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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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Another real long “I don’t like Bumbleby” post (Part 2)

Part 1 is here.

The Adam fiasco

We’ve reached the most controversial point in the essay: Adam.

Adam was… a symbol. He didn’t have much to offer in personality and screentime, but he represented. Until he stopped representing and became a mere tool for Bumbleby to develop.

I know, I know, another Adam fan who coincidentally dislikes Bumbleby. What can I say?

Adam was the sacrificial goat for Bumbleby. His existence became so tied to them that his whole faunus vs SDC plot became just an afterthought. He became a puppet to do Evil Things; if you pay close attention, especially in daylight scenes, you can actually see the strings on his back.

Adam had lost his way in every sense of the word. And he became a monster: Bumbleby’s heart.

Bees are gonna beat me up for this one.

Yes, Adam became such a vital piece for Bumbleby to develop, their whole relationship revolved around him. Yes, he traumatized both girls, but V1-V2 gave us nothing else to chew on. No bonding, no cute smiles, no development. Adam triggered the rise of Bumbleby like kaboom. Bam, now there’s Bumbleby. And what cemented their relationship? Killing him.

I need to ask: why does a wlw relationship revolve around a man? Why does everything in RWBY come back to a man? Jaune speaks over Ruby. Pyrrha dies so Jaune can have development. Qrow steals screentime along with Oscar like a madman. Adam is a matchmaker. Can the “RWBY is a feminist show” take die already? It ran away when Pyrrha was fridged.

Worse is? Bumbleby is good because Bumbleby is BETTER than Tauradonna.

Or so it seems. Ahem.

Now. Of course it’ll be better than Tauradonna, as it isn’t an abusive relationship. But what I mean is, this is the ONLY thing going for it. Oh, you should ship it because it’s better than Tauradonna. No, it’s not its own thing. It’s just better than Tauradonna. And no, we can’t stop comparing to it.

I know abuse leaves you a wound it’s difficult to heal, and you’ll inevitably make a comparison. I’ve been in an abusive relationship too. But Bumbleby should be its own thing, developed separately from Tauradonna, and then compared. I didn’t get enough screentime and reasons to ship them, and now you want me to compare it to an abusive relationship? Of course I choose Bumbleby! The other option is horrendous and… hey, this is more manipulative than I thought!

And the killing… oh, there’s nothing more romantic than killing a guy together. Maybe I’ll try this next time I wanna date a dude. Forget Netflix and chill, this is the real thing!

The show handled it… shakingly okay. Blake cried, Yang comforted her. Alright. Fine.

But now Adam’s not here, what’s gonna happen? Let me guess: we’ll get all the Bumbleby screentime we didn’t get early enough. Some say “Great, now it’s gonna be RW-BY instead of RWBY”. Maybe. I don’t really care. Ruby seemed to be more comfortable alongside JNR, and Weiss does what she can. Maybe she could get incorporated to the team too? Or form a new one with Qrow and Oscar (and Ozpin)? Hey, it’s not a bad idea. Either way, the dynamics will change, but as long as they don’t take too much time off other characters, it’ll be fine. I gave up.

DC comics development

I’m not 100% sure of how to feel with this one.

I couldn’t read the DC comic, but some… definitely interesting screenshots were posted. I could see that they don’t care very much about canon (I can’t take Raven seriously anymore). But they also patched some things up, meaning: Bumbleby.

Remember when I complained about not seeing enough Bumbleby bonding to actually buy the ship? Well, DC comics gifted us one, two, eight panels of Bumbleby bonding: borrowing books, offering food, braiding hair. Sounds very nice… and very late. And very fake.

Why didn’t we see this on the show? This feels like those eight panels are supposed to show peak Bumbleby bonding and we must be satisfied with it. Peak LGBT+ representation right there. Why didn’t we cut off Arkos, Renora, Iceberg and Blacksun and spent time with Bumbleby instead? Why should I feel satisfied with a mere eight panels?

Not genuine at all.

Bonus: the newest take goes like “DC comics was CRWBY trying to build more Bumbleby with moments at Beacon we didn’t get to see in the show because the episodes were ONLY 6 MINUTES LONG”. So CRWBY had time to build Arkos, Renora, Iceberg, Blacksun and not the main ship? Those 6 minutes were enough to build straight relationships but not the main wlw one? What an unfortunate coincidence.

What would have you done differently?

Team BSCE.

