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I was thinking about the moment I started to ship Blake and Yang like all the way. I had already had thoughts such as “they would be very cute together” in volume 1 when they had teamed up at the beginning. But, it was when volume 2, episode 6 aka “Burning the Candle” dropped in 2014 that I really started to see perhaps a possibility of them becoming canon. 

But for 15 year old me, who barely saw any LGBTQ+ representation in shows, I thought it would perhaps not happen, no matter how obvious the hints were. I was scared of the queerbaiting only for the ship to never happen. How many times had shows hinted at two main characters being in a LGBTQ+ relationship, only for it to never happen. The disappointment had happened too many times.

Still, a little part of me couldn’t help but have that spark of hope within me that they would become canon. The smile it brought to my face when even the cast loved them together and shipped them. It was really lovely to feel that way.

And then more hints came and they become more obvious and then volume 6… the way I was shaking as I saw their dynamics, both nervous and yet hopeful with a sense of shocking disbelief as things become more straightforward.

It all started four years ago, when someone recommended the show to me. I was in love with animes, and decided to give RWBY a shot. I immediately clicked with the show, binged V1 and V2. I was ready for V3(or not that ready, bc y'know... V3)! To try and make time go faster, I decided to search for fanfics and fanarts. I already had a thing for the idea of Blake and Yang, and seeing that it wasn't just me... wow, it was great!

When V3 was over, I knew there was in fact something there. I talked to people, and some of them tried to make me believe I was wrong. Tried to tear my hopes down for the ship. When it all became too much, I decided to leave some Facebook groups. I started enjoying it "by myself". Started watching the show talking with only a few people. And even through those critical moments with the fandom, I didn't give up on them.

I went through V4 and V5, enjoying the way we were getting to know a bit more about Remnant and about some characters. Raven's appearance, RW_Y's reunion, Ren and Nora's backstories... it all was so exciting! The moment bees reunited, though, was such an intimate and beautiful moment to me. I wished for someone to love me and to take me in that way. The instant Blake decided to stay with the team and not leave them, fighting her instincts of running away, was such a display of her bravery! And that inspired me, too. I wanted to be brave, just like her!

Then came the year of 2018. It was a hard year for me. Too many responsibilities and too much pressure. I was expected to enter an university, to go well in my last year of high school, to excel in everything I was doing. And, on top of that, I was- and still am- in the closet. I came out to my mom in March and she cried a lot, and although she was more... accepting than I thought she would be, but it still hurt to see her like that. Blaming herself as if my sexuality were a crime. I couldn't even imagine what my father would do, so I haven't come out to this day.

With everything so bottled up, I went through 7 hard months. From January to July, I thought only about killing myself, I couldn't find a purpose to my life, my mind was filled with self deprecating thoughts. I never attempted against my life, but the thoughts that the world would be better without me were still there. It came to a point where I broke down in class before winter break, in July. I cried a lot, told some friends about it and then I started to think about my life, the point of all this... and started getting better.

By the time V6 was airing, I was a lot better. Because of school, I didn't accompany the beginning of the volume and caught up later. Some things happened with a now former friend, though, and I wasn't feeling good again. Scratch that, I wasn't feeling anything at all. But then, there was a spark. There was a light.

The growing possibility of Bumbleby becoming canon made me smile more sincerely than I had before in that year. I already had the headcanon of Blake being bisexual, and to see her being loved like that was awesome. To see the possibility of her having someone of the same gender who loved her like that was great! And the family of said person- aka Ruby- seeming to be so accepting was very important to me! I looked at that and thought "I want that for me" and I finally felt truly happy!

Bumbleby saved my life, guys. It saved my life and I'm not kidding.

So if you ever find yourself thinking "why is BB so important for those people?", think about that. What might seem like just a ship could be a part of what saved someone. It could be what encouraged them to build themself back up.

