#bad faith media criticism

[sjbattleangel]

Edited from Hiding In Private's fantastic video which you can watch here.

Hiding In Public: "It's unreasonable to attack Rebecca's character as if the most malicious interpretation of everything in the show was their personal idea. The writing and storyboarding team of Steven Universe is one of the most diverse in cartoon history. On a show that pushed diversity and inclusion, a lot of this criticism starts to stink of right-wing co-opting of progressive language, without understanding context and sentiment, in order to have a "gotcha" moment. Considering a lot of videos pushing this also include racist and homophobic jokes (as I've covered in my own series).  Even then, the argument that you're trying to make is that there was a malicious characterization of minorities made by those same minorities...so the next question I guess is: Why Steven Universe? A show about pushing diversity, inclusion and acceptance was being specifically targeted by countless takedown videos (and posts) on this specific thing. It seems to me-at least-that even if someone were to concede all the bad things being said, that it would make more sense to target-more loudly-the shows (and other media) that do the same thing more often with less tact and who are also not led by minority communities rather than one of the only shows intentionally trying to support these communities. Especially when most the people making the criticism, show by virtue of their own comments, are neither coming from these communities or are at worst actively vilifying them with homophobic and racist comments. Say there are two shops: One that sells apples and the other that sells grapes. The apple owner overhears a customer complaining about the grapes not tasting good. Does the Apple owner then run a campaign pretending to be a grape fan in order to make grapes better? Or is it more likely that they stoked a flame to ensure that their business had less competition?"

[lightlavenders]

she-ra (2018) isn't about redemption arcs it's about healing through love. unrelated did you know hordak fans and catra fans can coexist without condemning the other-

[bandtrees]

one of the most infuriating things i’ve realized about fandom spaces lately to me has been some people’s inability to just trust a story and engage with its premise and what it’s trying to express. “canon sucks i can do it better lol!!!” is one of the most annoying attitudes to me and i do kinda hate how prevalent it’s gotten (in actually good polished media that isn’t to be engaged with like that)

like between people who read things in as bad a faith as possible and ceaselessly criticize things they supposedly like, and people who only care about media for the sake of making cookie cutter self-indulgent fandom content, it feels sometimes like the most controversial thing you can do in a fandom is “actually liking the source material for what it is”

[gorgeousgreymatter-x]

hi hello if you read books or fanfiction or consume media with the express intent to find something problematic to be upset about idk how to tell you my buddy my friend my guy but the problem is u

[iamafanofcartoons]

Take a look at these two photos. These were what were happening in RWBY V8′s second to last episode.

Now then...take a look at these edited ones.

Memeable , isn’t it? Especially if you remove all context. Ruby in this episode was focusing on Cinder, gathering up mental focus on what makes life Sacred in order to use her silver eyes against Salem’s Maiden.

Neo? Was trying to attack Ruby from Behind.

Yang? Intercepted Neo  by pushing Ruby out of the way, and using her own body to shield her sister, due to Neo being an extremely fast opponent, faster than Yang.

RWDE and R/RWBYCritics took advantage of the facial expressions to manipulate audiences into believing that Ruby ONLY made those expressions after Yang fell. In order to make it look like Ruby was apathetic.

You wanna see Ruby’s facial expressions? HERE

A sister horrified at losing her sibling. The image that every single RWBY Critic will hide from you, because showing this image provides context, showing this image showed that Ruby cared, showing this image, means that the criticism is based on lying.

When your criticism revolves around editing images to provide an out of context take on the situation, your critique should lose all validity, and be classified as bad-faith criticism.

Sadly, these days, Criticism is no longer about providing context, and more about lying. Its about editing things to be taken out of context. The reason people hate on V8 is due to people literally lying about what happens.

What makes this worse is that lies spread like wildfire, are harder to debunk, and the more people that repeated said lies, the more people are willing to take lies as truth over the actual truth.

And this, sadly, is part of the reason why Media Literacy is dead. Because truth doesn’t matter anymore...simply what people want to be the truth or what people want their take on the truth to be.

[asm5129]

Hey Queers and Dears.

I changed my mind. After the barrage of comments I got on my video debunking Hbomb’s Avatar Fanfic allegations, I decided it would be worthwhile to make the full streams public rather than keep them on my Patreon.

