nappybones5 - Tumblr blog

nappybones5 · 7 months

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Every think about how one of ravens coping mechinizism was to regress to a time in her life were things were simply just kill or be killed with minimal connection instead of every that came with team stqr and oz.

Cause I think about it a lot

this is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night, like

she would have had to change, right? qrow says raven has "an interesting way of looking at the world" that he doesn't particularly agree with—which likely is at least partly related to 'the weak die, the strong live' rule—but for team strq to be as close as they were, for raven to once trust ozpin enough to be part of his inner circle, for her and tai to get together and start a family, she would have had to move away from that line of looking at the world. to actually live instead of just survive.

when she learned the truth, maybe even whatever happened on summer's mission played a part, did all of it feel like it was built on lies? that this ideal, romantic life of a huntress wasn't what it was made out to be? that there's no fairy tale ending when an invincible monster who cannot even be stopped, who they've been tasked to fight and stop anyway, exists?

did that make it easier to go back to her previous life, where everything was simple; the weak die, the strong live. kill or be killed. there's no hidden truths there, no lies, just what everyone in the tribe takes as the cold, hard facts of the world.

and like. if raven felt like the very foundation of the life she had in beacon and beyond was built on a lie, did her teammates feel the same way about her? she was there to learn how to kill huntsmen, after all, and now she has gone back to the tribe and reverted (at least on the surface) to the person she was before beacon; to them, was the raven they knew a lie, too? especially to qrow who grew up with raven and would know exactly what she has been like from an outside perspective, to know the beacon era was practically a drop in a bucket compared to the rest, it definitely would have come across as an act.

which hurts bc i also feel like that raven was the real raven, and the rest is, to an extent, an act she had to put up to survive bc she grew up in a hostile environment where the weak died and the strong lived which is pretty much about physical strength and compared to adults, kids aren't strong like that, of course she would have had to make up for it somehow and, well. she's strong enough to do what others won't. that doesn't exactly sound like she was prioritizing physical strength to survive, rather that she was willing to do whatever it takes. it's like, scrappy, ya know?

...anyway. this got out of hand quickly, so safe to say: yeah, i do think about it. a lot lmao

#raven branwen #rwby

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nappybones5 · 7 months

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Parents in RWBY be like

And I don't mean just Raven. Kali, Ghira and even Taiyang are no saints either. Qrow doesn't try to teach/warn Ruby and Yang about the past or anything really (in that aspect even Raven has done more for Yang), and you already know everything you need to know about Weiss' parents. Wish we could learn more about Summer's flaws as a parent, assuming she had any, but so far out of all of them, she remains the best imo.

Yeah, as much as I like Taiyang, he and the other parents suffer from writers who need these parents to not be there so that the kids can drive the story, but can't come up with good reasons as to why they wouldn't be there.

Which makes them look neglegent at BEST. The only reason Taiyang isn't with his daughters right now is because the writers didn't want him joining the cast that's already struggling. He was meant to serve as a prop for Yang's "recovery" arc and then get dumped, similar to Blake's parents.

At least in other shows, they do a better job at explaining why it has to be the kid characters. ATLA, for example, has it that all the capable adults went off to fight in the war, and those left behind are too old and sick to do anything. There's literally no one in the SWT than Katara and Sokka to help Aang.

And even when there's an explanation, the characters are allowed to be mad at their parents. Katara is angry and upset that Hakoda left them, and he listens because he understands. We don't see any of that in RWBY, even to the point that Blake blamed herself for running away and Ghira allowed her to do so.

#rwde #taiyang xiao long #sigh #big sigh #heavy sigh #deep sigh #le sigh

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nappybones5 · 7 months

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maybe i like it when a female character is deeply flawed and responsible for countless deaths and so on and so forth. more female characters should be deeply flawed and responsible for countless deaths

#raven branwen

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nappybones5 · 7 months

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shout out to leo for his "who are you trying to convince?" @ raven bc this was truly the True Colors™ moment for raven in that episode that got to the very core of her character. every single other time she gets accused of something she has some kind of a response but this time? she just. leaves lmao she can't answer that bc the answer would be "me, myself, and i" like literally no one else is buying what she's selling.

and it's not even a new thing, she's already doing it in the flashback: "it's... you're better at that life, better than i was..." <- if that ain't trying to justify her decision to herself after she has already made it then i don't know what is. like she wanted that life, tho, and unless there was something going on before her departure, she'd have no reason to believe summer would fully commit to that life, either. it just so happened that she did, and now raven can tell herself that she made the right choice bc summer was always going to be better at that life than her anyway so checkmate.

anyway. raven is very good at trying to convince herself of stuff, but i don't think it's really working; that's why she keeps doing it over and over again.