I thought I was acearo before I started volume 2, but there was something about “aromantic” that didn’t sit well. I know I just didn’t want to get hurt by a partner. I started shipping Bumbleby around Burning the Candle. I read fanfiction, spent hours looking at fanart. I slowly realised that “I want what they have” even if I doubted it was ever going to be Canon. It clicked that I was in fact an asexual lesbian.

Earlier this year I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. Whenever she hurt my feelings or accidently smacked my face because I was suddenly behind her she covered it up with “I love you” and hugged me. A few minutes after she asked me out, she said I love you. Honestly I should’ve said something then because it made me uncomfortable. It felt way too early. She slowly started not listening to my geeky rambles over time but and I considered breaking up with her but felt bad every time she said I love you. Everytime someone said “Yeah you two were made for each other” I felt small. I gave her so many gifts, I spent almost a whole pay from work for a date. In turn she gave me less attention than friends. Just I love yous.

A day before I broke up with her, she had started refusing to even look at me. We had gotten into a fight beforehand because she felt I wasn’t giving her enough attention. I was spending more time with my best friend who would just scream with me about shows because my depression was getting bad again and I felt like my girlfriend was annoyed by all my rambles, she just dismissed them. She knew I was depressed and she still made it about her.

What helped me actually break up with her? Blake. How Blake finally left Adam. I looked at that and found the strength to break up with her. And I looked at Bumbleby and knew that I’ll find someone who’ll be there for me, and I won’t be the only one putting effort into the relationship.

I started RWBY around the end of Volume 3. My brother showed me this show by showing me the red trailer and I was intrigued. Next thing I knew I was binge watching the whole thing until the end of volume 3. I loved it, I couldn’t wait for the next volume. Fortunately, I had Army Basic training to keep me busy. I didn’t make it sadly because of a tear I got on my hamstrings and I then learned that I had a deficiency in my hip that stopped me from performing a sit up properly. Which in turn made my back ache.

When I got back home I felt so broken. I felt like I couldn’t do anything anymore because of my hip and everything else wrong with me. And to top it all off I ended up losing my best friend who I ended up falling in love with. So I was in the dumbs. When volume 4 came out I felt all of Yangs pain because I semi-knew what it felt like. In less extreme circumstances of course. I felt like I was growing/getting better with her instead of being all alone in this. I ended up going to physical therapy for about 6 months and working one myself during it. Yangs character and story gave me the confidence to move on from my past heartache and work on my future again. I got a security job after about a year from working at Carl’s Jr.‘s and started working on working in law enforcement. It ended up not working out but soon after, I found a love for boxing and am working on becoming pro to help people with my money and become a beacon of light like all of the voice actors on RWBY. I also want to work for nasa one day so RWBY has given me the courage to chase my dreams no matter how big. I guess you can say that I’ve channeled my inner Yang

When the volume 5 chapter where yang says I needed Blake came out I was ecstatic. Bumbleby didn’t really seem plausible to me until the “burning candle”. Its a ship that to me didn’t feel forced or have the normal ‘I’m gay you’re gay let’s date’ antics that tv shows always have. It felt natural/ normal for a change. It gave me hope to find a girl who I can have a dynamic like that.

For anyone not in the LGBTQ community, it can difficult to understand why these fans become so passionate.  The main reason is that the vast majority of media we see is aimed at hetrosexuals. Statistics from GLAAD showed that in the 2017 - 2018 season, only 6.4% of characters on primetime TV were LGBTQ.  With that in mind it’s understandable why people get confused or annoyed when the community starts getting vocal and passionate about a fictional relationship.  It’s because straight people see characters representing themselves all the time, so it’s hard to understand why it’s special.

Even among shows with LGBTQ characters, the depiction of their relationship isn’t often the best.  I absolutely love ships like Wayhaught, Avalance or Deanoru, they show two women in a loving relationship, but, to be honest, little time was actually spent setting up these pairings.

