• i was big toby fox fan for awhile
• first heard of him ~2012(?) reading about iwata and how much of a genius he was
• ended up reading about some kid's "earthbound halloween hack" https://archive.fo/67gZR, didn't know it was toby at the time
• got into homestuck ~2014
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyDdV8eIHGE fucking incredible
• generally got into the homestuck musicians and their work; toby fox was one of those Big Names that stuck with me
• ~2015: oh hey toby fox is making a game
• toby fox is the one who made the earthbound halloween hack?
• this guy is a genius and i love his work. but this undertale game looks silly. is it worth spending $15?
• it's made with gamemaker studio, which was a widely influential and important part of my life
• i send him an ask on tumblr, wondering if my computer can run it. he responded directly to me.

i went in completely blind, with expectations about the level of "3DS eshop indie game". after playing undertale, i felt good in ways i hadn't felt in years. i felt like things could be okay. it didn't fix my problems but, man, it gave me hope that i could be okay and that i could feel that way about things in the future. (undertale 2 was released as a good second dose of those feelings.)

i had so many feelings about it, and then seeing it get super big and seeing how people fandom about it, feeling very differently than me, i felt bad about that for a bit as i saw this become "just another meme game". i mean it when i say that undertale made me feel some of the strongest positive emotions i can remember in my life. it feels like an overwhelming argument that games are definitely art