stars in the sky

FRIEND

Darkness like midnight Moonless there’s no light Another lonely day is ending

Searching forever Waiting but never finding The only thing i dream of

The warmth of a smile That stays for a while The face of a friend That won’t leave

I heard a song once It posed this point of view That wishes made on stars Are likely to come true

So here’s my secret At bedtime every night I searched the sky And hoped to find A star who’d send a light to me

The one thing I need Just one kind soul With a heart of gold

Then my dreams became real And I finally feel not alone

Do hugs always make you feel this warm?

My wish came true The day that you appeared And called me friend An answered prayer A chance to share the world To be a girl who fin'lly felt alive

I’m so excited We’ll do so many friendship things Paint our nails Try on clothes Talk about cute boys

Attached but not by strings

And when you’ve got problems Woah! Then I’ve got problems too You’ll never face this world alone I’ll be right here it’s you and me Protectors of each other’s what we’ll be You saw my soul Through the nuts and bolts

You’re the friend i can trust Helped me see i’m not just a machine

And is this what “all the feels” means?

I’ve been combat-ready since the day dad made me Now I’ll fight for something more This might sound wholesome but strangely I’ve got friends I’m fighting for

But I found that humanity It came with sacrifice, a pact To shield you from the wicked even if I can’t Live for real, it was worth it to know you

Winter Schnee as the Winter Maiden in The Final Word

So I appreciate the fact that you felt strongly enough about this to break your blog’s character in asks to bring this to my attention by answering this as openly and honestly as I can.

Firstly, Clover was never written as gay. Never. Not for a single second in his conception was Clover ever intended to be a love interest for Qrow nor was Clover ever written as a gay man. Period.

Secondly, Clover was never ever stated to be “explicitly promised” representation for the mlm community. That is an entirely untrue statement with no actual basis for truth behind it. There’s no documentation of this anywhere, there’s no draft where he was, none of that is true at all in any way, shape, or form.

Third, I have also stated many times that I do understand how a misunderstanding in how the audience perceives a character vs what the actual written intent was can hurt, saying that I’ve felt that burn before, and very much understanding how a fandom can feel a bit upset by it. But the fact that various creators, for many shows, have come forward to say “hey, not the intention” - such as the case with many folks feeling Jenny was tran-coded in My Life As A Teenage Robot, which actually took the creator 21 YEARS to actually acknowledge that fact despite it being spoken of many times - and expressed their concerns and understanding toward those communities affected by it... shows a sign of actually caring. Of which many folks working on this show did the same thing and did so immediately after the first sign of the misunderstanding.

Fourth, as the voice of a character that is a blatantly stated and explicitly promised bit of representation for an entirely underrepresented community of people it’s extremely frustrating to see a character that was never intended to be seen as and surely was never ACTUALLY written as a representation for a marginalized group of people being held up as an example of representation while my own character, who actually is a real example of representation, being constantly demonized and overlooked.

Fifth, the cast and crew of the show (including myself) have received more death threats about this than I think most of you care to actually acknowledge. Am I saying that you, specifically, issued any of those threats? No. But the fact that a lot of folks just forget that that happened is pretty telling to me.

So you asked “How can you continue to support and advertise, in good conscience, for a company that has repeatedly baited and insulted its LGBT+ fanbase” ... the answer is because the actual representation for the LGBTQIA+ community that was explicitly stated and promised  was actually handled incredibly well, had time and care put into it, was thought about from concept, to design, to casting, to written dialogue. And that representation was not hidden, not coded, but bluntly stated both by creators outside of and inside of canon, and proudly on display in the show. 

The final big reason that I can firmly state all of these things? Is because this isn’t just a fictional situation. The people behind the scenes making this show possible actually stood up, stood by, and have put more effort into actually supporting the LGBTIQA+ community than most folks will ever even know or see. In a very real and tangible way these people have physically fought for the rights of people like me to be able to do what I do and, more importantly, to actually be able to live my actual real life with less fear of being actually harmed.

To top it all off, I’m deeply hurt by how things are said by the fandom some days.

I see all the comments saying May isn’t good rep because she doesn’t look or sound manly enough to be a trans woman and that Joanna or Robyn looks more trans than May does and worse being said about her.

Clover being mlm was always just a head canon that the fandom leaned into, it was never ever stated to be canon at any point during the production of the show or creation of the character.

I do understand the hurt that some folks feel about it, trust me I do, but I’ve received death threats over this head canon while actually having put time, effort, and part of myself into actual on-screen representation ... having had that real work ignored with me and my co-workers continuously being harassed despite not a single shred of tangible evidence to back up the reason for the harassment.

