This is gonna be a long post, and there's a lot to discuss. Yap warning ahead:

So let's get into it;

February the 1st; my birthday! I turn 19 today, which is genuinely surprising to me, because I genuinely did not think I'd get this far.

Putting it quite bluntly, 2024 was the worst year of my life. There was many factors that went into this, but I'll try to explain it in as simple of a way as possible with just a few bullet points of what happened:

• Exam stress. I lost so much sleep to the point I don't think my eyebags or sleep schedule ever recovered.

• Extreme mental health crash; Mood swings, Anxiety, Depression, being diagnosed with some really not nice Stuff.

• Losing a lot of important people in my life, I'd rather not be specific with this one.

• Issues with where I live. That sucked a lot LOL.

• An unholy amount of drama online. I'll get to this one later.

I am not a perfect person. I've stated this multiple times across the different socials I have, but I think it's more important to mention this any time than not. Growing up I never used social media much, unless you count watching Youtube all day as a social media. I never had experience interacting with others I don't know online, or how I should treat things, with me only essentially gaining free-ish internet access at the age of 17=6. With COVID essentially wiping out my mental development, I essentially had to take a "crash course" the hard way - I just had to wing it. This was not easy for my autistic mind.

This was easy at first. From 2023 to around March 2024 there wasn't much I had to do. Discord was pretty much exclusively for my friends. The most I ever did was talk in a public server once or twice, but I never bothered, due to never really seeing the point.

Then, over time, I start getting involved with the Undertale community. It's ironic really. When I was ten years old, watching my brother watch a playthrough of Undertale, I told him it was boring - The graphics sucked, why would anybody want to play that game?

And then, when I turned 15, I played Undertale for the first time. And holllyy. It hit me like crack hit American neighbourhoods in the '90s. I wanted more of it. I played more and more routes, I watched endless videos of it (Admittedly, none of it was really good, it was just AU slop like DustDustKillDeathTime Sans), but i kept watching.

I remember when UTY got announced, too. I wasn't even that aware of it was the time but I remember the demo dropped, and once I finally got into Undertale I obsessively kept up with the development.

I joined discord servers at the age of 16, met a bunch of people, and made a bunch of friends that I still have to this day. But the crazy part is, it felt like forever ago. And it's only been three years. I remember my favourite thing to do was larp with Sans on my profile and just fuck around with Friends on Minecraft and Undertale multiplayer mods. Good times.

Then I came across Evan Streblow's DUSTTALE. Dude, that game was so fucking awesome. I don't care if people want to act if I was looking at it with rose tinted glasses, but my god that game was like peak writing to me. It was such an interesting possibility. Sans killing people? Specifically, because of you pushing him into it? Peak fiction. Cinema, really.

And then I decided, after years of wanting to make a fangame but being physically unable to (Life issues and school holding me up), I sat down and started work on a Dusttale take of my own.

Being quite frank, it was ass. Lowkey a "never cook again" scenario, but I wanted to make my fixation a reality. So I sat down. Looked into Undertale's lore harder. I always had a fixation on making fan media as accurate to the source material as possible, so what if I did that with a dusttake?

Long story short (with some pulling of my talented friends) I came up with what you guys know as DTBL. And cut to a few months later, a insane sudden blowup happens.

I've never, and I mean never, experienced something of mine going "viral", or just generally gaining attention. At first I was loving it, checking my notifications every single day to see who liked, commented, who talked about my game, how many followers I was at.

And eventually, it ate away at me. I became obsessed with it for a while. Constantly working long nights, until 3am sometimes, writing, setting tasks so we can be efficient, editing videos, helping others with their own projects, the dopamine rushes I felt were unreal.

It got to a point where I was stressing out over the smallest things. I literally was getting stressed out because ONE person said ONE thing about me and it was the most mundane shit ever too. I don't think the internet was EVER that serious.

However, there was a breaking point. Around October, I was doxxed and threatened, live on stream, in front of my friend group chat. I had never felt more powerless and fearful until that moment, especially at a time where I was already dealing with a ton of drama surrounding my circle.

Obviously, it got to a point where I was afraid for my life, and I just couldn't handle it anymore.

So, with all this IRL shit crashing down around me as well as this, I went to a therapist (I just got discharged today, actually) - and wow it put a lot of things into perspective. If people lie about me, or if people get the wrong impression of me, it's not really my issue. But! I still would like to preserve the notion of being as friendly with as many people as possible.

Just compare these scores of the day of the incident, and halfway thru my sessions.

The main goal I've had over the past few months is to resolve drama I used to have with people. The Undertale community should be united! Not divided, and I think I should lead in example by that.

That being said, I've completely cleared my blocklist. If anyone has anything important that they'd like to discuss with me, my discord's still the same (sharkyleo), so to those I still have unresolved issues with, I encourage you to message me. The past is the past. I think we should try to make the Undertale community a better place.

That, while 2024 had a horrific number of problems that still linger on this year, there's one thing I learnt was the most important; the people I care about.

You all are awesome and make being in this community worth it. DTBL wouldn't be the same without my amazing team, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I also would like to thank those who gave me advice or critique on how to do better, which I strive to do. Your feedback is valuable and being a better person is generally cool anyways.

Always LOVE your brother, regards,

Sharky <3