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jaypelt · 4 years

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Cheers for Five Years of Undertale, and its Everlasting Effect on Me

Been a while since I’ve done one of these... I might even be rusty at it! Honestly, what I’ve got right now are more vague thoughts than coherent words in my head. I wasn’t sure if I’d even do this, since I felt it wasn’t entirely necessary. Everybody had so much to say! But spurned on by the display of someone very close to me, the cogs in my head couldn’t help but start turning for me too. So here I am. This isn’t going to be easy, though. Because if you read this, I need you to understand the depth of my feelings. Even if just a little. So I’ll do my best to bare my heart yet again, for the sake of it and everything its done for me. Everything it’ll keep doing for me.

The beginning is usually always one of the hardest parts. A blank space devoid of anything, that you’ve got to somehow miraculously fill with thoughts somebody else could understand. But Undertale is rarely a subject I ever have to struggle so much with. It’s been a long, long five years.

This is re-treading old ground that a number of those who know me are already familiar with, however, I don’t think this would be complete without it. But it will get very, VERY personal. If you’re not comfortable with that, then uh... giving you another warning now. But pushing forward...

Right before UT came out, I hadn’t begun to really unravel quite yet. But I was very close. It was somewhat of a rough transitional period as I moved on from my middle school to high, losing very dear IRL friends and generally continuing to struggle with school, as I had been for years. Untreated ADHD is real nasty. But I’d always had at least some friends, either online, or ones I made throughout the year, to rely on. And I didn’t really think about things. The start of this school year was no different. Even having a... perhaps questionable choice of boyfriend, but, well, he was my first.

I struggled with just about every aspect of school from basically the start, but having a small group, and especially an online partner to come home to everyday, helped me at least get through. In the coming months, however, I’d start to encounter more turbulence. Through aforementioned partner, I met someone who’d come to rely on me far more than he should have. Made even worse by the fact that he was a full grown adult while I was only 14, which will be a recurring trend. And has been for most of my life.

We hit it off pretty quickly, becoming good friends and talking to each other outside of mutual friend spaces. And through that, he started to open up about his problems. Living with a family that treated him poorly, suicidal urges, and particularly, an abusive boyfriend. If you know me well, I’ve probably definitely talked about this at least a little.

My daily routine starting becoming supporting this person through all of his troubles. Sitting in skype calls or exchanging messages for hours at a time on the daily. Rarely did a day go by where I didn’t, slowly sinking into an apathetic pit from overextending myself for the sake of his mental health. I couldn’t even help him improve, all I could do was just try to keep him alive. Which, well, I did. For months.

Everything else fell to the wayside as I was constantly stressed about the life of someone I cared about. Obviously my school life suffered even further. I grew withdrawn from everyone, and kept only to the few online friends I had. However, in the midst of this downward spiral, just before the ball really got rolling, a certain game came out. Exactly a month after it had come out, October 15th, 2015, I’d become interested after all the talk on tumblr about Undertale.

After watching a playthrough on youtube(I didn’t play for myself at first, a pity), It’d personally resonated so strongly and gotten me so hooked that it was something I invested a fair amount of my time into consuming content about. I grew super attached to all these characters that’d made me laugh, smile, cry... just this whole spectrum of emotions. And someone in particular, Alphys, really caught my attention after things had begun to get worse.

She felt so... relatable, though I couldn’t possibly tell you all the reasons. When I think about it, we’re not really the most similar, but something about her just hooked me. Maybe because she had all these things going on that nobody knew about. And that she lied. And felt so anxious interacting with anyone after she’d previously been much warmer and closer. That she was closer to “disappearing” than she seemed.

Whatever the reasons, the months moving further along, consuming content about UT practically became my lifeline. I reblogged heaps and heaps of posts about it, watched videos, listened to the soundtrack, even started drawing because I’d been so inspired. When I was just stuck in this horrible pit of second-hand depression, it was the one thing that still made me happy. I started to really think about why it mattered to me and how. It’s funny, I’d read books obsessively for years before then, but UT was the thing that really got me thinking. It was all downhill from there, I tell you. Now I’m an artist and a writer. Horrific.

