Game Enjambment is a reoccurring poetry series on games and gaming.

Most games encourage you to dehumanize your actions while playing. Most games don’t presume your choices reflect your personal morality—except for Undertale. This poem is inspired by these notions and these choices.

Three Sans skulls float on the left of the screen—red, white, and cyan, all slightly overlapping. Text in the same three colors, overlaid so it looks like it's vibrating, reads, "* … You'd be dead where you stand." Undertale, Toby Fox, 2015

digital me in a digital world

ONE

being human and being humane are different paths.

TWO

being digital and expecting digital good is a paradox.

THREE

bone-sans asks, after you murder every digital friend, “do you think even the worst person can change?
that everybody can be a good person,
if they just try?”

who said i didn’t try

FOUR

you felt your sins crawling on your back.

FIVE

i’m consumed by digital goodness. i want to be digitally humane. i want to be a digital human. i want to be human. i want to be human. i want to be determined.

SIX

monsters crawling on your back.
monsters crawling at your feet.

“yeah, you’re the type of person who won’t ever be happy”

sans crawling in my head.

SEVEN

games expect you to be digital neutral and expect you to be human/e.

EIGHT

“i thought we could be friends”

NINE

visual sins/sans. sans humanity. sans regret. sins splayed around. sin, digital real sin, all the same. one is a path, one is an echo.

being digital evil is the same as being human evil.

 

Read the rest of the Game Enjambment series.

 

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