#critter answer

I'm not paying $2 to watch a "Real or Fake Candies" livestream ಠ⁠︵⁠ಠ

Thankfully, it looks like the number of people willing to pay for that crap is going down. 82.5% in the last three years, and 10.6% just in the past six months. Don’t worry though, he’s still making an estimated $550–$7K a month, plus another $6.2K–$98K from his YouTube channel...

Sources:

https://graphtreon.com/creator/thomassanders

I’ve known about the Brei Grace situation for a little bit now, and it’s definitely made me take a “separate art from the artist” angle to my recent SaSi interest revival, but looking through this blog, I’m devastated that it’s even worse than I thought.

The series is one that has brought me so much joy, both back in 2018, 2020, and now 2025. I absolutely adore Patton, he’s been a MASSIVE comfort character for me, and I’ve even made my own Sides OCs that mean the world to me. But now I just feel… depressed. Not angry just, depressed and devastated.

It’s not your fault ofc, it’s ultimately his. If he didn’t let us down, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Part of me still wishes I hadn’t learned, but it still would’ve been true even if I hadn’t. So in that way, from my own experience, I think I know why so many people are so quick to blindly defend him:

It’s because they don’t want it to be true. They want him to be the person they see him as, the person he presents himself as, because the alternative would devastate them. I kinda sympathize bc I’ve been in the same position, but that’s not an excuse to harass people who are critical of him.

I had actually initially left the fandom bc of the Mad Libs situation, and somehow got informed that it had been resolved? Which seems to not be entirely true as evidenced by this blog.

Either way, I had been hoping that maybe he could still turn himself around, but that hope has now dwindled to being barely there.

I just wish things turned out differently.

If I were Thomas, I would be disappointed in myself. He pretty much had it all laid out for him. He was popular on Vine and not just in a niche way. He could have built a global platform easily. It would have been stressful, but he could have done it and probably been up there with Markiplier if he played his cards right.

Wow after three years of being unable to portray your characters as they actually are rather than the fanon version (arguably canon now with how much influence that has had) for more than a couple minutes because you only want the 8 minute mark so youtube will let you put adds and therefore get revenue.

You wonder why things have changed? After 3 YEARS of nothing more than silly little sketches that took at most 10 minutes of your time where you arguably didn't put that much thought on how the characters looked then, you wonder why you don't look the same AFTER 3 YEARS of actively ignoring the series. It's as if the human body aged and changed as time goes by, who would've guessed! And of course you want to look the same because your series that you are allegedly going to continue has a timeline you feel you must match because YOU left it there because of your poor managment skills. How could you POSSIBLY not expect that type of body incongruence, in what world did you think i will look exactly the same as i did since the last episode.

That’s the second time he’s posted something like that, and while I do think it comes from a real insecurity, it also feels like he’s fishing for praise from his die-hard fans.

We all know about the Flanderization of SaSi, there's not that much to say that hasn't already been said. But. If Thomas was GOING to steal allow fanon to influence his canon, you'd think he could have at least stolen used fanon that made sense for the characters? There's a host of incredible, thoughtful, caring fanfiction and analysis and discussion out there about every character, exploring their vulnerabilities, their fatal flaws, their underappreciated strengths. To ignore all of that to latch on to the most one-dimensional and vapid interpretations of these previously impressive, interesting characters is just... confusing and disappointing. Even when he attempts/pretends to care about that depth these days, it's so clearly bait that it doesn't compel anyone who isn't already forgiving a LOT.

I was wondering what changed, and... well. I'm really not trying to do the thing where people forcibly divorce a creator from the quality of their work, as though to insist they could never have loved any of their work now that Things Are Different. But for Thomas and co, I think the only real change that heralded the decline of SaSi (that affected them instead of just fans) was that Joan left the team.

