Ready for Prime Time
Jun. 23rd, 2025 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingdeltarune mettaton doesn’t get the amount of love he deserves
https://planetamarte.tumblr.com/post/786897660910125056/for-being-such-a-beloved-character-in-undertale-i
This is an interesting post about reading Mettaton as trans (among other things). I remember that this was a popular interpretation of the character in Undertale, and it's always good to see people finding trans joy in stories that speak to them.
Regardless of whether Mettaton is trans, I don't think about this character as a teenager. He has big Jonathan van Ness energy; and, based on the way he speaks, I'm going to say he's around the same age, which is... 38?? (Wow. I thought he'd be younger.)
Still, even if Mettaton’s way of speaking marks him as being around 40yo in 2025, he’s probably younger in the actual game... although it’s likely he belongs to the generation that would have known what Napster was.
I get the sense that Deltarune takes place in the mid-2000s. Kris has a cell phone, but they don't have social media, and they have fond memories of playing something like the first Zelda game with their older brother. The internet-themed Dark World in Chapter 2 feels very late 1990s to me, as does the idea of sitting in the public library’s computer room.
I feel like Mettaton is a social media star waiting to happen, but social media doesn't exist yet. So Mettaton’s transformation can be transgender, or trans-species. That’s all well and good. But what I’m really interested in is the emergence and transformation of a space where Mettaton can be his beautiful self. A transverse “dark” world where dreams can become real, and where anyone can present as the self they see in their imagination. For Mettaton, I think this is less about gender and more about being seen and finding an audience.
Social media seems very dystopian now, but it did genuinely feel like it was a space with infinite potential even fifteen years ago. Like, it didn’t matter if you were “a nobody” with no connections wasting your days away in a small suburban town. During the (relatively) early days of YouTube, if you had the drive and the talent, you could become a star. And obviously Mettaton was born to be a star.
Anyway I think he and Tenna should kiss.
https://planetamarte.tumblr.com/post/786897660910125056/for-being-such-a-beloved-character-in-undertale-i
This is an interesting post about reading Mettaton as trans (among other things). I remember that this was a popular interpretation of the character in Undertale, and it's always good to see people finding trans joy in stories that speak to them.
Regardless of whether Mettaton is trans, I don't think about this character as a teenager. He has big Jonathan van Ness energy; and, based on the way he speaks, I'm going to say he's around the same age, which is... 38?? (Wow. I thought he'd be younger.)
Still, even if Mettaton’s way of speaking marks him as being around 40yo in 2025, he’s probably younger in the actual game... although it’s likely he belongs to the generation that would have known what Napster was.
I get the sense that Deltarune takes place in the mid-2000s. Kris has a cell phone, but they don't have social media, and they have fond memories of playing something like the first Zelda game with their older brother. The internet-themed Dark World in Chapter 2 feels very late 1990s to me, as does the idea of sitting in the public library’s computer room.
I feel like Mettaton is a social media star waiting to happen, but social media doesn't exist yet. So Mettaton’s transformation can be transgender, or trans-species. That’s all well and good. But what I’m really interested in is the emergence and transformation of a space where Mettaton can be his beautiful self. A transverse “dark” world where dreams can become real, and where anyone can present as the self they see in their imagination. For Mettaton, I think this is less about gender and more about being seen and finding an audience.
Social media seems very dystopian now, but it did genuinely feel like it was a space with infinite potential even fifteen years ago. Like, it didn’t matter if you were “a nobody” with no connections wasting your days away in a small suburban town. During the (relatively) early days of YouTube, if you had the drive and the talent, you could become a star. And obviously Mettaton was born to be a star.
Anyway I think he and Tenna should kiss.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-24 12:46 pm (UTC)And also damn your mind. I don't know why it never occurred to me that "this is taking place in the mid-00s" was probably the most accurate answer for a lot of the background worldbuilding in Hometown, especially when my almost 38-year-old ass grew up during then. Meanwhile, I'm over here writing my fic and just writing it off as "maybe it's a small country town with limited funding/resources and there's probably commentary there about the power dynamics between the Holiday family and their wealth vs everyone else, but let's be real - everyone came here to eventually read about Mettaton blowing out Tenna's circuits". Regardless, I LOVE this and thank you for bringing it up!
Also also this tumblr link is solid! I don't really keep up with a lot of the updates/newsletters/whatever that Toby Fox puts out, so I had no clue about the extended Power of NEO song. That alone made my day omg it's beautiful.
> Anyway I think he and Tenna should kiss.
YES. YES THEY SHOULD. OMG YES.
