Today is my birthday! I am officially 22 years old now. Part of me is surprised to have lived this long, considering everything I've gone through in my life, especially recently. Long story short, I've learned that a friend that I've known for a decade ran a circle-jerk surrounding me for half of that time: five whole years. It culminated into a group of people who had valid reasons to be upset with me holding grudges and aiming to "take me down," whether it be by getting me cicked off of projects like D-Sides, or being "exposed" for something that was a complete misunderstanding on both parties. This messed with my sense of trust massively, because I knew something was wrong for those five years but I didn't understand what. Ever since that group has dissolved, I've earned a lot of my friends back that unfortunately got roped into the group. We've all mostly made up.
Many times in these past five years, I have debating ending my life. This is partially why I'm so surprised in making it to the ripe age of 22; I didn't expect to. I felt for so long, people hated me and I deserved it. I was willing to live with that, but time and time again my existence was used to harass my friends. I have considered killing myself in order to get people to leave my friends alone. That's how desperate I was. This is no longer the case, thankfully. I'm in a better place.
This also means I'm in a better place to recognize some... really unfortunate behavior recently, specifically in the UNDERTALE community. I recognize I am not responsible for anyone's behaviors, even if they come from people I care(d) about. Despite this, I want to speak up about it. I want to bring a positive influence where I can.
If you've been in the UNDERTALE community for a while, you may have noticed a common issue. In my experience, starting roughly around 2018, there has been a vocal community that is dedicated to being faithful to the game's original characters and writing. This isn't a bad thing inherently. Starting in 2017, I've wanted to be more faithful to the original portrayal of the game. The way I went about it, however, was problematic. I was an elitist. I judged people for not writing characters how they originally appeared, and put down fan content constantly without even giving it a fair chance. I ended up hurting friends this way; I dismissed their content under the guise of criticism, often reflected as "I just don't really like AUs because they don't really do the characters right."
This may sound familiar regarding today's atmosphere regarding UNDERTALE fan content. Roughly a year ago, UNDERTALE YELLOW and Deltatraveler: Chapter 3 had released. UNDERTALE YELLOW was massively accepted, however within a few months, people became increasingly critical of it. Criticism isn't bad, and is healthy for people's skill growth. However, the type of criticism felt more akin to bullying.
For some important context: I am not a fan of UNDERTALE YELLOW. I could not finish the game because I found myself too aggrivated with the writing and characters. None of them clicked with me. I even call myself "a bit of a hater" with UNDERTALE YELLOW. However, depsite this, I think it's fantastic it was made. I am happy a fan project like that was able to be completed. It's an old project, dating back to 2016. Deltatraveler is also something I've learned to realize I don't exactly enjoy, either. I liked chapter 1, partially liked chapter 2, and I did not like chapter 3 at all. However, I still had a lot of fun with the chapters from a gameplay perspective. I have issues with its writing, but I still had fun. I wish for the project to succeed. I see value in both projects, even if the writing is not something I like. I love the artwork, the passion, and the belief its team members have for their project.
When I say that the criticism out there is more akin to bullying than genuine criticism, I don't say this because UNDERTALE YELLOW and Deltatraveler are games I like so much that I want to defend. I say this because it is hurting the people behind the teams. The following stories I feel are important to demonstrate how dire things have gotten. Everyone will remain as anonymous as possible.
Person A was someone I've been casual friends with for a while. I met them through their artwork and analytical posts on both Twitter and Tumblr. I admired their dedication to UNDERTALE, and their own works. They told me they admired my own work, at times saying that I have "out-sansed" them in writing Sans accurately in TS!Underswap. At some point, they even told me they made a character inspired off of my own fan character, Marlette, who is a ship child between Sans and Toriel. I felt honored, but in hindsight, I have to wonder if the character was made as a thinly veiled attempt to do the concept "better." The reason I say this is because they've made outrageous claims lately, going as far as to say the way Ceroba is written in UNDERTALE YELLOW is misogynistic. This is a huge claim to make against ANY fan project, especially one that has women working on the team. I liked the tweet, wondering how A came to this conclusion, but I felt vastly uncomfortable with the claim. To this day and to my knowledge, they never made a post explaining why. I don't know if they're still working on it or not. However, it does not sit well with me. To claim Ceroba is a misogynistic portrayal because she acted poorly out of grief would be similar to claiming Alphys is a misogynistic portrayal for the same reason.
