#like at this point i tag anything remotely controversial as rude to keep myself safe

[fanstuffrantings]

"It's become so popular to cyberbully people in this fandom, especially if they hold any opinion outside the extremely limited and strictly enforced one-way-only 'acceptable' opinion."

This. Fucking this. I haven't experienced anon hate ir any sort of harrassment, but hearing the hate people can get boogles my mind.

You like Adam or dislike how things ended for him? You feel uncomfortable how fndm treats him? You're an abuse apologist. (because the only villains you're allowed to like are the ones WE decide you can like.)

You like Ironwood or dislike how things ended for him? You dislike how his villain arc got writen? You feel uncomfortable how fndm treats his paranoia and prosthetics? You're a terrible person who supports facism, because you dared to do some critical thinking and don't agree with the group by daring to have different opinions (how ironic)

You ship Blacksun instead of Bumbleby? You're a hompohobe, 'cause Yang and Sun are totally the same people so you should be shipping BB too. (Lets ignore how I water down Yang and Sun to 1 surface level trait and that both have different plotlines with Blake)

And now shipping FB is bad? I thought this fandom cared about f/f ships? Guess, not and only care about keeping everyone in line. For god's sake, you're telling me people got shitted on for theorizing that Qrow is Ruby's dad?? Sheez, with this pathern of behavior I can safely assume I would get accused of being a military bootlicker who supports bombing cities because I like Harriet.

For my time in this fandom I learned the only way I can enjoy RWBY, without mentally blocking out the toxic part of Fndm or getting mentally tired in the Rwde side and without getting frustrated by the canon...is to stay in my corner. No matter how friendly Rwby positive blog looks like - I'm staying in my corner. Quick look at their posts about Rwde, Ironwood etc. and I'm taking a distance.

And what sucks more, I do want to talk about RWBY with people. I want to talk without bringing up it's flaws. Once I brought up RWBY to a mutual of mine and they hadn't heard of it before, but said they would check it out.

I was happy because I would have someone to talk about RWBY, but then later I remembered about how Fndm can be, about the war with criticism they have. I would get worried them getting harrassed if they talk about the flaws. What if Fndms toxicity influences them? Maybe, I did the bad thing for mentioning RWBY to them??

I get, Fndm not wanting constant critcism in their dash. Trying to enjoy a show with many pointing out the cracks can be draining. But all this? All these rules of what to think, like and ship? This isn't ok.

I agree that RWBY haters can drive off new fans of the show. but there are times where fandoms are too responsible for this. Congrats Fndm, I'm tired.

Largely since my re-entry into the fandom I've been incredibly careful about separating positive posts from critical ones. I'll tag things as rwde/rwby critical liberally because I don't want to chance a post I make finding someone who thinks it's too negative. I tend to be more critical this days or think a lot about alterations I'd make to canon to enjoy myself more and I'm having fun doing that in my corner of the internet.

I think mainly the part that threw me was to see a harmless post get someone upset, and then a request for people to manage their internet space only caused this to worsen. Last time I posted freezerburn content (2016 I believe) it was treated as normal and not subject to controversy. It felt a bit like getting a bucket of ice water dumped on me because I wasn't ready for a completely angry response to positivity.

The fandoms response to my recent posts about this situation has been overall more positive in all honesty with a lot of support and mutual aggrevation (like this) at how many rwby fans can often live in an echo chamber where canon is law and anyone who ignores said law is out to destroy RWBY regardless of how much they might enjoy the show.

This defensive nature might stem from fans getting incredibly protective of the series because there was a point when it would get a lot of unnecessary hate in the early days for dumb things (animation and episode length when budget was clearly an issue). But even so they now begin to lump everyone enjoying the show differently together and assume the worst which is what isolates so may people.

I do appreciate all of you for being supportive though and it's unfortunate that the fandom got into a state like this, I feel like it's one of the worst versions of this type of thing in fandom that I've seen. But when we get the fans who accept people are going to have differences of opinions and handle their online space to make sure they're having fun it makes enjoying the fandom easier!