#Also I put correct/wrong in quotes because like. While yes you could argue inherently there is a 'correct' vs. 'incorrect' way | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

toshiro-46 · 6 years

Text

Bumblebee: A Comprehensive Guide to Your Favorite Ship

Hey, I ended up finishing this about a week back and was going to post it then, but I noticed that Bmblb week was upcoming and thought this might be a nice way to start it off.

To be clear: the purpose of this post is to be comprehensive. Every small detail I’ve noticed will be here, so like if you see something and you think “that’s not necessarily indicative of anything romantic”, you might be right, but don’t let that small detail detract from the larger picture. Unfortunately, though I’d like it to be completely comprehensive, I’m only human and no doubt will have forgotten and/or missed some details.

Speaking of small details, in the past I’ve been told that this is all too subtle and RWBY doesn’t do subtlety. To answer that, I invite you to look at Qrow’s semblance, or Raven being the Spring Maiden, or Ilia’s feelings for Blake. I don’t think this is out of line with any of those, and if anything it (particularly Yang’s feelings) is considerably more blatant than Qrow’s semblance and Ilia’s feelings were prior to their reveals.

Finally, I want to defend myself and other bees like me for a second because I realize that taking several hours to research and write this to argue in favor of a fictional (potential) romance, a ship, can be seen as a tad weird… but that’s not really how I view what I’m doing. I think of it more along the lines of a theory, because it’s actually not really different at all: I’m using evidence from the show to support a conclusion. It’s exactly what I did when making basically every other analysis I’ve done on the show. It’s just what the subject of this theory/analysis is. Ok let’s go.

Supplementary reading because I’m not the only person who’s written essays about bumblebee and I’ve used the first two as reference points:

The classic Masterpost by Allisonbw. Unfortunately, it’s two volumes behind, which is a big reason why I’m doing this.

A relatively shorter post by y8ay8a talking about why she thinks it’ll happen. Again, it’s two volumes behind, but still a very good read. Also her art is top notch so check that out.

I’m not as familiar with them, but rwby-analysis has also done several posts about bumblebee.

chained-prometheus has several posts I’ll be referencing, but just the blog in general has many fantastic analyses on why it’s going to happen.

The tl;dr is obviously Yang is gay for Blake, which I’m 95% sure of, and Bumblebee has a pretty good chance of happening.

There’s 4 sections. Yang’s feelings, Blake’s feelings, Parallels, and Eclipse.

#1. Hints of Yang’s Feelings

Volume 1:

There’s not much to say here, really.

Lowkey joking, but like, the only time we see Yang express any interest in boys (even though it was in an overly comedic tone) is in V1C3, and that’s immediately prior to when she meets Blake. After that, she has nothing but disinterest towards boys, like tfw Yang meets Blake. I don’t mean to be offensive because this is actually a thing, adolescents not realizing how they feel until they meet someone that’s their… type I think would be the correct word. Hell, Monty says something about this later on, which I’ll get to. And I’ll expand more on this scene, in a more serious manner, at the end of this section.

It’s worth noting that Blake and Yang have absolutely no relationship issues once they become partners, which - alongside Renora - is an interesting contrast to Weiss/Ruby and Pyrrha/Jaune.

Yang’s concern for Blake during V1C16 is in stark contrast to Weiss, and even though she just heard that Blake was literally a terrorist who seemingly defended all the horrible things that happened to Weiss, she’s more concerned about her safety and finding her.

Really there was very little on Yang and Blake’s relationship in this volume, which is a shame, but what can you do? I’ll tell you what you can do, you can go to the Director’s Commentary and see what Miles has to say about it! Which is what I did. The context of this quote is that it’s talking about when Blake elbows Yang when they meet Penny in V1C15.

That, that is really what I do love about Team RWBY, is that, we have these two pairs of girls, each pair is completely contrasting characters. Ruby and Weiss that causes them to butt heads, Blake and Yang? They get along, flawlessly most of the time.

To put it in my friend’s words: “This is particularly important as there are people that like to say that Yang and Blake have horribly clashing personalities and get along like ‘gasoline and fire’. That they have no chemistry and are absolutely horrible for each other. The idea has been around for awhile, but here’s actual proof that it’s been wrong from the very beginning.”

I also think it’s important because it sets a precedent that even little things like this are being taken seriously by the writers. They didn’t get a lot of time to show off Blake and Yang’s friendship this volume, but what they did show has meaning.

Finally, I wanted to mention Wings. Wings is either sung from Yang to Blake, or from RWY to Blake. But Weiss as the singer (which, I believe, has been the traditional interpretation) doesn’t make any sense, she simply doesn’t fit the singer’s very understanding, nurturing attitude towards Blake. Yang, on the other hand, is definitely characterized as nurturing, such as in Gold. I could see it being all of RWY, but again it’s not Weiss’s style, nor is it Ruby’s when she’s two years younger and she herself gets Yang’s nurturing side. Oh, and an instrumental of it played when Yang and Blake saw each other again for the first time since V3. So yeah, it’s probably Yang to Blake. Also Stray sounded like Straight the first 20 times I listened to this

Volume 2:

So it begins.

V2C1: “Whatcha doin’?” This is noteworthy for two reasons: 1. Yang, Blake’s new partner and future lover (don’t @ me), is interrupting her rumination on her old partner and former lover. Out with the old, in with the new. 2. This phrase is classic flirting, most notably seen in literally every Phineas and Ferb episode.

