Undertale serves as such a good base to autopsy fandoms because it makes all my points for me
People came for the found family and silly humour and the stories that stick to that are the best whereas the stuff getting too into lore or fandom interpretations of the characters that resemble nothing of the original work are consistently dull.
Theres a reason so many people into au's are into multiple au's, because very few are thought out enough to be engaging on their own so they go for quantity over quality to fill the void. The point of an au is to be a fun alternate version of events to explore but so many people treated them like fun makeovers while still expecting the same level of quality from stories about them
The most fun and interesting character in the game being flower is repeatedly ignored because people would rather focus on woobifying sans (and they only focus on flowey when they can do the same by woobifying asriel) because they hear 'complex' and think of mindless sadness and nothing else
Depressed fans/fans who like to think themselves dark tortured souls purely for the aesthetic clung to sans' implied depression and only use it to write vent angst because a lot of people in fandoms dont want to deconstruct a work or do have fun with it they just want it to validate their misery and self destructive tendencies and they want that so badly they will crowbar it into characters only tangentially related to it
The best undertale ships are consistently the friends to lovers ships and not any of the gross, abusive garbage most fandoms (including this one) are rife with