Bonding: why is Yang interested in Blake? Why is Blake interested in Yang? What does make Yang feel like she can be vulnerable around Blake instead of, let’s say, Weiss? What do they talk about, that isn’t Adam, or Ozpin? Do they have private jokes? Do they look forward to spend time together? Does Blake know what Yang’s favorite food is? Do they train together more time than they should? Why do they love each other? How do they support each other? Does Yang read books about faunus?

Showing: how does Yang feel when Sun flirts with Blake? How does Blake feel when Yang flirts with guys? What makes them blush? What is their body language? Do they notice things about each other no one else notices? Do they think about closeness? Do they think about each other at night? Do they think about kissing each other? How does their attitude change? Do the rest realize something’s going on?

Conflicting: besides Adam, what problems do they have? Blake has been shown to feel like a burden and isolate herself, but what about Yang? Do they have things about each other they barely stand? Do they share the exact same mindset? Do they have arguments and about what? How do they handle disagreements and arguments? How do they approach problems? How do they fix them? Do the same problems come up over and over again? What things they don’t tell each other? What do they hide from each other? Do they expect each other to defend them on arguments with others?

Exploring: what’s their endgame like? What are their dreams and goals, and do they collide with each other? Do they think about the future? Do they have a theme? Did they develop separately, as individual people, before developing their relationships? Are they dependent? If one of them died, would the other (take revenge and) move forward, or fall into deep depression? Can they live apart from each other and things don’t change? And what if things do change? What things change? How do they face change?

Yes, I love asking questions. One brings another, and another, and before you realize, you thought a lot about the couple and their core. You don’t need to answer every single one of these questions, but it can help you develop a clearer and deeper relationship, better than… I don’t know, sudden love?

Show bonus (what I posted on twitter):

· Yang interested in faunus. It is sudden, and Ruby realizes (Yang taking lots of notes during history class but only on faunus lessons, finding her in the library reading about faunus [allows for cute funny moment! Yang never reads!], talking to Velvet)

· After being informed, Yang asking Blake about her experiences (Adam topic could be brought up and thus foreshadowed), making them closer. This also has an impact on Yang, which drives her to defend Velvet from Cardin, making friends with Sun, etc

· Yang would also be more careful about the jokes she makes, trying not to make any racist ones and letting Blake explain her which ones are

· Just talking in general. Deciding to spend time together when they're free (that does NOT mean they're never with the group)

· Free time together allows for more talking and deeper topics brought up more naturally (ex: more about Yang's mother, maybe some other insecurities, further deepening her character)

· Blake realizing Yang is allowing herself to be "weaker" around her, so she supports her a lot

· They would defend each other in an argument against Weiss for example, and if that isn't the case, whoever wasn't defended would feel hurt and they would have to talk about it (fixing problems and talking out disagreements)

· LISTENING AND TALKING TO EACH OTHER

· Knowing small things about each other, for example Yang's secret place when she wants to think, Blake's favourite tea, etc

· Yang trying to show off her strength, making flirtatious comments that Blake doesn't get and getting embarrassed

· Yang feeling hurt when Blake spends more time with Sun and seems to be falling in love with her, but not acting on it because she doesn't wanna to get in their way and wants Blake to be happy

· Blake missing Yang

· Yang trying to flirt with other girls and Blake feeling strange

· When talking with Sun, the Yang topic is brought up frequently and Sun realizes and tells Blake she seems special, Blake starts to realize something

· Blake running away breaks Yang as she had put a lot of trust on her, even allowing herself to be "weak", and she knew about Yang's abandonment issues. Yes it's the same in canon, but it had more buildup and thus is more heartbreaking

· During Menagerie arc, Yang is brought up often and Blake finally realizes her feelings, while Sun accepts his place as just a friend and supports her all the way (also Yang is his friend too, remember!)

· From this point on you can drop canon on it just fine

· BUT ADD THE TALK™! They need to talk about Blake running away. PLEASE.

Conclusion

This is not me saying “Do NOT ship Bumbleby”. Ship whatever the hell you want. I ship things that don’t even make sense. This is me saying “Your ship isn’t as good as you think it is, please stop attacking other shippers for pointing it out, and no, your argument ‘you’re just homophobic’ isn’t always valid”.

I don’t want to talk about bees anymore. Never again. But I probably will, when volume 7 drops. Until then…

Beehaw, I guess.

#bumbleby rant #rwde #rwby rant

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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Another real long “I don’t like Bumbleby” post (Part 1)

So this one was a long time coming. I kept postponing it, polishing it, making it look the nicest I could, but it’s finally here. And it’s quite long. Let’s just, uh, start.