I do not care whether you personally like RWBY or not, but Hbomb’s video has no critical merit and releasing it in segments can cloud that so I am releasing them uncut.

I may or may not still release clips or segments with some editing and evidence added like I did with the Avatar Fanfic video since the streams are very long and it’s unlikely anyone will watch them in full.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0jPNDWamV_wmRreM0Cuanp77kHHu6xMD

[tomboymikayla]

THANK YOU!

[zukosdualdao]

Im glad to read the takes of a fellow zuko stan :)

Honestly, it feels like people just hate on him way too much lately. The posts ive seen on twitter, on tik tok, on tumblr... Do people just not like him anymore? Why did everyone turn against him so suddenly? I've been hoping it's something temporary, just a trend, but. I don't know anymore. People mock his disability, spit on his trauma, wish death on him and interpret everything he says or does in the worst possible way. I saw someone crying about how entitled he was because he took aang's seat when watching the play just the other day lmao. Another person wrote about how mysoginistic he was because he didn't remember katara's name when asking about kya's death to sokka? There are those who even call him a colonizer on the same level as iroh lmao. It seems their justifications for all the salt they throw his way are along the lines of "he's been loved for too long, aang stans have suffered way more, people just watched the show again and realized how bad he actually was, he's catching strays since his fans keep setting him up, his fans paint him as perfect and erase every bad thing he's done" etc etc. I'm all for criticism and deeper character analysis, but this is just said in bad faith. I also think it has a bit to do with how different engagement has become in fandom spaces recently (things people support in fiction need to be morally correct) and well, zuko was the perfect target. He's done bad things, sides with the villains for a good portion of the series, redeems himself but there are things he still has to work on... I don't know, it's been getting to me. There are many other harsh things ive read said about him (like implying how every single member of the gaang hates even after redeeming himself), but i honestly don't have the energy to delve into each and every one. His arc was poorly executed and his development was badly written now, apparently. I kind of just ranted here, i apologize. Im very happy to read the posts of someone who genuinely likes him and doesnt throw him under the bus to defend or elevate other characters...

hi! i'm glad you're enjoying my blog <3 and no need to apologize for the rant, i'm always happy to talk about zuko!

about to theorize a bit as to why it seems like maybe zuko has become a more contentious character, but it should be noted i have not been exceptionally, actively involved in the fandom very long. i loved atla as a kid, have retained fond memories, have witnessed some discourse from the fringes over the years, but only recently has it overtaken my brain to the point of making a whole blog about it. lol. so, like, grain of salt, etc.

i think a big part of it is what you said - in the last few years of fandom in particular, it feels like there has been a huge upswing in purity culture, moralizing liking/not liking certain ships or characters, and an overall increase in very black-and-white thinking. there's also an emphasis on "holding people accountable" (good in theory), often without specifying what, exactly, that looks like (less good). the idea then becomes that if you've done harmful things, there's no way you can ever make up for them and should just, like, hate yourself for all eternity and also die, probably, which is not actually helpful to anyone.

so, i think for those who ascribe to that mindset, zuko is a prime candidate for them to criticize. and while there's nothing wrong with criticizing a character or their arc or writing if you truly have a problem with it, as you've said, a lot of the time, criticisms against zuko don't seem to be made in very good faith. after all, a big part of zuko's arc is having to unlearn some very black-and-white thinking. also, zuko is not a real person. he is a character, and therefore a narrative tool, and if we want him to be 'held accountable', we need look no further than the story itself, in which he is probably the character the narrative holds the most accountable for his actions due to his prior status as a villain.