TLDR: 

Clover was never intended to be seen as gay, ever, and the fact that the fandom latched onto this head canon and has pushed it that it was always actually canon, in a very negative way, has only harmed both the fandom and staff.

Having a head canon is great, I love them, but seeing a creator (or group of creators) explicitly come out and debunk that head canon as to not spread a toxic and hurtful message that could easily spiral out of control and blatantly ignoring it because it doesn’t fit in with your own narrative does not make that head canon into canon and will only make getting actual intended representation for that group much harder in the future.

First off, it is blatantly untrue that Clover was not gay. Sure, he wasn’t intended by the writers to be gay, but if hundreds of actually gay people are looking at a character and going “Yeah they’re gay” with actual credible evidence in the work itself then I’m going to believe them over the cishet writers that insist its a totally platonic friendship with no romantic undertones (this is exactly what happened with Destiel and Johnlock too, mind you) and I’m incredibly disappointed to see you take the side of these writers that are, at best, completely clueless as to the subtext of their own damn show. 

Secondly, ....yes, he was? Like, explicitly or implicitly, several members of Rooster Teeth implied he was mlm and either attracted to or in a relationship with Qrow. There’s Lindsay’s “Bi is fly” tweet on a thread about Qrow, the fact at least one RT staff member said something to the affect of “Now Qrow has 2 boyfriends” when Clover was introduced, literally everything about him designed to compliment Qrow the way other canon ships like Renora, Arkos, or Bumbleby complioment each other, the fact their emblems are sold together, the wink he gives Clover that directly parallels the flirty waitress from several volumes ago. 

Third, see, the difference there is that Jenny is actually pretty decent trans rep (by the standard of 90′s-early 2000′s action cartoons at least) and he never directly exploited trans people that were hungry for representation for profit the way CRWBY does with Bumbleby currently and has done with Fair Game previously. And also, no, they never directly refuted or debunked anything until they started getting criticized after Clover died. If they did, then this whole situation never would have happened. But then that would cut into the profits they were getting, so they decided to wait, 

Fourth, I love May, don’t get me wrong. Seeing a fellow trans woman in a show I used to enjoy meant the world to me  But, to be fair...she barely got any screen time in Volume 7, which was when all this was going down for the most part. In order for it to count as representation, I feel like the character should actually actively be there representing the demographic. There’s also the fact that having a trans character doesn’t automatically make up for lackluster representation of other marginalized groups, and frankly its not fair to those groups to insist that their representation is fine because we have one transfem character strikes me as at best a sense of “fuck you, got mine” selfishness and at worst a silencing tactic 

Fifth, I hope you know that the people sending you death threats are not an accurate representation of most of the people criticizing Rooster Teeth for how they handled Fair Game, nor does it actually debunk any of our actual poitns. Its abhorrent you got them at all, but then you also have to look at the massive amounts of harassment and death threats that we received from your fans as well, including those of us that were just mildly criticizing how Rooster Teeth handled the situation. 

Sixth, no, they’re really not. We have super unimportant side characters that were only confirmed in dubiously canon tie-in material that not everyone will read - Coco, Velvet, and Scarlet (and even if we do accept it as canon Scarlet is kind of a homophobic stereotype) -, characters that show up for like a volume at most - Illia and the Cotta-Arcs -,couples who are either deliberately left vaguely unconfirmed or not as explicitly affectionate as the heterosexual romances like Arkos and Renora were at their confirmation -  Cotta-Arcs again and Bumbleby -, or glorified background characters who’s LGBT+ status was only ever explicitly mentioned outside the show to the best of my memory - there’s May. Hell, Blake spent an entire volume as relationship therapist to Renora instead of  her relationship with Yang getting developed. Renora and Arkos both got super passionate heartfelt kisses, the most we’re getting are couples that sit abnormally far from each other on the couch and hold hands. 

Let me recontextualize this: I have written a character Sam that is black. I've said this online and in public.

But you decided "Nah, they're white now" and the fandom agrees. So everyone is now claiming Sam as white, even though I've said that they're black.

In other words, you've decide to whitewash my example character.

You claim that I'm homophobic but I've never seen Clover as gay and I'm BI AS FUCK. Your behaviour is partially the reason why the LGBTQ community is so divided; you throw such baseless and insulting claims just because a fictional media didn't go exactly the way you wanted to. You're even willing to cannibalise other LGBTQ people just because they disagree with you.