The first thing I wanna say is, I watched RWBY without interacting with the FNDM, just at the start of this year. I didn’t know what Bumbleby was, nor its impact in the overall FNDM. I was blissfully unaware of what was going on, so I dived in with a clean, open mind.

First impressions and development (or the lack thereof)

I didn’t think about Bumbleby. For those who know me, I ship characters VERY easily and I don’t really care if it’s a gay, het, lesbian ship, I can and I WILL ship them. I shipped Ruby and Penny like crazy. Ruby and Emerald made my heart jump. Jaune and Ren looked insanely cute together, and Sun and Weiss had very nice potential. And in V2, in the Burning the Candle episode, when Yang had a heartfelt conversation with Blake, and hugged her, I was like “oh?”. It was the first time I had seen Yang this vulnerable, and while I really ignored her through the first volume, this scene made me realize she was more than it meets the eye. And she chose to be vulnerable… with Blake. Oh?

Then Blacksun happened. Oh.

I didn’t like Blacksun. I still don’t like it. It’s predictable and boring for my tastes. But it has a privilege Bumbleby doesn’t: development.

I will never understand this choice. Barb said it was planned from the beginning. The question is, then: why didn’t y’all spend time developing Bumbleby? Bees will tell me it was developed, but I’ll suggest y’all to take off your rose-colored glasses and revise those interactions. I totally understand the warm, fuzzy feeling when your ship talk, even look at each other (my ships are 99% rareships so I take what I can get), but deep down you know reality isn’t like that. I’ve seen the 40-minute essay about Bumbleby; yes, you can attribute to every interaction a romantic feeling, but I can do the exact same with Jaune and Ren, and fans will roll their eyes at me and tell me it isn’t like that. The only remotely romantic interaction was the whole Burning the Candle episode. It was a nice episode.

“But Onion”, y’all will say, “are you going to ignore V3 onwards? The plot completely ties Blake and Yang together”. Same as Blake and Sun. Yes, Yang lost an arm for Blake, and yes, she feels betrayed and everything, but… why should I think it’s romantic? Blacksun is being developed at the same time, following common romance tropes that apply to the rest of canon ships, so why should I think it’s any different? Yang could have lost an arm for Weiss and I have no doubt she’d have felt the same. (I also think Weiss would have called her and checked on her every day, until Yang even heard her in dreams.)

That brings me to my second point. Let’s trust Barb, it was planned from the beginning. Then what was Blacksun supposed to be? “It makes the point that romantic relationships don’t always work and sometimes it’s better to stay as friends.” Valid point, but… Blake? Sun? Why did you keep at it? Blake, why did you kiss him on the cheek? That’s misleading, for the audience I mean (Sun already knows the script). When I friendzoned guys, and when the girls I know friendzoned guys, absolutely none of them kissed the dude on the cheek. The most they did was give a pat on the back or shoulder. Let me know if it’s an American thing to kiss guys you friendzone, because maybe it’s the cultural barrier that keeps me from understanding “yes, they’re friends and nothing more!”.

And yes, I know Sun told Neptune it was never about that. What was it about then, Sun? Were you trying to get Weiss’ attention by making her jealous? Were you trying to get Blake to paid for the food? I don’t buy that Sun explicitly flirted with her just to be friends. Else I’m an alien and it’s my second day on Earth, or Sun tried to convince himself to feel less pain. Or who knows? Maybe he really was flirting with her to be friends. Maybe he flirted with Neptune too. Writers, give us proper answers. And no, FNDM, filling in the story holes with “show don’t tell, there’s a logical explanation for it” is still fanon and doesn’t count as canon. Show don’t tell is a rule, not an excuse.

Anyways, after the whole coming and going, Sun finally leaves the scene for Bumbleby to thrive on sudden romantic interactions, which are a little late at most. It’s confusing. Yang never felt jealous when Blake showed attraction to Sun. They didn’t choose to clearly spend time together, at least with the “we’re partners” excuse. I’ll delve into this point later, but for now: we had Blacksun, suddenly we have Bumbleby, and we’re supposed to have been cheering for them the whole time. Uhm, was this supposed to be a plot twist?

Okay, I may be biased on this one, but listen to me. I don’t like this kind of plot twist. Oh, we have a heterosexual couple… OR SO YOU THOUGHT! THE TRUTH IS THAT THE LESBIANS ARE CANON! WE’VE TRICKED YOU, WHAT MADMEN WE ARE!