(it reminds me a bit, actually, of another favorite character of mine: alec in the tv series shadowhunters. he starts out the story already in a heroic role, unlike zuko, but a big part of his narrative is unlearning some prejudiced cultural mindsets and challenging not only his previous ideologies, but his conception of himself and the people in his life as well. as a result, alec can look sometimes more obviously flawed than the other main cast, but the point is that the narrative asks him to examine those flaws and change and introspect and grow in a way that it doesn't always ask of other characters when they are showcasing their own flaws. which does make me thing about zuko vs. aang in the atla narrative.)

the other thing i think is contributing to zuko's more contentious status in the fandom is how long atla's been in the cultural consciousness, and how common it is for things that used to be popular to cycle through to people starting to criticize or actively hate it to people saying "no, actually, it's still pretty good, you just don't want to like a popular thing" (this is me rn), to maybe eventually getting popular again/at least in certain subsects of the audience. zuko was probably one of the most talked-about aspects of atla for a long time, and while i can understand how that could get frustrating (because there are some other really great characters and aspects of the story!), that's not, like, for no reason. people connected with and admired his story for a reason, and many still do, and (in my humble opinion) that is because it is one of the most thought-out, intentional, and nuanced character arcs of the show.

the ableism, i think, really gets to me because like... even if every criticism from the people who hate him were 100% accurate and said in good faith (they're not, but let's pretend for a minute)... that still wouldn't be an excuse for ableism against a character with a prominent facial difference (or making fun of abuse survivors for the permanent injuries they sustain from abuse.) if zuko had never redeemed himself and stayed a villain, it would still be wrong to talk about his scar and abuse the way some of his detractors do. and the show agrees with me! you know how i know? the only two characters to ever make fun of zuko's scar are villains in the narrative: zhao and azula. ("make fun of" might not be quite right for zhao, since what he said - "you have the scar to prove it" - is far more matter-of-fact than azula imitating him by covering her eye or "make sure they get your good side", but he's absolutely being a huge jerk about it.) other characters react to zuko's scar in all sorts of different ways, even when he's still in a villain/antagonist/anti-hero role: zuko's crew is horrified to learn how he got the scar, song sees a point of connection and tries to reach out to him, but, while i think well-intentioned, she breaks a major boundary by trying to touch his scar when he hasn't conveyed he's okay with that, jet makes assumptions about his background because of it, lee, the kid from zuko alone, asks with curious, childish naivete how he got it, only for his father to reprimand him for asking, aang reacts with annoyance/boredom to azula's ableist joke, and katara trips over her words to correct him when zuko thinks she's essentially calling him "scary to look at". not all of these interactions are positive, but the characters (all of whom are written as pretty sympathetic, even if also flawed) aren't outright trying to make fun of him for it, and the narrative never implies he deserves to be treated as less than because of it, even before his redemption.

anyway. if people don't believe in characters' (and, hell, irl people's) capacity for growth and change and don't want to have nuanced discussions about how trauma can impact these things, i mean... that's their prerogative, but i don't understand why they enjoy the show, because those are big parts of it (and not just wrt zuko.)

i know it can be frustrating, anon— trust me, i get very frustrated. but i promise you, there are plenty of people out there who a) still love zuko and his story and b) are capable of and willing to talk about things with nuance and in good faith. i'm happy to be part of that corner of fandom, and i bet you can manage to carve out a space where more people like that exist, too! <3

[mikus0na]

remember back in the twilight heyday when people would be like “edward SUCKS. vampires aren’t supposed to be sparkly and broody they’re supposed to be scary and monstrous and powerful!” like. yeah im sure that would be great in a romance love triangle story aimed at teenage girls

[jackshade21]

I find myself more and more wishing more people had media literacy skills. Cause all of these outrageous and bad faith comments are absolutely wild and not in a fun way anymore.

Also realizing that just because you don't like something or it doesn't fit your personal tastes it doesn't mean "THING BAD!" it just means maybe this piece of media isn't for you and that's OK. Criticism is a good thing but it can be abused. Constructive or good faith criticism is helpful. Bad faith criticism is counter productive.

People wonder why creativity is so stifled lately when it comes to shows and movies and it's because companies are afraid to take risks on things that are niche, weird, bold, campy, etc. Because if something doesn't have mass appeal it isn't worth it and when we try to destroy something in bad faith because it doesn't fit what we personally want all we do is add fuel to the fire of bland mediocrity.

I have seen entire sections of fandoms develop around just hating a thing and I see them revel in negativity and delight in making other people upset. All they end up accomplishing is drowning out all of the good faith criticism with their bad and when that happens creators/studios will tend to ignore all of it. Think about it like this, would want to read comments upon comments of people shredding something you worked hard on (or hell just something you enjoy) in bad faith just to find the ones that are engaging in a constructive manner? Or would you just avoid reading the comments altogether?