#raven branwen #I’M NOT OWNED #I’M NOT OWNED!#Raven insists as she slowly turns into a corncob

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nappybones5 · 7 months

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#rwby phoenix #taiyang xiao long #raven branwen #strq #Gee guess who the villain is #Is it the single father or the BANDIT QUEEN #We may never know

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nappybones5 · 8 months

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Gratuitous violence against minority villains: 🙄

A long and grueling redemption arc, involving personal torment and healthy skepticism from said character’s victims: Haha nice

I mean, right???

Two things I will never like:

Gratuitous violence as recompense for a villain's actions so we can?? I guess sit there and enjoy torture??? Because the fictional villain villained too close to the sun and now I'm apparently supposed to think that means it'd be just super for our heroes to turn into the sort of people that like inflicting pain on others???

Death equals redemption, so that a villain who has some sort of change of heart can kind of just nope on out of there without ever having to deal with consequences or continue growing and try to make things up and so on and so forth.

Give me an actual real redemption arc any day of the week. Give me former villains working with the mains and having people not ever forgive them, or have forgiveness come slow. Give me former villains who start being friends with a hero only to deal with massive guilt over what they did in the past. Give me former villains who try to fix the problems they've caused, sometimes realizing that some wounds just aren't going to fully heal. Give me former villains who become weird friends or relative-figures, who develop bonds that are later tested, who don't understand the kindness and forgiveness that's given to them, who start appreciating goodness, who start trying to be good themselves.

I'm never going to enjoy something that's like "let's watch this villain suffer, just for our own amusement because they did bad so now they get punished lol."

I'll tell you what I will like, though. A former villain getting hurt sometime after their grueling long redemption arc, and their new friends rescuing them or taking care of them. Now that, I can get behind as a whumper. Just violence for the sake of violence that I'm supposed to cheer for because I'm apparently meant to view it as good and just? No thanks.

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nappybones5 · 8 months

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i was thinking about how i absolutely do not envy tai's position in trying to navigate the whole situation of yang finding out about raven and how much to tell her and when considering yang's age at the time and everything else that surrounds raven's departure without having it end in Hurt™ but then i got sidetracked by what he did initially tell yang and

he basically told her the beginning and the end; how they met (they were both on the same team) and how it ended (raven left yang with tai after yang was born).

man really went "once upon the time, the end." LMAO

#taiyang xiao long #raven branwen #yang xiao long #strq #luhmaaaao

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nappybones5 · 8 months

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i'm fully preparing myself for the possibility that tai won't be in vacuo in case they need to get to vale stat cos raven's portals are perfect for that.

i'm also coping with this possibility by coming up with hilarious scenarios (to me) of raven hiding behind qrow so she doesn't need to face tai or qrow yeeting her through the portal first when she tries to skip town.

#raven branwen #rwby phoenix #taiyang xiao long #that man is going to be stuck on that island for eternity

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nappybones5 · 8 months

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'My sweet angels' I say with tears in my eyes and excitement in my veins as I construct the most hurt for my characters I can imagine.

#raven branwen #taiyang xiao long #rwby phoenix #rwby #strq

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nappybones5 · 8 months

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I asked and you absolutely delivered lmao; thank you kindly!

Phoenix my beloved? Feel free to rip and tear

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Buckle up kids, we’re going for a ride.

Just gonna go ahead and say this now: Raven is a bitch and deserves no happiness, and Tai deserves better.

She had a husband that loved her, a team that was like family, and a little girl of her own. And what does she do?

She fucking runs off to go play bandit in the wilds of Mistral.

If it isn’t glaringly obvious, I despise Raven. She’s a coward that goes on and on about strength, but isn’t strong enough to be there for her family. She uses her ‘strength’ to abuse others along with her clan, robbing, pillaging, and murdering their way through Mistral, and leaving the survivors of whatever town they hit at the mercy of the Grimm that inevitably descend on them while the bandits make their get away. She is a horrible, awful person who threw away a chance at a good life with a loving family because she’s afraid of commitment, and if there’s any justice she’ll meet a violent end before RWBY is over.

