Kris and the Player: Hand in Unlovable Hand

Before getting too thick into the weeds, it's important to explain what I mean by this double layer of fiction and how it connects to us. In almost all popular stories you have a perspective character or presence to serve as the audience's middle man, and for Deltarune that character is Kris. But Kris is not as passive as the usual protagonist, as they appear to be acutely aware of and tormented by their role as the player's vessel for peering into their world from outside the game. Somehow, this poor 14 year old within their own world has fallen victim to some sort of possession facilitated by a third party beyond them and the player, and the mystery surrounding this predicament and what meaning the story will find in it is one of the pillars of the narrative intrigue. One that ironically draws us into being active participants in this torment of Kris as we seek to understand how to break it for them.

I was actually watching a different video on Kris' backstory when I stumbled across another magical mental illness blunder in analysis that also inspired this essay. The essayist was explaining a part of Kris' backstory told by an estranged friend, Noelle, who describes how Kris used to have a habit of suddenly freezing and staring off into space for some time before coming to again and quietly reorienting themself. As someone watching the video to comprehend the in-universe and meta-narrative implications of this, I was very surprised when the essayist interjected by declaring this evidence of Kris suffering from absence seizures. Unlike the dramatic spastic seizures that typically come to our mind, absence seizures are as Noelle described, where people lose consciousness and freeze in place for periods of time. This interpretation was not useless. It did hint that Kris may have suffered extreme stress during that time in their life, and more importantly, it was a comfort to the essayist who made the connection from their own experience with the trait, but it does cut off discussion on its own. At best absence seizures may have been an active reference Toby Fox used to write the behavior, especially to make it something that people around Kris could attribute to a non-magical source, but in this world of possessions and mysteries that cannot be an answer in itself. Kris is a magical character in a magical context, and no matter what their behavior looks right now, it is more than likely magical mental illness.

Frustrating as those two essayists' reasoning can be, I can't fault the instinct. Honestly as I was watching that video beforehand I was sussing out in my mind a headcanon diagnosis of Kris that could contain the metaphorical strengths of their character and maybe speak some spiritual truth to that disorder and its humanity. One of my first instincts was Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I cringed away from it aware that it is a negative trope to portray alters as adversarial or invasive. But that trope, or more the language of it without the direct clinical label - magical DID - has never stopped being attractive to me, because even if it doesn't align with the psychological truth of the disorder, it does still with a broader metaphor. Maybe its selfish, but when I read of DID, an inevitable theme or story of it arises in my mind that reminds of my personal struggles with identity. How parts of me sometimes felt foreign and cancerous, and how learning to carve parts of those out of me was a silent triumph I longed to express or see expressed in stories around me. In Kris, I see my own middle school age self who lost the superficial childish dreams which defined her and moved through life in a daze as she tried to understand what truly ran her before finding it and taking back control. That thinking can come off as medieval or psychoanalytical, but as a writer I think it can be important to recognize it as a tool of empathy as well. A way for an unafflicted soul to find a root in themselves that at least emotionally blurs the line between themself and this clinically defined "other".

As we'll see with Spamton, this exercise in relatability between players and Kris goes deeper than just the initial experience of struggle, but into that wish to see oneself reflected elsewhere. Deltarune is not a story that needs to have specific discernible labels to its characters' internal struggles, because its not about the answer as much as it is about carrying a question with oneself into another realm. As I or another player may carry insecurities about control of the self into Deltarune, Kris carries their own into the dubiously metaphorical Dark World. As of right now, it is somewhat hard to say whether the Dark Worlds are as real as the life of Kris and their fellow lightners in the Light World, and I doubt this boundary will cease to be toyed with anytime soon. At the end of the first chapter we can see the hint that the card and board game themed Dark World was related to a closet of alike toys, and the connection was made explicit when Kris is told to bring the characters - the darkners - of that previous session into a new ground established in chapter 2’s computer lab. But, at the end of each chapter, just as the player could begin to say to themself it may have all been a dream, Kris tears the player's will out of their body and reminds them how willing this game is to confuse the borders of reality inside fiction and out. Making Deltarune a rather inappropriate choice for attempting to draw clean borders between a clinical and magical character psychology.