Example, I had to block multiple tags because all of the "criticism" I kept seeing was on par with "There are too many musical numbers in the musical show"

[canary0]

So.

My Friendly Neighborhood.

Good aspects: Interesting inventory management, tense moments and atmosphere, good voice work (kudos to the voice director Brendan Blaber/JelloApocalypse), interesting premise, having the puppets just be unexplained and part of the world feels fresh.

Bad aspects: Fake loading screens are weird and distracting, highlighting can be a little subtle.

Aspects up to personal taste, but I hated: The not-especially-subtle implication that the in-story show was meant to instill Christian values in kids, and the game's overall implication that this is an unambiguously good thing, and the loss of it will cause societal downfall because no one can be trusted to make their own moral decisions. The bad faith criticism of children's television.

That last bit, but extended (break if you don't want to read the extended rant, 'cause that's basically what it is):

The marketing niche for Sesame Street and the marketing niche for something called "Dinosaur Mayhem" would be two completely different age ranges and developmental stages. The game kind of implies stuff like Sesame Street was replaced with things like, say, Transformers or generally unnamed violent kids' cartoons, but that's not true at all.

First, Sesame Street is still running. It's had the occasional threat over the years, but people still see the value of it. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, the other implied reference, ran practically forever. These days, kids also have things like Paw Patrol, Dora the Explorer, Doc McStuffins, Bluey, and in general a whole lot of perfectly wholesome childrens' programming. There is no lack of love and cooperation in it.

Kids grow into shows with higher stakes and more conflict as they get older and are more ready for that kind of content. They're not going to keep watching shows for 2-6 year olds forever. That's not a failure of media - it's just kids entering a different developmental stage. Not everything is going to be appropriate for the very youngest, and that's actually a good thing.

Diversity of media and media that expands subjects people are exposed to as they get older and can handle it is good. It creates room for creative, interesting shows. It respects the developmental changes kids go through. Gravity Falls, to give an example, is not out-competing Sesame Street.

What gets me also is that there's a bunch of manipulation and negging and you get attacked and defend yourself and the game treats you like a monster for it, and the people who are mistreating the main character as correct. Lil' hinky, I think.

It was just frustrating, so I wanted to rant about it. The game was good and then fumbled the landing.

This is all purely my personal opinion, and you're free to disagree. Any interpretation of a given piece of media is valid, and mine is not correct any more than anyone else. Please don't take this as me claiming the final word. This is just what I personally took away from it.

[aaaaamorphous-entity]

People need to re-learn how to Read The Assignment in fandom spaces. This can apply to a lot of things but I’m going off of a personal experience here as well as the reactions to a character re-imagining I saw earlier tonight, which sparked this post.

I posted in a character rant board a while ago about the parallels between two characters. To remove as many variables as I can for people to use to deviate from the point of this post, I’m not telling who :p Besides, that’s irrelevant. I posted about these characters’ parallels, citing the particular pieces of the decidedly sprawling franchise they’re a part of that I had seen for my observations and commentary.

Cue what I call the Patrick Star phase.

A couple people started with what-about-isms about depictions of the characters in other parts of the franchise which weren’t included in the list I had seen. Not with the purpose to add to my point, nor to correct factually incorrect claims of which I'd made none, only to argue I didn’t Know Enough to make a point at all, I guess? The point of the post was about the characters’ parallels.

A person started nitpicking my wording (which, mind, was not incoherent nor far off from the ‘perfect’ phrasing). Instead of engaging with the spirit of what I was saying and either giving their own perspective on the one nitpicked character’s mindset, or asking for elaboration on my end, they just cited why I was ackshually wrong. The point of the post was about the characters’ parallels.

Somebody DM’d me about how using they-them pronouns for a character was actually unfair to non-English speaking fans and I should be more considerate. Which isn’t the point of this post either but still irks me to this day. Especially as a resident they-them-haver myself.

Anyways. The point of the post was about the characters’ parallels. The Assignment™ was to discuss this subject. To share one’s thoughts about it, to perhaps, kindly, engage with that point and consider it, or share why one personally can’t see it, or whatever have you.