Person B is another friend I've been casual friends with. They started distancing themselves a bit from the community after receiving immense amount of harassment from bad-faith actors. I defended them constantly, because it hurt to see my friend pained by people who wanted to slander them. However, when they started distancing themselves from the community, they began making inflammatory posts on their social media. They made controvercial takes that people would engage with, and they would constantly fight back, justifying themselves, and making arguments about games they even admitted they never played. Their distance from UNDERTALE dissolved once again, and this switched over to fan content. B started making inflamatory content about a specific AU of a friend of theirs, calling it a ham sandwich without the ham. This upset its creator, and I began publicly getting involved because it was bordering harassment. I saw person A being supportive of B in the replies, saying that B is right and people don't want to listen to the truth. I saw B repost a comic panel of Jesus with the same message, agreeing with A. I privately contacted A to explain that I was concerned about B's behavior, and when A said they were unaware, I gave some background. They claimed I was dumping Discord drama onto them, and the harsh wording send me into a small spiral of rejection sensitivity. I felt like I wasn't being heard, which was a reoccuring theme when I would privately confront B before cutting them off. A later apologized but told me they just don't think B was in the wrong, that they were just being critical. This upset me and I proceeded to drop it.
Both A and B now center their online presence around being critical of UNDERTALE fan works and media literacy. Both made posts calling Deltatraveler "hilarious" because of its portrayal of an AU version of Sans in chapter 3. A called the team behind Deltatraveler "cowards" for going back and revising the script in a later update. Today, I saw person A reply to someone's artwork of the genocide route in UNDERTALE, saying the artist's interpretation didn't sit well with them. While this was already at a point where users were bothering the artist, This further encouraged people to argue to the artist, saying "I thought we were over this misinterpretation." Every time the artist tried to defend themselves with "it's just my interpretation," they had multiple users arguing against them saying they were wrong. This led to the artist being harassed, in quote retweets and replies, for "being wrong."
Person A has a large following; roughly around 13 thousand followers on Twitter. Person B, less so, but I admittedly have not checked in a while. I mention this because if they were just random users that I knew, I would not be saying anything. However, these are people with platforms encouraging toxicity and hate. Person B made posts about how the UNDERTALE community has a "toxic positivity" problem, that people are overcorrecting for the issues in the past. This is partially true, but not in the way they see here. I have had a friend on mine who work on Deltatraveler tell me they are afraid to admit they worked on it, citing Person A and B's posts specifically. They have been harassed, belittled, and shamed for working on Deltatraveler in private spaces, and these posts by A and B are not helping. My friend has been spiraling, partially because of A and B.
This is a very important topic to me. I am not calling for A and B to be "deplatformed," "cancelled," or anything related. Do not interact with them. I tell these stories because I want people to recognize that the words they say affect people. I was wrong for staying silent about this issue for so long. I was wrong for enabling this kind of behavior myself. What I want is for people to be respectful; if they have criticisms against a fan work, state it politely and appropriately. Do not complain about an interpretation you may not like on an artist's post showing their artwork. Make your own post talking about it. It is valid to say "I don't like that this character was portrayed this way." It is healthy to state "I wouldn't write this character this way, I like it when they're written like this instead." It is not appropriate to complain about someone's interpretation on an art post. It is not appropriate to say "your interpretation doesn't sit right with me" when the artist is defending themselves from harassment on their art. It is not okay to say that a fan work has no meaning, because it is like a ham sandwich without the ham. It is not okay to claim that a character is misogynistic because you don't like the way they were written. These statements have very real consequences to them. They actively hurt the community and hinder the creativity in it.
There is a subcommunity that focuses heavily on being "tobycore," meaning being as close to the source material as possible. They put down fan works that deviate from this, shaming the people behind it and saying their skills are horrible. They use the same mindset found in A and B's posts to justify it. Multiple friends of mine tell me how much this makes them want to stop creating, to stop making, to avoid sharing their works. This breaks my heart. I admit that even I have wanted to avoid making UNDERTALE related content because of this, and I'm constantly praised for being "tobycore" and accurate to the source material. I'm tired of people being mistreated for this.
Let people create bad content. Let people express their creations, even if you don't like it. You cannot say you endorse cringe culture when you put down works you dislike. If you truly believe cringe culture is dead, then let people be cringe, even if it's bad. Proudly calling yourself an elitist only tells me you proudly put down others's work; my source is I literally used to do this when I was 16.
Something you can do to help combat this problem of elitism within the UNDERTALE community is to focus on projects and fan content you like. Uplift them, explain why you love these projects. If you have criticism, give it in a respectful manner that doesn't put down the team behind it. Focusing so much on the negative, in my experience, makes you miserable. I genuinely enjoy being critical, but my way of being critical isn't negative. I focus on things that can grow, change, and be better. I focus on the things that are going strongly for the content, and I push for it to be elaborated on.
For my birthday, please consider sharing some of your favorite fan works. Uplift some works for me. Talk about problems you've had in the UNDERTALE community. Thank you for reading.