Then of course there’s the fact that she helped Salem get the relic of knowledge to save her own skin, used Vernal as a decoy so no one would suspect who the real Spring Maiden, which would ultimately get Vernal killed (no great loss tho, tbh), and it is heavily implied if not outright confirmed that she murdered the previous spring maiden in cold blood to take the powers for herself.

But if the fact that Neopolitan got away scot free with everything she did (and boy do I have some thoughts about her) is anything to go by, Raven will probably be welcomed back into the fold with little to no issues because she wants to ‘make amends’ or some rot like that.

Why don’t you try making amends for Shion village you super bitch? Oh right, you can’t.

Because you and your clan murdered everyone there.

To clarify, I still find Raven an interesting character. I hate her, but in a ‘this character is really well written awful person way’ rather than a ‘this character is boring’ way. I can still find her interesting while wishing for her to die in a ditch from a gut wound, unloved and unremembered.

I know that turned into a rant about Raven, but honestly it’s the fact that she is such an awful person is why I don’t like Phoenix, or any Raven ship. She just doesn’t deserve happiness, and no one deserves to suffer by being with her (except maybe Cinder, but that’s for a different ask). She had her chance, and she threw it away.

But: I will still give the ship a 2/10 rating because A: Tai was happy with her, at least for a time, and B: we got Yang out of it. So there is at least some silver lining in these Raven dark clouds.

Also, complete side note here, but we never talk about the fact that Shion village was somewhere Jaune was familiar with. His family vacationed there in the past, he would have known people that lived there. He probably had friends there.

And now they’re dead. Because of Raven. I know it’ll never come up again, but I hope and pray we get something about that if Raven pops up in V10. Preferably just before she’s hanged for her numerous crimes against humanity.

And as another side note: this isn’t me attacking the asker. They specifically asked me to rip into Raven, and rip into her I did. I’m not gonna hate or be rude to anyone for liking a ship I don’t.

#raven branwen #taiyang xiao long #rwby phoenix #rwby #strq

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nappybones5 · 8 months

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"This story is a tragedy because it didn't have to end this way."

"This story is a tragedy because it was always going to end this way."

#rwby phoenix #raven branwen #taiyang xiao long #rwby #strq

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nappybones5 · 8 months

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Qrow: chowing down on munchies Guy like you, probably got a crowd’s pick. Who’s the lucky one?

Tai: …I was thinking of Raven-

Qrow: chokes and fucking dies

reading "some people are just in it for the money and fame" to be about tai is great, actually. imagine him being a young man with big dreams, seeing stardom in his horizon, wanting to be as popular and as cool as possible (is actually a dork)... and somewhere along the way he learns that not only is he not finding any joy from that, he's finding it from the smaller things; his own team, his closest friends, the people he now considers his family, and the thought of a quiet life, settling down with someone on a nice, quaint island perfect for raising a family

and he takes one look at raven branwen, the weirdest fucking girl at beacon, and goes "yeah, that one".

#raven branwen #taiyang xiao long #rwby phoenix #no one outside them understood it #it should not have worked #but somehow it did #Waking up every morning and going to sleep every night with Phoenix on my mind

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nappybones5 · 8 months

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Big fan of characters realizing they don't get to die. They have to live. And grow. And be a person. And deal with shit they thought they'd never have to. And be fucked up about it. I would like more of this. Enough dying for honor or as redemption. It ain't. You're just a corpse. There is no moral value in dirt time.

#raven branwen #rwby #catch me seething if she pulls off the sacrifice play

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nappybones5 · 9 months

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strq makes me insane imagine if the warrior parallels summer in that her town—her people—were attacked and she was the sole survivor and maybe that played part in her wanting to become a huntress so that she could prevent the same tragedy from happening to someone else and then she ends up in a team with raven who not only was sent to beacon to learn how to kill huntsmen bc they were ruining the tribe's raids but also has likely already taken part in said raids??? the fuck.

#strq #raven branwen #summer rose #the kind of drama to chow on like chewing gum #when your enemy becomes your friend becomes your enemy

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nappybones5 · 10 months

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I don't like it when the character's headcanon autism is made into an absolute.

I have a friend who is autistic and he has a very difficult time in this life. Being friends with an autistic person doesn't sound like a fun meme from the internet.

But character fans pretend that being autistic is the best thing that ever happened in a character's life. People are willing to make their loved ones autistic to justify them. Or they're willing to say that a quiet character with communication problems is actually autistic. It's annoying. I have big communication problems and don't like interacting with people because of bullying in the past. Does that make me autistic? For example, they call Ruby autistic. Ruby has some communication problems and don't want to make friends in v1 but it's not autism. It's normal human behavior in unfamiliar environments. Penny isn't autistic either. She is very energetic and active. She wants to make friends. She has no experience in life and is a freaking robot. How do robots have autism?