You've done nothing but embarrass everyone. A bisexual person like me believes in the inherent right as a creator to do what they want with a character. If they claim Clover is straight as a ruler (or alternatively asexual) and literally prove it, then that's pretty a divine word of God as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't see no romance between Qrow and Clover. I can see why people ship it but I've seen weirder ships.

Also, two guys can be friends. Same as two girls or a guy and a girl. By making everything sexual, you devalue friendships. Your behaviour is why guys are uncomfortable showing affection to friends; because you ship them for your own sick amusement.

They didn’t prove it though. They only insisted he was after they got called out for exploiting the ship for views and profit.   

Sure, two guys or girls can be friends, but I’m fucking sick of “WhAt AbOuT pLaToNiC fRiEnDsHiPs” getting thrown around whenever we criticize something for gaybaiting. No, the reason guys are uncomfortable showing affection to friends is toxic masculinity and homophobia, not because someone ships two fictional men together out of a desire to see representation for themselves in media. 

Sure, but never at any points where the show itself seemed to be building up to Black Sun. 

I’d argue that blacksun had buildup volumes 1-3 but fell flat when v4 showed that Blake and Sun couldnt get along and after heroes vs monsters pretty much cemented Yang as Blake’s endgame love interest. That still didn’t stop blacksun shippers from being Very vocal all throughout v4, v5 and even v6 when Blake kisses him on the cheek.

So I appreciate the fact that you felt strongly enough about this to break your blog’s character in asks to bring this to my attention by answering this as openly and honestly as I can.

Firstly, Clover was never written as gay. Never. Not for a single second in his conception was Clover ever intended to be a love interest for Qrow nor was Clover ever written as a gay man. Period.

Secondly, Clover was never ever stated to be “explicitly promised” representation for the mlm community. That is an entirely untrue statement with no actual basis for truth behind it. There’s no documentation of this anywhere, there’s no draft where he was, none of that is true at all in any way, shape, or form.

Third, I have also stated many times that I do understand how a misunderstanding in how the audience perceives a character vs what the actual written intent was can hurt, saying that I’ve felt that burn before, and very much understanding how a fandom can feel a bit upset by it. But the fact that various creators, for many shows, have come forward to say “hey, not the intention” - such as the case with many folks feeling Jenny was tran-coded in My Life As A Teenage Robot, which actually took the creator 21 YEARS to actually acknowledge that fact despite it being spoken of many times - and expressed their concerns and understanding toward those communities affected by it... shows a sign of actually caring. Of which many folks working on this show did the same thing and did so immediately after the first sign of the misunderstanding.

Fourth, as the voice of a character that is a blatantly stated and explicitly promised bit of representation for an entirely underrepresented community of people it’s extremely frustrating to see a character that was never intended to be seen as and surely was never ACTUALLY written as a representation for a marginalized group of people being held up as an example of representation while my own character, who actually is a real example of representation, being constantly demonized and overlooked.

Fifth, the cast and crew of the show (including myself) have received more death threats about this than I think most of you care to actually acknowledge. Am I saying that you, specifically, issued any of those threats? No. But the fact that a lot of folks just forget that that happened is pretty telling to me.

So you asked “How can you continue to support and advertise, in good conscience, for a company that has repeatedly baited and insulted its LGBT+ fanbase” ... the answer is because the actual representation for the LGBTQIA+ community that was explicitly stated and promised  was actually handled incredibly well, had time and care put into it, was thought about from concept, to design, to casting, to written dialogue. And that representation was not hidden, not coded, but bluntly stated both by creators outside of and inside of canon, and proudly on display in the show. 

The final big reason that I can firmly state all of these things? Is because this isn’t just a fictional situation. The people behind the scenes making this show possible actually stood up, stood by, and have put more effort into actually supporting the LGBTIQA+ community than most folks will ever even know or see. In a very real and tangible way these people have physically fought for the rights of people like me to be able to do what I do and, more importantly, to actually be able to live my actual real life with less fear of being actually harmed.

To top it all off, I’m deeply hurt by how things are said by the fandom some days.

I see all the comments saying May isn’t good rep because she doesn’t look or sound manly enough to be a trans woman and that Joanna or Robyn looks more trans than May does and worse being said about her.

Clover being mlm was always just a head canon that the fandom leaned into, it was never ever stated to be canon at any point during the production of the show or creation of the character.

I do understand the hurt that some folks feel about it, trust me I do, but I’ve received death threats over this head canon while actually having put time, effort, and part of myself into actual on-screen representation ... having had that real work ignored with me and my co-workers continuously being harassed despite not a single shred of tangible evidence to back up the reason for the harassment.