“But what if I didn’t want that assignment?” a theoretical naysayer might ask. Then: don’t comment on that post. It isn’t for you. Coming onto that post just to tell the OP why they’re wrong or What About This part of the media they haven’t seen, or the evolution of that: 'they can’t have a developed opinion of these characters if they haven’t seen XYZ'...is all unproductive, and Not Fun.

The point of fandom to me is to have fun. To engage with the media you all share a love for and build each other up. That grows creativity, and community, and furthers character analysis and media literacy and all that good stuff (ideally speaking, anyways).

If you come onto a post with an Assignment™, only to act like the Grinch and only contribute comments that spoil the fun, then why did you even comment at all? To be right? To feel superior? To just put someone in their place?

What does that accomplish besides killing someone’s desire to engage with others in this fandom, and possibly just entirely remove their creative voice from the space? I know I’ve certainly lost the desire to engage with many in my fandom save a few curated friends because so often, people Miss The Assignment.

This applies to a character re-imagining I saw tonight (not Hazbin Hotel, and not The Point Of This Post. Y’all could stand to hear this too tho), in which the comments were all negative or nitpicky. The character in question was more or less a parody, poorly written and largely disappointing for what he and many others of his group had been built up to be.

The OP had to take a lot of creative liberties to make him into an actual character, instead of a vindictive author’s joke. They still went to the effort of tying in themes and design choices that all complimented details unique to this character and the one other intrinsically tied to him, as well as incorporating a nod to an old fad in the fandom that apparently happened before I joined it. It was a pretty solid redesign IMO. Very different from the character as he was shown on-screen, but frankly, that’s like taking a burning pile of spinning gears and hammering them into a functional clock in this instance.

And all the comments had to say was ‘just make an OC at this point’, or nitpicking that this wasn’t REALLY a ‘rewrite’ because the OP hadn’t written a story or anything of substance with the character (??????????), and one person correcting OP about bipolarism, of which OP was already familiar with through a family member, though frankly I’m unqualified to comment on any of that myself (although I will note OP did not depart from the depictions of bipolarism within the original media they were working with).

All this to say: The Assignment™ of that post was to engage with the idea of redesigning that character. To add your thoughts about him, what could fit him, or possibly some alternatives if the reader felt something fit better. What did saying ‘just make an OC at this point’ add? What did nitpicking about the semantics of the word ‘rewrite’ do? It’s a nothingburger of commentary that, if I were the OP, would kill enthusiasm for the subject.

If you see a fandom post discussing characters, sharing ideas about them or the setting, talking about ships, or talking about parts of the media just clearly for the goddang fun of it, then you have two Decent options: Engage in good faith, or Just. Keep. Scrolling. Commenting just to drag down the OP does nothing but kill the mood and damage community and enthusiasm therein.

For the umpteenthousandth time: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all

[caparrucia]

Making my own post, because I'm derailing horribly and I know it. But I find this thread and @carriesthewind's addition key to a realization I just had about fandom drama.

Yes, there's this toxic dynamic where people demand the most good faith reading of their words, with generous opportunities for mistakes and misunderstandings, but go about reading everything they encounter in the worst possible faith, assuming malicious and harmful intent in everything.

And yes, that's one of the key drivers of fandom drama, because most people find people who go about doing that incredibly incendiary and annoying and often don't think twice to go back and call them out on it.

But the entire thread is talking about House of the Dragon as "the incest show" and how pointing out that "there's incest in the incest show, and if you're uncomfortable with incest, you'll be uncomfortable with both the canon and the fandom surrounding the incest show, because, y'know, all the incest," which... yeah. Valid points all around.

But I find it fascinated because it crystalized something for me and one of the reasons why most of fandom's tantrums about censorship vs harmful depiction annoy me so much. And I don't think mine is a unique experience, but... I don't have a stake, most of the time.

