alternative title: i am being trained by corporations not to engage with and become invested in media
⚠ this writeup has some minor spoilers for RWBY, and some linked articles may have tons of spoilers.
Rooster Teeth Productions, which has been subject to tumultuous times and mismanagement throughout the years, suddenly announced yesterday that it is being shut down by its current parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, who apparently just can’t figure out how to make money off multiple IPs so popular that you’ve almost certainly heard of at least one of them before. the sale of original IPs including RWBY, Red vs Blue, and Gen:LOCK will be explored in the coming months. the odds that the rights to RWBY go to people who care about it feel razor‐slim, let alone to the same people who have been pouring their passion into making it for the past decade in spite of their work conditions. current copyright laws mean these properties will never enter the public domain during my lifetime.
(edit: RWBY has been acquired by VIZ.)
about this time last year, the femslash pairing Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long, nicknamed “Bumbleby” by the fandom (a moniker which was referenced in‐canon as early as season 2), was made definitively canon in RWBY’s 9th season. this marked the show’s first canon LGBTQ relationship formed in front of the audience or within the main/recurring cast. the handling of their friendship‐turned‐romance finally culminating in a gorgeously‐presented on‐screen kiss has since been called “the gold standard for WLW”. this follows the series having proudly canonized LGBTQ characters since its 5th season and LGBTQ marriage since its 6th season. Bumbleby has consistently ranked in the top femslash parings on AO3 since its 2015 debut at #32, having been in the top 10 since 2019 and holding #6 in both 2022 and 2023.
season 9 was one of the series’ most critically‐acclaimed and highly‐rated despite its reduced runtime. there was ample speculation that the show’s next season would be its last. in this context, the renewal of the series seemed to be a foregone conclusion for many, including myself. while being surrounded by people in my life complaining about their favourite mainstream shows getting cancelled for the past decade, RWBY felt like a piece of culture that somehow existed outside of this paradigm. Rooster Teeth being one of the most prominent success stories in independent online media certainly made it feel like capitalism’s typical forces of creative destruction wouldn’t reach it at an existential magnitude. but perhaps the writing on the wall should’ve been obvious to me ever since the announcement of the RWBY × DC crossover spinoff.
RWBY is commonly derided by loud detractors in public online forums to a comically absurd degree. i can’t say for certain where this vitriol originates from, but the show’s quality is definitely not the only contributor, and i’d say in all likelihood not even the main one. RWBY being a series with some real issues has certainly not robbed it of all value, and as with most any media it can be engaged with intelligently and constructively. it clearly inspires a great deal of people, and its exceptional LGBTQ representation has left a definite mark on the media landscape with its strong examples for others to follow. the execution of revealing May Marigold as a transgender woman in‐canon in season 8 was so profoundly refreshing that it left me awestruck for days after my initial viewing. a prominent, plot‐driving character with distinct motivations, bringing up her transness on her own terms, in the context of her pushing her family away to pursue her own independent goals, with no undue fanfare from the characters learning this? the founded confidence of the presentation and the incredible thematic cohesion of the character’s identity, ideals, and background wildly betrayed its subtlety with how hard it hit. and in my daze, i realized that the only reason it hit so hard is because of how unprecedented it felt, and that the show didn’t even want it to be so impactful. they were simply looking towards a future where this kind of representation is commonplace, and sought to give us a glimpse of what that would look like.
while this may be surprising to some given how little i talk about it in practice, RWBY is literally the only non‐video game media i decided to let myself get into unapologetically in the entire last decade of my life. i’ve never ventured into any fandom any more than dipping my toes in at best, but last year the inspiration the show sparks in me built up to a breaking point, until something that realistically can probably only be accurately called an “AMV” was forcibly ripped from my chest. i feel now that i’ve been punished and betrayed for ever letting myself invest so much mental and emotional energy into a story that was not yet fully realized. i shudder to try and comprehend just how much genuine anguish has been inflicted upon just how many avid fandom participants by situations even worse than this — which are tragically only increasing in frequency during our current era of unparalleled corporate greed.
it is increasingly difficult not to feel like all the capitalist powers that be are transparently at war against LGBTQ culture and against creative expression in general — and it just so happens that systematic repression of self‐expression is an overt theme within RWBY itself. since its formation from yet another massive corporate merger in 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery has frankly been ruthless in its senseless destruction of media in pursuit of short‐term profit seeking. with the dismantling of capitalism being far beyond the grasp of artists, some of the only advice that remains is the age‐old line “Don’t sell your company!” which is definitely not always practical when the cards are more stacked against us now than ever before.
