Undertale, Deltarune, how I was brain blasted

YEAHH YEAH ONE OF MY SPECIAL INTERESTS IS UNDERTALE BLAHHH such is my autistic life. I played Undertale a few months after it came out in 2015 and it totally changed my life, as I've heard it did for many. I was 11 years old at the time and I was starting to really understand that I was a human with a life and a future and all that. I'm the kind of autistic person that's struggled with low empathy all my life. Especially when I was younger, I had a really hard time understanding other people's feelings, and how actions and intentions and hurt worked. Undertale helped me extremely with finding connection in other people through being intently kind, and understanding why people do the things that they do, and how important it is to communicate with each other. I am extremely thankful for it's place in my life, I don't think I would be the person I am or have the relationships that I do without it. I was very very active in the fandom in it's earlier years, and I had a lot of fun! I don't consider myself a participant in any fandom anymore, but I still draw and I still think and talk about it all the time. Same with Deltarune!

I played Deltarune on the night it came out, Halloween of 2018. I was 14 at this point, and it was my first Halloween sitting in my room doing nothing because I couldn't plan anything with my friends. I was scrolling my Tumblr dashboard and suddenly everyone was talking about Toby Fox doing some ominous shit on Twitter, and then the survey was posted and I played it. Game 2! I thought it was really interesting, but for a couple years I wasn't super into it probably just because it was so early on. BUT. then chapters 3 and 4 came out. I didn't pay much attention to them either, I was dealing with some massive brain fog the whole latter half of 2025. but then one of my friends checked it out, and began to REALLY like Tenna. I already knew about Tenna, but I looked at those chapters again once my head was clearer, and holy shit I also really like Tenna. My dearest emotionally neglected TV. Tenna's entire character and role in the story is a very visceral experience for me, as a victim of emotional neglect and abuse that's only recently really acknowledging that as fact. He wants nothing more than to be seen and to be a source of happiness for people, but he is an unacknowledged witness to presumably very intense household conflict with no source of solace and it leads him to be very lonely and very anxious. and it makes me want to SCREAMMM I want nothing less than complete safety and happiness for Tenna ok.

Toby Fox writes a lot about the nature of autonomy, and freedom being granted or taken away. It's there in Undertale, but it's especially present as a major theme in Deltarune. It resonates with me hardcore; I feel very deeply for these characters that are trying wholeheartedly to do as they wish only for something more powerful than them to grab them and pull them away. I've experienced it in a bunch of different ways over my life, I'm sure plenty of people have. I'm actually running out of words in my brain right now, but I hope everyone can reach what they want to soon. and play a cool video game!!!

Image Collection
TBA!