I’m Sweating

My Sander Sides Enlightment

You know what’s always kinda bothered me? Those mean takes on the other sides. Like ‘Janus is manipulating Patton and isn’t actually trying to be friends with him,’ ‘Patton has too much moral superiority,’ ‘Roman never learns,’ So on and so forth. There is something bad to say about all the sides. No hate to anyone who's made one, you are valid and probably right in your own way. I think the only reason they bother me so much is because you can easily say the opposite. The most common phrase being ‘Nobody listens to ____’

“Nobody listens to Patton! He was trying to show the others that Virgil was good all along and only when Virgil was gone did they listen.”

“Nobody listens to Logan! He gets ignored constantly and he’s getting mad because of it.”

“Nobody listens to Roman! Every time he comes up with a solution, he gets shut down only to get blamed for not coming up with a solution.”

“Nobody listens to Virgil! He only gets listened to when he forces Thomas to hear him, and he doesn’t like doing that.”

“Nobody listens to Janus! Even when he has good ideas and arguments, they get pushed to the side because he is a dark side.”

“Nobody listens to Remus! That was the entire point of an episode. And all he wants is to be listened to, it doesn’t matter who.”

And all of these are valid points. But at some point, you have to wonder who’s not listening the most. Which is how I think the criticism posts of the characters came to be in the first place. But I don’t think any of them are to blame. Even when this new side gets revealed, it won’t be his fault either. The fault isn’t on Roman, or Logan, or Janus, or any of them.

It's on Thomas.

And of course I don’t mean ‘Writer Thomas,’ I mean ‘Character Thomas.’ Throughout the series, Thomas has always held himself high. You can’t be perfect, but you can try to be. And every time a situation comes up, he doubts himself, wondering if he’s even any good at all.

And in comes the sides, telling him that he can’t be bad and here's why. In fact, Thomas won’t let himself be bad at anything. Can’t be a bad worker, can’t be a bad actor or singer, and certainly can’t be a bad friend. Even in situations where he wouldn’t even be those things, he can’t even let himself risk it.

And so, the sides follow suit.

Logan becomes the perfect person for knowledge and learning, never letting himself be anything less than right all the time.

Roman strives to be perfect physically and materialistically, coming up with creative ideas that help Thomas move up in the world or, at the very least, make himself feel better.

Patton is the perfectly moral person. Make sure everyone is alright, help whenever and wherever you can, and always keep a smile on. Wouldn’t want anyone worrying for you, right? That wouldn’t be good.

Virgil is the perfect alarm system. Even false alarms are taken with the utmost seriousness. Just as long as no one else knows your anxious.

Janus is a deceiver. And Thomas lies often. So he needs to be the best at putting on a face and making sure nothing goes off without a hitch. Wouldn’t want people catching him in a lie. He needs to be the perfect liar.

And then there's Remus. The only one who tries not to be perfect. But that idea terrifies the others so much, Remus is left to pick up all of the imperfection slack. Maybe that's why Remus was offended when he was called ‘Scary.’

Trying to be so many perfect things all at once, you’re going to but heads with all of the different aspects of yourself. You're going to not listen. You're going to ignore. And in some cases, your perfectionism is going to make you look like the bad guy. And as someone with perfectionism, I relate a little too hard.

Thank you for reading.

Okay, I know Logan can’t duck out. That’s canon. There’s nothing that can change that. But you probably wanna know the closest we could probably get to Logan ducking out?

Hypnotism.

Hypnotism can be used for a lot of self-help things, but for this I’m only going to mention those hypnotism performer type dudes.

So, I’m going to imagine what happens is when Thomas (Willingly) goes under hypnosis, Logan just kinda falls asleep? Like, worse-case scenario he can be woken up, but while under hypnosis? He’s just taking a little nap. But who takes Logical control while Logan is out?

Roman does!

That’s why people can eat onions and fully believe they’re eating apples. Or fully believe they’re meeting their celebrity crush when really it’s just Some Guy (tm). Because there isn’t any actual logic behind it, but believable thanks to a little imagination.

Out of all of these universes, which one screams ‘Nepo Baby?’

And I don’t mean characters or the actual people themselves. I mean which universe has the most privilege and is annoying about it? Which one is most likely to shout ‘do you know who my parents are?!’ in the name of strive?

