#literally without question the number 1 WORST fanbase i have EVER encountered

[here-there-were-dragons]

myeah, posting anything other than "wow thing is amazing i love everything about it and want to kiss staff on the mouth with tongue for allowing me to exist in their presence <33333 :)" or "i got an egg" on the forums is just an absolute warzone of passive-aggressive gaslighting hostility, the wildest bad-faith interpretations you can find anywhere, vapidly mindless content, and as much deliberate misunderstanding as you can physically cram into a thing, and even when it's not all that it's still constantly dripping with a plausibly-deniable shaming tone if that you're immoral and ungrateful for having any questions ever or saying literally anything other than that you love everything staff ever do so much you want to personally start a religion, and every single time i look back on there and see the kind of responses that every single post even slightly more complicated than the monthly fae necks gets on that weird culty false-polite hellscape i'm glad i stopped going on there. because hoo boy, if you thought fr tumblr was a toxic mess that thinks everyone wants to piss on the poor it is SO INFINITELY MUCH WORSE on the site. people will do literally any gymnastics to justify why any and every decision the staff ever makes on anything is actually the best possible one and we shouldn't question it and in fact are ungrateful and entitled and arrogant and should feel ashamed for questioning it. literally the single worst den of toxic positivity i've seen anywhere outside of like psych wards and religious organizations.

like i swear, fr onsite is the place where every single person the "how dare you say we piss on the poor" meme is about all personally congregate to exacerbate eachother and like. multiply or something. it's where they breed

and this is coming from me, the person with the tendency to rant about something only barely adjacent to the subject in every reblog and then get distracted with personal anecdotes until i've said the same thing 5 times over and forgot what i was originally talking about

they'll yell at you to give constructive criticism rather than "bashing" but no matter how constructive your criticism and how much apologizing for existing and reaffirming your absolute love and worship for our dear leaders and how they're absolutely superior to you in every way and know best always you cram into your post they'll just give you shit for it anyway. i genuinely don't feel like people on fr proper are actually speaking the same language as wider english anymore. whatever language they're speaking, "constructive criticism" seems to mean "kissing staff's ass". unless you can somehow word your rage in the exact right tone and language, in which case it's unacceptable NOT to scream at them.

like god damn, i distrust the staff as much as the next person who's actually been paying any attention these last 10 years but looking at the community onsite if it weren't for the fact that they deliberately fostered this culture (by slowly pushing out anyone that isn't similarly rabid and unwilling to question), i would say i can almost fucking see how the staff ended up like that.

and god forbid you so much as imply the 'community' could have any issues (other than "those whiny ungrateful complainers that just want to hate everything") in it's culture

Expressing your opinion with demonstrative examples and analysis isn't arrogant just because you used an assertive tone. People really don't know how to handle criticism that isn't couched in half-a-dozen layers of hedging and apology.

yeah, I just frankly don't feel the need to take an "everyone is valid" position to people that are either 1) misunderstanding/skimming over my points and/or 2) making counterpoints I entirely disagree with ("fat characters are less appealing/dynamic"/"animals in the real world generally all look the same, so giving these designs different head or body shapes would be unrealistic and cartoonish"/"all characters look the same when you break them down like this"/etc.) I reserve the right to disagree or correct points like these and think I'm being relatively polite and clear about why.