Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-226878-20140818053714/@comment-25122143-20170527222749

On LGBTQ characters in RWBY, I'm fine if it takes a while so long as it doesn't go the way of Sherlock with godawful queerbaiting, and making pretty much every canonically queer character psychopaths, assholes, or otherwise portrayed as villains (See: Moriarity, Magnussen, and Irene respectively) or RvB with the potential also queerbaiting, and making every implied queer character being a horrific stereotype (See: Grimmons and Donut respectively).

Now, unlike RvB, RWBY has taken itself mostly seriously from day one. Sure, RvB got dark and serious later, but there has always been, at least in the parts set in the "present" of the show, an underlying tone of comedy. Plus, the Donut joke was started over a decade ago, where it was a bunch of guys dicking around on Halo: CE after work, and I trust that they've both grown as individuals, and realize that their jokes will reach an infinitely larger audience, so they hopefully won't be so quick to make stereotypical and, honestly, a little bit homophobic jokes. Not in RWBY, anyway.

As for who the LGBTQ characters are going to be... Ruby seems to be at least asexual, if not also aromantic, so far, and I think we could get a Bumblebee endgame (Laugh all you want Eclipse shippers, but remember how TLoK ended. The Mako x Korra shippers were so quick to dismiss the Korrasami shippers picking up on little hints as to it being canon as yuri fanboys grasping at straws in denial, and look where they are now). I think at least RWBY is too mature to go for the obvious feminine-man-is-gay joke with Scarlet, but him being trans could be possible.

It was also proposed earlier in this thread that Velvet might be asexual. I really like that idea, especially as it would disprove the stereotype that Faunus are naturally animalistic which, if true, discredits Blake's entire arc, and the Faunus' plight in general (Looking at you early Volume 3 and Chibi Blake...). Also, I just find asexual Velvet ridiculously adorable for some reason. I've also got a theory that Qrow could be a transman (Would explain the whole "How I GOT my name" part, with his parents apparently knowing his Semblance before he was born). I believe it was also mentioned earlier in this thread that either Monty or Miles said that we'd meet a queer character that Monty was "adamant about" in Volume 3, so it's pretty much either him, Winter, Amber, Salem, or one of the fifteen or so students that were just there for the main characters to beat in the Vytal Festival Tournament, and given how Monty was supposedly "adamant" about it, I sincerely doubt it'd be someone that minor.

Regardless of who the LGBTQ characters are, or when they're introduced, I just hope that they're done right. I have faith that M&K are mature and open-minded enough to make them more than one-dimensional sereotypes or token minor characters, or at least, that Monty was, and they'll do their best to stay true to his design.