V2C2: “Yes! I love it when you’re feisty!” More flirting, not much else to say.

I mean obviously, we have the V2C6 scene: most of it isn’t inherently romantic, just a friend comforting another, excepting the rather infamous, “If you feel like coming out tomorrow, I’ll save you a dance.” wink? I shouldn’t have to explain this, it’s pretty blatantly flirting and a double entendre.

V2C6: My friend: “This is the most vulnerable Yang has ever intentionally allowed anyone else to see her. With Ruby in V3 she was too hurt to really guard herself, and even then she tried to deny caring about Blake. The only time Yang has ever let anyone see herself as vulnerable as in Burning the Candle is during her talk with Weiss about Blake.” Because Blake gets to her like no one else. See later when Yang keeps it together with Raven until she makes a snide comment about Blake.

The dance in V2C6-7. Out of our ten students (RWBYJNPRSN), 8 of them end up with someone here. The two who don’t? Ruby, who 1. is two years younger than everyone else 2. “is not really focused on romance” - Lindsay and 3. ends up with Cinder for most of the night and Yang. Yang, the one described as a “party girl” by the back of V1’s steelbook cover, doesn’t end up going with anyone to the dance. Take a second and think on how that’s pretty weird, especially when she says “I’ll be turning heads tomorrow night”. She does, however, dance with Blake, and then seemingly spends the rest of the night just chilling out and watching Blake be happy. To put it in Allison’s words, “Yang went and played wallflower for fuck’s sake.” Oh, and while doing that, Yang turns Blake’s head while she’s dancing with Sun. That shot is focused on ffs.

Something that should be noted: Yang is not a flirty person. She flirts with two sets of people: cute cat girl partners, and enemies. Or to put it another way, she flirts with Blake, and she flirts with enemies (Junior, Random WF Mook #294, Mercury sorta before their match I guess). So let’s not pretend that flirting with people is just a Yang thing.

Volume 3:

Let’s fast-forward to V3C8. Yang has to deal with being vilified in front of literally the entire world, thinking maybe she’s going crazy, getting her team kicked out of the tournament, and guilt over breaking Merc’s leg. What brings her to tears? Blake not believing her. Like this can’t be overstated. Yang is brought to tears like 6 times in series proper. 3 are due to Blake, 1 is her reunion with Ruby, and the other 2 are due to Raven. This relationship is just so important to her and her character, way beyond what you’d expect from a normal, platonic partnership (contrast it with Weiss and Ruby). And it’s not like they have a “sisterly relationship” (something I’ve heard too often) either, because again this is portrayed as different from Yang and Ruby.

Blake and Yang are always on the scroll together btw V3C10 proves this

In V3C11 she’s again brought to tears, and again it’s due to Blake. She’s more emotional in that moment than nearly at any other point in the series so far. And before that, she chooses to go after Blake over Ruby. This is Ruby, who has been missing for like an hour and who she called Blake about last episode because she was so concerned, as opposed to Blake, who was okay last Weiss saw her. And she goes after Blake.

In V3C12, Yang has to deal with everything she did before in V3C8 except now she’s short one arm, two people she knew are dead, her school is in ruins, Weiss is gone, her sister was in a coma for weeks, and you know what actually gets her to break and raise her voice at Ruby? Blake. Yang is more torn up about Blake leaving her than she is about any of the other shit, including her arm. She’s heartbroken.

There’s also a lot of shit about parallels here that I’ll get into later.

Volume 4:

Yang doesn’t mention Blake at all this Volume so we don’t exactly have a lot to work with.

There is, however, one useful quote from Sun in V4C11 that helps confirm what I said a little ways up: “That chameleon friend of yours got me pretty good, but I’d do it all again if it meant protecting you. And I can promise Yang would say the same… so stop pushing us out. It hurts more than anything the bad guys could ever do to us.” So in case you were doubting that Yang is indeed more hurt by Blake than by her arm, doubt no longer. Also parallels between Sun and Yang, which again we’ll get to later.

In Armed and Ready, Yang states she has nightmares every night about how she tries to save Blake (because “There’s nothing that I won’t do for her”). Not necessarily romantic, but telling.

Bmblb speaks for itself and deserves a mention here, regardless of everything that’s happened. I should also note that, in response to what Arryn said about songs not being in the show not being consulted over, Boop wasn’t in the show either until an instrumental or two in V4 and no one doubted its canonicity. And also this is important and relevant. I thought about expanding on this section more, but ultimately I don’t think it’s worth it.

Volume 5:

Not really a hint towards anything romantic but I thought this exchange in V5C6 was interesting: “Listen to your friend, Yang. Your teammates never let you down before.” - Raven, vaguely sarcastically. “You don’t know the first thing about my teammates! About me! You were never there! You left us! Why?” - Yang, her voice breaking by the end; Yang manages to keep it together until Raven makes a quip about Blake leaving her.

V5C8: Yang snaps at Ruby over Blake. Her scenes this episode portray actual heartbreak. I’m having trouble explaining it any other way, really. “What if I needed her here for me?” Like hello? + Yang/Ilia parallels which I will get to later. + This connecting it back with Sun and Blake’s talk in V4C11. Also this is a good time to mention Fre/ezerburn. People were/have been hyping it up, particularly because of this episode, but in my opinion, this episode does the opposite of supporting it. Yang and Weiss are given a private heart-to-heart together - pretty rare for RWBY characters… and they spend the entire time talking about Yang’s feelings about/for Blake. That’s not really what I’d expect from two characters interested in each other. Nothing against the ship itself, just doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen in canon.

