White Fire !!!

White Fire !!!

I got a binder!!!

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.

tired: mermaids are all women

wired: much like elves, merfolk are mistaken by sailors for being all women because they have long hair and are very pretty

player!killer and anomaly!dust

since these ideas have been invading my brain lately, i feel like i need to ramble about the toxic (doomed) kist potential they have.

imagine the game world of dusttale trying to correct itself ever since the anomaly/virus that is killer entered it. so things in the world start to glitch and don't make sense. a character repeats their lines over and over without stopping. shortcuts stop working properly. character stats inexplicably get messed up. goners start appearing to warn dust and killer about the end of the world. it's nearing its doomed timeline trajectory, and yet dust will not give up trying to salvage his universe. in his mind, there's one surefire way to get everything back to normal: exterminate the virus that is killer.

dust and killer (and the goners and the almagamates) are not affected by the glitches because they are anomalies, glitches detached from the world already. to killer, this means enlightenment and freedom. he doesn't understand dust's attachment to the underground, his dogmatic beliefs about justice and the greater good for the monsters. doesn't dust want to ascend to be something "real", rather than the npcs that the rest of the monsters are? doesn't he want to escape from the control of the player? why would he want to obey to the whims of a dying, boring, constricting world anyway? if dust can't see it, then killer will make him see.

the thing is, dust is a difficult monster to persuade. sure, killer can kill him again and again (chances are 50/50 on who will win anyway). but dust always bounces back, more vindicated in his retaliation and belief that killer needs to be gone. the thing is, when you want to break someone down, you need to be the thing they fear the most. killer is already that, isn't he? he's a future of a sans, of dust's own past. this is what dust could have become. killer is what dust has become - a sans doing the work of the no-mercy player.

"aren't you bored of doing the same thing over and over again? aren't you crazy from repeating all these useless cycles only to reach the same conclusion again and again?... oh wait, you already are!"

and dust - what can he say to all that? is it true? is it not? who cares - the only satisfaction he can have is wiping that smirk off that face. killer knows intimately beings like dust - not only because they were the same person at some point, but also because dust is a control freak with a savior complex as well as survivor's guilt. deep down inside, dust cannot fathom losing. he has poured too much, sacrificed too much, to get this far. and he won't stop - not until he reaches his happy ending, which will never come. so he'll forever be stuck down here, repeating his worst nightmares again and again in a hell of his own making.

the only variable in dust's life is killer. gradually, dust treats killing other monsters as a job - an important yet thankless job that someone has to do. the only kill in which he feels something is of his brother... and killer. with killer, dust is filled with something - maybe it's joy, maybe it's hate, it's hard to tell when apathy is his usual state.

and the thing is, the opposite of love isn't hate. it's the lack of love - it's apathy. he feels something for killer - an attachment, an obsession, a possessiveness. "only i get to kill him", "he's my kill", that's what dust thinks. he rationalizes that thinking of course - killer reminds of him too much of himself, the person he hates the most. but there's that fear every time he kills killer - fear that killer will never come back, leaving dust with his empty broken world and voices in his head. and he fears killer will know it, somehow.

for killer, it's always a game to see who's the winner and who's the loser. it's a struggle for control, with the controller and the controlled. and with the player gone, dust should belong to him now. an eternal playmate, after everyone else has disappeared from his life. and like, it's totally therapeutic to beat up and mess with the guy who reminds you of yourself, right? totally not a self-esteem issue waiting to be explored or anything at all. it's funny how much they match. "look, we both wear red!" exclaims killer as he points to his own red soul and dust's red iris. determination pulls them together, and determination will break one of them in the end, and it's not going to be him. he'll persevere once this world rots away, while dust will be trapped by his own volition.

maybe, just maybe, he'll whisk dust away once the end comes. and they'll find another playground to re-enact their play again. killer will take and take and take, until all they are is dust.

Oh, I will ruin you It's a habit - I can't help it

I will only break your pretty things I will only wring you dry of everything And if you're fine with that If you're fine with that