#ts fandom critical

[darksides-dutchess]

Forever gonna be a hater in this fandom because everyone loves to make their headcanons and theories and concepts for the sides/their fav ship.

But the moment it's a little out of canon idea for favs, then it's just pure anarchy and scandal.

I don't have to explain to anyone for any reason why I headcanon a certain character or a specific ship in some ideas, I just do.

To act like the sky is gonna start crashing down upon us just cause an idea I have isn't close to canon when some of your own ideas are even remotely touching the line of canon is ridiculous.

[just-call-me-the-intrusive-thot]

This is totally not in reference to anything anyone has posted, but man imagine thinking you know someone's characters better than the person themself. Imagine if you were just vibing with your literal OCs who you made, and some random person comes up to you and goes "UMMMM ACTUALLY your OCs would NEVER act like that because I think they'd act like THIS!" and then they get mad at YOU for not going "oh you're so right, how could I forget I put you in charge of MY OCs?".

Just a little observation, y'know?

[baby-girl-aaron-dessner]

[prodigal-explorer]

friendly reminder to the sanders sides fandom that patton knows just as much about sex and curse words and other impure things as the other sides.

like he definitely knows where fucking babies come from. there’s no way he couldn’t because he is connected to thomas and thomas knows where babies come from.

patton was in thomas’ mind when thomas was in health class or with his parents and learning about that stuff.

patton is not some innocent little baby who magically knows nothing about every impure thing he’s literally just pretending because a huge part of what he does for thomas is censor the “bad” stuff. he censors thomas’ thoughts because he wants thomas to have a “pure” state of mind. so of course he acts innocent so that the other sides stop talking about it and so viewers who maybe don’t know these things don’t get to learn. (and so he can seem more pure and innocent to the viewers and to thomas-)

i’m just so sick of seeing like incorrect quotes where the only punchline is “patton is just an innocent baby who doesn’t understand sex 🥺” like PACK IT UPPPP he’s a fucking GROWN ASS ADULT.

[galedekarios]

"i don't understand why people say gale wouldn't want children."

maybe because some people look at what gale actually says and does instead of projecting their own motivations and assumptions on him that don't reflect his character in this particular regard 🤡

[ts-crit]

All the sanders sides fans who were around at like the HEIGHT of the fandom I’m talking like sweating while waiting for part 2 of Accepting Anxiety to drop I need you help me out

I need every single fandom controversy that you can think of documented here on this post or sent to me in my asks or dms I’m trying to reminisce the old sanders sides drama to my friends 💀

I know for a fact I don’t have all of it but I distinctly remember:

- The unsympathetic!Patton drama

- That one long post with all bunch of the popular fanders about how “if you think we’re a perfect fandom then you are very misguided”

- I feel like there was SOME kinning drama that was swept under the rug

But yeah please add or shoot me an ask or something just like any like wild posts/blogs/whatever you remember

[warcats-cat]

Man remember when Sanders Sides was silly and fun and not all encompassing overly dramatic and took four *years* to make one episode? And we had faith that the creator wasn't just a money grabbing asshole stealing from his patrons his artists and his fans at large?

Good times.

[very-uncorrect]

ADS AREN'T CONTENT THEY'RE ADS

[doughbrainer]

Thinking About Making Sanders Sides Pride Flag Designs For My Redbubble, But I Can't Decide If I Should Just Make Designs For The Main Six Or If I Should Give More Options By Designing Other Characters As Well (Sleep, Emile Picani, Critic, The FORBIDDEN UNSEEN ORANGE CHARACTER Yknow All Those Good Fellas)

If You Vote, PLEASE Reblog, I Want To Get As Many People's Opinion On This As I Can, As I Want To Know If People Would Want To Buy Them Or Not I Have Over 80+ Flags I Want To Do For These, Including Alts And Such So Yeah

[draconicsplendor]

I hate that the Sanders Sides fandom is such a minefield. It seems so sweet and caring from the outside, but one look into the "ts critical" tag is all you need to see the bullshit going on behind the scenes.

Like... this fandom seems so innocent because it's so aggressively puritan. That worked for me when I was a middle schooler, but not anymore. And when paired with literally anything else from the "ts critical" tag... I'm honestly scared to rejoin the fandom.

I wish I could give my inner child a better reunion than this.

[skullmoss]

seeing a post complaining about where rook "belongs" with the companions bc bioware isn't including them in companion-focused promo material makes me actually achingly angry about the way ppl engage with rpgs in the modern age. where they need to be spoonfed by mommy game devs in order to be happy.

"i hate the inquisitor because they're boring :("

"this is why i like dark urge origin over tav in bg3 bc it gives me a reason to care :("

like i'm sorry. the part about a ROLEPLAYING game like dragon age, like baldur's gate, like elder scrolls, is to fucking.....bring your own brain to the table and fill in the gaps for that character. if you don't want to play a game where you have to actively engage in creating your character from scratch, giving them your own little backstory to influence the why and how they say or react to things, then play a game with a semi-custom protag (mass effect, dragon age 2) or, better yet, a game with no customization and you just roleplay as A Set Guy (witcher, disco elysium).

for example, i personally hate dragon age 2 because i don't like how bioware went from a relatively malleable protag with multiple origin backgrounds (the warden) to just...attempting to make dragon age into mass effect by giving us a singular protag you can change the class, gender, appearance, and choose the personality of but you're stuck with the same background and family no matter what. inquisition has its MAJOR flaws, but the inquisitor is a malleable protag that's more in line with what origins established.

"why isn't rook really featured in promo materials?"

because the second bioware creates their own 'default' rook to advertise with, is the second fandom becomes less fun and fans suddenly latch on to that iteration of the character and say there's a 'canon' way to play the game when there isn't.