V5C13: this is gay. No but seriously this girl gets paralyzed in the middle of a battle of life and death just from seeing Blake again. I have to emphasize again that this is so much more emotional and intense than how a normal friendship is and is portrayed in this show.

General stuff:

This is more about Yang’s sexuality than Blake specifically. When talking about it, people generally point to the scene in V1C3 where she… purrs I guess would be the sound at shirtless men as evidence that she likes men. Makes sense, but I don’t completely buy it. 1. It’s just a joke, both in a meta context and to Yang. She’s clearly just joking with Ruby and as soon as one of the guys (albeit Jaune in a onesie) takes notice of her, she gags. 2. She’s still a 17 year old fresh out of their equivalent of high school, it’s not uncommon for LGBT people to realize they’re LGBT around then. 3. This is still very early in the show and since that point (starting with V2 specifically) RT could’ve decided which way they wanted to go with the character. Ultimately it’s sort of irrelevant as it doesn’t matter much if she’s bi or lesbian, but I’ve always thought of her as a lesbian for reasons right below.

Historically Yang has not really liked men. Junior in the Yellow trailer, Jaune in V1C3, Port in V1C9, Neptune in V2C4, and Shay in V5C1. Unlike Ruby, she’s not a fan of Qrow’s story in V3C4. Unlike literally everyone else in RWBYJNPRSN, she doesn’t have any notable positive relationships with a member of the opposite sex, excepting those related to her.

Her reactions to Blake are far beyond what you’d consider normal for a friend, even a best friend. She gets angrier than we’ve ever seen her when Blake gets stabbed. She isn’t that angry when Ruby gets knocked out or when Weiss gets stabbed or anything, but she absolutely fucking loses it with Blake. And this is after going after Blake when as far as she knows she’s fine but Ruby’s been missing for a long time. Pyrrha and Penny died, Weiss left too, but what got Yang to crack and lose her temper with Ruby in the V3 finale is Blake. A reminder that Blake’s abandoning actually hurt her more than losing her arm did - Sun says as much in V4 and that again, she loses her temper at Ruby when Blake is brought up in V5C8. She actually goes still from shock when she sees Blake, p different from when she first sees Raven and Ruby, two people who she also reunited with this volume after being abandoned previously.

Relevantly, in response to someone asking about LGBT characters, Monty said (and this is at the beginning of V2) “Sure, absolutely. The best part about that is maybe they are there now, because they’re kids and we’re on a path to help them discover themselves. I don’t think we even need to make that decision right away because we learn more about these characters as we write them. So we’re definitely not opposed to it, a lot of us are for it, I have some cast members and some crew members who are like “This would be really cool”. But the thing is we can’t just shove it out there, it has to be earned, which is the better way to do it. And a lot of these characters we try to look at outside of their gender so we just want to do what’s natural for them.” I think this is important because it’s pretty much what I think happened with them and Yang. At first, they didn’t think about it much and that’s why we didn’t get anything about it in Volume 1. But by the time Volume 2 starts, we get Yang flirting with Blake and all that. She may not have (in Monty’s words) discovered it herself then or even now, but we’re getting to that point.

#2. Hint’s of Blake’s feelings

There’s not nearly as much about Blake, but the moments she does have tend to be pretty significant.

Volume 1:

V1C6: Blake chooses Yang. She follows her in the Emerald Forest and deliberately makes eye contact with her. Obviously not specifically romantic, but the other two people who chose their partner had feelings for them.

gay

Volume 2: I personally can’t find anything that would indicate Blake has non-platonic feelings towards Yang. However note that she does tilt her head in a smile when Yang says “I love it when you’re feisty” in V2C2, so… it’s not just Sun whose flirting she responds to positively (V3C2 is what I’m referring to).

Volume 3:

In V3C8, Blake, unlike Ruby or Weiss, doesn’t immediately believe Yang. Why? Yang reminds her of Adam. Not in the sense that they have very similar personalities - they don’t, besides a few striking parallels - but in the sense that Blake thinks of them along very similar lines. She let love blind her once and doesn’t want that to happen again.

V3C11: A post on the Kuleshov Effect in use here by Chained Prometheus. In addition, Adam, who probably knows how to read Blake better than most, having known and/or dated her for 4+ years, can immediately tell she loves Yang just from a single look of hers. That’s something.

V3C12: Besides the obvious implication of this shot and what Sun is thinking about here (more on that here), what other relationship saw hand-holding in an intensely emotional scene this volume???

Volume 4:

In the opening, Blake glances away, leading into a scene with Yang, indicating that she’s thinking about her.

In V4C11, her voice breaks when she says Yang, a stark contrast to the other two she mentions. She also says, “I loved them like I never thought I could love anybody!” Wait… what? Was her friendship with Ilia - a 4+ year affair - somehow lesser than a friendship with them that lasted less than a year? That makes absolutely no sense! What about Sun, what about her parents?? Did she really love all of RWY differently and more intensely than everyone else she knows/knew? No. Just one of them.