It’s not unusual for a M/F relationship to get several years of build up, several years of character growth and interwoven storylines before they get together romantically.  F/F relationships usually happen very quickly, they get together within one season and have little development with each other before they become a couple.

This is the reason so many of us have fallen in love with RWBY and Bumbleby.  It has given us that development.  It has taken the time it needed to show how Blake and Yang have grown as people, both individually and together.  It’s shown us their initial friendship, growing closer and trusting each other more, sharing intimate details of their life with each other, accidently hurting each other, pining for each other while they’re apart, trying to repair their relationship and finally coming together stronger than ever.

This is not uncommon in M/F relationships, but is so very rarely found in F/F ones, so you’ll have to excuse us for being really excited about it.  To some of us, this is something we have never seen before.

I completely understand that a lot of people just don’t see the development of a F/F relationship.  We live in a heteronormative society.  There is the perception that two women can be more intimate with each other, without it being romantic. It’s not uncommon for people to ship a M/F pairing just for looking at each other, but if a F/F pairing shared the same look it would be seen as platonic, so seeing a growing, intimate relationship between two girls is often written off as them being close friends.  However, in the case of Bumbleby, I can assure you that the signs have always been there.  I would ask you to look at any of the popular Bumbleby blogs, I guarantee they’ll have a list of the romantically coded interactions between Blake and Yang.

Perhaps, even more importantly, there are very strong hints that this relationship was planned from the very beginning.  A show making a F/F pairing the primary romantic relationship, then putting time, effort, care and long term planning into it is, I believe, unprecedented.   

While I wouldn’t want to denigrate anyone’s M/F ship, the sheer ubiquity of them means they aren’t unique.  Bumbleby really is and for that reason it is very important to us, so we’re going to be loud about it and we’re not going to be sorry for being loud.   

I invite everyone to share in our happiness.

So I’m super excited to announce that you’ll now be able to find me as one of the mods on @whatbumblebymeans (mod anna) 😊

I’m super excited to be apart of this! Thanks again to @technicallyblakebelladonna for starting it and letting me join up!

We’ll be letting everyone know more soon about how we’re going to work submissions so stay tuned and be sure to follow us!

I guess the first thing that’s important to understand when we’re talking about representation in media is that growing up queer really messes with the relationship we have to ourselves. Our own experiences are in a constant dissonance with what society tells us what our attraction should feel like, and that’s the reason why many of us don’t figure out we’re queer until we’re much older.  It’s a confusing experience, and often painful.

It isn’t just about knowing that homosexuality exists (and other letters of LGBTQ obviously, but that’s a whole different topic), it’s also about what we connect with it. Imagine growing up and every time you see gay people in media it’s connected with all the struggles that come with being gay, with fighting homophobia and discrimination, and then you find out you’re gay yourself. Suddenly you connect all those issues, all that struggle, with a very fundamental part of yourself. You don’t think about all the people who will accept you but those you won’t, how some people will hate you for who you are, and how your life is going to be an endless battle.  

We rarely ever see gay people have a happy ending in media, and the issue isn’t just that we don’t want our favourites to die, the issue is that we grow up not believing that we will have a happy ending. That people like us just don’t get a happily ever after with someone we love. The issue is that we rarely see representation that allows us to form a positive connection with our attraction to people of the same gender. And it isn’t a problem that stories about the struggles of being queer exist, the issue is that those are the only stories being told right now, and we already know what it feels like to struggle with our sexuality, but what we don’t have are positive feelings that we can connect to with that part of ourselves.  

It heavily disconnects us from a part of ourselves, and that’s such a painful experience.

Bumblebee is different because it is what young queer people desperately need to see, for so many different reasons.

Bumblebee more than just a gay ship. A lot of stories with queer romances are all about coming out, realising you’re queer, and then you have that other person who also happens to be queer and they fall in love, guess you gotta take what’s there, right? Rarely do those romances show what connects those people beyond just being comparable regarding their sexuality. Yang and Blake don’t just love each other because “I’m gay and she’s a woman, so guess we’re doing this now”. They’ve formed a strong bond that’s built on mutual trust and support, because their personalities work together really well.

