#but that so many rwby fans use their ships to excuse all the horrible RT does

[george-oswald-dannyson]

Rooster Teeth called one of their trans employees a slur as a """"joke"""", and then gave her a coded nickname so they could keep calling her a slur while the cameras were rolling

The Anime Binge-Watcher's Queer Anime Ship Tournament!

The first round is approaching its end! Yes, I know RWBY isn't really an anime, but Bumbleby's exquisite slow burn more than deserves to up against the powerful queer storytelling of Bloom Into You. Which one will prevail? Cast your votes now!

All Round 1 Match-Ups

Rules and Full Bracket

[team-crtq]

RWDE Flaws Quickie

Quartz here again. Last time I tackled the show itself and now I’ll be tackling the other side of team CRTQ’s purpose as well as the fact that we use a different tag for criticism than the normal one: Problems with the RWDE tag.

RWDE is the tag used primarily for criticism and sounds like a neat idea (in fact, our #crtq tag was made for this purpose), there are SO many problems with the RWDE tag that it has become a bigger problem with the show than the actual flaws of the show. And I’ll take you throw a quick rundown of them.

1. Criticism or Hate

A huge problem with the RWDE tag is that the tag can’t decide whether or not it’s a tag for criticisms about the show or it’s a tag for hate about the show. Constantly when I went into the RWDE tag to debate, I would keep getting the defense of “It’s not criticism, it’s hate” and vice versa.

Here’s the thing though: Criticism and hate are NOT mutaully exclusive. You CANNOT be critical and hateful at the same time. When you are being critical, you are trying to be as objective and neutral as possible to give a balanced critique. When you are being hateful, you bitch about everything you can find and even make up stuff to bitch about. These two things DO NOT go together. This gets especially bad considering the fact that quite a bit of the hate is trying to masquerade as criticism under the excuse of being “harsh” when in all actuality the intent is not to improve the show or medium but to attack the writers, the fans or the show itself. And this is a problem because actual criticism of the show gets buried underneath a pile of bitching and other assorted nasty things.

To know which is which, try the following test: If the intent behind the post is to improve the show or improve the medium and the tone and wording support this (like admitting to stuff they did right or trying to be neutral), it’s criticism. If the intent behind he post is to attack and harm and the wording and tone support  this (like blowing things out of proportion, directly insulting the creator or fans or making up flaws through misinformation), then it’s hate.

2, Arrogance

The RWDE tag suffers from a very severe case of arrogance and pride, saying constantly that they can do better and that their way is better. To this date (04/30/2017) only 1 person in the RWDE tag has attempted to make an improved version of the show and it is only a fanfiction and it is an abject failure. That’s only 1 person: The rest of the RWDE tag think they can claim to do better without proving it.

But it’s not as though they would do any better: Much of what the RWDE tag complains about is personal opinion and not objective improvements on the show. They demand that there be an LGBT character introduced as soon as possible despite the fact that means said LGBT character would be shoehorned in or messily written as well as fuck up the balance of character screentime. They demand that characters like Jaune essentially be removed from the story without knowing that Jaune and others serve an important role in the story as well as in the narrative. They demand that ships get together without seeing that it’s not the right time or that two characters might not work well together or that two characters haven’t had enough onscreen romantic chemistry. All in all, they’d fuck it up to an immense degree.

And then there’s the sheer audacity when the people in the RWDE tag say shit like “they’re dishonoring Monty’s memory” or “Their pissing on his grave” as though they knew Monty personally enough to know what the man would want and not his close friends and family (Neath Oum). This gives off the feeling that they think they know him better despite having never met him personally, let alone as long as the likes of Miles and Kerry. Or that they’re using Monty as a way of getting what they want but I decide to believe in the less damning one.

As a side point: Many people in the RWDE think and act like they are above criticism. They act as though because they criticize, they can’t BE criticized themselves. Not only is this damaging as hell to actual criticism but it’s also arrogant as hell to think you get to do something but others can’t. One RWDE poster even outright said they were a better person than Miles Luna because he “Queerbaits” (I’ll get to that topic next) and he can’t take criticism. Then they immediately block the person that criticized them, attacks the writers personally and also queerbaits in their work. All in all, it makes them and by extension criticism of the show look terrible.

3. Representation

Another major problem with the RWDE tag is that the tag demands representation from RT from everything, saying that since they don’t have network restrictions and they said there is an LGBT character in RWBY so they demand them as soon as possible. I’m going to point out the not so obvious flaw here: Quite a few of these people aren’t LGBT people nor are they a racial minority. Ergo, they shouldn’t have a stake in this discussion. This is especially bad for the LGBT argument which is the most used argument, is the most vitriolic and quite a few LGBT people now hate the argument. My comrades Tangerine, Regalia, and Cobalt are LGBT (bisexual by the way) and they are more exhausted and frustrated by RWDE in this regard than I am, a straight person. It’s quite telling when the group you claim to be speaking up for actively hates you for it, especially when these people say otherwise and get attacked for it.

