DISCLAIMER │ Nothing I say here is a representation of the community as a whole. There are some genuinely great people in this community who continue to help it thrive in a positive light.

- INTRODUCTION -

Good evening. How are you all doing?

Sorry about the recent silence on almost everything; shit ain't been good, and is part of my motive towards this post.

Hopefully after I get some stuff off my chest I'll be a bit more active here, as its pretty much the last of my platform I have. I'll get into that in one of my points.

Before we get into the main stuff, I'd like to give credit to @souptaels due to their take on the topic inspiring me a lot and giving me the general idea. Make sure you check it out before reading on!

Anyways, with nothing else to say how about we just get into it? Its gonna be a long one, so get comfortable.

- THE TOXICITY & HARASSMENT -

I'd say this is the most frequent point made by people when it comes to discussing the Undertale Community, though there is one major problem with how people go about this.

That problem is the fact that no one is bothering to do anything about it, and on most occasions are contributing or adding on to it.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't been any better myself in the past, but these past few months have been an eye-opener with the recent target put on my head, causing my channel to end up falsely terminated.

With little to no support from YouTube, I genuinely felt lost. And how did this come about? Someone disliked me, and that is that.

The fact that people go to such lengths over the smallest of things is disgusting to me. Several faked suicide attempts, threats of various degrees that have caused people to leave the community entirely, keyloggers and IP grabbers thrown into applications just to get back at someone, and over what? Nothing.

Nothing but a TINY issue that could've been resolved with a simple conversation between the parties involved.

And the worst part is that these petty dramas end up taking the spotlight from actual, genuine problems, causing it to get even worse due to little to no support on their ends.

All people need to do is be civil and talk things out in a sensible manner instead of throwing all these problems around. Is it really that hard?

- STEALING -

One of the other big problems in this community is the theft of peoples copyright. It is as equal to stealing something in real life, yet people try to justify it regardless.

A contributing problem to this is the people who dedicate all of their time to 'reporting' thieves. And by reporting, I mean harassing them.

Thief or not, there is no need to harass them. Just report what they stole, and move on with your day. It's not that hard.

In general, the whole 'reporting-thieves' thing in general just seems off. Whilst yes, calling a thief out is good as it helps them (hopefully) realise what they're doing is wrong, there is no need to make their life hell.

To me it mostly just seems like an excuse for groups of people to gather and harass people who steal, justifying it with "they steal though, so we can treat them however we want!".

Let alone the fact that these people are most likely 99% of the time NOT associated with the copyright owner.

Just remove Report-Thieves channels on Discord servers, problem solved.

- DISRESPECT TO FAN WORK -

I've seen a lot of cases of people going against the wishes of prominent people in the community.

These can go from something of the likes of
"Hey, please don't make AUs/Takes of [INSERT PROJECT HERE]!" / "Please don't use any of the assets in [INSERT PROJECT HERE]!" and having people go against that
To
Having people go to projects similar to another and saying something along the lines of "Ugh, this is just a ripoff of [INSERT PROJECT HERE], stop wasting your time, [INSERT PROJECT HERE] is better."

When it comes to the first set of examples, I'm moreover talking about projects such as Storyshift and Undertale Hard Mode: Wonderful Idea, where these requests were asked of but were went against by people regardless of the request.

When it comes to the second example, this is most prominent when it comes to projects such as SS!Underswap and Inverted Fate. Inverted Fate gets called Underswap and has its entire story disregarded as if its in no way significant, and SS!Underswap finds itself being called a TS!Underswap ripoff frequently, even though the projects are in no way similar and have their own spark to them.

Of course this isn't every project that gets this sort of treatment: VERY FAR from it. Its just a handful of examples.

To add on to this, you then have those projects that are apparently making something "BETTER". This on its own is bad enough, but then you've got people going out of their way to shove it down the original creators throat.

Like, what?? Of course you can have your own opinion on a project, that is fine, but going out of your way to 'make it better' is absurd. The only person who could deem a project better is the owner themselves after they're satisfied with what they've got going for it, not some random guy online who probably has little to no understanding on the project.

Calling out the people who do this type of stuff would be one of the best calls, but this then ties into people using it as an excuse to harass these individuals, which isn't great.

This is why there needs to be a more civil manner in place when it comes to situations like this, otherwise it'll never get sorted.

- PERSONAL ISSUES -

This will be more my personal grudges and issues over the more general things, though still including things already mentioned.

When it comes to this community, it feels as if people are incapable of thinking what they're about to do through.

People act without thinking, and that is what I deem the main problem altogether. Maybe if people were to think "Hey, retaliating so negatively probably isn't a good idea" or "Stealing is wrong, I should ask for permission" we'd be in a whole different situation right now.

Instead, the community his spiralled so out of control that most of the things I've mentioned are just the norm, and are joked about and gazed over, causing it to go on further.

The community is starting to form into a more dangerous over toxic place, with people going to the extent of faking their own death just to escape an issue. Its not right, and at this rate won't be fixed.

Think, UTC, think.

- OUTRO -

Well, that's about it for my rant. Hopefully with the platform I have on Gamejolt, at least there'll be a tiny bit of change taking place, but honestly? I have a lot of doubt.

I'll probably go over more stuff in the comments, along with responding to people's thoughts and criticism on the post. I just really wanted to get this out, but its coming up 4am and I got hell to attend to.

If you've gotten to this point, I really appreciate the fact that you've took the time to at least gaze over the post. Getting these issues sorted would be a blast.

Thank you for reading, and I'll hopefully see you around.