Hey I can say that Adam is autistic and that's why he killed people. He's autistic and according to fandom, anything can be forgiven for being autistic.

I'm going to conclude from the fact that you played the "I have an autistic friend" card and the contents of the third paragraph that you are not yourself autistic. So, from one non-autistic person to another:

Step back.

There are three main things your ask is doing that I want to make sure you recognize. If you recognize them and don't care, then this will never go anywhere. Otherwise, I hope this sparks some self-reflection.

You, a non-autistic person, are policing what autistic people can and cannot do in fandom.

You are conflating people critiquing or analyzing writing decisions with people defending a headcanon.

You're framing a personal frustration as a greater problem with the fandom.

The reason you gave for point 1 is this: "I have a friend who is autistic and he has a very difficult time in this life. Being friends with an autistic person doesn't sound like a fun meme from the internet." In other words, you looked at autistic people headcanoning a fictional character as autistic for fun and/or comfort, looked at a friend of yours, and then decided based on your experience as that person's friend that those autistic people on the internet are not allowed to have that headcanon because…I actually can’t figure out the exact reasoning you have here.

What does “being friends with an autistic person” have to do with headcanoning a character as autistic? What does not sounding “like a fun meme from the internet” mean in concrete terms? Are you trying to say that because an autistic person you know is facing struggles, all depictions and personal interpretations of autism in media must fit the mold of those struggles? Genuinely, I cannot understand the point you are trying to make by bringing up your autistic friend.

But if you want to bring him up, let’s engage with that action. You've used your autistic friend as a shield. You've said that he has "a very difficult time in this life." If that's the case, then I hope that things get easier for him. But before you plant his existence between yourself and criticism of your opinions, consider what you're actually doing. Have you ever asked him his opinions on autistic representation in media directly, or have you only ever used him as an excuse to invalidate the the myriad of autistic people expressing opinions you disagree with? Even if he dislikes or disagrees with what another autistic person thinks, that still doesn’t give you carte blanche to bring him up to invalidate other people’s opinions. People within a subgroup disagree all the time.

As for point 2, there is overlap between critiquing the writing decisions and defending a headcanon, yes, but the distinction is important when it comes to recognizing when someone is defending their headcanon and when they are pointing out a negligent-at-best flaw in the writers' material. A lot of what you've interpreted as defending a headcanon (I presume in the RWDE tag, since that's where it crops up the most because of hostile anons, and I have read nearly all of those posts) is actually the former.

Point 3. If you say "I don't headcanon that Ironwood is autistic," very very few people are going to argue with you on that. If you say, "I don't believe Ironwood is autistic-coded," then many people are going to push back on that with evidence. What's the difference? The former is personal preference. The latter is a debate position. If you have read the many essays put forth in the RWDE community explaining how the writers - intentionally or not - coded Ironwood as neurodivergent and still believe that both of those first two statements are identical in purpose and impact, then we cannot have a reasonable discussion.

I want to take a while to address the third paragraph because it is very revealing of your motivations. We’ll start from the beginning and work our way through to keep things comprehensive.

"But character fans pretend that being autistic is the best thing that ever happened in a character's life."

The phrasing here is already questionable - being autistic isn't something that "happens" in someone's life, it's an innate characteristic. To address the statement itself, though: who? Who is doing this? Who is genuinely headcanoning a character they love as autistic and then "pretending" that their headcanon is the best thing to happen to that character? You seem to be missing the fact that, a lot of the time, people headcanon their favorite characters as autistic because those real people are themselves autistic and can already see certain relatable behaviors displayed by the character. They often don't change aspects of the character - they add onto aspects already on display.

"People are willing to make their loved ones autistic to justify them. Or they're willing to say that a quiet character with communication problems is actually autistic. It's annoying."

"Loved ones" is typically used to refer to real-life people and particularly family, but judging by context I think you're still referring to fictional characters. What do you mean by "justify them"? Do you mean, "fans are willing to headcanon their favorite characters as autistic to explain those characters' behaviors"? Because yes, of course they are, that's part of how engaging with fictional characters works. And the next line? As an isolated statement it's just a statement of fact. Yes, people are willing to headcanon that a quiet character with communication problems is autistic because that is a common expression of autism. What's the harm in that?