Volume 5:

When she’s talking about her team in V5C5, her ears perk up and her tone changes when she talks about Yang. Again, it’s made exceedingly clear with small things like this that Blake and Yang care about each other differently than they care about the rest, and that this isn’t just a partner thing - once again look at Ruby and Weiss - it’s far more comparable to JNPR’s partner relationships than it is to WR (the difference btw between JP/RN and WR is that JNPR’s partner relationships are/were both romantic).

V5C13: “Yang?”<- her first thought when there’s a giant fucking ethereal lancer (huh wonder if the giant bee that’s there right as they see each other again means anything it probably doesn’t)(oh also that’s the whole reason she went in there in the first place bc Hazel got stabbed and she saw that and was checking it out, yet she still ignores it in favor of Yang) behind Weiss who has a peculiar stab hole in her shirt and also Mercury and Emerald are there for some reason fighting her team and somehow her team is back together and all this and yet her first reaction is “Yang?" Hammertime does a nice post on this.

Oh hey look it’s Hammertime again. Seriously, watch that, it’s only like 40 seconds long and relevant. Besides that V5C14 doesn’t have much beyond some smiles but those smiles are, in my completely objective opinion, pretty fucking gay.

#3. Parallels

The most important shit, in my opinion. Yang and being compared with Blake’s past and present love interests, name a more iconic duo.

Yang and Tai, Raven and Blake:

Raven and Blake: mysterious ninja (well Raven’s clothing is more samurai-esque I think, but I digress) girls with bloody pasts who use katana-esque swords and also incorporate their sheathes into their fighting, who have long black hair, and who have clear affinities to animals.

Tai and Yang: (I mean they’re father and daughter so the similarities/parallels should be obvious). Both obviously deal with some severe abandonment issues due to Raven and later Summer/Blake. Or how about this? Tai and Yang are both reminded of their former teammate/lover in a talk (Tai in V4C11 talking with Yang before she leaves, though this gif is from V4C12) and then go look at the photograph with them in it.

Raven/Blake leave their teammate/partner/person-who-is-in-love-with-them after a life changing event, which leaves Tai/Yang broken and shut down.- Raven and Blake are pretty clearly contrasted in their relationships to Yang. Raven leaves for (probably) selfish reasons, never bothers to give an explanation as to why (true for Blake atm, but Weiss at least explained it), and Yang is forced to find her. Blake leaves for selfless reasons and chooses to go back to and stay with Yang.

And, as per my friend:

Yang and Blake both seem to be succeeding where Tai and Raven failed. Tai suffered heartbreak and broke down. For a long time. He wasn’t a deadbeat who only just started working, because as Yang says to Weiss, Tai was always at work. But he threw himself into work instead of facing his issues. Yang had to deal with so much [ex: her arm and everything else I mentioned in the V3C12 blurb] on top of losing Blake. And yet, she still got back on her feet in under a year. And while she may not be better, she’s still moving to take care of those she loves. She’s working to heal.

As for Raven, she also had a problem with running away. While Blake just runs away, Raven runs and hides behind others. Which shows in her Semblance [A point I didn’t get, Blake and Raven even have sort of similar semblances], she can teleport to people she cares about. People who would protect her [And Blake ran away to protect Yang. Raven ran away to protect herself].

But where as Raven never overcame this, Blake decides to stop running and face her problem. Instead of getting revenge, she seeks to stop the source of the problems. And yeah, she didn’t go to Haven for Yang. But she decided to stay [And she willingly decided to face Yang in the first place]. Something Raven also didn’t do.

Yang and Adam:

I mean Blake herself compares them. This fact alone is huge: she’s directly comparing Yang to her former love-interest, she thinks of them in similar ways, even if she doesn’t realize it herself. Which is actually a thing people do.

Their semblances. Both are essentially absorbing and redirecting damage, and the writers themselves have said that’s a purposeful comparison, except Yang uses her pain to become stronger while Adam just bottles it up, not feeling it, before releasing it all in one hateful blow.

Both are forced to deal with Blake leaving them unexpectedly, except Blake left Yang because she loved her, while she left Adam because she no longer could.

Both have anger issues that worry Blake at some point, but Blake chooses to believe in Yang, unlike what happened with Adam.

Yang and Ilia, Yang and Sun:

Look no further than Alone Together for Yang and Ilia. They’re paralleled in the episode pretty heavily, with both getting pinkish eyes over her, both showing how they’ve handled her abandoning them, and both getting extremely real with their confessions over how Blake makes/made them feel.

Sun himself talks about how they feel the same way in regards to protecting Blake. Sun - who we know 100% has romantic feelings for Blake - says this: "I’d do it all again if it meant protecting you. And I can promise Yang would say the same.” He knows they feel the same way about her. Besides that they’re both blonde brawlers who show some chest, have gloves/bracers/whatever, are/can be pretty laid back, and are associated with the sun. Again, similarities should be clear.

Bumblebee and Arkos:

Honestly, I had never seen this myself until it was pointed out to me, so it’s much more fitting that I just quote Allison.

From her post (I once again encourage you to read the whole thing, it’s very relevant):

You remember how I mentioned that Blake and Yang’s relationship is not like the other relationships in Team RWBY (Ruby and Weiss’s relationship included)? Because there’s another relationship in this show it’s a lot like. A relationship with confirmed romantic interest that gets a fair bit of on-screen development in the first three volumes, even. I’m going to show as much as possible as opposed to a bunch of telling, because this shit must be seen to be believed.

