#its the passing acceptance of the problems within horrortale and the praise of its creator despite harmful depictions thats what bothers me

[gasterofficial]

could you explain how horrortale is ableist? i had no idea, and i'm shocked that it falls into those horrible characterisation :(

but if you don't want to, that's totally chill too! you don't owe some anon anything lmao ^-^

since I've had a couple people ask, I'm going to provide a slightly more in-depth explanation of why horrortale is ableist. content warnings for everything below the cut: ableism (obviously), discussion of graphic gore, unsettling content, and flagrant mischaracterization of sans undertale.

alright, so before we even talk about sans or alphys there's the whole issue of the treatment of physical and mental disorders (specifically psychosis) as a source of horror. this is an issue with the horror genre in general of course, so it comes as no surprise to see it in horrortale, but I really had higher hopes for the creator to not fall into those same tropes. i don't really want to read back through the comic to pick out all of the examples throughout, but like half of the main characters are at some point referred to as deranged, crazy, insane, or psycho and therefore "shouldn't be trusted." this is just classic "mentally ill/neurodivergent = scary!!!" and isn't just lazy horror but actively perpetuates harmful stereotypes. also this one is less egregious but papyrus is supposed to be scary just because he has yellow and crooked teeth??? bad dental hygiene = horror now. i feel like this is also ableist or classist or SOMETHING but i don't even want to try to define it past it being silly and dumb so. moving on.

ok so. sans himself. the entire conceit of sans's character in horrortale is that undyne smashes his head in because she's mad at him for not using his spooky magic eye to attempt to save the CORE from a power outage, and then after that he "suffers mood swings and delusions" that make him ~SPOOKY~ because obviously mood swings and psychosis make you an evil murderer who wants to torture children.

(image transcription: *His increasing psychosis makes him difficult to trust.)

(image transcription: *You're dead. A deranged goat mom made a twisted promise with a psychotic and it ended up with a bone up your throat.)

Both of the above images are in reference to sans, and the second one not only refers to sans as "a psychotic" but also calls toriel deranged. double ableism win!

Painting psychotic people or people who suffer from mood disorders as evil murderers isn't even as bad as it gets, either! Let me introduce you to the shitshow that is how this au treats alphys.

In this story, after undyne smashes sans's head in she takes his magical eye and gives it to alphys, who uses it to get the core back up and running, thereby saving the ENTIRE UNDERGROUND from magical starvation. thought to be dead, sans survives the beating through some sort of magical connection to his eye and immediately goes to find alphys and retrieve the eye. the literal instant he finds her he uses bone attacks to destroy the entire fucking CORE, takes his eye back, and then attacks alphys before leaving.

Let's just ignore how little sense sans's actions make both in terms of the storyline and his character, and take a look at what happens when others finally make it to the CORE and find alphys after sans is through with her:

yep. that's right. he leaves alphys ""lobotomized"" (this is the description the author used, though this is not at all what an actual lobotomy is) with her brain exposed, which somehow causes her to morph into quite possibly the worst stereotype of an insane mentally disabled person that i've ever seen!!! a stereotype of mental disability which we are explicitly meant to interpret as horror!!!

and yet, despite all of this, the creator and the majority of the fans who participated in a creator-run poll consider alphys to be the villain of the story, there is no follow-up of any sort on what happens to alphys, and sans receives no consequences for his actions.

so yeah, that is why i’m not a fan of horrortale sans and horrortale as a whole.

#also i dont hate anybody personally for liking or making content with horror!sans. far from it #its the passing acceptance of the problems within horrortale and the praise of its creator despite harmful depictions thats what bothers me #<- copied tags from a later post on the subject just to clarify #answered #avem hater moment #horrortale #ableism #sanism #horror #graphic content #mine #ask to tag #undertale au

[gasterofficial]

is it still ok to like horror!sans in the context of nightmares gang? either him being used and it being a downright terrible situation (and being portrayed as such) or him actually finding solace and acceptance in other outcasts and actually getting help with his mood swings (not saying its bad at all, its just something that would be good if treated with proper care)?

(expanding on my last ask) using horror in nms gang would be like how the fandom has taken characters from shit creators and used them for other stuff, the utmv fandom experience is literally whatever you want it to be, it thrives off of the fandom.

i think in this case it's really difficult to separate horror!sans from the source material since so much of how he is portrayed and his actions within the au are directly intertwined with what makes it problematic in the first place. that's not to say you can't enjoy content with him in it though– as others have pointed out he could be a very interesting character to explore, it's simply the outright praise and acceptance of how the author portrays sans in the original comic that bothers me. Ideally not supporting horrortale at all by avoiding creating content with horror!sans would be the best option, but I know it's hard to do that with au sans stuff since so much of their identity is tied up in the recognizability of their source au. I'm not much of a sans au person myself so I can't really give any good advice on what to do other than to just drop horror!sans from sansverse stuff completely, but I do think that what's most important is that people are critical of the media they consume and recognize when harmful portrayals and stereotypes crop up and don't simply give creators a pass on it.

#also i dont hate anybody personally for liking or making content with horror!sans. far from it #its the passing acceptance of the problems within horrortale and the praise of its creator that is what bothers me #avem hater moment #sansverse #answered