To wit, we all know Game of Thrones crashed and burned at the end and it's been such a meme there was a solid eight months worth of youtube video essays chronicling every single factor that went into turning the heir to the Sopranos as far as prestige TV went, into a fucking meme. But the thing is... Game of Thrones was something ELSE before it was the incest show. It was a whirlwind of high production and amazing acting and competent writing! ...right up until it wasn't. Yes, there was incest in it. There was also rape and violence and gore and maiming and a whole lot of shocking things, to a mainstream audience. It reveled shamelessly in its Adult rating and being gatekept behind HBO's paywall.

What I'm trying to say is, the people who watched Game of Thrones as it came out, myself included, and the people who left in disgust as the writing declined in quality and the plot became more and more obvious and stupid in direction and execution? We weren't there for JUST for the incest. To us, it wasn't the incest show. It was the dragon show. Or the politics show. Or the obscenely detailed costume work that makes me scream in paroxysms of ecstasy (yes, Bernadette Banner has a bunch of series breaking this down and salivating about it right along with us, go check them out over on youtube) show. Or it was the Charles Dance set the bar so fucking high every actor sharing a shooting site never mind scene with him has been forcefully dragged into a higher level of performance and it's fucking jaw dropping to witness show. Or the this is reigniting my love for D&D and fantasy because no one's ever taken it this seriously before and it's inspiring me to go look at those hobbies again show.

Sure, there were people who were absolutely in it for the incest. And you know what? All the power to them. Glad they were fed. But implying everyone has to be either gleefully consuming incest and celebrating/endorsing it, or being harmed by it, that's it, that's the dichotomy, the evil people who celebrate or the good people who're martyred (wow, some of you carry your evangelical damage VERY prominently and will find a way to work it into every conversation, yes), kind of erases the agency of the rest of us who looked at the incest and went "huh, not for me" and then moved on. Because that's a thing! That people with agency! Can do! Different people can have different tolerances for stuff. You don't get to erase us just because we're not convenient to the narrative.

Bad faith arguments about a show's morality - and let's start from the fact all arguments surrounding a show's moral standing are bad faith from the gate - will find the one thing they find objectionable - the incest - and try to eclipse everything else, pretending there was nothing else to the show, but incest. Because that's how they set the stage and cordon off the bits and pieces that sort of don't fit their argument. They're trying to get a head start in the conversation by delimiting the grounds. Not cool, but also understandable. All bad faith takes do that.

The weird thing is that in most other scenarios, when someone does the bad faith narrowing down of the field like that, the general answer is "this is more complicated than that and you're being stupid for being so narrow-minded, go away." When evangelicals try to do it about creationism and fossils. When evangelicals try to do it about science and religion and politics and a million other things, because this is a very (though not exclusively) evangelical way to frame problems and it's part of their preaching methods so they've internalized it.

But when it comes to media? And when it comes to Queer issues? Somehow people don't immediately go "your framing of this is objectively incorrect and also stupid, go away". People go in engaging in that same framing.

So now GoT and HotD are "the incest shows", and you can't have an opinion about them without identifying at the door if you're in for the incest or against it, as if incest is the central point of the discussion and the thing everyone is hyperfocused on. Like... no? IDK, I don't care about the incest, I'm more interested in X/Y/Z. But this framing makes it so that from the outside, if you don't know what's happening, you assume that, yeah, the incest must be the most important thing. Everyone talking about it, pro and against are basing all their thoughts and comments about the incest. So it must be true! So a bad faith framework, unchallenged, becomes the good faith standard that people use to gauge the conversation, because there's no challenging in that framework.

Bad frameworks are bad, and more than that, they're harmful. Because when you let them go unchallenged, you're letting bad faith actors dictate the tone of the conversation. This is annoying and irritating in fandom discussions, but it escalates to actively fucking harrowing when it comes to the other thing that keeps following this pattern: conversations about queer people, particularly trans people, and the concentrated efforts from right wing extremists to reframe their entire existence as predators, and specifically child sexual predators.

So, like, absolutely call out people who do that good faith for me, bad faith for thee bullshit. Absolutely recognize when someone is trying to bias a conversation or forcefully frame it in a way that tries to box you into a gotcha. But when you see the bad framing, for fiction and for queer issues, and you wouldn't tolerate that in a science conversation. Or in a history conversation. Or in a linguistic conversation... yeah, call THAT out. And remember the only people who benefits from you engaging unquestioning in that bad framing, is the asshole who set up that bad frame in the first place.

