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itsclydebitches · 1 year

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Clyde, it would be my honor to make a Apollo prophecy with you.

The highest display of love to a mutual.

We will weather whatever the Gods throw at us together, friend! XD

Okay wait, not to take my own memeing seriously... but we've kinda already gotten this? Granted, comparing any two shows will inevitably lead to a wealth of differences, but think about the framework: two characters of the same gender, heavily coded as queer and in love, face a crisis where one of them is (presumably) killed and sent to a Very Bad Place. There are similarities between SPN's Super Hell and RWBY's "Don't fall" void, in that the latter is heavily implied as not just a death, but a horrific one. Ambrosius isn't shrugging at the possibility that one of them might fall with a, "Eh, it would suck to leave this world early, but that void leads to Remnant Heaven! :D" There are similarities between SPN's choice to reconnect Dean and Cas in actual Heaven (even if we don't see that) and the inevitability of Blake finding Yang in the Wonderland. There are similarities in the sacrificial nature of the death, even if in RWBY's case the sacrifice was for her sister rather than the love interest.

The two most significant differences to my mind are that a) Cas' death immediately follows his admissions, whereas RWBY hasn't had even a one-sided confirmation yet, and b) that in SPN this occurs towards the very end of the show, whereas RWBY presumably has at least two more Volumes. So it's by no means an exact comparison, but there are #vibes here that I think are worth acknowledging. Oh look, another coded-but-not-explored pair of queer characters is dealing with a horrific "death" that doesn't actually remove them from the narrative because the rest of the cast has a personal relationship with Gods/the afterlife/alternate universes, thereby allowing the writers to indulge in that removal without committing to it given the inevitable backlash. I'm still not on team "RWBY is queer baiting!" because I think there's a lot of nuance here, as well as the influence of the term's original definition, however, if we start comparing RWBY to other shows, the lines become more blurred. Why is SPN's "Cas, not for anything, but the last time someone looked at me like that I got laid" a problem without a confirmation, but Blake's blush and the hand-holding without a confirmation isn't? Is it just because RWBY hasn't gone on as long? (Even though I think that quotation is from Season Five.) Is it only because RWBY doesn't treat the coding as a joke like SPN does? Is that was keeps the hope alive: that if creators aren't encouraging their audience to laugh at the idea of this couple, then it's considered proof that they'll commit to it? For me personally, there's a huge divide between the two. Queer baiting--or it's more complicated cousin we've seen in recent years--doesn't have to be followed by a criticism/joke. It's entirely possible that RWBY will continue to imply without committing or, like SPN, commit in the final hour so they never have to write the relationship itself. It exists only in the gaps of the show and fans' imaginations.

I feel like Apollo has been tossing soft balls for years that we've been able to dodge up until now, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been playing the game 😬

#rwde #rwby #mymetas #I mean regardless of what happens #we're all weathering Volume 9 #there's no version of our future in which it's not A Hell of a Time #even if it ends up being an AMAZING volume #the issues surrounding RT have complicated #everyone's consumption of the show #which yeah #veeeeeery much includes its queer rep #okay cool you finally confirmed the bees #how are you treating your queer employees again?

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