Ten (10) years of UNDERTALE. Timegrief re-engage. Post-anniversary_stream(s) I still feel aching need to convey the incalculable weight on my own terms. Can’t let it slip by. My voice, my contribution to the ideally-unending celebration. Nothing seems adequate. It’s more than a date. Been a week since the decade set itself in stone, chronicling four days of buildup to two days of creator-driven appreciation+examination+recalibration, and only now has the long-term emotional consequence reared its uglybeautiful head. Grand reopening of the heart’s SOUL-shaped hole. Nothing seems adequate. Shall I write? Shall I sing? Meanderingly I begin by taking the vicarious approach, seeking the artwork, the comments, the communal sensation, and to some extent regret this, for the unfavorable Sentimentality:Petty_Fandom_Drama ratio, textual thorns unexpectedly-but-in-hindsight-unsurprisingly poking through, punishment for brief breakage of the Detox guidelines, scratch marks left across my arms as I exit the sacred garden. But one such Post stops me in my tracks.

“in tears”

30-second clip of ANNIVERSARY LIVESTREAM, DAY 2. Near end of encounter with ASRIEL DREEMURR, GOD OF HYPERDEATH. Just as remembered. I question the success of this Post, re-ruminating on an unaltered iconic scene to the tune of ~150 upvotes. 15 seconds in, I am struck with The Realization. It was altered. This was one of the Special Edition Live-Exclusive Modifications, new lines of dialog included to commemorate the occasion.

"It can’t have been a year already.
It can’t have been 5 years already.
It can’t have been 10 years already.
It can’t have been…
Everything, everyone I loved can’t keep getting further away.
We can’t go any further than this. Please."

Fuck. Gutpunch to punch all gutpunches. In that moment of broadcast, I’d been multitasking again. In that moment of broadcast, two screens couldn’t save me. This was the one pivotal moment I happened to miss. In equal parts I grieve the passage of time and my continued inability to settle down, to hone in on what matters, to take things one step at a time, to stop willfully assaulting my senses with overlapping information… I’m fucking sobbing. How could I have sunk so low that even the celebration of my literal favorite thing in the world was not enough to consistently command 100% of my attention? I’m no better than Flowey, in all his detached crunching of the numbers. Well, maybe that would be an overstatement; I was present, I understood what was being said, I took moments to emotionally reorient myself when necessary… but the fact that any asterisks need to be placed on those statements is what really stings. This is where I draw the line. This is the external wakeup call I still needed following the double-edged internal wakeup call. I know I care more about the fundamentally life-altering work of art that is UNDERTALE than I do about fucking File Organization. That was never up for debate. I know that despite everything I am still me. That I’m a being, not a doing. Now I just need to fucking act like it.

In search of healing+void_filling, I’ll finally be playing Undertale Yellow for the first time, a remarkable culmination of such widespread inspiration. It’s a wonderful thing. I am blessed to be one of millions of recipients. For the time being, it seems I’ve written enough. Enough to illustrate at least a modicum of my gratitude for the perpetual positive impact on my life that the work of Toby Fox has had. Atonement for perhaps the most offensive instance to date of this mind so mercilessly wandering. I’ve snapped out of it. Everything I need is already here.