I ask that rhetorical question knowing that your statement of "It's annoying" is a segue into the beating heart of your complaint: that you personally cannot see these characters as autistic. Because you are not autistic, all of these autistic headcanons are, on some level, attacks on you personally. These attacks are, somehow, erasing your non-autistic identity. Your example with yourself and your own communication problems, supplemented by bringing up Ruby, shows that you want to see yourself - a non-autistic individual - represented in the show. You want this, but when you see other people making autistic headcanons of characters you want to sympathize with (or otherwise cannot see as autistic), you seem to interpret those headcanons as impinging on your own. Erasing you.

You feel like you're on the defensive and so you treat the fandom as this all-encompassing hive-minded entity when that is not at all the case. The "they," the united fandom, that group hostile to you in your message does not exist in the way your cornered mind wants it to.

Headcanons are not a zero-sum game. Someone headcanoning a character as autistic doesn't mean you cannot headcanon them as something else. You are free to think that Penny is not autistic, that Ironwood is not autistic, and so on even if two hundred or ten thousand other people think that they are. That's your choice. If people having autistic headcanons for these characters is annoying to you, then block the blogs saying those things. Or, perhaps, acknowledge that you may have an opinion that differs from the majority of people around you and carry on. Fandom is a community but enjoyment is individual. If fandom is impinging on your enjoyment, disengage from fandom.

"...but it's not autism. It's normal human behavior in unfamiliar environments."

The idea of "normal human behavior" is spectacularly difficult to pin down. And just because something is common ("normal") doesn't mean that it cannot be a behavior shared by neurotypical and autistic individuals. One demonstrating some trait does not preclude the other doing the same.

Moving to Penny, you say the following: “Penny isn’t autistic either. She is very energetic and active. She wants to make friends.” Do you think that autistic people cannot share these traits? Do you think that all autistic people are lethargic loners? Do you hear yourself?

Your words again: “She…is a freaking robot. How do robots have autism?”

If I wanted to be snarky, my only response to this would be "There is this thing called implication" - but I'm making an effort, so I'll provide something marginally more involved.

Things in fiction do not have to have a 1:1 mapping to reality in order for people to find common ground with characters in that fiction. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is not derided as a meaningless story about farm animals being communists because people can see the reflections of actual society and real individuals superimposed onto those animals. If this figurative concept is still confusing to you, please research what fables and allegories are on your own time.

To even ask "How do robots have autism?" is to indicate a staggering lack of knowledge of how representation in media works. It's not my job to educate you, but less than two minutes of searching online brought up resources I can share: this paper exploring harmful autistic representation in media through music, this video discussing one of the most popular autistic robots (Data), and this video talking about representation more broadly (talk of autistic and autistic-coded characters starts at about 7:00). And for that last video, after you watch it, take what you said about Penny - "How do robots have autism?" - and apply it to the gems. Hopefully then you can see how absurd that question is. If you still need more material, do your own research.

Of course, there are multiple perspectives around autistic coding in fiction and I don't mean to say that any one perspective is "right." For some, autistic-coded characters often being depicted as nonhuman carries with it the dehumanizing implication that autistic people are "other" and/or that they are lacking something non-autistic people posses (which the aforementioned paper explores in depth). For others, seeing autistic-coded nonhuman characters existing, happy, comfortable with themselves, and/or still being treated with love by characters or the narrative can be a comfort. From my layman outsider perspective, it seems to come down to personal preference.

I want to circle back to point 1 to finish. I've been relatively polite in this response because I want to operate under the assumption that you're genuinely explaining your position and not trolling, but your message? Its implications? Incredibly impolite. Rude, overbearing, and overstepping, to say the least. It's not your responsibility - nor should it be - to decide what autistic character headcanons are and are not okay.

Depictions of autistic people as inherently violent, as dangerous, are too common. You, intentionally or negligently, reference these depictions with that last stray shot at Adam. What you’ve failed to heed is that these kinds of conversations require empathy, nuance, and the ability to listen and learn. The only ability you’ve demonstrated thus far is careless and callous disregard.

You looked at autistic people headcanoning characters as autistic based on overlapping experience and/or entertainment, said, “That’s annoying,” and then told them (even if only in the relative privacy of your own head and my inbox) to stop having fun. Moreover, you did it in an incredibly offensive way.

Stop, step back, learn, and do better.

#rwde #autism in media #haha nice

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