TLDR: 

Clover was never intended to be seen as gay, ever, and the fact that the fandom latched onto this head canon and has pushed it that it was always actually canon, in a very negative way, has only harmed both the fandom and staff.

Having a head canon is great, I love them, but seeing a creator (or group of creators) explicitly come out and debunk that head canon as to not spread a toxic and hurtful message that could easily spiral out of control and blatantly ignoring it because it doesn’t fit in with your own narrative does not make that head canon into canon and will only make getting actual intended representation for that group much harder in the future.

First off, it is blatantly untrue that Clover was not gay. Sure, he wasn’t intended by the writers to be gay, but if hundreds of actually gay people are looking at a character and going “Yeah they’re gay” with actual credible evidence in the work itself then I’m going to believe them over the cishet writers that insist its a totally platonic friendship with no romantic undertones (this is exactly what happened with Destiel and Johnlock too, mind you) and I’m incredibly disappointed to see you take the side of these writers that are, at best, completely clueless as to the subtext of their own damn show. 

Secondly, ....yes, he was? Like, explicitly or implicitly, several members of Rooster Teeth implied he was mlm and either attracted to or in a relationship with Qrow. There’s Lindsay’s “Bi is fly” tweet on a thread about Qrow, the fact at least one RT staff member said something to the affect of “Now Qrow has 2 boyfriends” when Clover was introduced, literally everything about him designed to compliment Qrow the way other canon ships like Renora, Arkos, or Bumbleby complioment each other, the fact their emblems are sold together, the wink he gives Clover that directly parallels the flirty waitress from several volumes ago. 

Third, see, the difference there is that Jenny is actually pretty decent trans rep (by the standard of 90′s-early 2000′s action cartoons at least) and he never directly exploited trans people that were hungry for representation for profit the way CRWBY does with Bumbleby currently and has done with Fair Game previously. And also, no, they never directly refuted or debunked anything until they started getting criticized after Clover died. If they did, then this whole situation never would have happened. But then that would cut into the profits they were getting, so they decided to wait, 

Fourth, I love May, don’t get me wrong. Seeing a fellow trans woman in a show I used to enjoy meant the world to me  But, to be fair...she barely got any screen time in Volume 7, which was when all this was going down for the most part. In order for it to count as representation, I feel like the character should actually actively be there representing the demographic. There’s also the fact that having a trans character doesn’t automatically make up for lackluster representation of other marginalized groups, and frankly its not fair to those groups to insist that their representation is fine because we have one transfem character strikes me as at best a sense of “fuck you, got mine” selfishness and at worst a silencing tactic 

Fifth, I hope you know that the people sending you death threats are not an accurate representation of most of the people criticizing Rooster Teeth for how they handled Fair Game, nor does it actually debunk any of our actual poitns. Its abhorrent you got them at all, but then you also have to look at the massive amounts of harassment and death threats that we received from your fans as well, including those of us that were just mildly criticizing how Rooster Teeth handled the situation. 

Sixth, no, they’re really not. We have super unimportant side characters that were only confirmed in dubiously canon tie-in material that not everyone will read - Coco, Velvet, and Scarlet (and even if we do accept it as canon Scarlet is kind of a homophobic stereotype) -, characters that show up for like a volume at most - Illia and the Cotta-Arcs -,couples who are either deliberately left vaguely unconfirmed or not as explicitly affectionate as the heterosexual romances like Arkos and Renora were at their confirmation -  Cotta-Arcs again and Bumbleby -, or glorified background characters who’s LGBT+ status was only ever explicitly mentioned outside the show to the best of my memory - there’s May. Hell, Blake spent an entire volume as relationship therapist to Renora instead of  her relationship with Yang getting developed. Renora and Arkos both got super passionate heartfelt kisses, the most we’re getting are couples that sit abnormally far from each other on the couch and hold hands. 

Let me recontextualize this: I have written a character Sam that is black. I've said this online and in public.

But you decided "Nah, they're white now" and the fandom agrees. So everyone is now claiming Sam as white, even though I've said that they're black.

In other words, you've decide to whitewash my example character.

You claim that I'm homophobic but I've never seen Clover as gay and I'm BI AS FUCK. Your behaviour is partially the reason why the LGBTQ community is so divided; you throw such baseless and insulting claims just because a fictional media didn't go exactly the way you wanted to. You're even willing to cannibalise other LGBTQ people just because they disagree with you.