Spamton Don't Seem Too Well, Does He?

Exploring the Dark World with a focus on Kris is what finally leads us to the one and only, collective delight of millions, Spamton G. Spamton. He is beloved for being a masterclass in how to lead players into the depths of a stories machinations¹. From pithy lore to fundamental existential questions, Spamton's rich character arc encompasses it all brilliantly, but it's not where to begin, as it is not where Kris nor the player begins. First impressions are critical after all, and Toby Fox has pretty much never let looming implications get in the way of a damn funny character. From his very first textbox after bursting out of a garbage dumpster, Spamton is equal parts incomprehensible and memetic. Players will literally freeze up in utter bafflement as they take whole seconds to comprehend the gaping blank space in his dialogue, with may just giving up on understanding its intention and filling in the gaps either way². Uniformly capitalized text, keyboard smash-esque grammatical errors, odd meter, and most famously, randomly bracketed text abound. Yet somehow by the end of the first bossfight, most players walk away thoroughly engaged in trying to translate his quirks into YTP impressions or an otherwise stilted and manic tone. He disappears after this first encounter till the final area of the game, but its nearly impossible for a player to not be thinking about him after.

¹ See a great - and very inspiring for this essay - breakdown of his character construction in Designing For's video on him!

² For examples of what I mean...

These unique mannerisms of Spamton's are where we find Toby Fox's employment and mastery of one of the most common tropes used to convey insanity and instability in a character. It is a tell-tale example of disorganized speech, specifically through a pattern resembling loose association where the words of the subject are strung along by superficial rather than descriptive content. Usually loose associations sends oblivious sufferers on a chain of associations far beyond what anyone but them can understand, but Spamton's writing seems to marry the idea with concentrated dialogue by way of the system of bracketed text. Spamton will splice tangentially related sales-themed slogans and phrases directly into his sentences before picking back up. Trying to say something along the lines of, "Why be a little whelp who hates its pathetic life," becomes:

"> WHY BE THE [[Little Sponge]] WHO HATES ITS [[$4.99]] LIFE"

A real life loose association phrase meanwhile would likely have taken "little sponge" and began starting a string of words related to the kitchen sink. The genius on display here, is that Spamton succeeds in getting his very important deal-making scheme across while also reading as utterly insane to the player. It's a careful balance of chaos and conscientious use of the player's time, which adds a character-rich twist to this common cliche. As players acclimate and move on from the encounter, they will likely begin to put together more and more patterns in Spamton's speech which fuels the intrigue.

By the time players return to Spamton's shop and spend even more time delighted and/or terrified by his erratic personality, it begins to become clear that 'crazy' in its more dismissive reading is not the whole picture for him. Really it started with his referencing of Kris' "[[HeartShapedObject]]" in the first scene, which may have been lost on disoriented players, but not on the character themself who visibly, autonomously flinched away from Spamton at the mention of this device which binds them to us. But these revelations are still for a time buried under another mountain of equally well-written quirks that have players continuing to second guess Spamton's legitimacy. At his shop, away from the eyes of Kris' fellow party members or surrounding darkners who have already declared him crazy, Spamton unveils the roots of his madness to them and the player. His catchphrase "[[BIG SHOT]]" begins to take form as an analogy for some kind of higher state of being related to Kris' world, or possibly even the player's, and it is self-evident why he seemingly can't shut up about it:

"> I'LL GET SO.
> I'LL GET SO.
> I'LL GET SO.
> I'LL GET SO.
> I'LL GET SO.
> I'LL GET SO.
> [[Hyperlink blocked.]]"

– he sputters like a broken, creepily aware toy. What would in a clinical sense be a delusion is the main drive behind Spamton's entire character, a delusion of control that something or someone above him is pulling the strings of the world, and perhaps one of grandeur at his unflinching certainty in his ability to rise above it.

