Homophobic Ruby

About

Homophobic Ruby or Ruby Homophobia Arc refers to a series of memes depicting Ruby from the web animation series RWBY as a homophobe. The memes became popularized on Twitter and 4chan in early April 2023 after the premiere of the episode "The Perils of Paper Houses," which features a scene in which Ruby sarcastically says to Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long (who are dating) while on an angry rant, "Good for you by the way, we're all so happy for you." The memes misconstrue the scene as a homophobic rant. Some of the memes also crossover with the Homophobic Dog format.

Origin

On April 1st, 2023, season nine, episode seven of RWBY premiered on Crunchyroll. In one scene, Ruby has an angry breakdown, resulting in her yelling at several other characters including Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long, who are dating. She sarcastically yells at the couple, "Good for you by the way, we're all so happy for you." The scene was uploaded to YouTube^[1] that day, garnering over 354,000 views in five days (shown below).

That day, people began uploading the scene to Twitter and painting her rant against Belladonna and Long as homophobic. For example, Twitter^[2] user @TheLastOdyssey posted screenshots from the scene, writing, "Ruby really said 'So what if you're gay? You want a medal or sth???'" garnering over 1,500 likes in six days (shown below). That day, Twitter^[3] user @unkillableNPC posted, "NOT PEOPLE THINKING RUBY ROSE IS GENUINELY HOMOPHOBIC GU Y S PLS TELL ME UR /J," gaining over 1,300 likes in six days and suggesting some people thought the scene was legitimately homophobic.

That day, Twitter users 4chan's /co/ board began making memes continuing to paint the scene as a homophobic rant, depicting Ruby as a homophobe and saying homophobic slurs and phrases. That day, Twitter^[4] user @LookAtMyMeat1 posted images from various threads on /co/^[5][6] making jokes like this (shown below).

Spread

The meme continued to spread over the following days. On April 2nd, 2023, Twitter^[7] user @LambdaBestGirl2 posted a version of the meme that gained over 3,100 likes in five days (shown below). On the same day, YouTuber^[8] Nobody Real posted a video adding the "I quickly became homophobic" audio over the scene, garnering over 16,000 views in the same span of time. Later that day, Twitter^[9] user @HarbingerArt posted a photoshop of a YouTube thumbnail in which Ruby comes out as homophobic, garnering over 2,300 likes in five days (shown below, right).

On April 4th, Twitter^[10] user @LookAtMyMeat1 posted a version of the meme that gained over 6,500 likes in three days (shown below).

On April 6th, 2023, a /co/^[11] user started a "Christians only Edition" RWBY thread that resulted in numerous homophobic Ruby memes, branching off into memes depicting Ruby as a fundamental Christian and republican with traditional values as well (examples shown below). The thread gained over 600 replies in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References