You've done nothing but embarrass everyone. A bisexual person like me believes in the inherent right as a creator to do what they want with a character. If they claim Clover is straight as a ruler (or alternatively asexual) and literally prove it, then that's pretty a divine word of God as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't see no romance between Qrow and Clover. I can see why people ship it but I've seen weirder ships.

Also, two guys can be friends. Same as two girls or a guy and a girl. By making everything sexual, you devalue friendships. Your behaviour is why guys are uncomfortable showing affection to friends; because you ship them for your own sick amusement.

They didn’t prove it though. They only insisted he was after they got called out for exploiting the ship for views and profit.   

Sure, two guys or girls can be friends, but I’m fucking sick of “WhAt AbOuT pLaToNiC fRiEnDsHiPs” getting thrown around whenever we criticize something for gaybaiting. No, the reason guys are uncomfortable showing affection to friends is toxic masculinity and homophobia, not because someone ships two fictional men together out of a desire to see representation for themselves in media. 

So I appreciate the fact that you felt strongly enough about this to break your blog’s character in asks to bring this to my attention by answering this as openly and honestly as I can.

Firstly, Clover was never written as gay. Never. Not for a single second in his conception was Clover ever intended to be a love interest for Qrow nor was Clover ever written as a gay man. Period.

Secondly, Clover was never ever stated to be “explicitly promised” representation for the mlm community. That is an entirely untrue statement with no actual basis for truth behind it. There’s no documentation of this anywhere, there’s no draft where he was, none of that is true at all in any way, shape, or form.

Third, I have also stated many times that I do understand how a misunderstanding in how the audience perceives a character vs what the actual written intent was can hurt, saying that I’ve felt that burn before, and very much understanding how a fandom can feel a bit upset by it. But the fact that various creators, for many shows, have come forward to say “hey, not the intention” - such as the case with many folks feeling Jenny was tran-coded in My Life As A Teenage Robot, which actually took the creator 21 YEARS to actually acknowledge that fact despite it being spoken of many times - and expressed their concerns and understanding toward those communities affected by it... shows a sign of actually caring. Of which many folks working on this show did the same thing and did so immediately after the first sign of the misunderstanding.

Fourth, as the voice of a character that is a blatantly stated and explicitly promised bit of representation for an entirely underrepresented community of people it’s extremely frustrating to see a character that was never intended to be seen as and surely was never ACTUALLY written as a representation for a marginalized group of people being held up as an example of representation while my own character, who actually is a real example of representation, being constantly demonized and overlooked.

Fifth, the cast and crew of the show (including myself) have received more death threats about this than I think most of you care to actually acknowledge. Am I saying that you, specifically, issued any of those threats? No. But the fact that a lot of folks just forget that that happened is pretty telling to me.

So you asked “How can you continue to support and advertise, in good conscience, for a company that has repeatedly baited and insulted its LGBT+ fanbase” ... the answer is because the actual representation for the LGBTQIA+ community that was explicitly stated and promised  was actually handled incredibly well, had time and care put into it, was thought about from concept, to design, to casting, to written dialogue. And that representation was not hidden, not coded, but bluntly stated both by creators outside of and inside of canon, and proudly on display in the show. 

The final big reason that I can firmly state all of these things? Is because this isn’t just a fictional situation. The people behind the scenes making this show possible actually stood up, stood by, and have put more effort into actually supporting the LGBTIQA+ community than most folks will ever even know or see. In a very real and tangible way these people have physically fought for the rights of people like me to be able to do what I do and, more importantly, to actually be able to live my actual real life with less fear of being actually harmed.

To top it all off, I’m deeply hurt by how things are said by the fandom some days.

I see all the comments saying May isn’t good rep because she doesn’t look or sound manly enough to be a trans woman and that Joanna or Robyn looks more trans than May does and worse being said about her.

Clover being mlm was always just a head canon that the fandom leaned into, it was never ever stated to be canon at any point during the production of the show or creation of the character.

I do understand the hurt that some folks feel about it, trust me I do, but I’ve received death threats over this head canon while actually having put time, effort, and part of myself into actual on-screen representation ... having had that real work ignored with me and my co-workers continuously being harassed despite not a single shred of tangible evidence to back up the reason for the harassment.

TLDR: 

Clover was never intended to be seen as gay, ever, and the fact that the fandom latched onto this head canon and has pushed it that it was always actually canon, in a very negative way, has only harmed both the fandom and staff.

Having a head canon is great, I love them, but seeing a creator (or group of creators) explicitly come out and debunk that head canon as to not spread a toxic and hurtful message that could easily spiral out of control and blatantly ignoring it because it doesn’t fit in with your own narrative does not make that head canon into canon and will only make getting actual intended representation for that group much harder in the future.