I swear for the past week or so I've had multiple friends ping me to say something along the lines of "so I thought the gay robots thing was just a crack crossover pairing you were going crazy over, then I discovered the actual in-game context and wow they fuckin'" and I will never not grin like an idiot over this.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-26 10:37 am (UTC)I think this works just as well honestly!
My mom's family lives in a small town in central Georgia called Jackson. It's only about an hour south of Atlanta, but culturally it feels several decades behind the present. Part of the reason for this is that the municipality is so poor that nothing has been built or updated since the Carter administration. A lot of the first season of Stranger Things was filmed in Jackson precisely because it still looks like the 1980s there.
In Jackson, people definitely still have wall-mounted landline phones and CRT televisions. (My mom has both of these things lmao). People definitely still go to church for social reasons. And... there are definitely wealthy families who go all out for Christmas in a borderline insane way.
A small town like that probably isn't a bad place to live for most people, but it's not for me. I have a sense that Mettaton is probably a lot like what I might have been if I'd gotten stuck there. Ie, super fucking depressed and super performatively gay to make up for it.
...which is all to say that it gives me no small amount of joy to know that you're writing a happy ending for Mettaton, and it feels incredibly validating to see that your story has resonated with so many people. I am cheering you on all the way!!!
no subject
Date: 2025-07-01 01:40 pm (UTC)Escaping those small country towns lolsob
I'm thankful that Hopedale, MA wasn't that suffocating, but it uh... sure was a place to grow up in. Definitely feels similar to Jackson, albeit in New England. For how deep blue this state is, all it takes is two left turns down a scenic backroad to find some REALLY heinous fuckery.
Random tangent, but I remember a friend of a friend in my college social circle mentioning at a party years ago that she and her husband were moving to "a cute and cozy small town" to raise their daughter in. And when she name dropped my nightmare fuel town, I somehow didn't scream, but at least got up and left the room. Yikes.
AWWW and thanks again for all your support!! 😭💕 it's been a mix of emotions writing this (all good, just very AAAAAAAAAA) and I'm like, I dunno, bracing for a comment that tells me I'm wrong actually and should delete my fic, but nothing has come close to that yet so yeah. Definitely incredibly validating. Thank you!! 💖💖💖
no subject
Date: 2025-07-01 02:07 pm (UTC)(Tangent: Last summer I adopted a Pomeranian puppy from a shelter in a small town in Lancaster County PA, which is deep "let's go brandon" billboard territory. It was an experience. I was torn between my deep and abiding belief that we should accept and normalize all levels of disability... and my sense that we desperately need immigrants in this country if only to deepen the gene pool just a little maybe. Fun times.)
I think partially because of this experience of small town weirdness, it's been immensely gratifying to see the numbers you're achieving with your story. I owe you a lengthy comment on your own entry on the subject, but bravo. I remember that people were a little weird about some of the fringe characters in Undertale (Alphys, mostly), but I hope the fandom has moved beyond that. I've been getting the sense from various places that everyone is kind of burned out on discourse, and I hope it stays that way.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-07 12:42 pm (UTC)That said, I'll gladly share my FAVORITE bit of history about this town with you, bc I guarantee you will not find this anywhere via an internet search.
So the high school used to allow the seniors to pull pranks during the end of the school year. You know, typical bullshit. It was all pretty harmless stuff that you'd expect for a senior prank. Except the graduating class before mine (2004) ruined it for everyone in the best way possible. So... the high school underwent renovations in the 00s and the cafeteria became super fancy. Like the ceiling extended to the third floor and there were massive glass windows at the top circling the whole place. It looked nice and had lots of light, but wow it sucked during the winter. I'm explaining this bc during May of 2024, one of the senior guys hid in the janitor's closet after classes for literal hours until well into the night. He then unlocked the doors to let all his friends in for the senior prank. And what they did was paint at least 50 dicks on those glass windows circling the cafeteria.
It took 3 weeks for them to properly clean off all the dick pics. I took SO MUCH JOY in watching my least favorite teacher (who'd be proud of the purity culture bs) just lose her collective shit daily whenever entering the cafeteria. Sadly, what caused the senior prank ban wasn't even the dick pics, but the dozens of empty beer cans and used joints left on the rooftop. Still worth it. I couldn't have planned a better senior prank. And according to my former barber back in 2021 (who also attended that high school), they STILL ban senior pranks.
Oh boy, I'm glad you were able to get your Pomeranian and gtfo lol. We really do need to diversify the gene pool holy shit.
Aww and thank you!! I'm still in shock over the everything with this fic, but I'm really delighted that you and others are enjoying it! And god yeah, I really hope it stays that way with discourse. I know the Undertale fandom in its heyday was uh... not great. For a lot of reasons. It's delightful to see folks have either simmered down or moved on. Now if only the FFVII fandom could do this 🫠