2025.01.03

Suffer! My Excellent Taste

Note: This blog is unfinished. I'm bored of it and don't want to write anymore!

A new UNDERTALE Y*tuber has appeared... and she's a girl!!! The only other I know of is Dorked and— as much as I love her work— she isn't even a Sans fan! It's easy enough to find women making Sans content for other women. Art, animations, fanfics, etc... but video essays? You can find some about UNDERTALE the UNDERTALE fandom, and Sans himself, but long form video content by, for, and about Sansgirls is a totally untapped niche. Until MiMimUta, anyways.

Maybe it's too generous to call her videos "essays." For all her rambling and odd word choices, I was shocked to learn they're scripted at all. I'm not knocking her, though. She's new at this. She might not be a native English speaker. And if she exclusively reads fanfiction, then prosody is the least of her problems. I considered reaching out with an offer to edit her scripts, but decided against it. I wouldn't want my reputation as an outspoken feminist to tarnish hers. Plus, her tierlist cemented that we not only have very different tastes, but different priorities, too.

Still! I love MiMimUta's work. It's refreshing to see myself reflected in both her videos and her comment section. If she ever reads this (maybe she'll search her name?) then I want her to know that I'm rooting for her. And if you like Sans or feel curious about the people who do, her videos offer a genuine insider perspective. Go give 'em a gander.

Update! Since writing this, MiMimUta's videos have gotten soooo much better. The editing is tighter, the scripts are funnier— everything's just more polished overall. The other day she posted a deep dive into DUSTTALE (my favourite!) and, I gotta say, it's her best video yet. She's on a path of constant improvement and I couldn't be more pleased.

The Tierlist

I could talk at length about each of these tropes. Maybe one day I will! For that, though, I'd rather work with a totally custom tierlist. (Watch me get sidetracked making that instead of finishing this bloggy...) Until then, I'll discuss one item from each tier— whichever one leaves the biggest impression on me. If any of this reads as repetitive or disjointed, it's because I've been writing this off and on for two months....

My Top Favourites!!!!

The UNDERTALE fandom remains polarised on romantic ships involving Frisk and Chara because they're kids. How old, exactly? You decide! In my opinion, younger is better. It's funnier. There's a reason why Gokiburi-chan is so babyish and it's firstly because I'm enamoured by the idea of a literal^* toddler destroying the universe. How many months old should my baby be before she starts fucking with space/time? Does your preschool admit children who haven't yet murdered the love of their life a hundred times over? So far her kill streak is two dozen. She has a hard time stabbing him when she's only three feet tall.

^* For specificity's sake, Goki is not a literal toddler. She's an eldritch horror learning to be human. From a distance, the two are easily confused. That said, she does wear a striped shirt now— the in-universe symbol of childhood. Hmmm...

I don't care how fans portray the humans. No matter their age, gender, ethnicity, moral alignment, or degree of narrative agency... I want them with Sans!!! He's the guy I came here to see. And I love to see him making friends and foes out of the canonical self-insert characters. Who would've guessed? A girl madly in love with canon Sans got invested in the ship featuring her only avenue of direct interaction! Though... I could write a whole essay on the dynamics between Sans and the protagonist versus Sans and the player... I'll save that fun for another day.

For now I'll just say that when it comes to fanworks, je dis laissez-faire. Further on in this post, I complain about some stuff I don't like and I wanna make one thing clear: my personal gripes are neither moralistic nor prescriptive. They're only personal. We're all women here. Before anything else, I believe in women's rights to have fun, be creative, and do things others might disagree with. That includes actions I myself find disagreeable... though that may be too strong a word. If anything, I'm bemused.

When I came of age, I discovered my vibe was unkillable. I'm immune to online discourse. I see Pinterest people posting death threats under stolen Sanfuri pics and the only thought in my head is, "OMG you guys. Just ignore it and the algorithm will stop showing it to you!" I never write it out, though. Who writes comments on Pinterest??? That's just as weird as protesting cute fanart. God help the people do both at once.

