my thoughts on the Toby Fox situation

10/04/2026 22:57
i personally stand against toby's defendants, and use a few arguments on the Latin side of things.
- other literary works such as The Lord of the Rings, Shakespeare, the Illiad, El Quijote, Dante's Odyssey, 1984, Harry Potter, heck, even religious material such as the Bible; have a much deeper meaning than what Undertale/Deltarune could ever offer, and they're all translated into many languages; so the argument that the game cannot be adapted due to him not being able to verify the "vision" of the story is flawed, in my opinion.
- professional localizers' job is precisely to fix this issue; they are trained to understand all the features of a language; including stuff as puns, references, wordplay, ambiguities, etc. and accurately adapt them to another language
- not providing an official translation because it "doesn't match his vision" and letting fans interpret whatever they interpret is actually *worse* for maintaining his vision for the game, since, unlike professional translators, they might not be trained for that task (they don't have any reason to). so toby's fear of people playing with an unreviewed translation and being misled to certain conclusions about the lore is actually happening. one clear example is "Kris' gender is up to interpretation" which, if left alone, people in the Hispanic community would still believe it.
that being said, taking things to such an extreme, like referring to toby as racist, zionist or xenophobic, and associating him with ICE; is an exaggeration that should have never happened. same goes for actually racist people taking toby's side but with an extremist mindset, and actually harassing latin americans for (loudly) requesting an adaptation.
then there are the elitist, bootlickers, potentially xenophobic people that stand with "just learn english" or "oh so you want a translation? fund toby for it". these are the people that make this discussion much more chaotic and personal.
oh right, and then there's people who aren't from Latin America, and already speak English as their native language, simply lack any kind of interest on this situation and dismiss it as irrelevant (it is not), annoying (perhaps), or even oppose to it just for the sake of opposing.