But, unfortunately, for all its good... it couldn’t stop what was to come. I was still getting worse and worse, with no end in sight. I’d already been supporting... let’s call him Phil, for a few months. And in December of that year, my boyfriend completely dropped off the grid for a while. I’d see him appear online sometimes and I’d message him, but no response, then right back to offline. Finally, he came back, approaching me with something he obviously was uncomfortable about.

To make a long story short, he’d come to the conclusion that he was straight, and decided to end the relationship. What’s bad is that... honestly? I was already doing so poorly that I had a hard time caring. But we did pretty much stop talking, and I leaned into Undertale all the more. Anyway, time continued to pass. Not without its few ups, and mostly downs. I got used to being called “mature”, usually followed by “especially for your age.” “Phil” told me that if I were legal, he’d date me. I’ve got a crippling fear of screwing up with people that’s stuck with me to this day, after a few occasions involving him. I considered doing some... not so great things to myself. Thankfully, I was always so averse to physical pain that it didn’t become anything extreme.

As for the few ups, there was “Phil” finally managing to leave his abusive relationship, when he’d tried previously and fallen into such a bad depressive episode I had to talk him down. So that was something. He’d even started going to therapy after the second break up.

Not that it did a whole lot. The school year began approaching its end and nothing had really changed. I’d been going through all the same motions for around half a year or more. My sleep was terrible, I was passing almost none of my classes, had practically no friends to speak of, and just felt... tired. All the time. But during this... the minute beginning of a monumental shift started. Another character in UT had begun to clutch me in his grasp. Even more strongly than Alphys. Flowey. Through the posts a singular person on tumblr had made about him and my experience with the geno run, I came to understand the dumb little flower more. Which is also funny, because he was previously my least favorite. Even, yes, after the Asriel reveal.

I’m having a difficult time weaving together this convoluted timeline of events, but it was around... perhaps March or early April that the person whom I’d been supporting for almost a full fucking year completely disappeared. Without a word. The one thing I’d tried to stick to for so long was just. Gone. So I drifted about with, well, no purpose.

By the end of the school year, it probably goes without saying that I was... not doing great. But one those aforementioned acquaintances I’d only just started to become actual friends with came forth to me with a question. That being if there was some way for us to keep contact during the summer. So I gave her my email, which would turn out to be a decision that saved my life. Because things would only get worse before they got better.

This is getting to be way, way, way too long. So to summarize, summertime came around and I’d been in pretty close contact with... I’ll just call her V. She was... well, unlike anyone I’d ever known. Someone who stood out with the intelligence you could just see in their eyes. Outgoing, charismatic, compassionate... all those sorts of things. We were opposites in a lot of ways. Or, at least, it felt like it.

Some things happened, like “Phil” coming back after months of nothing. Me immediately slotting back into my role of being a pillar of support, but then screwing up and hating myself for it. But honestly, that ain’t shit to the rest of the whole shitshow.

For a bit of context, my parents are divorced. So for most of the previous years, I’d been going to my mom’s place during the summer and staying with her the whole time, to make up for how rarely we’d see each other otherwise. That year... she was beginning to run low on money. She lived next to my granny, but still basically alone, compared to how she’d been staying with someone else in hotels for the few prior years.

After learning she didn’t have enough to pay rent and might be kicked out, she tried to appeal to her mom, who said she wouldn’t let her stay. Why? I don’t know. After that, she spiraled into a panic. And, well, the ever faithful little worker bee, I stepped forward to try and console her in any way I could. She seemed to recompose, at least a little. It wasn’t great, and she thought she’d have to do some unsavory things in order to survive, but... I thought that, just maybe, I’d done something.

But... later that night, she started drinking. Which... well, put her in a mood. Exacerbated by the day’s earlier events and the fact that she was taking medication that responded poorly to alcohol. She came over to where I was sitting, my little makeshift desk I’d put together to set up my desktop, with my little sister just in the other room. Just... a warning for this next part, it’s... grim. More grim than anything else in this thread.

