Honestly, I'm glad that you are here to write your critiques with RWBY without being demeaning. I think too many fans think that having criticism or dislikes in the show means you hate it and that is so inexplicable? I like RWBY but I can't deny that it has botched its racism plots and its a bit rushed at points.
I don't feel as alone when I do see fans having a more critical eye on things they like/don't like.
to me, it comes down to a very simple thing: people are a lot less likely to criticize an idea they never had any interest in than they're to criticize an idea they found interesting.
at its core, criticism is basically "i like this; i wish it was (even) better."
so, yeah. the whole "if you criticize something, you must hate it" is just utterly asinine. like if i hate something, i'm not giving it a second thought in a day lol
there's also like. different kinds of criticism? sure, sometimes you watch something that just gives you that visceral "wtf was that", and you just want to vent on your own blog. sometimes, you liked what was in the show, but can also acknowledge how it could have been done differently to get the message across better, etc. and sometimes, you felt like the writing promised something else and then didn't meet those expectations, either by ignoring it completely or by swerving to a lane on the opposite side of the road and you're left wondering what the hell just happened.
all completely valid, of course; it just depends on your preference and current mood. speaking for myself, if i find something lacking, i tend to offer alternatives because that's part of my analytical process; figuring out why something gave me the reaction it did, why it doesn't work, and finding workarounds without changing too much, if plausible.
with rwby and its fandom, especially, it's like. there was a definite change around V6, i would say. before that, for example, it was pretty much widely accepted that the racism plot was botched from every direction, at worst you'd have people just ignoring it and focusing on the rest. but then the writers started drip-feeding queer representation, and something broke, because you sure as hell cannot claim the show you like is "progressive" with its botched racism plot, and so began the attempts to explain how it wasn't actually botched, for reasons XYZ and ABC—and that eventually evolved into "no criticism allowed" and "criticism = hate" to dismiss it.
which in itself is weird, because in my personal experience, it's very easy to avoid criticism. tumblr offers all the tools to do so, from blocking to filtering tags to filtering words in the body of the text (even blog names!!!), so at this point if people keep seeing criticism when they don't want to. . . they've made their choice.
(sorry if this is all over the place, my mind is half focused on a f1 race lmao)