Additional twitter threads about bad framing/bad faith arguments:

"Why fiction was used to groom me is a shitty argument and you need to stop engaging with it."

"Doxxing/Suicide baiting is bad, actually, stop letting people reframe them as valid activism."

"TERF/Kink-critical/RadFem rhetoric speaks the language of abuse and you'll never be able to argue your way into being seen as a person if you engage in their framework."

"Discomfort is not harm and you can't have conversations about harm-reduction when someone keeps bath faith derailing to try and force you to take accountability for THEIR discomfort."

[iamafanofcartoons]

Ah, c'mon. Female characters are only ever hated when they're poorly written. If they were male, they'd be just as hated. Calling anybody sexist is such a reach.

I mean, you really think that the likes of Team RWBY would be more liked if they were guys? Qrow? Ironwood? Got any solid examples? All I see from you lot is a bunch of accusations and hypotheticals.

C'mon. The FNDM's maddening but real bigots are few and far between.

Let me give you three examples of sexism from the RWBY Critics. And let me remind you that both men and women can be misogynists. The Republican Party of the USA is sure proof of that.

Now that we have the proof of RWBY Critics being nasty sexists out of the way. Let me go over Yang Xiao Long, since most straightshippers and rwby bashers love to hate on Yang.

Critics gnoring the fact that she losed a arm, got PTSD for like 3 volumes, saving the world from a immortal being. Edit: She's just not 24 hours all happy girl anymore like in the volumes 1-3….nobody is anymore after everything that happened. Because taking world ending stakes seriously, and not constantly being quippy doesn’t mean that someone is no longer fun. No, no, don't look at Yang pranking Nora during their arm wrestling match, making jokes about getting reward money for Weiss, or doing stunts on a hover bike. Giggling about Adrian? Pranking Penny with her arm? Joking about crashing the Schnee Party? RWBY Critics: Yang is no longer fun, she’s a Karen! Basically, critics have to ignore/forget/deny ANYTHING that disagrees with their negative views of women. If these people can't even understand a character after showing all his background, trauma and way of thinking, imagining understanding a real person you know nothing about. But seriously, things are less fun in general. Like, yeah V1-3 were school fun-times where the characters weren't even aware of the world ending threat working behind the scenes. Now they are, and they're trying to stop it, things are going to be less fun. Want an example of how Critics pretend to be blind and deaf? Adam Taurus: Introduced trying to blow up a train of passengers. Blake Belladonna: Introduced trying to stop him, and then joins Beacon, hoping to change the system from within. Volume 2: Adam literally tells Cinder that he finds his followers expendable. Blake is opening up to Yang and becomes more and more happy. RWBY Critics: Blake manipulated Adam, Blake is the reason Adam is evil, Blake should have saved Adam, Adam should have killed Blake. Yeah, I’d call that sexism. Let’s cover Robyn Hill

I’ve got some memes just for this But somehow Robyn is an evil terrorist? And Ironwood is somehow the savior? Ironwood, who constantly demands trust and talks about making difficult decisions while : A) repeatedly forbidding penny to have any friends and having her as a project done behind everyone’s back? B) Holding more government power than any other Council Member, and forbidding anyone not part of his military from being allowed to defend themselves or carry weapons (volume 7 chapter 2, clover ignoring Qrow’s license) C) Going behind Ozpin’s back to get the council to fire him for not giving James what he wants? D) Threatening Jacques and telling him to get on James’ good side while declaring closed borders WITHOUT the council’s permission? Threatening a civilian while declaring HIMSELF the council? E) That mech was put in Argus WITHOUT the people’s awareness or permission. Ironwood then installed a racist megalomaniac because she was fanatically loyal to him.  But any woman standing against is immediately considered a war criminal? So yeah, the hatedom? Is misogynistic.  I keep seeing men and women talking about how they want the female characters in RWBY to suffer. I keep seeing them throw slurs at fictional characters and towards the writers. If you don’t have anything respectful to say about the show unless it involves pushing cis white male OC/MC fanfics and talking about how your ideas are superior? Or you wanna talk about porn? Then you have nothing to contribute but Hatred, and you shouldn’t contribute at all.