She proceeded to tell me she was going to go upstairs and grab the gun my granny kept in her room. And berated me for thinking I’d done anything to help, saying she “wasn’t like my little friends” that I could simply talk to. With that, she walked away, heading upstairs. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so crushed in my entire life, to this day. I broke down crying, sitting in that chair.

Yet, somehow, I managed to stop when I saw her coming back down. She walked back over, pointed the gun at her head, and told me to give her a reason she shouldn’t do it. And also to this day, I.... still don’t know if I said what was right. It was all I could think of. I quietly told her that if she did it, I’d pick that gun up and do it to myself. Same as her. And I asked if she wanted to be responsible for that.

It was true, too. By that point, I didn’t care anymore.

And if there’s one thing I can say about her, it’s that she’s always cared about me. In a horrible, twisted way especially, that night. It was enough to make her silently pull the gun down, go back upstairs, and put it away. One last time... she came down, walked past me to the front door and simply said “I love you.” before going out to sit on the porch.

I’m not sure I’ll ever truly get over the events of that night. I spoke to V afterwards, as I’d been keeping in regular contact, as I said. And even been speaking to her throughout the day about what was happening. I think she was panicking just as much as I had been, and told me to go find the gun and unload it. So I did. Bawling my eyes out the whole damn time. Afterwards, I took the bullets and threw them in the large neighborhood garbage can.

The rest of the night’s a blur. I don’t recall if anything else happened, I just remember waking up tired the next day. My uncle was in the house, as he’d been staying with my granny for a while, but hadn’t been around the night before. I tried to talk to him, but.. couldn’t bring myself to open up. Even though we were pretty close. I went back to my dad’s.

That wasn’t the end of it, either. For the next coming months, I’d get drunken calls and live in fear of being put right back in the same situation. It got so bad that I stopped answering my phone altogether. I broke contact with my mom entirely. I still hate answering or making calls.

Anyway, a few other things happened in the summer, like my applying for online courses. And the subsequent ridicule from my dad’s side of the family for the decision. Tell you what, the stress of taking a test to try and join that online program, then going to golden corral and having to struggle to not cry in front of everyone there was... not the ideal way to spend a birthday. Happy 15 years to me.

So.... that was that. I still went through with online courses and everything kind of... slowed to a crawl. I tried to do school work, but depression and still yet untreated ADHD prevented me from making any substantial progress beyond a few finished classes. For a while I simply... existed in a limbo. All I did was get up, get on my computer, maybe talk to a few people, and play Overwatch. Maybe look at tumblr, as I remained into Undertale. V and I lost contact after school started back up. I never blamed her for it. In fact, I preferred it that way. She didn’t deserve to have such a burden placed on her, and I still... feel guilty for leaning on her so much.

But I’m very thankful. I hope she’s out there living a good life, wherever she is.

And this! Is where we finally get to the not depressing parts! And only... what, 29 paragraphs in? Sheesh... I know I wanted to really illustrate just how shit things were to demonstrate just how much UT did for me, but this is taking it a bit far, isn’t it? Ah well... already made it this far. In for a penny, in for a pound. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! I’m sorry. Truly. And I love you so very dearly.

Time went by and I kept doing my thing. Playing Overwatch(a practically self-destructive behavior deserving a therapy, frankly), talking to the few friends I had that I kept at an arm’s length, that sort of stuff. “Phil” and I no longer talked, thank goodness. Obviously I was depressed as all hell, not bothering to shower, eat, clean up, or do laundry for days on end. I spent more time asleep than I did awake, on most days. Did I say this was where the not depressing part was? I may have lied a little.

Blah blah “more months go by”, you know the drill. Until... I believe, November of 2016. After cementing my love of Flowey ever deeper, I’d started to follow more blogs putting out content for him on tumblr. In particular, the most important ones being I’lltrytobegood, Flowey-Answers, and later happyflowey and Corruptedflora.