A new quirk in his disorganized speech also emerges in his shop dialogue which goes from a diet loose association, to abrupt breaks in tone and subject mid sentence. One of the chilling examples is triggered when Spamton tries to discuss some "knight" character - a focal point of fan theorizing - but breaks into frantic apology as soon as the words leave his mouth. Before a player could even suspect if this was a reaction to Kris, he screams:

"> TOO MANY EXCESS VACATION DAYS?? TAKE A GOD DAMN VACATION STRAIGHT TO HELL"

– Most definitely alluding to some other confrontation. In another, bringing up your fears (which could be related toward God knows how many aspects of this sidequest) leads Spamton to a sudden departure from his unending award-winning grimace, as he solemnly asks, "... can anyone hear me? Help...", before immediately springing back to life:

"> HUH??? WHAT?? NO, I DIDN'T HEAR ANYTHING JUST NOW!!!
> ... BUT IT SOUNDED LIKE THEY WERE TALKING TO YOU."

Both can be read as a new flavor of break-down in speech content, and the first one especially as some sort of traumatic flashback, but to keep consistent I believe they could be best read as hints of otherwise unreferenced hallucinations. Perhaps trying to speak of something forbidden triggered accusations in his ears causing him to panic and lose his train of thought, or he accidentally parroted a line out loud (echolalia) and tried to deflect as in the last case.

Leaving the shop, as with the first bossfight, is another crucial point where Spamton has sold a second layer of himself to the players as a personality and character¹. While the full glory of the former won't crystallize until his final confrontation, the latter has been established well enough by now players are choosing to buy tickets to however all this insanity comes together. That insanity is very clinically and unsurprisingly diagnosable as Schizophrenia. Disorganized speech, paranoid delusions, and possible hallucinations are all hallmarks of the disorder and especially its archetype in fiction. His constant smiling affect could even be lumped in with motor dysfunction too if it weren't for the fact that his kin, the addisons display this naturally too. From the backstory the addisons tell of him as an easter egg, a broader picture of Spamton’s life as this living corrupted computer ad comes into focus, in a way which could thematically be read as mood disturbances. A life of never-ending career failures perhaps the result of a persistent depression, only to be broken by a psychotic mania in which brute force of personality and ideas - hallucinated from phone static - sent him soaring into the heights of unsustainable success. But that requires more assumptions about him than are necessary, and in the end the core takeaway here is that Spamton presents with highly readable psychotic symptoms.

So there you have it. A clinical, psycho-pathological reading of Spamton G. Spamton from Deltarune. Satisfied? Hopefully not, because I ignored nearly everything about him that is relevant to the story being told. As Spamton becomes more psychotic to the player, he also becomes more comprehensible in parallel. At the same time players can begin to read him as a paranoid schizophrenic, they realize that his paranoia in all its bracketed glory is directly on the money. He recognizes a power dynamic between the worlds of this story that most others are oblivious or apathetic to, and accurately implicates Kris' role within it while soliciting their favor. His associations are less loose and more censorious, and from their syntax-breaking nature, likely not by the volition of him or anything related to his plane of reality. Even his grossly broken text I attributed to hallucinations may be displays of the raw power some of these characters carry in the narrative, and the fear and disorientation they strike in its subjects. While he is doubtlessly still mentally unstable, he is by no means out of touch with reality as the diagnosis of Schizophrenia defines. Spamton is explicitly speaking arcane truths, not the psychological noise that makes up the real disorder of Schizophrenia, no matter how much his mind is struggling to carry that truth's weight.

