so called “constructive cr criticism on youtube” really bothers me. these people don’t see how misogynistic and hateful they are. they claim being fair, but in reality they set impossible high standards for women, Marisha especially. it’s not criticism when week after week someone analyzes every single Keyleth’s action and points out every mistake she ever made, but never praises her. Yet everything Sam or Travis do is amazing, and their mistakes go unnoticed or easily forgiven.

Seriously, 9 times out of 10, “constructive criticism on youtube” is already an oxymoron. Claiming constructive criticism in general unfortunately tends to be the pseudo-intellectual’s “it’s just a joke”.

And like. I find the concept of criticizing how someone plays their D&D character to be a bit of a grey area from the get go. There’s stuff like pointing out that some aspects of Taryon’s character and backstory are uncomfortable (calmly and politely without making Matt cry, please) or that maybe Marisha shouldn’t be using Maori designs for Keyleth’s tattoos when the character has no Maori heritage. There’s calling out misogynistic tendencies and the genral creepiness of early game Scanlan. Hell, I even have some sympathy for maybe the first ten people pointing out that rogue/paladins do not get 5 attacks per round, but also calmly, politely, and maybe not with 20k people at once.

But when it comes to playing a character beyond rule violations or the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes or whatever, I dunno. Of course you will always like or dislike certain characters more than others. But the thing is, demanding someone change their character’s most basic traits not because of some meaningful development, but because YOU don’t like how they play, that’s… You know. Kind of a dick move, considering you’re getting free entertainment out of this.

And of course the women are hit especially, butas soon as you bring up misogyny, you are a crazy SJW or whatever and the argument is over. Even though the patterns are obvious to anyone paying attention. Marisha gets the worst of it, but there’s also this funny little trend where Vex gets hate as soon as she does something just because she wants to, and not for anyone else’s benefit.

Every single player gets their spells and abilities wrong. Marisha gets actually less slack from Matt than anyone else does. And usually, when something goes horribly wrong, it’s because Marisha, Taliesin, AND Matt ALL misinterpreted the spell. The wind walk disaster was also partially Matt’s fault. When Marisha got upset that her 8th level spell apparently didn’t affect Thordak at all, MATT was the one who made the wrong call. As he admitted. Like. Two minutes later at the most.

Meanwhile, Travis has lost and Sam started entire encounters from not remembering their abilities. But hey, who cares about that?