Going in chronological order, and also weaker to stronger, on dialogue parallels:

Bumbleby and then Arkos in the Emerald Forest.

Arkos, in a scene with an intimate setting with romantic lighting in which Jaune discloses a shameful personal secret to Pyrrha.

Bumbleby, in a scene with an intimate setting with romantic lighting in which Yang discloses a shameful personal secret to Blake.

Bumbleby, in a scene where Yang tries to reassure Blake.

Arkos, in a scene where Jaune tries to reassure Pyrrha.

And some parallels that aren’t dialogue per se: In what relationship in the V2 dance arc do we see a blond hunter having a heart-to-heart with their partner (one, two, one partner making a deniable expression of interest in going to the dance with the other (one, two), and then the blonde cheering up their partner by donning a white dress and dancing with her despite not officially being her date (one, two)?

Depicted: the answer. Both of them.

I also had a Blcksn shipper tell me once that Yang can’t be interested in Blake because she let Blcksn happen right in front of her at the dance (I like the way she stomps off in those heels). And I’m thinking, “You mean like how if Pyrrha were interested in Jaune, she totally wouldn’t have coached him on how to ask Weiss out?”

And then of course there’s this blatant juxtaposition in 3.11, which I dare you to unsee now.

Seriously though, the big moments for Arkos/Bees come at the same times. It starts with V2C6/C7, then the first half of V3C8, the end of V3C11, and the beginning of V3C12. Jaunedice is the only odd moment out here, otherwise it’s consistent. Pyrrha and Blake both deliberately hunt down and choose their partner in Volume 1, both believe they find the relic at the same time… etc. The similarities are hard to ignore.

Yang and Blake, Beauty and the Beast:

'Beauty’ and 'Beast’ can be used interchangeably with Blake and Yang. Blake has labels assigned to her from birth (her last name, Belladonna and the fact that she’s a faunus) while Yang has physical traits (she’s a beauty and referred to as such in RLR, and her semblance is essentially beast mode) that signify both of them as both characters. And Adam fits in neatly as Gaston.

Here’s a link to Chained Prometheus’s post on the matter. He’s legitimately very well-versed on Beauty and the Beast, his opinion here is very worthwhile.

From Allison:

Yang, who’s loathed worldwide as of 3.6 and misshapen as of the end of this very scene and generally paid out the nose for her short temper this volume, introduces herself with a roar, attacks a white-fanged enemy in defence of Belle/Blake, gets her right arm fucked up, passes out from shock, and has to be rescued and hauled to safety by Belle/Blake at the end of the scene.

#4. Ecl/ipse

So I’ve gone back and forth on Ecl/ipse (which is Sun/Blake, to be clear, I just come from a part of the fndm where Ecl/ipse is the dominant name) a lot in the last two years. From “It’s definitely going to happen” to “It’s never going to happen” to somewhere in the middle, to where I am now (No hate btw, and I mean that seriously. This is just something I have to address, because for Bumblebee to happen, Ecl/ipse can’t).

Which is… it’s probably not going to happen. I think it’s pretty simple as to why:

If it were going to happen, it already would have. Blake and Sun had two volumes where they spent the majority of their time together; from a storytelling standpoint this is the ideal time to develop their dynamic into a relationship. There’s no better opportunity, really. Especially since Sun has always been a stand-in for her team, a way to push her back towards them, and he’s never been relevant when that’s not necessary. If you don’t believe me, look at how he’s first introduced when she runs away in V1 and how he’s barely a presence in V2 (excepting the one episode where she’s apart from her team, of course) or especially V3. In V6, she (and the show) most likely just doesn’t have time for him, the same way she (and the show) didn’t have time for him in V2/V3. She’s back with her team, what further purpose does he serve? The answer is no purpose, really, because it’s not like he’s going to Atlas (because why would he), so he’ll likely be out of the story for the next few years. Basically they had their chance to make it happen and they didn’t. They had their chance to set it up more explicitly in V5 and they instead focused primarily on Blake’s and Ilia’s relationship.

Look at V4 and V5. In V4 (specifically Chapter 3), Sun is obtrusive and flirty and Blake really doesn’t like it. She’s impatient with him, she even slaps him three times, and generally she’s just not having it. But he gets the hint, he actually backs off in V5. And their interactions are far more positive accordingly. I think Sun realizes by V5 that it’s not going to happen, so he doesn’t end up flirting - at all - in V5, which is unique when compared to literally every other volume. In fact, I think he realized it back in the V3 finale, he was just sort of in denial for most of V4 before coming to accept it in the latter half. And that’s why he pushed Blake towards Yang in the V5 finale. He knows (this is admittedly speculative, but yeah Sun is low-key a bee shipper imo).

y8ay8a also explains the actual faults of the ship pretty well.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a lot of evidence towards Bumblebee. Even if you’re not looking for it, you’ll see signs of it. I did. Allison did, too. Both of us weren’t really into shipping in general or bees specifically until we saw Volume 3 Chapter 11. And once I started looking for it… there’s just much pointing to it. Which is why I wrote this post. As a guide for anyone who wants to know whether this ship is actually realistic.

#bumbleby #bumbleby rwby #bmblb #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #Ok but seriously I spent so much time on this

604 notes · View notes

schtroumpf-a-lunettes · 6 years

Text

ok so NOW while we keep the disclaimers I made in this post in mind, there’s something I’d like to discuss...