First off, it is blatantly untrue that Clover was not gay. Sure, he wasn’t intended by the writers to be gay, but if hundreds of actually gay people are looking at a character and going “Yeah they’re gay” with actual credible evidence in the work itself then I’m going to believe them over the cishet writers that insist its a totally platonic friendship with no romantic undertones (this is exactly what happened with Destiel and Johnlock too, mind you) and I’m incredibly disappointed to see you take the side of these writers that are, at best, completely clueless as to the subtext of their own damn show. 

Secondly, ....yes, he was? Like, explicitly or implicitly, several members of Rooster Teeth implied he was mlm and either attracted to or in a relationship with Qrow. There’s Lindsay’s “Bi is fly” tweet on a thread about Qrow, the fact at least one RT staff member said something to the affect of “Now Qrow has 2 boyfriends” when Clover was introduced, literally everything about him designed to compliment Qrow the way other canon ships like Renora, Arkos, or Bumbleby complioment each other, the fact their emblems are sold together, the wink he gives Clover that directly parallels the flirty waitress from several volumes ago. 

Third, see, the difference there is that Jenny is actually pretty decent trans rep (by the standard of 90′s-early 2000′s action cartoons at least) and he never directly exploited trans people that were hungry for representation for profit the way CRWBY does with Bumbleby currently and has done with Fair Game previously. And also, no, they never directly refuted or debunked anything until they started getting criticized after Clover died. If they did, then this whole situation never would have happened. But then that would cut into the profits they were getting, so they decided to wait, 

Fourth, I love May, don’t get me wrong. Seeing a fellow trans woman in a show I used to enjoy meant the world to me  But, to be fair...she barely got any screen time in Volume 7, which was when all this was going down for the most part. In order for it to count as representation, I feel like the character should actually actively be there representing the demographic. There’s also the fact that having a trans character doesn’t automatically make up for lackluster representation of other marginalized groups, and frankly its not fair to those groups to insist that their representation is fine because we have one transfem character strikes me as at best a sense of “fuck you, got mine” selfishness and at worst a silencing tactic 

Fifth, I hope you know that the people sending you death threats are not an accurate representation of most of the people criticizing Rooster Teeth for how they handled Fair Game, nor does it actually debunk any of our actual poitns. Its abhorrent you got them at all, but then you also have to look at the massive amounts of harassment and death threats that we received from your fans as well, including those of us that were just mildly criticizing how Rooster Teeth handled the situation. 

Sixth, no, they’re really not. We have super unimportant side characters that were only confirmed in dubiously canon tie-in material that not everyone will read - Coco, Velvet, and Scarlet (and even if we do accept it as canon Scarlet is kind of a homophobic stereotype) -, characters that show up for like a volume at most - Illia and the Cotta-Arcs -,couples who are either deliberately left vaguely unconfirmed or not as explicitly affectionate as the heterosexual romances like Arkos and Renora were at their confirmation -  Cotta-Arcs again and Bumbleby -, or glorified background characters who’s LGBT+ status was only ever explicitly mentioned outside the show to the best of my memory - there’s May. Hell, Blake spent an entire volume as relationship therapist to Renora instead of  her relationship with Yang getting developed. Renora and Arkos both got super passionate heartfelt kisses, the most we’re getting are couples that sit abnormally far from each other on the couch and hold hands. 

Let me recontextualize this: I have written a character Sam that is black. I've said this online and in public.

But you decided "Nah, they're white now" and the fandom agrees. So everyone is now claiming Sam as white, even though I've said that they're black.

In other words, you've decide to whitewash my example character.

You claim that I'm homophobic but I've never seen Clover as gay and I'm BI AS FUCK. Your behaviour is partially the reason why the LGBTQ community is so divided; you throw such baseless and insulting claims just because a fictional media didn't go exactly the way you wanted to. You're even willing to cannibalise other LGBTQ people just because they disagree with you.

You've done nothing but embarrass everyone. A bisexual person like me believes in the inherent right as a creator to do what they want with a character. If they claim Clover is straight as a ruler (or alternatively asexual) and literally prove it, then that's pretty a divine word of God as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't see no romance between Qrow and Clover. I can see why people ship it but I've seen weirder ships.

Also, two guys can be friends. Same as two girls or a guy and a girl. By making everything sexual, you devalue friendships. Your behaviour is why guys are uncomfortable showing affection to friends; because you ship them for your own sick amusement.