And then Volume 3 happened and suddenly they have all these strong and complicated feelings for each other, and nothing of it has to do with them being queer. The storyline around those two characters is a rollercoaster of complex emotions, something we rarely ever see for queer romances. And this is so incredibly important, because suddenly we have all those emotions to connect with a wlw ship, but what it boils down to is that it’s also a healthy relationship between two characters who care a lot about each other. Suddenly there is a wlw ship that we connect with the need to be there for someone else while also wanting that person to be there for you, with protecting each other and standing up to an abuser, with overcoming struggles and the fear to be left alone, with softly looking at each other and holding hands.

Suddenly a romance between two women can feel soft and warm and caring and then we can also connect those feelings with ourselves, and it’s so much more than just struggling with your sexuality and fighting for equal rights. We see those characters and fall in love with them and finally have characters who we can relate to when it comes to our own sexuality, but who are also so much more than that. And that finally helps us reconnect with ourselves.

Shows rarely have as many well written female characters as RWBY, and it’s even rarer that a show spends so much time developing the relationship between two female characters, that their relationship is so important to the plot of the show. Even rarer without those characters being related or already romantically involved with another man. And now we get all that, but this ship is also sailing and going to be canon. A major romance between main characters that the narrative spends a lot of time developing. One that completely ignores homophobia, and finally gives us a break from all those issues we really know way too well. 

Genre is another important aspect here as well. A lot of gay romance stories are just that, gay romance stories. Often books about the issues that come with being queer, and as much as I loved Love, Simon, I’ve already explained how we also need LGBTQ romances that aren’t just about the struggles of being queer, because otherwise we can never connect anything positive with that part of ourselves. RWBY is the kind of genre where we almost never see good representation, but it’s the genre where we really need it, because only if badass woman fighting monsters and queer are two things that can be connected we can feel like we’re truly equal, only if we can fall in love with a character who we can identify with regarding our sexuality we can develop pride.

It’s canon.

this morning I watched the new episode off of kickassanime because I don’t have a roosterteeth first account.

this morning I watched the new episode three times before the content really began to sink in. i cried and i screamed and i made my dad watch it with me and i sat there in shock and everything. because.

this is unspeakably important to me. I really wasn’t even that much of a rwby fan; I just stayed because of characters like ilia and yang/blake and stuff and

gosh excuse me I can’t even word my thoughts in a logical order

when Adam followed Blake everywhere, like her past always catching up to her, I felt that. It was so real and familiar to me. Through Blake’s (and also Yang’s) psychological trauma, and when he broke her weapon (metaphor for herself probably) I felt that so deeply. 

So when they killed him with the broken halves of Gambol Shroud and he just fell off a darn cliff and Blake just broke down crying because she did it she DID IT she finally got rid of her past by her own will and it would never follow her again, but she would never be able to access it and she had murdered someone, even if it was her toxic abusive ex—oh my gosh I felt her pain and horror and relief and shock and confusion and grief I just can relate to that so much my past I just

I was also sometimes unsure if gay people really existed, if maybe they were just complete imagination and my wishful hallucinations and I was cursed to forever write limerent poetry alone in the dark and ha I know this sounds really silly and absurd and a little wallowing but

this really spoke to me. I think bumbleby broke down some barrier within me. great now this sounds cheesy but I just wanted to say that this is so important. And I’m still crying right now because it’s so

I just

(please excuse the swear im so sory i usually don’t say curse words but uh)

We met about 5 and a half years ago now on tumblr, on a fandom shipping LGBT characters and generally doing fandom things. I came across her blog and was instantly mesmerised by her. She was beautiful, from her photos she posted (even if she was in cosplay, cosplaying a big gay!) and I messaged her! We got along so well! We fell for each other over time and wanted to make it work. The problem, I live in Australia and she lives in the US. Unfortunately circumstances arose and we had to go our seperate ways. It wasn’t our time. We couldn’t make the distance.