“You’ve all been behaving like human beings!”

This is a post I’ve been meaning to make for a while but I’m making it now because it’s also partly in response to a comment @shiruvue made to me recently where they made reference to this line of Papa’s :)

The book Sapiens talks about how one of humanity’s defining traits is our ability to cooperate on a massive scale. You put hundreds of humans in the one spot, and they can learn to cooperate and function fine. We humans have learned to cooperate around the world. You put hundreds and hundreds of apes in the one spot? It’s chaos, they just can’t have a functioning society with those sheer numbers. Their societies need to be lower in scale or it just won’t work, and bigger groups will tend to split up and become smaller, separate societies that can get along fine. But they just can’t... climb into the higher numbers range.

Yeah, among humans, there is a lot of war and violence, and that is what Papa here is extremely critical of and is appalled by the idea of the village mirroring those kinds of things.

Smurfs live happily and peacefully, right? But we also know that the number of smurfs in canon that get along so well, that must cooperate with each other in order to have a functioning society is only around 100. So yes, I’m going to draw a kind-of parallel to what I mentioned about Sapiens earlier. What would happen if hundreds and hundreds, possibly thousands of smurfs lived in the one society together and needed to cooperate with each other? Could they pull it off? Could they pull it off like we humans do?

Well, it’s entirely possible that they could. I’m not actually going to say one way or another. Here’s another thing though: smurfs don’t seem to be able to control their own population numbers either. The fact that the smurfs seem to have lived pretty consistently with around 100 smurfs, more or less (dubious claim because we don’t really know Anything about previous smurf generations but the dance of 100 smurfs needs to be done every 600 years or so iirc, so there would have needed to have been 100 smurfs ~600 years prior to canon, according to comic book canon at least lol) anyway - the fact that they seem to consistently have these low-key numbers POSSIBLY suggests that smurfs are best-suited for cooperating in small numbers and their society may not be able to cooperate as effectively on a larger scale (although, that sounds kinda Essentialist in tone and I’m just about as Societal Influence in my theories as they come lol).

Anyway, what I’m getting at is this: Papa Smurf and the smurfs can stand there criticising humans and their violence and wars as much as they want, and that criticism is justified because those things are Bad and Suck. But smurfs, as a species, seem to have Never needed to operate on the same massive scale that humans have. So they don’t actually have any moral high ground in the sense of “Oh, we SMURFS would NEVER. We don’t have your awful human violence and war!” because YEAH, YOU DON’T HAVE THE LEVELS OF VIOLENCE THAT HUMANITY DOES BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE THE NUMBERS FOR IT. They probably look at a war being fought by thousands of humans and criticise it and say they would never have this level of awfulness, which.. yeah? Because you don’t even have thousands of smurfs in the first place, it’s literally not possible. Smurfs fundamentally lack the numbers needed for violence and war to become any kind of issue or problem so obviously they don’t have to worry about it. Here’s my “challenge” to the smurfs lol: set up a fully functioning, peaceful society with hundreds and/or thousands of smurfs, and then we’ll talk. I don’t doubt they can do it, but, y’know... put ur money where ur mouth is (ohwait, they don’t use money either, that’s also a Human Thing, etc)

Like, listen. The smurfs live in a mostly enclosed, harmonious society that rarely interacts with the outside world in a meaningful way (as in, they don’t have to constantly engage in trade or broker treaties or anything like that apart from the most minor things such as Woolly getting wool), they just keep to themselves. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve never heard about a full-scale war breaking out within an Amish community. The lack of war in the smurf village... aint that impressive in that sense. Relatively small community, you know?

Therefore, to a certain extent, the smurfs occupy a false moral high ground when they compare themselves to humans. Papa Smurf, being the leader who likes to trot out the good old “you’ve been acting like human beings!” is especially guilty of this. (But, they do very well from themselves, I’m not going to deny that. Honestly, they’re still seemingly much, much better than humans tend to be a lot of the time, so they have some moral high ground in that regard, lol.)

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! No violence and war in the smurf village, unlike those Awful Humans? Well, turns out they couldn’t even get that right! We can take a look at the comics first. Chuckletons has mentioned before how, something which tends to stand out in the comics is that, the smurfs are a lot more predisposed to violence. They’re always Ready To Fight very easily, there are canonically Instruments Of Torture in the village... If you really really make a smurf mad in the comics he’s not going to shy away from getting violent, yeah, comical and non-serious violence because of the lens through which it is intended to be viewed from and the format, I’m not denying that, but violence nonetheless. It has been pointed out in the fandom before how you also have, say, let’s just straight-up smash a mallet into Brainy’s head and then turn it into a running gag! This ISN’T restricted to the comics though, because we have the same running gag with Brainy getting thrown out of the village in the cartoon. And there are shades of this other kind of undercurrent of violence in the show, I would argue. Fights have broken out among smurfs in the show (the comical kind where it’s a Big Ball of Violence). What was that about no war? Yet there’s that episode where, sans Papa Smurf (because these things always are), everyone is just like LET’S GO TO WAR WITH THE FAIRIES!!!!!!! THE FAIRIES ARE OUR ENEMIES AND THE VILLAGE IS UNDER POTENTIAL THREAT, LOAD UP THE CANNONS!!! hmm. And like, I don’t think I need to go into King Smurf. That’s where Papa’s “acting like humans” quote is from, after all. And I think there’s probably more evidence that would prove this point, this is just off the top of my head.