So here's my kind of mean take. It honestly feels to me like, since Joan left, Thomas may or may not have realised that he's not qualified enough himself atp to understand/respect the depth of these characters, or at least what they became under Joan? I remember even back when I was a fan, years ago, I went through season 1 again and could just about see a visible line where Joan joined the team and started contributing, because the writing quality SOARED. Without Joan, I feel like Thomas doesn't care half as much about these new well-rounded characters, kind of wants his one-dimensional archetype joke characters back, and still wants to keep making money off his biggest property. I imagine that that might be why he's happier to engage with discussions like "Patton is an innocent widdle baby who doesn't know what sex is. Janus is a wine mom now. Look how much Logan loves jam!" than discussions like "Roman has had an arc written and waiting and scheduled since Moving On Part 2, and it was shelved to make room for Deceit and then it was shelved again to make room for Remus and then it was shelved again to make room for Janus' redemption and nothing was even written in between those to un-shelve it, and he's also been shaped by all of That and now has even more arcs of depth and exploration and understanding of his character locked and loaded and ready to fire, SVS-R set the stage for it yet again and the next mainline episode has to tackle it, we have a perfect opportunity to get a closer look into Roman's motivations and what makes him act the way he does, let's talk about it, let's go!".

Because he doesn't KNOW how to handle discussions like that. Those were discussions that Joan could probably have taken so far, because Joan is actually a good writer (cough), but Thomas doesn't really seem to know what to do with them. And, more to the point, it feels like he wasn't prepared for people to take the series seriously, and now he isn't willing to put in an earnest effort to meet his fans in a heartfelt place - to at least make some sort of effort to recognise and respect that seriousness and genuine care for his characters. That's what makes this feel more like a 'betrayal' by a creator than I would normally allow it to feel. I think it's because he IS engaging with the fandom - in fact, lifting heavily from fanon to the point of laziness - but he's only taking the parts that feel generic and tropeish enough to make into funnies, and the parts that allow him to dress up and do glamour shots. Without any regard for the actual development of the series over the years, or for the fans begging for it to be treated seriously.

If I'm being fully honest, I think the SaSi we loved has long been Joan's SaSi, and the characters have for a long time been Joan's characters, just acted by Thomas. Without Joan, whether the finale comes out this year, or in 2037, the reason it'll be bad won't be because we all grew up and got tired or whatever, like I used to think, or because Thomas suddenly got worse at his job. The reason it'll be bad will be because it's Thomas trying to write an ending for Joan's story and Joan's characters, pretending they're still his story and characters, but refusing to take either seriously. Or at best, attempting to take them seriously, but failing, because it hasn't been Thomas' story for a long time even if the characters all wear his face.

I don't know the details of why Joan left the team. I hope it was amicable, although at this point I don't trust that there wasn't anything under the surface. But what I do genuinely think, no joke, is that SaSi needed Joan more than it needs Thomas. I mean that. Recast the character of 'Thomas Sanders' with a different actor if you must, rename him if you must and rebrand it all if you must, but that's the only timeline in which SaSi actually gets the finale it deserves. Thomas is the face, and a good actor for it, and he undeniably created the framework for the characters. But the SaSi that took off, and made people so happy for so long, is Joan's SaSi. Thomas is just kind of dragging around its corpse.

I know it's not as cut and dry as giving one person all the credit for the thing. And I know Joan probably couldn't feasibly have done the whole thing themself, or succeeded in popularity, since Thomas was too embedded in the face and the origins and the publicity of the whole thing to remove comfortably. And I don't think people were ready for it at the time. I definitely wasn't. It's not a "should have happened and it WOULD have been better" as much as it's an "Imagine if we could have had this instead. Shame it could never have been."

In a perfect world Joan got the rights, rebranded and finished the story, or if nothing else, stayed long enough to write a suitable ending before leaving.

In the world we live in, SaSi was doomed the minute Joan left.

No need to apologize. I'm really glad you shared it here. It's not just that Thomas pulled from fanon, it's which parts he pulled. There’s so much rich, insightful fan content out there, and instead he went for the shallowest interpretations - Logan loves jam, Janus is a wine mom, Patton is UwU baby, etc. - like he wanted the aesthetic without the substance.

And Joan... I think you nailed it. They brought a level of emotional depth and narrative intention that Thomas just hasn’t matched since. It really does feel like he's trying to finish someone else’s story without understanding what made it special, and instead of stepping up, he's leaned into surface-level cosplay and vibes.

that is if it ever does come out.

I get not feeling motivation to write stuff, but pretending your going to do something and showing no progress in five years is just ridiculous, and it’s clearly just for money now.

it’s just sad cus in middle school I was figuring out my identity and starting to do theater and Thomas was such an inspiration to me, but now I just feel sad when I think about his old work.