Garbage Noise

One of the connections that always chilled me in the Spamton story was the notion of the "garbage noise" which the addisons report coming from the speaker of Spamton's phone. I was sure to make this period in Spamton’s life where he communicated with a mysterious benefactor over the phone a psychotic one in the mood disorder model for that fact. It is on very purposefully ignorant surface-level evidence that a player could say Spamton's insanity came from nothing, but there is a very fun detail in how they themselves can come to hear this garbage noise. If a player opens Kris' phone and tries to make a call, a shrill mechanical tone tears through the receiver instead of a simple text-description of static. Toby Fox wanted the player to understand what "garbage noise" was, but he also wanted the player to understand exactly where it comes from - any line from the Dark World into Kris' Light World. I can't get enough of obfuscations like this in storycrafting, especially here where it simultaneously combines two ideas at once. We only know of nonsense coming through the phones of the Dark World, but we have heard that it is a divine, higher plane nonsense for Spamton. Whether it once gave way to a clear voice or not does not change its deeper content, and in a way, as much as it may invalidate Spamton as a rational subject, the idea it never sounded any different is revealing and chilling.

Why is it that Spamton presents so bluntly as psychotic when we know he is truthful? Even the source of his madness or genius can't be determined as of now as anything but the darkner equivalent of cosmic background radiation! Well, this is because Toby Fox, deliberately or subconsciously, is drawing on centuries to millennia of fictional ideas to shape this character, not our beloved scientific labels. Without a doubt the most modern framework applicable is that of lovecraftian knowledge and memetic hazards, where the world hides are cosmic facts to be learned that tear the psyche of its learner asunder. I could write an entire other essay on how Spamton is quite possibly the most creative and delightful take on this trope ever created, but sadly, claims like that require substantiation. But, with my pre-existing knowledge of psychology and capacity to wax philosophic, I would like to go beyond that thesis as a historical statement, and more so as a theme or story. The story Deltarune is getting out of this reference to the Schizophrenic archetype, the way I could infer the story of DID out of Kris. What the platonic ideal of this human experience means to Deltarune for Toby Fox to write Spamton as such, and what Deltarune intends it to mean for us.

Throughout human history, we have, frankly speaking, not understood a damn thing about what was happening to or around us. When humans saw the subset of ourselves who ranted and raved about things no one else could see, hear, feel, nor touch, there was a natural mix of apprehension and fascination towards them. We are pattern-seeking animals, nonsensically so even at our healthiest, so of course when our kin passionately speak of patterns found in that which we cannot begin to comprehend, we are drawn to the idea of novel and potentially revolutionary knowledge. But routinely, even in superstitious societies, many have tried to follow the patterns drawn by them only to come to naught. Even those afflicted, once in better health, may reflect and find nothing but psychic noise. But every now and then the pattern leads to something, whether that be a religion, a theory, or just a spark of imagination. Imagination for a world where we create the patterns, and tell the characters within and ourselves which to see and which to ignore. For as harmful as many portrayals of schizophrenic and psychotic behavior based on this fossil of reasoning can be, like those distortions of DID, I can't help but see an attempt for empathy in them. A wish to create a world where the disorientation, isolation, and exhaustion of the psychotic mind we see can find a form of radical acceptance.

The product of this story holds true for Kris and Spamton within the broader narrative of Deltarune, with its open look into how reality becomes fantasy and how that fantasy reinforces reality. Spamton is a character with a shocking amount of impact on Kris, despite them being more aware than any other lightner of the falseness of the Dark World. It is more than just the flinch at Spamton’s mention of the player's soul inside them, but their desperate striking of the shell in the basement during the Spamton fight fakeout, and being so emotional after Spamton's defeat that it elicits concern from their party-mates no matter what words the player puts in their mouth. To Kris, Spamton - this ridiculous embodiment of a spam email thrown in the trash - should be no more than an overly interactable and self-aware cartoon. Spamton's words, his actions, and his ambitions have no reason to matter to them, most of the insights he gives are into Kris' own vision. But they nonetheless highlight something in it that shakes Kris to their core, and causes them to look down on this speck of a man from their higher plane, and squirm in empathetic agony. Spamton's struggles speak to their own; speak to freedom, captivity, choice, autonomy. Things that Kris has been struggling with silently since the player opened a save files, and which Kris is for the first time hearing put into words. Passionate, direct yet censored words. Coming from a 3ft tall spam email, but coming from something nonetheless.

