Never Miss a Meme

This is not the “rwde community” looking to tear RWBY to shreds ever since Monty died or whatever bullshit excuses you keep coming up with everytime ppl critique this cartoon

This is the fact that REAL LGBT people watch this show; real NON-WHITE people watch this show; real WOMEN watch this show, and WOMEN are the literal lead characters of this show. But those parts of the audience wind up disappointed with the lack of care, consideration, or prioritization in this weak-ass writing, where only the art and animation salvage it.

Diversity isn’t a fucking myth like you think just because you have less social aptitude than a fucking rock, or because you refuse to interact with anyone that isn’t the same as you.

Monty was GENTLY asked in a post-show interview if there’d be LGBT+ rep in RWBY, and he confirmed yes. That was 2014.

What Miles Luna, Kerry Shawcross, and Gray Haddock have done, instead of giving us a named PROTAGONIST character to be the first instance of that rep, they made the first openly gay character a VILLAIN. (no, Matte Sky does not count bc the VOICE ACTOR named them, not the creators)

Nothing is groundbreaking about that trash. LGBT+ historians and fandoms have noted that in the media, villains were portrayed as gay, trans, or implied as such for YEARS. (it’s called “queercoding”)

Monty was GENTLY asked by fans at a convention when more brown characters would be in RWBY. He confirmed that Sun and Velvet have “cool” dark-skinned teammates. That was 2013. (after an animation panel at Supanova)

So no, this isn’t just “rabid tumblrinas” hounding the creators for the sake of being special snowflakes like you fucking think. These are real fucking people who love the soul of this show but don’t actually SEE THEMSELVES IN IT. And Monty, rest his soul, was so excited and earnest in wanting to be inclusive so this show could be shared and loved by more people.

But the fact is that it’s not as inclusive as it could be. Even when he was alive, he made missteps too. And it’s not even like it’d be a big deal to fix. But hateful people go out of their way EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. to make it seem like it’d be such a lorebreaking addition to make a character brown, gay, or trans.

It makes absolutely ZERO SENSE how a FANTASY REALM can be lacking so much variety in terms of its inhabitants. And Diversity is an AFTERTHOUGHT. Or a “lorebreaker” (remember the homophobic “how would you show gay characters? just have them make out during the chaos? That’d make no sense!” argument? Fun times!!!)

How many times do we have to sift through the garbage comments on fanart (FAN ART!!!) of Blake being portrayed as black, as if that’s some huge leap from what she could have represented in the first place?

How many times do ppl turn a blind eye to femslash fanart of team RWBY but suddenly complain when someone mentions the notion of one of the characters in team RWBY actually being canonically gay? Or bi? Or pan? Anything outside or in-between?

Hateful people are like “u should be thankful” when they’re having a buffet of representation and we only get, not just breadcrumbs, but moldy ones that the ants are crawling on. Then, when we make our own stuff to satisfy us (again: FAN ART! FANFIC! HEADCANONS!!!) they’re suddenly so defensive and wanna police our shit???

RWBY’s first dark-skinned character was a villain. That’s not representation, that reinforces racist beliefs that black people are thugs and thieves that can’t be trusted and need to be put down.

RWBY’s first openly GAY character is a villain. That’s NOT representation. That reinforces homophobic beliefs that lesbians are predatory temptresses that seduce your daughters and sisters to lead them down a path of hellfire and brimstone.

RWBY has been making transphobic jokes since volume 1 (Penny’s “*gasp* Is she a man?” reference to Blake) Those jokes reinforce the transphobic belief that trans people wear disguises to bait unassuming people so that they can harm them eventually.

Hey, I hate to be doing this on this ask, but I’m not answering in-character questions anymore. You guys have all been great, but to sum it up, the show has (always had) some seriously racist undertones that I just can’t ignore anymore. I go further in depth over here [x]. I’m leaving my inbox open in case anyone wants to have a deeper discussion about why I can’t support the show anymore, but past that…

I still love the versions of JNPR that live in my head, but this has been coming on for a while now. I started out watching the season on a pirate site, because I didn’t want to give RT my monetary support (for a number of reasons), but now I just don’t want to give the show any extra advertisement, period. I’m an American. So are the folks at RT. This racism plotline, with all its questions of ethics and the morality of resistance, is not theirs to tell – or, more specifically, not their questions to answer. and while that used to seem (to my white self, I admit that stuff might have been going over my head) like just awkwardly bad writing, at this point, with our country so torn apart that they can’t use the excuse of ignorance anymore, it is incredibly irresponsible to pull from real life the way they’re doing and a) attempt to answer questions about the “right” way to resist when the writing room is predominantly made up of white men, and b) make the main resistance group so evil. Sienna Khan was the closest they had to a medium between Adam’s bloody revolution stance and Blake’s peaceful protest only stance, and even she was willing to execute people for not falling in line with her rules. People are inevitably going to connect the White Fang to the Black Lives Matter movement, just because of the modern social parallels – so honestly, this ends up feeling like subtextual propaganda. The oppressed are gonna rise up and murder or enslave us all if we don’t keep them in check. Ghira even had a fucking line in episode 3 about how Adam was making it harder to condemn the humans’ hatred of them. Like, what kind of bullshit is that? Oppressive racism is always condemnable, no matter what the actions of individual members of the oppressed group. And, in fact, Adam’s behavior feeds right into the fears of white nationalists in our country right now. We have Nazis and white nationalists rallying openly on the streets chanting that they will not be replaced – essentially, that they refuse to be oppressed at the hands of their former slaves – which is not what’s actually happening, of course – but what do they have Adam, a prominent leader of the oppressed group’s resistance say? Expressly that – he wants to make the humans serve him. A further kick in the teeth is that they’ve taken white nationalist language – all that bullshit about a superior race — and put it in the mouth of that same oppressed resistance leader.

In the end, yeah, maybe it’s just a cartoon, but I don’t want to give any support to the type of people who would make that cartoon. 

We both know you talk the talk but don’t act like you don’t FUCKING touch your self to the godly show known as RWBY only second best next to the perfection of a show like RVB and the Filthy Frank show ya damn heathen protestant fuck bucket.

Sienna Khan, betrayed and murdered by Adam Taurus.