They didn’t prove it though. They only insisted he was after they got called out for exploiting the ship for views and profit.   

Sure, two guys or girls can be friends, but I’m fucking sick of “WhAt AbOuT pLaToNiC fRiEnDsHiPs” getting thrown around whenever we criticize something for gaybaiting. No, the reason guys are uncomfortable showing affection to friends is toxic masculinity and homophobia, not because someone ships two fictional men together out of a desire to see representation for themselves in media. 

So I appreciate the fact that you felt strongly enough about this to break your blog’s character in asks to bring this to my attention by answering this as openly and honestly as I can.

Firstly, Clover was never written as gay. Never. Not for a single second in his conception was Clover ever intended to be a love interest for Qrow nor was Clover ever written as a gay man. Period.

Secondly, Clover was never ever stated to be “explicitly promised” representation for the mlm community. That is an entirely untrue statement with no actual basis for truth behind it. There’s no documentation of this anywhere, there’s no draft where he was, none of that is true at all in any way, shape, or form.

Third, I have also stated many times that I do understand how a misunderstanding in how the audience perceives a character vs what the actual written intent was can hurt, saying that I’ve felt that burn before, and very much understanding how a fandom can feel a bit upset by it. But the fact that various creators, for many shows, have come forward to say “hey, not the intention” - such as the case with many folks feeling Jenny was tran-coded in My Life As A Teenage Robot, which actually took the creator 21 YEARS to actually acknowledge that fact despite it being spoken of many times - and expressed their concerns and understanding toward those communities affected by it... shows a sign of actually caring. Of which many folks working on this show did the same thing and did so immediately after the first sign of the misunderstanding.

Fourth, as the voice of a character that is a blatantly stated and explicitly promised bit of representation for an entirely underrepresented community of people it’s extremely frustrating to see a character that was never intended to be seen as and surely was never ACTUALLY written as a representation for a marginalized group of people being held up as an example of representation while my own character, who actually is a real example of representation, being constantly demonized and overlooked.

Fifth, the cast and crew of the show (including myself) have received more death threats about this than I think most of you care to actually acknowledge. Am I saying that you, specifically, issued any of those threats? No. But the fact that a lot of folks just forget that that happened is pretty telling to me.

So you asked “How can you continue to support and advertise, in good conscience, for a company that has repeatedly baited and insulted its LGBT+ fanbase” ... the answer is because the actual representation for the LGBTQIA+ community that was explicitly stated and promised  was actually handled incredibly well, had time and care put into it, was thought about from concept, to design, to casting, to written dialogue. And that representation was not hidden, not coded, but bluntly stated both by creators outside of and inside of canon, and proudly on display in the show. 

The final big reason that I can firmly state all of these things? Is because this isn’t just a fictional situation. The people behind the scenes making this show possible actually stood up, stood by, and have put more effort into actually supporting the LGBTIQA+ community than most folks will ever even know or see. In a very real and tangible way these people have physically fought for the rights of people like me to be able to do what I do and, more importantly, to actually be able to live my actual real life with less fear of being actually harmed.

To top it all off, I’m deeply hurt by how things are said by the fandom some days.

I see all the comments saying May isn’t good rep because she doesn’t look or sound manly enough to be a trans woman and that Joanna or Robyn looks more trans than May does and worse being said about her.

Clover being mlm was always just a head canon that the fandom leaned into, it was never ever stated to be canon at any point during the production of the show or creation of the character.

I do understand the hurt that some folks feel about it, trust me I do, but I’ve received death threats over this head canon while actually having put time, effort, and part of myself into actual on-screen representation ... having had that real work ignored with me and my co-workers continuously being harassed despite not a single shred of tangible evidence to back up the reason for the harassment.

TLDR: 

Clover was never intended to be seen as gay, ever, and the fact that the fandom latched onto this head canon and has pushed it that it was always actually canon, in a very negative way, has only harmed both the fandom and staff.

Having a head canon is great, I love them, but seeing a creator (or group of creators) explicitly come out and debunk that head canon as to not spread a toxic and hurtful message that could easily spiral out of control and blatantly ignoring it because it doesn’t fit in with your own narrative does not make that head canon into canon and will only make getting actual intended representation for that group much harder in the future.

First off, it is blatantly untrue that Clover was not gay. Sure, he wasn’t intended by the writers to be gay, but if hundreds of actually gay people are looking at a character and going “Yeah they’re gay” with actual credible evidence in the work itself then I’m going to believe them over the cishet writers that insist its a totally platonic friendship with no romantic undertones (this is exactly what happened with Destiel and Johnlock too, mind you) and I’m incredibly disappointed to see you take the side of these writers that are, at best, completely clueless as to the subtext of their own damn show. 

