinking rep that languish.) 

Yes, there’s certainly more queer art out then there ever was before, but in my opinion it’s also a mistake to act like that’s enough. After all, there’s a reason we usually have an LGBTQ section in bookstores. The implication is that this is removed from the rest of fiction; it’s a niche interest that only a few are interested in. As opposed to, you know, an accurate representation of a huge portion of the population. I just finished A Discovery of Witches--a series I utterly adored--but that’s nevertheless an excellent example of the (still) standard storytelling setup. We got one minor gay character, which was great, but when you compare that to everything else... the het main couple, the het relationship that can’t be, the main het side couple, the het grandparents, the numerous other het side pairings... it reinforces that one type of relationship is “normal” and the other is tucked in as a “rare” treat. And this is actually what a lot of queer stories are. Not stories about queer characters. Not stories with queer characters. Just stories that happen to have one (1) queer person somewhere in the world. That’s actually something I love about RWBY now. Ilia’s initial treatment aside, we have her, the Cotta-Arcs, and now presumably Blake and Yang. That’s a ton more than you usually find in more mainstream media. 

Also, as a sort of side note, I came across a section in one of my readings that pertains to our discussion as a whole. This is from Ronald Berger’s Introducing Disability Studies where he talks about the “What’s wrong with the artist’s vision?” question. Here he’s tackling Million Dollar Baby where, if you haven’t seen it, a boxer who becomes a quadriplegic begs her coach to help her commit assisted suicide. 

Disability scholars and activists were dismayed that so many viewers and reviewers of the film seemed to sympathize with the decision to kill the disabled character, as if her life no longer had meaning. Maggie did not even have the opportunity to receive counseling or physical therapy to adapt to her new condition and consider her options for living in the world. “Disability Is Not a Death Sentence” and “Not Dead Yet” read protest signs in Chicago, Illinois, and Berkeley, California (Davis 2005; Haller 2010).

Some nondisabled film columnists, such as liberal writers Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, were equally dismayed at the protesters’ response: What’s all the fuss? Isn’t this just one artist’s view of the situation? Doesn’t Eastwood, as a filmmaker, have the right to make any film he wants? ...

Lennard Davis (2005), among others, wants people to understand that disabled people’s opposition to the film was not about Eastwood’s anti-ADA politics, or about the storyline of Million Dollar Baby alone, but about the entire social and cultural apparatus that invalidates the experience of people with disabilities. According to Davis, the issue is not simply

“that Eastwood is speaking his mind. It’s that he’s speaking the mind of a country that is largely ignorant of the issues and politics around disability. . . . The history of oppression of disabled people is unknown to most people, and so they see disability as an individual tragedy, worthy of being turned into a movie, and not as political oppression and the struggle to fight that oppression. . . . It’s a lot easier to make a movie in which we weep for the personal defeat of a person who loses a leg or two, or cry with joy for the triumph of an individual with disabilities, than it is to change the whole way we as a society envision, think about, and deal with people who are disabled. (p. 2)”

[Gestures vaguely at people more eloquent than me as I align the same broad arguments with the queer movement] lol 

[deathgripspussy]

Not sure if you’re into RWBY, but the recently revealed their first (openly and without question) lesbian character. There are some people who are upset about it because she’s also a very complex evil character. Her motivations being that the world has kicked her people around her whole life, and she’s aligned with an extremist group to scare people into making things right. Because of this, some people see it as saying gays are evil by the writers’ viewpoint.

Yeah i’m not into RWBY so honestly i can’t give you my opinion on this character, but from what you’re telling me i really don’t see how the writer is implying that “gays are evil”. It’s fine to have gay characters be evil unless the writer intentionally makes them evil just bc they’re homophobic or whatever.