And I don't need to play coy. While Sans/Frisk is almost universally "cute," other age gap ships aren't. I still like them because I love disgusting fiction. Hell, I love disgusting nonfiction— though preferably with a happy ending or at least a condemnation of evil. That's why I filled my library with tragic memoirs and crime documentaries. My Ao3 bookmarks look the same, just sexualised. I'm cooking up my own depravity, too. Nobody is writing the exact flavour of Sansfic I'm looking to read, so I said fuck it. I'll twirl my own comically curly moustache. Be the cartoon comship villain you want to see.

As An Aside: Canon divergences i like

• Anything relating to Sans's battle!!!!

  Sans actually spares you. Sans dodges the second slash. Sans and the human stay trapped in his turn forever. Sans gets "creative" with his punishments and demoralisations. I love how the DUSTTALE fangame IDUTSHANE lets you battle Sans in a new location. CocoAndo's fanart of a fight so fierce, you break through the windows in the Final Corridor and battle above the rooftops of New Home... Oh man, I just live for that stuff.

• Frisk/fallen reader stays in the Underground.

  I prefer the storied settings of the game to "the surface," where people rarely do any worldbuilding. There are UT fics that make the surface interesting, but theyre not Sans x Reader slopfests where smooching skeletons is the only objective. Then, the setting feels like a generic "modern AU" with no impact at all.

• Everything's the same but Sans is an asshole.

  Yeah... I dunno. I like seeing him manipulate and torment people

Pretty Good Stuffs

Thanks to Miminuta, I learnt that "reverse harem" is not synonymous with "anti-harem." I thought they were the same thing! In this case, "reverse" means "one girl, lots of guys," as opposed to a traditional harem with one male and multiple women (yuck). "Anti harem" means "one girl, lots of guys, and they all HATE HER!!!!" Or at least it takes them a while to warm up to her. Usually stories like these have a female villain who manipulates the guys to hate the protagonist and love her instead. The appeal, I guess, is the angst of being treated unfairly and yearning for love that's denied to you. Then relief as everyone learns the truth, and gratification as they punish the villain and apologise to you.

I don't actually know. I don't read fics like this! I'm turned off from any story where my self-insert isn't the immediate center of attention. I don't want intrasexual competition in my daydream world. That's why Goki-chan outright replaces Frisk and usually kills other characters. In some circumstances I'll allow Sans to pursue Toriel, but only because their relationship dynamic is completely different to what I personally desire from Sans. If "I" am in the story, as an OC or just reader-chan, I can't stand to see him interact with anyone similar to me. Basically, if Frisk exists then I gotta be Frisk. Maybe I could self-insert as the villain in these tropey anti-harem fics, at least as long as Sans's attention is on her, but then I'd get rejected at the end! Woe!!!

Ironically, I actually enjoy stories of rejection and unrequited love. Gokiburi's narratives revolve around being so repulsive that there's no way Sans could want her... but he's stuck with her anyways. Usually because everybody else is DEAD. It's like there's a scale, some polarised thing. How much Sans dislikes Goki-chan correlates inversely with how many other characters are allowed to exist. Only after I've secured his attention can the world go on.

So, I don't like anti-harems the way people actually write them. I dont want a protagonist and a villain. I want a villain protagonist. I wanna be the reason all my love interests hate me! For over a year I've been sitting on a harem genre deconstruction fanfiction where a new-ish version of Gokiburi traps some AU Sanses in a pocket dimension she calls her "playhouse." None of them play along. They're extra pissed at being kidnapped because I write it in the most existentially horrifying way possible. Overall, it's a psychologically thrilling, darkly comedic smutfest. All Archive Warnings Apply.

As for the harem fics I actually read... I like them plotless and episodic. I always skip straight to the parts with Classic Sans because, as much as I like AUs, the original will always be my one true love.

I Can Rock w It

So, the -cest suffix has fallen out of favour in fandom spaces... Good riddance! But I definitely won't be replacing "selfcest" with "self love," and I'm only lukewarm on "mirror shipping." Luckily I don't talk about Sans/Sans pairings enough for this to matter to me. I'm only invested in a few of them.