It all started with a stream. I joined an art stream of LLA(Lovelyladyartist) on picarto as he worked on ITTBG. I kept quiet for the first few streams I joined, being too anxious to really out myself in any capacity. But little by little, I was coerced out of my shell. Particularly by one SilverKhaos, who I think at the time went by SilverSlayer or something. Anyway, he got me talking. And through that, I started making friends, bit by bit.

Also through the stream, I was introduced to CC(CuteCatDoodles) of Flowey-Answers. I obsessively read through the entire blog in a single sitting, just... having such a good time with it. And... strangely enough, it... got me feeling oddly better. Like I’d finally started to breath after not being able to for what felt like such a long time. If just a little. The next day, I got out of bed early, cleaned up, took out some garbage, and made breakfast. Just a simple plate of scrambled eggs. A simple, easy morning for most any average person. But for me? It was one of the most special mornings I’ve ever had.

Likewise, I did the same with Ding’s happyflowey, of reading through all of it in a single night. My head hurt like a motherfucker, but I tell you, it was worth it. The effect perhaps not as profound, but still very meaningful to me, as well as sowing the seeds of yet more relationships to form. If far off in the future, as far as this timeline is concerned. I still adore all of those dumb, charming little flowers so much. Mania would come to inspire my first ever OC, in fact. Thinking about that blog makes me miss when the UT fandom was more active here, even though I never participated in the fandom at large. But I’m grateful for the memories and incredible amounts of enjoyment getting to read it all brought me. I have way too many cropped images of Hysteria.

I wasn’t immediately better, but it was all the start of something new. I kept up with the streams, also joining in for CC’s. For hours upon hours a day, I’d just hop into them and spend the day talking away. I had something to really look forward upon waking up, starting to adjust my schedule so that I at least didn’t miss TOO much. I was able to really make friends, it felt like. Even though I wasn’t and still am not the most socially adept.

And as luck would have it, because picarto chat was and probably still is pretty unstable to this day, it just happened to go down and that led to... the creation of the discord server! It started off small, but steadily got more and more joiners from the growing population of the streams. LovelyLadyArtist, CuteCatDoodles, BrySkye, Flowers-Without-Pots, SilverSlayer, KRS, Donut, Mr.Quarter, Dragoler, Stilla, Chara, RotmModdy, Rowdy, Dunal, and probably at least a few others I’m forgetting... all names I encountered there and most of which I still see daily.

Through that server, we started keeping up even when there wasn’t any stream going on. Just goofing off and having a good ‘ol time. Already I was... well, doing a helluva lot better than I had before. All because of the gathering of a small community surrounding this indie gem. And even further centered in a niche specifically about Flowey! Who, and I’d forgotten to mention this before, I’d found a surprising amount to relate in. He’d become a big, BIG hyperfocus. Which is why I’d met everyone at all. Truly, it’s crazy to think how possible it is for me to have never come down this path.

From there on, I continued to meet new people, established new relationships. I even got invited to an RP server, creatively named “Flower RP” :p. At first I was hesitant, perhaps not even initially 100% interested. But as people really got into it, I felt an incredibly strong Fear of Missing Out. Leading to the creation of a character still near and dear to my heart.... Zorch. The result of contributions from many friends, from design ideas, to character concepts, and even his name(thanks for that, Rowdy). And... I began to write. It wasn’t great at first. very short form, and I didn’t know how to approach the roleplaying mindset, or even how to properly characterize him.

But over time... I got better. I became more confident. I really got into the nitty-gritty of character writing and discussion. I joined in on hours long discussions about the characters, lore, and narrative of Undertale. I’d wake up just to be there as soon as chat began to move, all the way to the point where everyone was finally asleep. I started to be able to help people again. For months, participating in this RP, in this chat, in this community was what I lived for. The joy that I felt in being among friends all working towards and talking about a common goal and interest is, well, honestly still somewhat unrivaled.