For a society that specifically prides themselves on being peaceful, there’s an awful lot of predisposition towards violence in canon.

And this notion of fundamentally peaceful kind smurfs is mostly due to Papa imo. He is the one in charge, he is the one teaching and putting these ideas in everyone’s minds and making sure everyone is peaceful/good. I do think there is an aspect of Fundamental Goodness to the smurfs but I also believe that Papa.. greatly exaggerates it when he talks about it, and this exaggeration contributes to the level of goodness that they exhibit. Like even if there’s a note of truth to “we smurfs are like [good quality], we don’t do [bad thing attributed to humans]”, Papa has actively raised them to be that way so.. most of it is just Papa raising them, not an inherent quality.

#smurfs #the smurfs #Papa Smurf #Did you order an uhhh lengthy analysis of smurf society or something? TOO BAD #too late here's my thesis about the smurfs and their relationship to violence & their perception of humans lol

15 notes · View notes

chloe-elizabeth-price · 7 years

Text

KYLO REN IS ANAKIN SKYWALKER REBORN

So, if this makes zero sense or is just rehashing things that have already been said then I apologize, but I thought of this theory today and thought it was cool enough to share. Also it wasn’t beta’d so any mistakes (factual or spelling/grammatical ones) are mine.

Anakin Skywalker is believed to have been conceived through midichlorians, destined to be the chosen one. What if Ben is too and Han’s not really his father? It’d line up perfectly with the daddy issues that seem so inherent to the Star Wars saga.

Now at first glance I am fully aware of just how crazy this freaking sounds, but stay with me here.

In “Episode I: The Phantom Menace,” Shmi Skywalker tells Qui-Gon Jinn that Anakin has no father, and she “can’t explain what happened.”

When Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan first meet Anakin at age 9 they’re completely taken aback by the power he seems to posses, aka how strong he is with the force. Later in TPM the following conversation takes place:

OBI-WAN : Strange. The transmission seems to be in good order, but the reading’s off the chart…over twenty thousand.

QUI-GON : That’s it then

OBI-WAN : Even Master Yoda doesn’t have a midichlorian count that high!

QUI-GON : No Jedi has.

OBI-WAN : What does it mean?

QUI-GON : I’m not sure.

So clearly Anakin is something new even to the Jedi and even from such a young age it seems clear that his powers are immense.

Throughout the prequel trilogy it’s believed among the Jedi that Anakin is the one meant to bring balance to the force so that both sides can finally live in harmony and maybe that’s how it started out. Maybe that’s why he was initially created, but it turned out having that much power puts stress on anyone and especially Anakin whose been told his whole life that he has power no one else does and that he’s special, the chosen one. That the Jedi are even somewhat afraid of him.

When he later has children of his own Anakin messes with the force’s plan to have him be the ultimate power, first of all Anakin goes dark which the Jedi had known were a possibility for him from day one. They were even reluctant to train him for this very reason. Secondly, through having children Anakin passes on some of that power of his and that may permanently mess with the force’s plans.

What if Anakin were never supposed to have any children? In RotJ Obi-Wan tells Luke:

“The Emperor knew as I did that if Anakin were ever to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him.”

So when Anakin goes dark and it’s up to the twins (although let’s face it, mainly Luke. Because Lucas is sexist) to be the ones to bring that ultimate balance to the force.

This is what Anakin was ultimately destined (but failed) to do. But what if it was never supposed to be Luke and Leia that brought that balance? After all, going off the theory that that was Anakin’s job, the twins were never even supposed to exist, because Anakin wasn’t supposed to form attachments, fall in love or have children.

His sole purpose was to bring balance to the force, but instead it fell upon his son to handle this task and he did, temporarily. If Luke was never the chosen one, if that was always supposed to be Anakin, then maybe that’s the reason why the battle of Endor didn’t ultimately mean peace for the galaxy, the reason the war continued.

Luke was never the chosen one, he was merely a buffer (a great buffer though, I LOVE Luke with all my heart believe me!) to temporarily bring some balance, but not all of it, that’s Anakin.

So what if the force decided to give Anakin a second change by re-birthing him as Ben/Kylo?

Let’s look at the facts, Leia is one of the Skywalker twins, as such she’s directly related to Anakin and essentially part of him, part of the force’s little miracle child.

Ben/Kylo is born a few months short of a year after the battle of Endor when Anakin Skywalker dies and Luke burns his father’s body.

This means Leia must’ve fallen pregnant shortly after the battle, aka shortly after her father’s death. (I could be slightly off on the timing here because I haven’t actually read any of the canon books set around this time yet and my internet searches gave little in terms of an actual timeframe on Leia’s pregnancy)

So what if the midichlorian cocktail that made up Anakin just reformed to make up Kylo instead and have Leia be the new vessel. (ew, sexist much? It’s like when they called the mother of Satan’s child “the container” on Supernatural, so sorry Leia!!)

In TPM Shmi talks about how she couldn’t explain what happened and that she suddenly just found herself pregnant one day, much like mother Mary.

