Transcript: I Think The Fandom Was Genuinely Better Before 2020. Or At Least 2021. Maybe I See Nostalgia

Transcript: i think the fandom was genuinely better before 2020. or at least 2021. maybe i see nostalgia through rose-tinted glasses, but 2015-2019 was the best era of this fandom. people say cringe and free but there’s a difference between unknowing cringe and acknowledged cringe, and the former is just more genuine. more fun, more free. things were better, in my eyes. now there’s useless discourse (there was, of course, discourse then, but now people have wrapped morals into it. you’re not a bad person who wants to abuse people if your favorite character is canon nightmare sans, god), even worse fanon that people have dubbed as canon (dream is not an uwu baby, yes, but going in the entirely different direction and making him a mean smoker is just as fanon and inaccurate, you’re no better, so get off that pedestal), and just the bullying that comes with liking older interpretations.

blueberry is fine. uwu star sanses are fine. slendermansion bad sanses are fine. teddy bear horror is fine. any interpretation is fine. but there’s art left and right of people drawing characters punting those other interpretations whilst the creators themselves continue to make their own interpretations that are the same, if not worse, levels of inaccuracy and mischaracterization. it’s hypocrisy and i don’t doubt that in four or five years this era of the fandom will be mocked and a new, just as wrong interpretation will emerge. i don’t mind this, you can characterize anyone however you want. that’s what makes this fandom great. it’s just the fact that this is combined with the bullying of other interpretations that makes it hypocritical and me upset. not even to touch upon the new fanon of “sans would show no emotion of papyrus died”. in an attempt to move away from one side of the spectrum they went too far to the other, rather than settle upon the perfect balance.

in general i also grieve what will never come back. the style of older popular artists drawing sans, that line weight jakei and superyounma used that pulled the style together, the obsession when dream and nightmare became truly popular, the formation of the star sanses, the overuse of the word ‘senpai~’ when it came to crossmare, the comic dub movies on youtube, or how everyone obsessed over sans and made him overly edgy and emotional. the animation memes, the genuine sans fangirls, not the satire ones. ichika. the othertale animations. early underverse and the silly comics jakei made for it. the terrible wattpad fanfiction. amino. actually, we can leave out amino. i don’t miss amino.

it wasn’t all perfect. if i’m honest, it was a dumpster fire in a lot of ways. but it was my dumpster fire, and what once burned became nice and toasty. the fandom now is great, don’t get me wrong. i love how it’s turned out, i love how characters are no longer white anime boys and how people have begun to acknowledge how certain things are bad, rather than ignoring it. how underrated characters have been getting more attention.

but if i had to pick between the fandom now and the fandom then, i’d pick then in a heartbeat.