"where does rook fit into all this??"

idk mate the game isn't out yet and sometimes a protag is just Some Person who wound up at the wrong place at the wrong time. fucking have fun with it.

people love astarion from baldur's gate 3 even though he is ACTUALLY some rando with 0 connection to the main overarching story.

the gaps in characters like the warden, like the inquisitor, like tav in baldur's gate, are there for you to fill in. you can criticize the way it's done and handled in the game itself. hate the way certain things are shoehorned in without allowing flexibility. but to complain about the gaps existing period?? you're missing the point of a 'fully' customizable protag. are you that afraid of indulging in an OC?

the way some people react to and talk about games that are made a VERY SPECIFIC WAY to appeal to a certain demographic of gamers (people who can and will have fun with having freedom and not being entirely railroaded) is like....going into a peanut-free bakery demanding a peanut butter cookie.

[casey-complains]

One thing I've seen fanders completely refuse to talk badly about is Thomas' use of AAVE when playing Logan or Sleep :/ its been bugging me for years

im a very white man so i dont want to speak out of place, but ive seen conversations about thomas' aave been shut down COUNTLESS times over the years. a fander, usually a black fander, brings up thomas' misuse of aave to appear "hip and cool" or for his sassy character, and a white fander acts like theyve committed blasphemy

[amorremanet]

disclaimer: blah blah blah, this post is just one person’s opinion, blah blah blah, I’m basing said opinion on my own observations but there are no doubt pieces of the story that I’m missing and my opinions should not be treated as fact, something something, DO NOT harass the volunteers at AO3 support or anyone else over any of this, if you harass anyone over this then you are the asshole, period. not a debate, just a fact.

SO, LIKE. I honestly don’t have anything of actual significance to add to the current round of AO3 Discourse because all of my complicated feelings on it have already been said better by other people

(e.g., axing “all media types” tags was a bad idea; some fans may not like them but they are too broadly helpful to be done away with entirely; this is a complex issue, there is likely no way to make literally everyone happy; there should’ve been more transparency and AO3 upset people more by rolling the change out with little to no warning; lumping former “all media types” works into a specific fandom silo was all but guaranteed to piss people off; the Archive userbase being hair-trigger makes a lot of sense after some of AO3’s very high-profile fuck ups in the past few years; however, the three (3) volunteers handling the support tickets are not the people who made the decision and it’s garbage that they’re the ones who are left dealing with so much of the vitriol from upset fans; etc. etc. etc.)

My big question in all of this is: if the people on the tag-wrangling committee who made this decision actually thought that getting rid of the “All Media Types” tag was going to be a broadly popular decision with a lot of support from users, then why didn’t AO3 do more to announce this change to users before it started being implemented?

If we are supposed to believe the version of the story that has come out from AO3’s people, the one where they really did believe that it was in the best interests of the majority of AO3 users to get rid of “All Media Types” tags, then why doesn’t their behavior about the decision reflect that? Why didn’t they post more to let Archive users know that this was coming? Why didn’t they talk up what a great change this was going to be and how many people and fandoms would allegedly benefit from it?

Why is it that most users (readers and authors alike) seem to have found out about this from popular posts on reddit, tumblr, or twitter, all made by aggrieved fans whose fandoms have been negatively impacted by the decision? Because as far as I can tell, there was a single solitary post on the official AO3 tumblr about this, which went up AFTER the change had started rolling out and got its reblogs turned off because of all the backlash?

Not to treat “say that shit with your chest” as uniformly useful advice, but……… Come on, AO3. If you really stood behind the decision to get rid of “All Media Types” tags as much you’re claiming—if you really, truly believed that it was in the best interests of the Archive as a whole and that the majority of Archive users would support you in it—then why didn’t you say that shit with your chest?

Because to me, failing to announce the change ahead of time—and then only doing the bare minimum to let users know—looks like moves to try and hide what’s happening, which does not make me, personally, inclined to believe the “We really thought that this would be a popular decision with broad user support” story

I do not have any explanations for what could’ve happened instead of the official story. Moreover, I’m don’t actually want to speculate on that beyond saying “The way this was publicly handled makes me personally feel disinclined to believe the official story” because conspiratorial bullshit thinking like that doesn’t help anybody (it’s way more likely to cause unnecessary harm, especially by spreading ideas that may sound true enough but are probably not gonna be based in reality, when you get down to brass tacks about it)

But the way that this whole change was handled publicly makes me personally feel disinclined to believe the story as put forth by the official post from AO3, and as a longtime Archive user with millions of words of fic posted on the site, who donates to AO3 and the OTW when I can? I really don’t enjoy feeling like I have even more reason than before to distrust Archive staff :/

[prodigal-explorer]

y’all: the sanders sides fandom isn’t aro/aphobic! 🥺

also y’all:

-“you know, the sides are probably all aroace because they’re not really human so they don’t really understand attraction on a human level and are incapable of feeling it because they’re not human.”

-“guys i’m writing an asexual/aromantic side and he’s so sad and tragic and lonely and he just wants a lover so bad but it was just written in the stars that he’ll never have one and it’s so angsty!”

-“patton is asexual because he’s so pure he would never have sex!”

-“remus is aromantic because all he cares about is sex and he doesn’t want to deal with real feelings.”

-“obviously logan is aroace because he doesn’t have feelings!”

(just to clarify i do NOT agree with any of these quotations these are examples of things i’ve seen that i heavily heavily DISAGREE with and if you agree with any of them you and me are not going to get along whatsoever.)

[galedekarios]

going into the tags to see someone who prev hc'd gale as straight acting oppressed for dad gale hcs and equating having kids with "seeking normalcy", implying very much that not having children is abnormal in the same breath 🤡