Like... Kustard! People are always drawing those two (Normal Sans Undertale and Red Sans Underfell) together. Make them a trio with Underswap Sans (Sans but Papyrus flavoured) and they're even cuter! I like Dustard, too, since Dust's (Sans but a serial murderer) edge is even sharper than Red's. I'm sure the work of one of my favourite artists, GOKIN, convinced me to ship it. And after watching some animations by Peng2_comics... yeah, I'm here for life.

(Maybe don't click that link unless you like skeletons. Definitely don't click it in public.)

The fanime Underverse popularised the grouping of "good" and "evil" Sanses, too. Lots of people on my side of AO3 are especially enamoured by the bad guys. I see them shipped with each other, as a harem for the reader-insert, or both at once. I'd join the fun if I was more interested in the interdimensional-crossover multiverse-travel thing that's so beloved these days. It's not my thing, but I'm not knocking it, either. The world runs on pleasures as simple as recolouring Sans the Skeleton, changing his whole personality, and mashing all the new characters together.

Do these fan characters need to be called Sans? Probably not.

Isn't it weird how much they overshadow the original? Probably yes.

Is this "ruining" the UNDERTALE fandom? Well... take it or leave it— this is the UNDERTALE fandom. I'll enjoy what excites me and ignore or endure the rest.

Dreamtale, for example. Apparently Charasriel wasn't enough for us and we needed the exact same story again, this time with skeleton brothers... both of whom are Sans. (Papyrus: shortchanged again!) Is it more accurate to call them Sans-shaped creatures? Because the rounded, smiley skeleton base is where the similarities end. The story strips Sans of everything that makes him unique, nuanced, lovable, and cool, then shoves his conceptually-naked likeness into a generic narrative of good versus evil.

And neither new version of him is hot!!!! Dream (Sans but he's a Madoka-expy god of "positivity") never made it onto my radar. He's so, so, so not my type. Nightmare, though? (That's Sans but he's a tentacle god of "negativity.") He's the leader of the Bad Sanses. Dust is popular enough to be included in this beloved crossover cluster, but not popular enough to have many fanfics set in his actual universe.^* So I'm only ever searching for my psychotic sweetheart when this ugly, goopy guy plops his overly formal ass directly on my radar. Ugh. I get so turned off that it wraps around into kismesitude.

^* For reasons I've yet to analyse, male fans love DUSTTALE a lot. They create countless "takes" on that AU, none of which involve Underverse-type crossovers. I know why female fans love the crossovers (one word: shipping) and maybe dislike DUSTTALE proper (ten words: everyone is dead and Sans is trying to kill you) but... yeah. It's just interesting, the dichotomy.

Ultimately though, it makes me laugh. I refuse to feel angry about any of this— firstly because it's unhealthy to get mad on the internet, secondly because I value everyone's fun equally. There are Sansgirls who wouldn't like or understand what I'm up to with Gokiburi-chan. I wouldn't want them coming into my house to criticise me, so why would I do it to them? Golden rule, everybody.

Speaking of Goki-chan, the best Sans "mirror ship" would need to include her. Sans, Red, Swap, and Goki sounds like a solid OT4. I'm not sure what cliche I'll use to get them all into the same universe... but it will surely affect Goki's characterisation. Her personality can change a lot because of her circumstances, especially how well received she is by her beloved...s. Plural. In this story, she'll pursue all of them equally. Three times the rejection!

... Eh. Shrug!

I've no personal experience with any of these tropes besides ABO, which proliferated in my previous fandoms. Fujoshi love the ease with which it creates power dynamics between men who would otherwise be equals. They might also be furries. Me, I'm indifferent. I've never read a Sansfic set in this sort of world and I probably never will.

That said, some bits of ABO have made their way into my personal canon. I mean, doesn't it make sense for monsters to have some more animalistic traits? I always thought Sans was the kind of guy who could see in the dark, like a nocturnal predator. Why not give him a hunter's nose, too? It'll be even funnier when he's stinky but swears he can't smell himself.