Another problem RWDE has is the fact that they throw around terms like “sexist” “racist” “ableist” all the damn time, applying them to situations that only work because either the author has taken it out of context (like saying that calling the White Fang terrorists is racist despite the fact that they are using fear and violence to achieve their goals), interrupt the aspect in a completely different and illogical way (Like saying Taiyang is ableist for not training Yang until after putting on the arm when it was obvious Yang was rejecting help and sticking herself in a rut) or just plain lies (Saying it’s sexist that Jaune gets more screentime than Ruby…despite the fact that 75% of his screentime and lines are dedicated to making Ruby look good.) It makes it look like RWDE is only using these terms to justify their hate and make it look like they’re fighting for social justice when that is the furthest thing they are doing.

And finally, they act as though the creators of the show are obligated to show representation when that is not the case. RWBY is not a progressive show meant to promote social problems and such and it was never said to be, meaning that is not what the creators want to do. However, the RWDE tag acts like they must make a socially progressive show or else they are in the wrong for doing so, essentially trying to rob creative control from the creators. They are essentially the same as corporate executives whop change shows to appeal to the lowest common demonator except those guys at least have some idea of what they are doing.

And on a side note: The accusations of “queerbaiting” imply that if any characters of the same gender show anything that remotely resembles attraction to another male or female, they must end up together but the heterosexuals aren’t allowed to do this.  Just as well, the heterosexual equvilant of Queerbaiting happens as well: even more so. As such queerbaiting would just be the logical balance of normal ship tease and acting like it shouldn’t exist is like demanding special treatement AKA the exact opposite of equality.

4.Double Standards and Sexism

I’ve already discussed two other different kids of double standards in RWDE such as the thoughts that they are above criticism and that they can speak for groups that they are not a part of above the people that are actually in those groups. But there is so much more than that. RWDE as a tag have a severe bias against the male characters in the show.

Criticism about Male characters in RWBY is wide spread in the RWDE tag but inversely criticism about female characters is rather rare and this gets highly hypocritical. For example: Jaune is criticized for taking up too much screentime in Volume 4 when he didn’t have all that much screentime to himself. However, Blake had an entire episode to herself and Weiss appeared in the most episodes of any character and yet no one says a word. Jaune is called out for being a Dogged Nice Guy to Weiss but Pyrrha, who does the same thing to Jaune, is never called out. Stepping outside of Jaune, Taiyang is accused of being a horrible parent while RWDE will make excuses for Raven, the actual bad parent of Yang who she constantly abandons for selfish reasons and has practically said “I don’t love you” to her daughter. Likewise, Taiyang’s joke in Episode 4 is called out for being insensitive but Yang directly says something more sensitive, without a hint of humor and has a greater impact on Taiyang and nothing is ever said. And Sun is called being nosy and abusive for constantly getting in Blake’s business and trying to help her while Kali does the exact same stuff and gets away with it. This shows a heavy bias against male characters in the show and is constantly trying to be passed off as criticism.

And that’s not it. This is also a problem with race. Weiss is treated as a constantly racist girl for no reason other than elitest when she actually has an understandable  reason to think that way (the only Fanaus she ever met was WHite Fang members who made her life a living hell.) Likewise, Adam is treated as an innocent, sad broken man who fights for equality when he is really a genocidal, abusive, racist and all around terrible person/ In fact, the entire White Fang is treated like they can do no wrong even as they act so extreme to kill innocents and break up actually peaceful protests that other Fanaus (including a former leader of the White Fang) call them out on this. Just terrible.

5. Manipulation of facts

RWDE has a strong tendency to excuse and justify it’s actions as being right by either leaving important information out, choosing very miniute details to complain about or manipulating the facts. Like in the case of Jaune having too much screentime, they say that Jaune has taken the protagonist role away from Ruby because has had the most lines in the Volume. But here’s the deal: Most of Jaune’s lines in Volume 4 was interacting with Ruby and giving Ruby characterization and making Ruby look better. This is the same as Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: yeah he had more screentime than the actual protagonist Simon but Kamina’s screen time was used to build Simon up, inspire character development, point out his flaws and make him look good.screen time and lines alone don’t count: the context and content do. But this doesn’t stop RWDE from proclaiming he’s the main character while denying Ruby any acknowledgement of what she did right.

They also act as though very small details that would be overlooked in most other shows are huge problems in RWBY. They say that the proper usage of Raipers are important when there is numerous examples of raipers being used incorrectly in other animes, including ones the profess to enjoy. Then you have the times where they ask for very specific details about stuff when other anime built around Ruby never give those details. One example is that one RWDE poster demanded to know how Yanhg’s Semblence charges up and gives an example from JoJo’s Bizzare Adventure…an anime where time is stopped because. Very hypocritical.

And finally they tend to manipulate the facts like saying that RNJR could have taken a train despite the fact it was stated in the show that inter-kingdom travel wasn’t possible and that Grimm attack trains as well then proceeded to ignore that. They say that Yang magically recovered when it took six months for her to start and weeks to fully recover. And so on and so on, making it clear they’re making shit up to complain about, thus lowering the chance that ANY criticism will be taken seriously.

And that’s all I have to say for now. My comrades will surely have something to say as well so if you like this post, stay tuned for the others. and if you yourself want to criticize RWBY, please use the #crtq tag so that we can see it ourselves. Have a great day everyone!

-Quartz