Fun Facts:

Anti’s first canon appearance was October 10, 2016

The first episode of SanderSides came out October 19, 2016

And A date with Markiplier came out Febuary 14, 2017 (Valentine's day)

Meaning all of these great series came out days (or months) apart from each other! Isn’t that cool?!

I know some people are worried about Iron Lung and Mark because of the strike, but you don't need to be. Mark is a union member, doing a union movie, he's not crossing the picket line.

To cross the picket line would mean working with any of the four companies the union is striking against. Mark's movie has no affiliation with Disney, Netflix, Amazon, or Warner Bros. The cast is safe, he's safe, the movie is safe.

Unless, for any odd reason, he pays any of these companies, or gets his movie tangled up in them, then he would be in trouble, but he is not going to do that.

With post production almost done, he's fine, he is out of the bigger struggles, and he has no reason to interact with any of those companies. Most of those companies are so big because they fund people's ideas and projects so that they can actually be made rather than struggling with self funding. Mark and his team never needed them because he's funding the movie, and doing the work to get advertising and marketing finalized, and he's not doing any of that through those companies.

He owns the movie, he paid for the movie, he wrote the movie script, he's the main actor in the movie. Even when he pays for scheduling and buying spots in theaters, he still won't be working with the big four, he'll be competing against them as an independent movie.

He's pro union, he's fine. It's how he did in space, and maybe even heist. At the moment, he's basically functioning as a small creative company, and one that's probably better for his workers, and paying them better than those who are marching with their picket signs. Crossing the line would be actually having to cross those people to get to the big four, and he's not involved with Hollywood, he isn't in that world, he sits beside it.

Now the edge of sleep, that might be a different story. I don't think Mark is allowed to talk about the show already since he hasn't talked about it much so far. He did leak some on stream once, and was kinda stressed about it, but it turned out alright. He doesn't talk about the show at all so he's probably under contract. I don't know how the strike will affect it since it's probably going on streaming (Netflix), and if it's already ready to go and waiting on a time slot then Mark will have to be unaffiliated with the rest of the project. He won't be able to talk about it at all, no promotion of it. If it changes platforms to something else like, HBO, Hulu, or Peacock then maybe it'll be fine (unless those are under any of the four, and I don't honestly know if they are.)

“Bury your feelings” implies he murdered Patton, and I feel the sad feeling thinking about that

GET IT LIKE BURY YOUR FEELINGS???

...I'll leave

Let’s talk about 16th century Italian theatre.

No wait come back I promise this is actually related to Sanders Sides

So, last night I was talking with some friends about an AU I’m currently working on. I’ve been away from the Sanders Sides fandom for a good while now, but recently my hyperfixation reactivated and now my brain is so ready to write a ridiculously long longfic with a convoluted premise and horrifying implications. (I’m like 25k in. Having the time of my life. No doubt I’ll talk about it more later. This isn’t about that.)

Since I’m not the sort of person who usually writes AUs - I prefer to stick to canonverse, and canonverse-adjacent fics - I eventually brought up how worried I always am about characterization of the Sides in AUs. Because although I do adore an AU; I devour Love and Other Fairytales like candy and think about Lavender For Luck all the time and don’t even get me started on WIBAR, when it comes to my own writing, I secondguess myself a lot. I don’t like to stray too far from canon concepts and characterization. I get worried when I don’t draw enough connections to things that happen in the series, because it feels like a betrayal of the source material - if I change a character dynamic from how it’s usually portrayed, I spend entirely too long thinking about how to make it work. 

And someone else said, well, I don’t usually worry about that sort of thing very much anymore. 

And I said, why not?

And they said, well, I haven’t watched the actual show for ages. I mainly treat the Sides as stock characters for the stories I write, and my brain fucking exploded.

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TOO ASS! [falls off my lily pad. hits the water and dies instantly]

Spaghetti eyes

‘Creation’ - Oil on Canvas 32” x 48″ Fine Art Original

This piece is part of a larger series that taps into my roots/ancestry and the working class/post industrial town where I was raised. It’s an examination of both the personal and collective drive of that era of our past, from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, and a further reflection of the future it helped create.