Secondly, ....yes, he was? Like, explicitly or implicitly, several members of Rooster Teeth implied he was mlm and either attracted to or in a relationship with Qrow. There’s Lindsay’s “Bi is fly” tweet on a thread about Qrow, the fact at least one RT staff member said something to the affect of “Now Qrow has 2 boyfriends” when Clover was introduced, literally everything about him designed to compliment Qrow the way other canon ships like Renora, Arkos, or Bumbleby complioment each other, the fact their emblems are sold together, the wink he gives Clover that directly parallels the flirty waitress from several volumes ago. 

Third, see, the difference there is that Jenny is actually pretty decent trans rep (by the standard of 90′s-early 2000′s action cartoons at least) and he never directly exploited trans people that were hungry for representation for profit the way CRWBY does with Bumbleby currently and has done with Fair Game previously. And also, no, they never directly refuted or debunked anything until they started getting criticized after Clover died. If they did, then this whole situation never would have happened. But then that would cut into the profits they were getting, so they decided to wait, 

Fourth, I love May, don’t get me wrong. Seeing a fellow trans woman in a show I used to enjoy meant the world to me  But, to be fair...she barely got any screen time in Volume 7, which was when all this was going down for the most part. In order for it to count as representation, I feel like the character should actually actively be there representing the demographic. There’s also the fact that having a trans character doesn’t automatically make up for lackluster representation of other marginalized groups, and frankly its not fair to those groups to insist that their representation is fine because we have one transfem character strikes me as at best a sense of “fuck you, got mine” selfishness and at worst a silencing tactic 

Fifth, I hope you know that the people sending you death threats are not an accurate representation of most of the people criticizing Rooster Teeth for how they handled Fair Game, nor does it actually debunk any of our actual poitns. Its abhorrent you got them at all, but then you also have to look at the massive amounts of harassment and death threats that we received from your fans as well, including those of us that were just mildly criticizing how Rooster Teeth handled the situation. 

Sixth, no, they’re really not. We have super unimportant side characters that were only confirmed in dubiously canon tie-in material that not everyone will read - Coco, Velvet, and Scarlet (and even if we do accept it as canon Scarlet is kind of a homophobic stereotype) -, characters that show up for like a volume at most - Illia and the Cotta-Arcs -,couples who are either deliberately left vaguely unconfirmed or not as explicitly affectionate as the heterosexual romances like Arkos and Renora were at their confirmation -  Cotta-Arcs again and Bumbleby -, or glorified background characters who’s LGBT+ status was only ever explicitly mentioned outside the show to the best of my memory - there’s May. Hell, Blake spent an entire volume as relationship therapist to Renora instead of  her relationship with Yang getting developed. Renora and Arkos both got super passionate heartfelt kisses, the most we’re getting are couples that sit abnormally far from each other on the couch and hold hands. 

Let me recontextualize this: I have written a character Sam that is black. I've said this online and in public.

But you decided "Nah, they're white now" and the fandom agrees. So everyone is now claiming Sam as white, even though I've said that they're black.

In other words, you've decide to whitewash my example character.

You claim that I'm homophobic but I've never seen Clover as gay and I'm BI AS FUCK. Your behaviour is partially the reason why the LGBTQ community is so divided; you throw such baseless and insulting claims just because a fictional media didn't go exactly the way you wanted to. You're even willing to cannibalise other LGBTQ people just because they disagree with you.

You've done nothing but embarrass everyone. A bisexual person like me believes in the inherent right as a creator to do what they want with a character. If they claim Clover is straight as a ruler (or alternatively asexual) and literally prove it, then that's pretty a divine word of God as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't see no romance between Qrow and Clover. I can see why people ship it but I've seen weirder ships.

Also, two guys can be friends. Same as two girls or a guy and a girl. By making everything sexual, you devalue friendships. Your behaviour is why guys are uncomfortable showing affection to friends; because you ship them for your own sick amusement.

They didn’t prove it though. They only insisted he was after they got called out for exploiting the ship for views and profit.   

Sure, two guys or girls can be friends, but I’m fucking sick of “WhAt AbOuT pLaToNiC fRiEnDsHiPs” getting thrown around whenever we criticize something for gaybaiting. No, the reason guys are uncomfortable showing affection to friends is toxic masculinity and homophobia, not because someone ships two fictional men together out of a desire to see representation for themselves in media.