Spamton’s struggles do not fall on deaf ears for players either, no more than Kris' do, drawing them deeper into every moment of every interaction between these scheming characters. When a man in the real world speaks of being tied to metaphysical strings and reaching a new plane, others in their superegos understand this to be baseless, but still feel something metaphorical to hold on to. All of us feel patterns which cannot be measured as materially as we would wish on a daily basis. Ones we can connect partially to tried and true philosophies of science, even religious doctrines, but which we strain not to turn into something too cosmic, for fear of chaining ourselves to unreason. An abstracted, diffuse lack of control in life has inspired everything about the human condition down to the delusions of that hypothetical man. But when this intangible captivity is molded and sculpted into a lower reality, into a story, it can become more real, it can become comprehensible and acceptable. So when we are insecure about feigning more knowledge than we could ever truly know about our own cosmos, we create miniatures and have them discourse with us about the patterns we have brought into pseudo-existence. And crucially, for all the pity or fear we cast upon those sick with societal and psychological superstition, we imagine a world where people like them can speak a real truth. Where listening to them and indulging in their passion through all the insanity is not just unashamed but objectively correct. Where the story - not the reality - of psychosis makes sense.

Watch Me Fly, [[Mama]]!

But at the same time, knowing that we cannot truly grasp past our own cosmos anymore than a fictional seer can be rewarded with realness for his insights, we often can't help but write a bitter ending. Deltraune puts Spamton within a unique position, where by being from a world within a world, there was at least that one plane for him to jump to. There is a version of Deltraune where Spamton became a "[[BIG SHOT]]" and entered the Light World. But that is not the version of Deltarune that Toby Fox wanted to tell, because that would be about a hypothetical less real, less true to existence for the player than a spam email coming to life and begging them for money. If Spamton's schemes had succeeded, it likely would have been too unreal for that anyone to even consider trying to diagnose him with a real world sickness, because his failure is what gives him that tangibility. That fantastical caricature based in a true story of human existence allows us to explore our dreams and to blur the lines between ourselves and those we deem a simultaneously wretched and idealized other.

Like Kris cutting the strings of Spamton's big but not "[[BIG]]" enough body, we cut the strings of these dreams to allow sobriety to wash over us, reminded that no character nor person can move past their dedicated realities. Spamton then resigns himself to being an aspect for Kris to carry throughout their adventure, offering: "Let me become your strength." A silent passion once again, after the bombast of his performance that reminds us that it was a truth at one point, spoken by something, by someone. Spamton's lust for freedom, control, and understanding will stay in Kris' heart throughout their own character arc, and once they have succeeded or been cut down in parallel, we, the players, will have an aspect of them with us as well. A reminder that someone out there, some artist named Toby Fox, recognized a truth that we resonated with for all its potential absurdity, and spoke it long enough for us to dream and wake again. Hopefully with a clearer image of the world around us, in all its utter incomprehensibility and infinite meanings. A few of those meanings we hold in our back pocket just became a bit clearer thereafter.

That is why we have magical mental illness. Some of it is ableism and people wishing to assert an arbitrary boundary between sanity and reason, some of it is patronizing misplaced sympathy for struggling people, some of it is a profound meditation on the power of knowledge. It all gets a bit jumbled together after so many years, so many iterations, so many countless voices contributing to the noise that forms into what we would call a trope. But that history of meaning-making is beautiful and it is present in Deltarune. In amazing crystal clarity before the game is even a third of the way finished, may I add. The piecemeal nature of this story is perfect for letting ideas like those of Spamton get as much room to breathe as they can, as I can only imagine the game has more knockouts like him in store, but it would be a crying shame for them to all drown each other out in one single release window. Perhaps because Deltarune is a story about characters digesting stories, it makes most sense too for there to be delays - no matter how asynchronous - between adventures. If people want an excuse to understand why Kris reopened a Dark Fountain at the end of Chapter 2, just think about how hungry we all are to get another bite out of this game and its resonant characters this June!