For Leia it must’ve been different, at the point in time she was with Han so she and everyone else just assumed the kid was his and why wouldn’t they? It’s not like she’d cheated (Noo you nasties, Rey isn’t the child of Luke and Leia, get out of my damn house!! And yes, I legitimately saw this theory on the internet while conducting research for this *pukes*) instead it was more like a Joseph/Mary/Jesus situation, only in this case no one knew about it because they (including Leia herself) had no reason to doubt Ben’s natural conception.

But much like Shmi Leia is able to tell something is different about her baby boy right from the start.

“Her baby boy, him she can effortlessly feel inside of her. Not just in the way that all mothers can feel the living creature within, but she can feel him with the invisible hands of the force: With it she senses the burgeoning of his mind, she knows his mood, she can tell that he is healthy. He’s less of a human-shaped thing and more of a pulsing, living band of light. Light that sometimes dims, that sometimes is thrust through with a vein of darkness. She tells herself that it’s normal; Luke said to her, ‘Leia, we all have that.’ He explained the brighter the light the darker the shadow. Right now her son is upset, tumbling inside her, as if he can’t get comfortable. His light flickering with the dark.”

- Aftermath: Empire’s End

Here we find out that Leia is concerned about the darkness she can sense in Kylo before he’s even born and Luke tries to reassure her by basically quoting Sirius Black and saying: “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”

This is similar to the arguments used against the Jedi council’s fear of Anakin’s power when they (at first) refuse to let Anakin be trained as a Jedi in TPM.

YODA : …Correct you were, Qui-Gon.

MACE WINDU : His cells contain a high concentration of midichlorians.

KI-ADI : The Force is strong with him.

QUI-GON : He’s to be trained, then.

MACE WINDU : No. He will not be trained.

QUI-GON : No??!!

MACE WINDU : He is too old. There is already too much anger in him.

QUI-GON : He is the chosen one…you must see it.

What Qui-Gon is saying is that though Anakin has very strong emotions that may very well be his downfall he also has great potential and all that matters is which of these traits he’s choses (or is trained) to act upon and if trained correctly he will bring balance.

This is pretty much also what Luke says to Leia in the quote above when she worries about the darkness already so prevalent in the unborn Kylo.

Also can we talk about the bolded part of that quote for a second?

Because “a pulsing light thrust through by darkness” doesn’t sound like a human child to me, that sounds like a fucking demon. And yeah maybe one could argue that because Leia is highly force-sensitive this is just her sensing that Ben is too, that he has both the dark side and the light side within him, just like all force sensitive people (or just people in general) but something about that quote still seems unsettling to me.

It seems like little baby Ben possesses much stronger powers than your average force sensitive kid the fact that the presence of darkness within him worries Leia who herself is force-sensitive seems wrong somehow. Don’t quote me on how the force works or anything, but I’m pretty sure that a force-sensitive person such as Leia would be quite used to sensing the force within other people and when one does sense the force it is reasonable to assume that one senses both the good and the bad side. Because to quote the late great Sirius again: “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us.” So the fact that the amount of darkness within Kylo worries Leia even before his birth is quite telling to me. I mean yeah, maybe Leia doesn’t know as much about the force and its inner working as Luke does after all she was never formally trained, but I still feel like she’d be able to sense when someone’s darkness is alarmingly present, not to mention if that’s the case in her own child.

Also “He’s less of a human-shaped thing” creeps me out too, again demon. No, but seriously: “a pulsing, living band of light. Light that sometimes dims, that sometimes is thrust through with a vein of darkness.” That sounds like the force in its truest and rawest form to me.

Almost as if, to use the cocktail metaphor again, while in Leia’s belly the force cocktail was “making itself human” as it had done with Shmi and Anakin so many years ago.

If we move forward to Ben as an adult, when he’s already Kylo Ren and has turned to the dark side there is the popular question in the fandom why Anakin’s force ghost never visits Kylo or at least tries to guide him in any way? Well, what if the reason for this is that he can’t because he doesn’t have a force ghost anymore since he’s Kylo now and Kylo isn’t dead.

It also makes sense why Kylo would hold so much nostalgia for Vader’s things, such as the old, but iconic helmet he rescues from Starkiller base, because these things used to be his, Kylo’s. Almost a part of him, before. When his name was Anakin.

Or maybe Kylo doesn’t remember his old life as Anakin/Vader, but it makes sense that he’d wanna learn as much as possible about it so that he avoids repeating any previous mistakes (such as having children that weaken him, sorry twins…)

Just like Vader however Kylo missed the memo on the whole “with great power comes great responsibility”-thing that uncle Luke (And previously master Obi-Wan when Kylo was Anakin) has been trying to teach him, instead of using his power as the force intended to bring balance to the force he again uses it to find power for himself and become a dictator.

This indicates of course that the force is failing again, but maybe Anakin wasn’t supposed to be alone, maybe he was always supposed to have a foil to help keep the balance. In this incarnation that could be Rey, but previously is was most likely Obi-Wan (although that might be a theory for another time, how Anakin and Obi/Kylo and Rey represent the two different sides of the force and how they’re supposed to exist together, ground each other and keep the balance.)

So yeah, Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker reborn, given a second change if you will, after all wasn’t star wars always supposed to focus largely on Darth Vader’s redemption?

#star wars #star wars fan theory #kylo ren #darth vader #princess leia #han solo #luke skywalker #the force awakens #the last jedi #my writing #pew pew pew #movies #also let's just not think about the creepy implications of Leia giving birth to her own father #it isn't LITERALLY LIKE DAT

3 notes · View notes