Get it? My problem isn’t that Blacksun isn’t canon. My problem is that the writers are using a wlw relationship as a tool, a surprise, manipulating and tricking the audience. It doesn’t feel genuine--it feels like they just wanted to cause controversy--or sell. At the end of the day, Bumbleby is way more popular than Blacksun, and a big part of the FNDM came for the bees. Don’t y’all ever wonder why voice actors don’t talk as much about other characters, or Ruby herself? The main main character?

Let’s bee honest: at this point in time, the biggest thing keeping RWBY afloat is Bumbleby.

“And what’s the problem with all that?”, bees may ask. “What’s wrong with feeding us some good bees?” Ship whatever you want, y’all. But I don’t like getting ships shoved down my throat and treated as peak LGBT+ representation when it didn’t get the time and treatment it deserved. Not all that glitters is gold, guys. (Especially Yang.)

Racism

Oh boy.

Racism is quite the great deal in Remnant… at least that’s what the show tells us. It doesn’t show it. No, Velvet doesn’t need to get stones thrown at her to show us discrimination. But, you know… if there was discrimination, I don’t think she would be in Beacon in the first place. Or that Leonardo would be the headmaster of Haven… Adam Taurus, pack your things and go home; there’s no faunus discrimination worth the fight. (Wait! Don’t go yet, you still have work to do.)

What does racism has to do with Bumbleby?, you may ask. Well, it’s Blake’s main plot. I think it has a lot to do with Bumbleby… but uh, it seems I was wrong. Yang isn’t interested in it, so I guess it’s just Blake’s problem. Until uh, Adam makes a scene, but that doesn’t have much to do with the fact he’s a faunus. It’s still pretty distasteful of a human to kill a faunus, but I’ll tackle that point a bit later.

Blake’s faunity? is very important to her. If she’s an important person to Yang, why doesn’t Yang show interest in it? She didn’t even defend Velvet, even though she could have punched Cardin in the face. She sits around sighing “It must be hard to be a faunus” and annoys Blake with a lighter. This only shows me Yang doesn’t care about Blake’s identity, and not in a good way.

I know, I know, I take the faunus issue to heart. It must be because I’m a person of color. I could talk hours and hours about the horrendous execution of faunus racism (reinforcing stereotypes, horrible analogies and really unfortunate implications), but I’ll limit myself to Blake for now.

Yang doesn’t care. She’s not one bit interested in reading faunus’ history, in asking Blake about her experiences, in thinking how she could help as a human. She’s like those people who say “I’m blind to race” as if it were a good thing. Yeah, you don’t discriminate, but you dismiss other people’s culture and background. It’s part of who we are. Some of us will take it better, some of us worse, but acknowledging Blake’s identity in this case could do wonders. That way Yang could show interest in her as a person, her motives to fight, her struggle.

But she didn’t. In fact, she did quite the contrary.

Bonus: I’ve recently seen a… hysterical headcanon. As it turns out, some bees were excited at the idea of Blake getting branded and Yang going berserk, later saving all the faunus in the mine. It was supposedly justified by “faunus needed a reason to respect her” and of course, Bumbleby angst. Do I need to point out the White Savior trope and how blatantly racist and harmful it is? Do I really need to? Considering faunus are supposed to represent the civil rights movement? Especially knowing Adam’s previous treatment? If faunus were explicitly Black, this would be… well, this is a disaster, but it gets swept under the rug. As a woman of color, this headcanon just makes me want to cry.

I think I’ll have to divide it into two parts so it doesn’t get too heavy. Part 2 is here.

#bumbleby rant #rwde #rwby #rwby rant

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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when canon gives you an underdeveloped character and you just have to make do:

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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vol 7 spoiler

its v funny because i catch up with radical memes hahaha

I hope he comes to his senses

#rwby

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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almost forgot THIS EXPRESSION

me: *knocking on your door* sir please have you a moment to talk about how Weiss and Adam share this move and are both sword people and super fast sir please just for a minute sir. sir don’t call the police

We missed on a great fight you guys….. just imagine them using the same move at the same time and everything just explodes dfsdfsfg Adam’s shadow clones against Weiss’ summonings…. sir pls

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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We missed on a great fight you guys..... just imagine them using the same move at the same time and everything just explodes dfsdfsfg Adam's shadow clones against Weiss' summonings.... sir pls

#adam taurus #weiss schnee #rwby

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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Don't @ me I stan 1 boy

#whitley schnee #can relate

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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Let me show you one of my favorite images on the internet: nuns performing “exorcism” on a very patient punk dude

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dbXr3GikQE

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

Photo

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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Canon Sun deserves so much better than whatever the fuck people are making him out to be

#sun wukong #rwby

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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Y’all can ship Ruby with whoever you want but

Emerald was her first crush and y'all gotta pry this headcanon from my cold dead hands

I mean c'mon....... we're told that Ruby is socially awkward but suddenly she's all smiles and cuteness when Em is around?? She compliments Mercury and then smiles to herself like "yay, i talked to her!!"