Why is this So Chaotically Organized??

Ok, so this is a "personality" test broken up into seven dimensions, three of which are explicitly mental disorders and four of which are traits which also align with a disorder. A lot of these are, or are implying, full blown personality disorders. I do not think there is any common proper use for the term 'schizoid' outside of the personality disorder, and that intention is kinda confirmed my OCPD (Obsessive-Compulsive PERSONALITY Disorder) being here cause an OCD or obsessive-compulsive trait on its own would be suspect. Anxiety also falls into that pitfall, because it could mean the trait of neuroticism (tendency to be anxious from the Big Five), or either anxiety disorders or anxious PERSONALITY DISORDER (AXPD)¹. It's probably the latter because it would be consistent, but then why the fuck are non-personality disorders ADHD and PTSD here?

¹ AVOIDANT Personality Disorder. It has so much overlap with the anxiety disorders in terms of traits that I had a Freudian Slip here. I would fix it, but I think it's worth preserving the blunder to emphasize that fact.

The disorders chosen is a mess, going from highly broad without the PD specifier to terribly specific. This not even to mention - why the fuck would you use wholeass personality disorders for a personality test? They're incredibly specific and extreme niches, I don't feel like just throwing away, "Oh yeah you're a bit Dependant PD (DPD) or you're a bit Schizoid PD (SZPD)," is very useful for normalization, screening, or personal insight. If the framing was explicitly like, "here are PD's that you share traits with," that would be one thing, and far more preferable would be, "here are axes of traits and we've chosen ones related to pathologies because its recognizable," even though I doubt anyone knows what OCPD is.

THEN ONCE AGAIN! How is this personality disorders when ADHD, A NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DISORDER, AND PTSD, AN ANXIETY-TRAUMA DISORDER ARE HERE? And I still don't know if "Anxiety" is a stand in PD or neurotic disorder. It mostly just looks like a blender of buzzwords and common traits. OCPD in all its hyperspecificity being there because the testmaker was aware that people think "being OCD" is a personality trait. 'Schizoid' has actually been thrown around as an insult lately from some voices I've heard on the wind, and obviously Narcissism too.

Do Not Fuck With Sonic Psychology - I Will Destroy You

Then we actually have the Sonic half of this. The artwork... Sonic is classic despite everyone else being a modern rendition, I think Amy's and Metal's are traced over from a model or some other awkward art, Tails is missing his fucking nose, and Shadow must be stolen fanart because he has Classic proportions. Then the alignments... Sonic, Shadow, Metal, and Eggman are fine I suppose, though I feel icky calling an inhuman character Schizoid. But hey, the amount people actually know about SZPD and how much characterization Metal Sonic has gotten are pretty much the same.

Tails has never struck me as primarily anxious², he can be insecure but nothing that would point me in the direction of neurotic or personality anxiety. He is outgoing, confident in his abilities but more humble than Sonic, and despite some stumbles, is capable of stepping up to new challenges alone. AXPD represents someone for whom anxious mood is so strong in their sense of self they will sometimes self-isolate from people and situations out of crippling fear of judgment or making a mistake - Tails has never been like that nor is he shown to be neurotically anxious to any notable degrees to me. Like... he's definitely a character where a headcanon of anxiety could be fun - (actually now that I remember it he does have a phobia of lightning, but similarly and more commonly Sonic has a phobia of drowning, so...) - but like as a trait for analysis it's not there.

² Just clarifying - definitely not AVOIDANT either. He's had trouble with bullying in the past but has never shown excessive shyness or fear of others' rejection.

Amy Rose does not have fucking Dependant Personality Disorder. I guess from like that pop culture "we need to stamp a well-known character on this label" way you could say so, but this is again where the implication of PD levels of dysfunction is ridiculous and probably downplaying the disorder. DPD is similar to AXPD in that you are so insecure and debilitated you cannot live or make decisions on your own. You have no confidence in yourself, you are uniformly self-deprecating, and the thought of making nearly any decision without someone you trust near by sends you into paralysis. Amy is fucking none of those things, she's just a dumb little girl with a crush, and it's lowkey rude as hell to take a female character who is just a bit clingy and imply she has dependency problems.

