#you can't even reasonably argue that the women are poorly-written this time!

[musical-chick-13]

Oh sure, people can generate a shit-ton of content for two guys who barely interact just because they’re two visible male characters and eventually get rewarded with in-story material, but when I, a gay woman, simply want to find even one non-canonical fic of two women who don’t get along developing a psychosexual obsession with each other--

[iamafanofcartoons]

Ah, c'mon. Female characters are only ever hated when they're poorly written. If they were male, they'd be just as hated. Calling anybody sexist is such a reach.

I mean, you really think that the likes of Team RWBY would be more liked if they were guys? Qrow? Ironwood? Got any solid examples? All I see from you lot is a bunch of accusations and hypotheticals.

C'mon. The FNDM's maddening but real bigots are few and far between.

Let me give you three examples of sexism from the RWBY Critics. And let me remind you that both men and women can be misogynists. The Republican Party of the USA is sure proof of that.

Now that we have the proof of RWBY Critics being nasty sexists out of the way. Let me go over Yang Xiao Long, since most straightshippers and rwby bashers love to hate on Yang.

Critics gnoring the fact that she losed a arm, got PTSD for like 3 volumes, saving the world from a immortal being. Edit: She's just not 24 hours all happy girl anymore like in the volumes 1-3….nobody is anymore after everything that happened. Because taking world ending stakes seriously, and not constantly being quippy doesn’t mean that someone is no longer fun. No, no, don't look at Yang pranking Nora during their arm wrestling match, making jokes about getting reward money for Weiss, or doing stunts on a hover bike. Giggling about Adrian? Pranking Penny with her arm? Joking about crashing the Schnee Party? RWBY Critics: Yang is no longer fun, she’s a Karen! Basically, critics have to ignore/forget/deny ANYTHING that disagrees with their negative views of women. If these people can't even understand a character after showing all his background, trauma and way of thinking, imagining understanding a real person you know nothing about. But seriously, things are less fun in general. Like, yeah V1-3 were school fun-times where the characters weren't even aware of the world ending threat working behind the scenes. Now they are, and they're trying to stop it, things are going to be less fun. Want an example of how Critics pretend to be blind and deaf? Adam Taurus: Introduced trying to blow up a train of passengers. Blake Belladonna: Introduced trying to stop him, and then joins Beacon, hoping to change the system from within. Volume 2: Adam literally tells Cinder that he finds his followers expendable. Blake is opening up to Yang and becomes more and more happy. RWBY Critics: Blake manipulated Adam, Blake is the reason Adam is evil, Blake should have saved Adam, Adam should have killed Blake. Yeah, I’d call that sexism. Let’s cover Robyn Hill

I’ve got some memes just for this But somehow Robyn is an evil terrorist? And Ironwood is somehow the savior? Ironwood, who constantly demands trust and talks about making difficult decisions while : A) repeatedly forbidding penny to have any friends and having her as a project done behind everyone’s back? B) Holding more government power than any other Council Member, and forbidding anyone not part of his military from being allowed to defend themselves or carry weapons (volume 7 chapter 2, clover ignoring Qrow’s license) C) Going behind Ozpin’s back to get the council to fire him for not giving James what he wants? D) Threatening Jacques and telling him to get on James’ good side while declaring closed borders WITHOUT the council’s permission? Threatening a civilian while declaring HIMSELF the council? E) That mech was put in Argus WITHOUT the people’s awareness or permission. Ironwood then installed a racist megalomaniac because she was fanatically loyal to him.  But any woman standing against is immediately considered a war criminal? So yeah, the hatedom? Is misogynistic.  I keep seeing men and women talking about how they want the female characters in RWBY to suffer. I keep seeing them throw slurs at fictional characters and towards the writers. If you don’t have anything respectful to say about the show unless it involves pushing cis white male OC/MC fanfics and talking about how your ideas are superior? Or you wanna talk about porn? Then you have nothing to contribute but Hatred, and you shouldn’t contribute at all.

[king-maven-calore]

I guess since I don't get as invested as you do in books, but I really don't think Rihda dying had anything to do with her sexuality??? Why would it, when you write characters as the author you know if a character is going to die. Rhida dying wasn't "Queer character dying to forward a narrative", it was "character death to forward narrative" her sexuality had nothing to do with it? And I say this a lesbian, I didn't even think that until I saw discussion about it.

As you said Rhida wasn't a big part of the story, but she was the daughter to the monarch who didn't care if the realm fell, with her death she now has more reason to join the effort, now we have the women who indirected caused this in the war. Because her daughter was murdered.

I do agree that too many authors just throw queerness at characters so readers don't bother them about representation. But VA has always been more plot focused the character or romance. I'd, that's my take at least

listen pal, I made a whole ass disclaimer on my rant that those were my feelings regarding Ridha's storyline. You don't have to come here to try to change my mind bc I'm not arguing about whether her death as a political piece will serve the overarching narrative when we already know it does. I'm not that stupid. I'm not banging on VA's doors demanding apologies for being problematic or making tiktoks canceling her.

