My Otp Was Papyrus/mettaton But I Thought Soriel Was Cute - Tumblr Posts

I was in the fandom the cookie needle incident occurred in! It was Undertale. TLDR we still don’t know why the artist got a needle cookie because the culprit was never caught. The reason it got tied into antis and shipping stuff was because someone on Tumblr took the opportunity to go “it wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t drawn my rival ship minor/adult!”

r/Hobbydrama has a write-up, but unfortunately the OP spends most of it going “lol Undertale fans and shippers” and right when shipping would actually be relevant it gets completely ignored. The actual incident is shoehorned in with unfounded assumptions, and OP finishes with “maybe don’t ship adults with minors”. So I’m gonna attempt my own write up from what I remember. I urge your followers to correct me if I get things wrong!

Once again: The culprit was never caught so we have no idea why they did what they did. Keep this in mind.

A popular Taiwanese fanartist called Avimedes was at a convention in 2017. She got some gifts there, among them a cookie. When she took a bite her tongue was pierced by a needle. I think it was bad enough she had to go to the hospital? Either way she posted a picture of the bloodied cookie and needlea on her plurk, stating she had no idea who did it. A screenshot of it was posted and spread on Tumblr. The first reblogs were of people reacting with horror.

Then someone reblogged with (paraphrased) “Sure it was wrong, but it probably wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t drawn Frisk/Sans.”

Context: Frisk is the protagonist of the game, implied to be a child but very open for headcanons and self-inserts. Sans is THE most popular character in Undertale and thus the most shipped one. He interacts a lot with Frisk, so while it was never the fandom OTP for him it was pretty popular. People got around the age thing by simply drawing Frisk as a teenager/adult. Avimedes was one of them.

Not that the reblogger, who just so happened to ship Sans in the fandom OTP Soriel, cared. They might’ve been a BNF? Either way now legions of Soriel shippers were reblogging that version of the post, either as is or with additions about how minor/adult is wrong, Frisk is a child, [insert typical ship and anti arguments here], until people were outright defending the culprit.

The incident got posted only a day later to r/Undertale, but by them rumors were already flying about ships being the cause. Reddit OP made it clear the culprit hadn’t been caught and that these were just rumors, but they still took the time to denounce the culprit and people defending them for those reasons.

One game of telephone later and we have today’s “artist got feed needle cookie by an anti!”

Because of this there’s an now forgotten incident that happened few months to a year later. People started talking about how the culprit had been caught, and it turned out they had been one of Avimedes’ fans! I can’t remember if a reason was ever stated? Either way this got spread for a while until people got suspicious and looked up the source.

The source was a Soriel shipper going “Trust me guys! Also this totally had nothing to do with ships!” See, while it was (still is) the fandom OTP… turns out people will side-eye its shippers if it seems like they’re fine with people being seriously injured if they’re rival shippers. Once it was clear it was damage control people stopped spreading those claims.

So while anon is right in that we can’t say it was because of a ship because we don’t know, people were damn quick to defend the culprit because of their shipping bias so it IS still tied into anti-stuff and fandom purity. Kinda side-eyeing anon for trying to down-play it, because it certainly had an effect on Undertale fandom and ships.

After some research I’m also gonna side-eye anon for bringing up the claims about animal abuse and scams. The only sources I can are from 2021, from a few people going “source: trust me guys”, several years after the fact.

Even if they’re true, and even if that’s why the culprit did it?

People still thought it was fine an artist got needles in her cookies because she created content for their rival ship.

Thank you OTNF for letting me rant late at night, and apologies because this'll probably start another round of discourse.

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