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.