I heard somewhere that even modern humans pick mates based on their body odor. Compatible partners are said to enjoy each other's stink. For most of my life, I've been completely anosmic. Smell remains a mystical topic for me. That's probably why I'm so enchanted by the thought of Sans hugging me from behind, taking a deep breath on the back of my neck, and muttering, "mmm, you smell good."

And if I'm going to suffer at the hands of my fertility cycle every month, then Sans will suffer, too. It doesn't need to make evolutionary or biological sense. I just want him hypersensitive and insatiable. Usually, the most intense moments can barely crack his poker face. This is a guy who barely reacts to being killed, okay? If I want to see him vulnerable, struggling to control himself, it makes sense to alter him on a hormonal level. Or... the monster equivalent of hormones. Call it overactive magic, maybe. Can you tell I haven't got this far— or really cared to? I just think, "okay. Sans is in heat. Time to ████ ██ ██████ ███ ██████!"

Bleggghhh

And lastly... ectobodies. This belongs in its own category for how disgusting i find it, like "double blegh" or "literal actual vomit." Now, I believe in free will. That includes the freedom to give Sans whatever equipment will give you the best experience. I developed my own preferences with a lot of "research." Three hundred fanfics and thirty gigabytes of fanart later, I've seen it all. And honestly? I love what the Sansgirlies are showing me. We're so creative and so deranged. Only a culture like ours could think up something as weird and stupid as an "ectobody."

Basically, people looked at Sans— Sans the freaking Skeleton— and thought, "but what if he had flesh?" His bones just weren't sexy enough! They wanted him gelatinous. Maybe also muscular? Perhaps this trope repulses me so much because of my horrific first exposure. I'd joined the failed Tumblr clone, Cohost, beelined to the Sans tags, and found them empty besides an artist drawing nothing but bodybuilder-buff AU Sanses fucking each other. I'm glad she was enjoying herself... but goddamn. Nothing turns me off faster than the male form.

On top of that, I was deeply confused. I've seen Sans depicted in countless ways. Short, tall, fat, slim, angular, round... Cartoonish or anthropomorphic, scary or cute— the sheer diversity amazes me! But I thought we all agreed on the fundamentals...? Like, literally, he is a skeleton. He is BONES. And whatever appearance of flesh he may have is just an illusion— or a gag. UNDERTALE features a couple fat jokes at Sans's (subverted) expense. I assume it's a play on the skeleton cliche "big boned." Also the irony of a guy who stuffs himself with food but never gains weight (... because he's got no body). It's just one more silly Sans mystery. When you hug him, will he be soft and cushy? Or will his shirt give way to his spine?

The ectobody girlies have no love for this ambiguity. No love for Sans as he naturally is. I.E., A FUCKING SKELETON. Which is still weird, i know! Probably (in the grand scheme of things) weirder than magic glittery jelly flesh. I get it. I do. At first, I also struggled to accept Sans. His ribs and shoulder blades and spindly little arms freaked me out. But enough stumbles into shirtless fanart got me used to that. Next I came to appreciate the complexity of his carpals. And now, after two years, one glimpse his wrist or hip bones drives me absolutely wild. I never thought I'd say it, but yeah. I find Sans the Skeleton physically enticing.

Not once did I think of changing him to suit human standards. Cartilogenophobia was my obstacle to overcome. After all, we're an interspecies couple. Being weirded out by your partner's body or customs is part of the appeal. Bridging those gaps to arrive at an unconditional love is the whole point.

So the ectobody trope doesn't just gross me out— it offends me on an emotional level. Imagine the roles reversed! I'd be devastated if Sans wanted such fundamental changes to my appearance. I already struggle with my self-esteem and body image. That's why Sans's nonjudgmental nature won me over. Half the things that I hate about myself, he doesn't even notice. He accepts me exactly as I am, and every other night I fall asleep to the sound of him saying so.

"I love you just the way you are."

When I say that back to him, I need it to be factual. True. Reflected in the fanworks I create and consume. That's just how deeply I adore Sans, y'know? I love him down to my bones.