#just would be nice if more people made him less one dimensional and hateable and more nuanced and tragic

[blackgoldaster]

I don't like pure evil Gasters

I don’t like pure evil Gasters.

Or rather, I don’t like Gasters who get treated like they’re (pure) evil.

If Gaster is anything like any other character in both Undertale and Deltarune, he won’t be pure evil. His ‘evil’ will most likely come from pain, if all the pain mentions have anything to say about it.

Basically, If Spamton and Jevil can be forgiven (and become fan favorites) because their evil was from a source of pain…

Then why would Gaster be any different.

Why should we assume and treat Gaster like he’s pure evil, and thus, claim he deserves the pain…

When we treat nobody else like that.

Sure, there is the spade king, but the worst thing that happened to him was that he was thrown in a cell.

A far cry from being thrown into (metaphorical) hell, as so many people headcanon happened to Gaster.

Nobody in Undertale or Deltarune deserves their pain, it’s one of the core traits of these games. So why should Gaster be the sole exception.

If the vilification of Chara can result in an entire defence squad protesting, then why does nobody care that Gaster gets treated like a scapegoat as well?

I think it’s because we see so little of Gaster, plus his portrayal as devilish and creepy, makes people just. Not sympathise with him.

And I find that so unrelatable, as someone who felt really bad for Gaster ever since I discovered Goner Kid.

Which heightened the more fanfiction I read.

Other people hate Gaster because of their personal headcanons, which would be fine, except for the fact that AUs like Handplates and Underverse became so popular, that Hateable Gasters became so common, that it’s both very difficult to avoid…

And that there’s barely any variation.

The only Gaster headcanons that are popular are Dadster, which is usually good, sometimes neutral, rarely evil, and Badster, which always gets treated like evil no matter how nuanced he gets made (and people think the only way he can redeem himself is to be a dadster)...

And ships, more specifically Grillster (which is pure fanon), Kingdings (which makes more sense than Grillster at least) and Sanster, which gets called incest by dadster fans who can’t stand people have different headcanons than themselves.

And guess what? That's not much. If you just so happen to have completely different Gaster headcanons than any of these, including ones that are actually based on canon rather than preference…

Well, then you’re screwed in the content department, so that your only option is to look for niche content, blocking an endless stream of popular content just to get to it…

Or to write your own stories (assuming you can).

Now, I clearly don’t speak for most people here. In fact, I'm speaking about my own experiences here.

Remember the theory that Sans and Papyrus are pieces of Gaster? Or the theory that Papyrus is Gaster? Or even that Sans is Gaster?

Those theories never got popular.

People say it's because they think it's unlikely, but i suspect it's really because not many people just. Liked the idea that Sans and Papyrus could be one person we know nothing about that might be potentially evil.

In a similar fashion, I don’t think dadster and badster got popular because they are ‘likely to be true’ (which I heavily disagree with), but because most fans prefer some mundane dad whose entire character is determined with how he treats Sans, and to a lesser extend, Papyrus, over the Yume Nikki inspired eldritch man that Gaster most likely is in canon.

Which I personally think is really boring!

And if canon has anything to say about it, if Gaster turns out to be the father, he will be anything but mundane and he’ll actually have a characterization that isn’t centered around the fan favourite.