You see, there were actually some interesting arguments I was reading about in my textbook that certain personality disorders like Histrionic (HPD) and Borderline (BPD) are built upon a sexist basis of pathologizing traits many women adopt to cope with the torment nexus of sexism. Basically it goes that they were constructed by men with little insight into or respect for the unique experiences of women, who were looking at social strategies and personality patterns adopted by women to get by in society, and deeming them as problematic because to them as a man those traits are abnormal. Stuff like the flirtatiousness and superficiality found in HPD or the self-deprecation and dependency found in BPD.

I don't completely agree with those hypotheses cause I believe that beyond some of the clear appearances of gender bias in those disorders, they still capture a very abnormal and disorganized relationship with the world and self that is not at all universal to womanhood. But I do absolutely agree some disorders need to be looked at with a more sociological rather than plainly personal lens for sure. We also need to kill anything left of the Freudian, self-appointed daddy-knows-best complex that I do not doubt some psychologists still have towards female clients.

Back to Amy though, I feel like calling her DPD is that exact sort of insidious pathological sexism that those other disorders need to watch out for. Women being clingy does not have to be pathologized on an individual level, you have to think about how women are often conditioned to act from a young age - how they are taught to put all their energy into being a caregiver and then find a man who will take care of everything else, or taught to downplay their competence when around men to be seen as desirable. Amy both as a character and person is like a perfect example of that kind of trap between socialization (or writers' characterization) and how someone processes it (or how her personality can be interpreted given how volatile it is). This to say I think Amy's personality could be a perfect profile for exploring how women are taught to minimize themselves for the sake of finding men whom they don't even really need.

My favorite interpretation of Amy is that she is incredibly strong and competent but because she is caught up in the fantasy of being rescued by Sonic she downplays that. If she's ever being carried away by a robot and yelling for Sonic she is 1000% capable of destroying it herself but is just playing games. But even that sort of self-minimizing is NO WHERE NEAR the pathology of DPD and the complete inability to assume your own agency. It's like that "Belle has Stockholm Syndrome" thing where you deliberately obscure the nuances of a female character to make some pop-feminist gotcha about how #problematic the characterization is. Doubly worse when talking about a literal mental disorder/disability.

Knuckles with OCPD is bonkers, but at least a chance to talk about this very weird disorder. So as y'all probably know, OCD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, is an anxiety disorder where people get stuck in debilitating anxiety-inducing thought loops (obsessions) and placate them with ritualistic behaviors (compulsions). OCPD, Obsessive-Compulsive PERSONALITY Disorder, is actually a lot more like the pop cultural understanding of just being a controlling neat-freak but still to a debilitating degree. Stuff like focusing so much on the details of a task you never get to the big picture, or being unable to compromise in relationships because everything needs to go Your Way.

I don't know how any of that describes Knuckles. I get that he is one of the few in the cast who is strongly tied down by a duty which defines him in contrast to the more chaotic, free-spirited cast, but like. He is not controlling, he's just responsible. His issues with others are usually of suspicion that they're going to get him or purposefully annoy him (Paranoid PD anyone?) than it is that he needs everything to be a certain way. I don't think being fretful over protecting a personally significant and objectively powerful relic makes you obsessive. Like Amy I guess it's just like, yeah stamp SOMEONE'S face on it even if it kinda flanderizes them, but still so weird to even pick that... Why are there so many disorders picked from the objectively niche as fuck Cluster A and C Personality Disorders and just NPD rep'ing for Cluster B like what?

Ok, You Can Fuck With Sonic Psychology A Little

Shadow with PTSD is an analysis that is not really needing of explanation but is still worth discussing. It's overall a really good reading of his character that I think has the opportunity to make him all the more impactful. Mainly cause beyond him just having some symptoms like flashbacks and mood issues, his place as an antihero who had to struggle to make meaning of his trauma is a very good message all in all. Shadow PTSD is GOAT'ed.