We never lost touch. Ever. We were the best of friends. We shipped EVERYTHING together. Korrasami. Pharmercy. You name it. She introduced me to Steven Universe and the main reason I ship the Bees. I was doubtful of the bees when I started watching RWBY in mid 2017 but she assured me it would be canon!

I relate a lot to Yang, where as Valkyroid relates to Blake. We would message each other things like “I wish I could find my Blake.” And in the same breath say “You’re just like Blake.” We never had the guts to say what we wanted until one day. I admitted to her I liked someone, that that someone was like my best friend. But I was scared to tell her because I didn’t want to lose the friendship. This person meant everything to me. Valk said to send her the Bmblb song as a joke. Of course only she would understand what that song meant. So I sent it too her. Her reaction was adorable to say the least 😍😍😍

This ship got us together.

Bumbleby being canon means so much to me… to us. This ship gave me hope. Gave me a way to tell the woman I love just how much she meant to me. Valk was.. and IS… my BEST FRIEND. I just happened to be one of the lucky ones who fell in love with their best friend… and have her love me back.

There aren’t many stories that have queer characters, and even less are written for queer people. The thing is that stories can drastically change the way people think, and even though well written queer characters can make homophobic straight people less homophobic, the more important part is that they can drastically influence how we view ourselves.

Often queer characters are only included when their sexuality has something to do with the plot, if the issues that come with being queer can be used to create conflict or it can be used as a shocking plot twist. Often we are only side characters, walking tropes, the gay best friend.

Those stories tell us that being queer will be hard and painful. That being queer is what defines us. That we are always just side characters to more important straigth people, never the protagonists of our own adventures. That we are only allowed to exists if our queerness is useful. That we have to fullfill certain expectations to be useful. The worst part isn’t even what others think of us but what we think of ourselves, what kind of relationship it creates to that part of our identity. 

The image those stories create in our heads are so harmful, especially because we don’t have many good stories to create less harmful, even positive images. When you’re queer the hardest part can sometimes be to love yourself, especially when so many people tell us we shouldn’t.

Bumblebee is so different because nothing about their relationship is about being queer. Their story tells us that the relationship to another woman can be sweet and wholesome, that she can complete you in a way that no one else can. It tells us that you can love someone so much that it breaks your heart when she leaves, but that you can also forgive her and dream of kissing her in a beautiful spring garden.

They aren’t in love because they’re both queer and “well, she’s a woman, guess I love her and have to be ashamed of it because that’s dirty”. They get the whole range of emotions straight couples get (and sometimes not even them), their love is complicated, warm, painful, rewarding. Of course it’s not easy, but that’s because of Adam, Blake’s guilt, Yang’s fear of being left. Nothing of it has to do with them being queer.

Even though not being straight is an unique experience that is important for most of us, it’s not who we are. It doesn’t define us because we are so much more. And that’s why Bumblebee is so incredibly important, because they are more than just two women not being straight and falling in love, they are also teammates, partners, friends, who care for each other, who went through an incredibly traumatising experience with each other, who would do anything to protect each other. They are the ones who understand each other best, who know how to give each other what they need, they are what the other needs during their darkest times.

They are the very rare portrayal of what love between two women can be beyond of just the love between two women. They are so much more.

@technicallyblakebelladonna recently made a blog called @whatbumblebymeans to collect posts about what bumbleby means to all of us.

Today I became a mod (mod autumn) on that blog to be able to reblog posts about this topic. And as you all know, soon I’m going to publish a YT video about this. So I’ll be sure to use the posts and submissions there after I get permission from their OPs.

Submissions are not open yet, but soon you all can send submissions to that blog if you want to.

Also, if you want us to see your posts about this topic, you can tag your posts as #whatbumblebymeans or mention our blog in it, and we’ll be sure to check it out!