Paci, Pots, Neue, Castor, Silver, Nightmare, Rowdy. Me. All of us joined together in mutual love for a game, spurred on to feverishly create our own content about it. I kept up for months on end, living by the mostly same routine for probably the longest I’ve ever stuck to anything. Eventually... things happened and the server’s gone quiet. We had problems with management, people feeling excluded, targeted, etc etc. It was a very... consequence heavy RP, most of us were almost complete newbies to the roleplaying game, and many came to care rather deeply about the ongoings of it. Perhaps too much. But, well... I’m not sure it could have been prevented.

Sometimes, I still wish I could go back to that point of my life. I know someone else who does too. Even more than me. But I know not to try and emulate the past, as alluring as it may seem. So I push forward. Leading to yet another server with its own events. Clement, myself, Rowdy, Zielo, Neue, Moddy, Vee, Mini, Nappy, Tia, Silver. Some familiar names, some new. All still with the foundation of Undertale, but it quickly became a thing for us to just... chill and talk about anything. There was real love in that place. It was at this time that I even started going to therapy! After some struggling with the family. It helped a lot.

In time, that server, too, went under. For reasons that have long since been buried and forgiven. It no longer exists, after being deleted entirely, but I’ll always remember it. And we did eventually all(mostly) gather back together someplace new, which is still being talked in. Even gaining some new additions recently! If any of you guys are catching this one, I love you!

And we come to the final and most recent group. One I wasn’t actually a founding member of, instead being a late joiner. Comparatively smaller than all the ones before, but filled with just as much love. Pip, Ding, Kink, and Cola. Remember when I mentioned happyflowey sowing seeds, and then didn’t even expound in further detail about corruptedflora? Well congratulations, you’ve reached the payoff.

It all started after I began interacting with the mun of CF, Kinko, and became mutuals with them. We usually just spam reblogged from each other on occasion for a while. That is, until I got messaged, then sent a friend request through Discord. Which, even still, didn’t immediately go anywhere. But eventually... some things led to another, and we joined up in a particular server. Not one I’ll be naming, but times were... turbulent in there. It went under and we lost contact a bit after that.

That is, until completely out of the blue, I just get invited to a server with them and some pals to just join in on Roblox shenanigans. Imagine me, sweating and anxious as hell after getting asked to join a server with two people behind blogs I adore, considering Ding was there too. Cardiac arrest, I tell you. And obviously more than just them too! But the night turned out to be so fun that I forgot I’d ever been so anxious in the first place.

From there on... the rest was history. There’s been many, MANY ups and downs, but I’ve found yet more people I love very, very dearly. And they’ve gotten me to open up about the way I feel the most. In the past years, I could never tell someone I loved them, no matter how much I really wanted to. The words just couldn’t come out, but they... they brought that out in me. And now I can say it whenever I want! Like now! I love you guys!!! So much!!!! And not just you all, but everyone else too!!! And much love to Kink especially for being a driving force behind me making this, as well as just being a goddamn star.

So... as a final ovation... LLA, CC, Bry, Drago/Paci, Pots, Silver, Donut, Quarter, Stilla, Chara, Moddy, Rowdy, Neue, Castor/Skater, Tia/Nightmare, Clement, Zielo, Vee, Nappy, Ding, Pip, Cola, and Kink. As well as some stragglers like Log, Ingrid, and Jai. I’m probably still forgetting some... but thank you all for being my friends. It’s been a long, long five years. And yet, many of you are still in my life. In at least some form. There aren’t words enough to express my gratitude towards every single one of you for the most incredible years of my life and pulling me from what can be called nothing less than the fucking abyss. You all made and continue to make life worth living.

And thank you, Undertale. The game behind all of these relationships. The game that inspired such strong feelings in me when nothing else could. That made me into an artist and writer. The reason I’m still alive. The game that changed my fucking life and will continue to affect me, I believe, for the duration of it. I really cannot overstate just how important you were and still are. There’ll never be anything else like you.

#this is probably littered with mistakes and things that didn't need to be there #Like the sheer amount of context provided for how poorly I was doing #But too late to change things now!#My brain hurts too much to bother proofreading #So take this raw and unfiltered thing and do what you will with it #Or don't #It's a rough read #Don't push yourself through it if you can't #Or simply don't want to #long post

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