I never said Ridha died because of her sexuality ???

In case it wasn't clear, what I said is that when you have 6 freaking POVs, 3 straight romance storylines, and you choose to tease with a wlw romance for the POV you have already decided beforehand is the one going to die, it fucking hurts for all the wrong reasons. See? I am allowed to feel massively let down because I've been through this exact same situation several times with other media. It's not original. I'm not hurt because her death scene was magnificently crafted. Ridha was introduced, she hangs out for a while doing nothing chopping ice, some gayness was sprinkled in, she disappears for the entire book and comes back with allies that don't really amount to much, to die almost off the page (Sure Taristan delivers the killing blow but she's already one foot in the grave by then). If she was going to die so unceremoniously that most readers don't give a damn about her, then I would have preferred she had no trace of gayness so I wouldn't mind either 🤷‍♀️. Everyone else is just relieved it wasn't their fave. It's not taking risks or leaving the protagonist (Corayne) "at her lowest" when she didn't even know Ridha lmao.

A poorly written character meant to die means nothing to me coming from a random author. But coming from the same woman capable of writing Sorasa's reluctant hero arc, or Corayne's coming-of-age journey, or the absolutely brilliant chapter 22 from Erida's storyline (which is frankly on another level)... then yes I'll feel fucking betrayed. Because I see my orientation reflected in a character and a kinship sparkles to life! it's a great thing! until that character is meant to be cannon fodder a plot device. VA put such lovely effort into the others and then for Ridha it was like "cheap angst coming right up". It wasn't even like the ~boldest~ narrative move, babes.

Basically, I'm not saying queer characters can't die. You can clearly see I am a Maven fan, who also you know... is queer and dies. So sorry for holding VA's writing up to uhm 🤔🤔 VA's books standards. How silly of me.

[19-bellwether]

"Qrow can't be in a gay relationship because he's never showed interest in men before."

“Blake showed interest in Sun, so her feelings for Yang don’t make sense.”

This may be months overdue, but I want to address this idea that’s pushed by some members of the fandom. Even though one of the characters I mentioned didn't follow the path many hoped for, I still think it's important to refute this argument because it's a bad take that's been used to criticize any queer representation in any fandom.

When this argument crops up (and isn't just made in bad faith), it usually follows the logic that a character suddenly having a same sex love interest or LGBT+ identity is bad writing. “It should have been hinted at before,” or “they suddenly changed a character.” On the surface, it almost seems logical. If you’re going to make a major development in a character, aren’t you supposed to build up to it?

Except that’s not how a queer identity works in real life, and that should be reflected in fiction. People are who they are for no reason at all. The key flaw in this argument is that it assumes being straight is the default. It’s ‘divergent’ from the norm, and thus must be justified. This simply isn’t true. It’s someone expressing an aspect of their identity they always had, not someone acting out of character. 

No one questioned when Qrow flirted with a waitress or Blake blushed at Sun, but the moment these characters potentially showed interest in someone of the same gender, the criticisms started rolling out. Critics didn’t see these as bisexual characters acting on their feelings, they saw these as straight characters being forced into being gay (and boy do critics love to use the word “forced” in these discussions). Similarly, a character showing interest in the opposite sex doesn’t disqualify them from having a same sex interest at another time. I frequently see this line of thinking used to argue that Weiss, Qrow, Jaune, and others MUST be straight, hearkening back to their idea that being straight is the default setting.

It’s is 100% acceptable for a character to not have shown signs of being queer beforehand. Maybe they were hiding it. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe it simply never came up. But it’s never bad writing. Unless a piece of media is specifically about someone struggling with their identity, there’s no argument to be made against a character suddenly showing a non-straight sexuality. In most cases, the same is true of being non-cis as well. Whether dissenters realize it or not, they’re essentially arguing that queer people deserve less simply because we make up less of the population.

Regarding Fair Game, if Clover were a woman I bet we’d have seen a different response to people shipping them. People shipped Qrow and Winter to hell and back after one episode of drunken, angry banter after all. If the show has Yang and Blake officially start dating in Volume 8, then there’d be nothing wrong with it. You can argue whether or not it was well written to your heart’s content, but arguing against two men or two women entering a relationship because “it came out of nowhere” is ignorant at best and homophobic at worst.

TL;DR There is nothing wrong with characters like Qrow and Blake being interested in the same sex because that’s just how sexuality works, and that applies to nearly every queer rep in media. The only people who say otherwise are wearing heteronormativity on their sleeves.

(And yes, there are times where representation is handled poorly such as Dumbledore's homosexuality being confirmed on Twitter but never in the books or movies where it can actually be seen. That’s a different topic altogether that doesn’t nullify this one.)