Sonic ADHD is also obvious as hell, I think he is like the most stereotypical ADHD mascot ever created, but I personally like to think he's Autistic too. I don't really get how you construct a pattern of pathologies that include a neurodevelopmental disorder like ADHD and not Autism, but I've already told this survey to go fuck itself enough. I also think Sonic is a Narcissist, but my brain is too big for people so they don't get it and just use Eggman as their stand in evil bad person disorder haver. I've probably seen "Sonic is a Narc" takes from people using that as like College Humor punchline though.

Schizoid Personality Disorder is very interesting, rather than being *anti*-social it is a completely *asocial* personality disorder. All the Cluster A disorders (Schizoid, Schizotypal, and Paranoid) are related to the Schizophrenic spectrum, seeming to me to reflect some of the acute changes in behavior and cognition that accompany psychotic episodes. Y'know how like the stereotypical idea of a schizophrenic is some fidgety, dead-eyed person rocking in a corner? People with schizophrenia are not like that 24/7, but when their psychotic symptoms like hallucinations and delusions flare up so do a bunch of odd behaviors and cognitive issues.

One of those, is a sudden asociality, disinterest in social relationships, which is what is in SZPD. You completely lack all interest in other people, their opinions, and your connections with them. It's usually not in the problematic way in ASPD where you also disregard rights and approach the world from a transactional perspective, you're just a chill ass guy who lowkey doesn't give a fuck. There's so little to know about this disorder it seems, but it's very interesting as one of those disorders where its like... I can see how it can be disabling but also... if you're just in your lane vibing and find your niche what's the issue? As fun as the Cluster B (ASPD, BPD, etc) is to fixate on, the other 2 are also fascinating I think because they are so much subtler but likewise more mysterious.

Is Metal Sonic a good pick for representing SZPD (or as this stupid survey is probably trying to say, an asocial personality)? I guess... but SZPD is also one of those disorders where I feel like associating it with inhumanness is very rude and betrays a deep-seated self-righteousness within the science which believes it understands how humans SHOULD be, instead of trying to just help people if they're suffering. To a lot of people the idea of someone completely detached from social interests is scary, it's why more asocial autistic people are still so gawked at, but SZPD is still far beyond even that level.

Then not to mention, Metal kinda just isn't really defined by that. Like of course he's this stand-offish inhuman character who represents cold, calculating cruelty in contrast to Sonic's outgoing nature, but that does not align with the nature of SZPD. Unless you see SZPD as cold, inhuman person disorder... When I think of a character I would have to pick for SZPD I think I would maybe go for Shadow as much as that is also a mischaracterization, but I associate him more with explicit disinterest in others. Maybe Knuckles at least far more than OCPD for chrissake, but SZPD is also defined by low affect and Knuckles is a very expressive character.

I do not know how the fuck you win with trying to find a Sonic character to represent the hyperspecific and controversially defined experience of Schizoid Personality Disorder and I just feel like what is even the point the more I look at it.

Conclusion

So Like I was going back to the quizzes main page to read its BS cause I did remember it saying it cited something. And it was related to a Winnie the Pooh test which is like... OK, whatever, they've done this scale before with different cast of misdiagnosed characters... But it's.... it's...

"On the surface it is an innocent world: Christopher Robin, living in a beautiful forest surrounded by his loyal animal friends. Generations of readers of A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories have enjoyed these seemingly benign tales.1,2 However, perspectives change with time, and it is clear to our group of modern neurodevelopmentalists that these are in fact stories of Seriously Troubled Individuals, many of whom meet DSM-IV3 criteria for significant disorders (Table 1). We have done an exhaustive review of the works of A.A. Milne and offer our conclusions about the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood in hopes that our observations will help the medical community understand that there is a Dark Underside to this world (link)."

I shan't even comment...