i ADORE this game. the first time i played the demo i had just started college after leaving secondary school. i won't get into details, but i've survived a lot of academic abuse. this game was the thing that made it click for me that i hadn't really been there for myself. there's this one part in the step 2 demo where qiu like. ragdolls on you. and playing it made part of me feel really upset and bitter because when i was 14, my best friend was really not doing well mentally and also being neglected, so their hygeine was bad. i mean like i was picked on for being their friend because it was so bad. so i hadn't really had anyone who i could be that cuddly with!
that whole debacle led me down a rabbit hole that helped me realise some important things. okay so you know how sometimes people talk about healing trauma by doing stuff that would've made their younger selves happy??? i do that a lot and i think of my younger self as an entirely seperate person to me. playing that part of olnf made me realise that............ there's no way to explain it other than as well as having an inner child i have an inner tween as well. and i'd been neglecting her for years. like yeah okay my 7 year old self is having the time of her life living vicariously through me, but my 12 year old self is still physically unable to consume media where kids around her age have healthy friendships without getting angry and sad and demanding to know why it couldn't have been her.
since i realised that, i've been trying to reconnect with my inner tween again and i'm feeling a lot better. i've reignited old hobbies and reconnected with old friends - a new theatre group has started up and i've joined rangers, because i used to be in brownies, dropped out of guides during lockdown and then had a run-in with one of the other members when i was about 13 and never went back. now i'm in rangers on mondays, one theatre group on wednesdays, and the new group on thurdays. one of the people in that group used to be my best friend before life got in the way and who i'm already reconnecting with. the cast list for the show we're doing, fame, came out 3 days ago. we've both got leads. again, if not for this game i don't know if i'd have done any of this.
on another note, playing through the start of school in step 1 and being able to be distrustful towards the teacher feels incredibly cathartic. my main coping mechanism with school was to unconsciously almost compulsively find silver linings to things - even the teachers who abused me or my friends had some redeeming quality to them, so when i had to see them the following lesson it was easier to pretend to like them. i didn't start hating the teacher who abused me as a kid until i was 16 because it was the first time i was in a safe place to acknowledge the flaws of the education system, since i didn't have to put my uniform on the next day.
like i said, olnf is important to me.