[amazinglyscarydonut]

I’m just thinking about how the McElroy brothers were absolutely worshipped on this website as cornerstones of internet culture, and then all of a sudden a few years ago everyone did that thing that they always do to random dudes they used to worship, and decided that they were the devil (for reasons I was never clear on), and then Sarah Z made this long-ass video called something like “The History of the Decline and Fall of the McElroy Fandom” like some huge Voltron-esque fandom dropoff had happened. But like nothing had actually occurred and everyone who had been listening to their podcast just kept listening to their podcast and they’re still very prevalent in meme culture. What the fuck was all that about

[templegate]

While I've seen plenty of criticisms of Outlast for ableism/stigmatizing mental illness (because your enemies are murder-happy asylum inmates), I honestly beg to differ—at least for the most part. For one thing, only a handful of inmates actually attack you. Most of the other patients there are either in shock or just trying to lay low and stay alive through all the chaos going on around them. Even the more proactive of the non-combatant characters, such as the pyro you encounter in the kitchen, are just trying to get out—and their desperation is made to be pretty relatable. Even the boss characters like Chris Walker and Eddie Gluskin were victims of the asylum. For crying out loud, the Whistleblower DLC opens with Eddie getting dragged into the morphogenic engine kicking and screaming and begging for help—it's what solidifies Waylon Park's determination to take down Murkoff. Even when you find Eddie's files later on and see that, yes, he was already a murderer before he wound up in Mount Massive, that also comes with notes about the sexual abuse he experienced as a child and his denial of it. It doesn't excuse his actions—of course it doesn't—but it shows that he didn't become the way he is from nothing. Furthermore, the entire Mount Massive arc focuses so heavily on the theme of abuse of power. The patients are enduring horrific experimentation at the hands of people like Blair and Trager, and that is what sets up the rest of the story. The people running the show are the catalysts for all hell breaking loose—not the patients, who are instead victims of a system that is exploiting them by pushing them past their mental and physical limits, and has no qualms about treating them as replaceable test subjects. They are already sick people thrust into terrifying circumstances. Some of them were already dangerous to begin with, but most of them were not. They were all in a place that was supposed to help them cope with their conditions and rehabilitate, but instead were exploited and had their issues exacerbated by being traumatized further, and that's part of what makes Outlast terrifying.  So yeah, the portrayal of mentally ill people in Outlast isn't phenomenal, sure, but it goes beyond making all the patients out to be horrible monsters. Most of them are just trying to stay out of all the awful shit going on and stay alive without completely breaking down. The games still makes you feel for those people after you see how desperate and terrified a lot of them are, due mainly because of the abuses they have suffered from the people who were supposed to help them.

Anon this is so fascinating cause I agree with you sm. I think all of this stuff is true. From the way I see it Outlast is an attempt to subvert all the other mental asylum horror stories. Which I think adds all this complexity you're talking about. But while I do think it's more nuanced and better written than contemporaries, I don't think they did a good enough job. The "evil asylum" trope is inherently ableist, and stigmatizing. And I do agree the main source of long term horror in the series is from the incredible abuse the patients suffer- it cannot be ignored that the majority of scary moments aren't from the abuse, but from the patients acting violent and "crazy". And yeah it makes sense why they're violent and "crazy" that doesn't change the fact that the average joe schmoe is gonna go through the game and take away the message that mentally ill people are violent, and scary, and mental health facilities are bad and scary. Which- as someone who's been to a psych ward- I find to be a very bad message. They have their issues but stigmatizing them makes it worse. I think Red Barrels realized this, and for the Whistleblower made more of an effort to emphasize the abuse as a front line horror. Jeremy Blaire, the Walrider, The Morphogenic Engine, etc etc. Although the complaints I have still stand. Overall I agree with you that Outlast is a nuanced portrayal of this trope. That point about how not all of the patients are violent, is one of my favorite parts of Outlast. How they're still humans. And that creates some really great moments, like Someones Playing Piano. But as I've said before I still think it's inadequate I really want people to realize that Outlast being a story about systemic abuse where innocent people are victimized, and Outlast relies on ableism to get it's scares- are two statements that can coexist. I think at this point I should just write a paper about outlast