I mean FDUCK THE WAY SHE LOOKS AT HER. SHE'S COMPLETELY SMITTEN SDAHSDHNDJSD

Also a gay mess when Emerald compliments her:

And she also tries to show off that she's The Leader of Team RWBY™, as if trying to impress her. And is the one to invite Em to eat with them, even though SHE'S THE SOCIALLY AWKWARD

that's it. that's the thread. to me, it's canon. ruby likes girls. emerald was her first crush. die mad

#rwby #ruby rose #emerald sustrai

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years

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Thoughts on Tauradonna [ship rant 1]

My thread on Twitter that I copied here for maximum comfort :) Remember that THIS IS MY OPINION!

PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION. THERE'S SO MUCH SALT HERE I COULD EXORCISE A DEMON. ARRRGHJHHH Anyways let's talk about the most controversial thing since pineapple pizza: Tauradonna and why I (me) dislike it--and yes, it's exactly what you think!

The abuse! I understand M&K wanted to send the abuse warning message, but I’m not sure why they made that choice. Either way, the moment Adam called Blake “my love” and behaved like an abusive psychopath, it was like everything was laid right in front of me.

I knew how this story would end, and I knew which side I had to choose. Adam was cursed to have a horrendous (yes, horrendous) development, reduced to an abusive piece of shit, and Blake would have to face him one day. Not interesting.

Don’t misunderstand me, it could have worked well. Foreshadowing, backstory, an organic bridge between White Fang Leader Adam and Abusive AF Adam—oh wait, Adam had explicitly said he didn’t care! Whatever, let’s just throw that out of the window, remove his brain completely and replace it with worms! Was he attacked by Yeerks? Is that it? Because that would make sense.

Now, I was expecting to like Tauradonna. Why? Because the Black trailer whispered to me, “there’s clearly a clash of ideals”. Blake didn’t want to leave him but had to. She loved him and wanted to stay by his side, but couldn’t stand the killings anymore. And obviously, Adam loved her back, even if he tried to make it as if he didn’t care. Now, wouldn’t that have been interesting? A clash of ideals? We would have explored Adam’s ideology a lot more, and not only his, but Blake’s. Let’s remember she was there when Schnee members were—well—killed.

What did she think about that? What was her thought process? How did she reach the conclusion “killing humans is not cool”? Besides, Blake loving him back gives balance to the ship. In canon, Adam is abusive, Blake fears him. Black (lol) and white. Adam will obviously lose.

We have to pick a side. But what about deleting that abusive part and making it a healthy relationship, but with clearly different ideals? Isn’t that more complex and interesting? Blake has to fight her ideals or her love for him.

Adam has to choose between his methods (that work) and Blake’s love. Both have a big struggle on their hands. It smells like ah, delicious conflict. That’s why I think Tauradonna had a lot of wasted potential, and dragged Adam on its way to hell. Don’t even get me started on the age difference part. Long story short, it wasn’t necessary, and if M&K wanted to make Adam a pedophile (???) to be even more hated, that’s the cheapest shit I’ve ever seen. Well, not the cheapest cheapest, but the second cheapest.

The majority of the FNDM agrees Adam dated Blake since she was--12?? Y'all know he could have waited, right?? Anyways, this narrative only worsens Adam, and the FNDM and writers' reputation (at least for me). It’s disgusting and I don’t even wanna think about it. If they wanted Adam to be older so much, either make him Blake’s practically-a-brother or, oh my god, a mentor! Didn’t anyone think about that—oh wait, they did, and they threw that out of the window. Frog off.

Anyways that's the end of a long thread. I remind y'all, this is MY opinion and whatever. Everything's very sad and giving this big of a thorn to a ship is one of the worst decisions ever made (in MY OPINION). Rip ship

Also Blake repeating his "This could have been our day" to Adam when she defeats him would have been a great punch I don't make the rules

#rwde?#rwde #not tagging the ship #sprinkledonionrants

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