hello i am a 17 year old autistic trans person who played undertale when around the time he first found out about his diagnosis and was in incredible denial about it. here is my thread on alphys' autistic coding whether or not it was intended by toby

1. i've played undertale several times and i've been into it since 2015
2. i will be taking things from undertale, but not deltarune as she's a minor npc there
3. if you're allistic and this makes you angry that just makes me even more powerful.

it's important to note before anything that autism pulls symptoms from a "pool" of sorts. no two autistic people go through the exact same things so if you're autistic and some of this doesn't apply to you that makes sense.

first thing to note is probably what is, to me, the most obvious evidence from the game; her special interest for anime/anime-related media such as dating games, especially mew mew kissy cutie. people with autism (including myself) usually have media or things they fixate on-

-strongly and know everything about. when they are brought up, we often tend to "infodump" about it even if nobody really asked. when mettaton asks a question about the game to frisk, alphys immediately begins reciting small plot points by heart and doesn't stop herself until-

-she realizes it was unneeded. also, a key factor of autism is struggling with social skills (i'll get to this more later), and dating/social simulating games can be a way to scratch that social itch without feeling like you're going to embarrass yourself. also gaming in general-

-is a very common special interest

she also loses her stutter when infodumping. when nervous in the game, she often begins stuttering and her words get a bit "jumbled" which can also be linked to autism as well as anxiety

"but she canonically has anxiety and depression! this can just all be part of that!"
anxiety, depression, and autism are comorbid disorders. it's much easier to develop anxiety, depression, ptsd, and other things when you are autistic because of the different brain wiring

alphys CONSTANTLY updates her undernet status, which a lot of people really don't like due to how it disrupts the flow of the game. but personally i think it's a nice look into her character and can also be pointing towards the coding. autistic people often communicate better-

-over text and are also very prone to getting internet/social media addictions.

autism can heavily lower empathy. while this doesn't equal lacking sympathy or feelings, it can definitely make it hard to understand others and, unfortunately, skew morals. not out of maliciousness, but because those of us who suffer from low empathy just can't understand others

which is why i'm bringing the true lab into this. she couldn't put herself into the shoes of any of the monsters she experimented on, or the families who were upset about it. another thing about it is that she was too afraid of rejection to confront the facts

autistic people are often forced to "mask".
this means we have to hide our symptoms and act like different people to be accepted by society. it's common to feel like we have to mask and lie all the time and get incredibly insecure about symptoms we can't help

some more

okay, onto something positive! we tend to get very, VERY passionate about our interests, even if we try to force ourselves into not talking about them in order to seem "normal". we tend to analyze things super closely to find out more details. undyne points this out about alphys

minor detail time! alphys doesn't particularly like making eye contact, especially under stress or when she's shy. this is actually incredibly common for autistic people, including myself. a lot of her sprites feature her eyes moving to the side or down

that's about all i have for now! sorry if this seems cluttered, i honestly just had a few basic ideas then went off in my head without thinking about how i was gonna... structure them. i'll add more if i remember anything, because i could very well be forgetting something!!

another thing my friend pointed out! she does raptor hands! this is because she's... well, literally kind of a dinosaur, but "raptor hands" are common in autistic people since it's hard for us sometimes to keep our hands still when we walk

other things that have been pointed out!
- alphys wears the same type of clothes (lab coats) every day and is implied to not have the best hygeine which are both also potential autism symptoms. i can't find a screenshot and i'm too lazy to go back to my hotland save but her-

wardrobe is shown to be entirely dirty labcoats with one clean dress (the one she wears for her date)

another minor detail which is a throwaway gag that i'm including as evidence anyway. another symptom of autism is heavily involving fiction in your life to the point it connects to ""weird"" beliefs (can manifest as kin, elaborate universe theories, fictosexuality, etc.)

back to "masking". here are more quotes from her that can be attributed to it, coming from her lost soul fight

back to this thread with another thing i noticed (also in deltarune)! autistic people often have VERY strong opinions on media, and if they see writing that's bad or flaws in it they can fixate on it and analyze it. like if a sequel is inferior. i honestly do this with drv3 lol

this might be unintentional since honestly most of the characters in undertale don't make super close movements to you, but a common symptom of autism is hating physical contact. alphys rarely gets physically close to you, even in her "date"

i should mention she does not look used to intimate physical contact and reacts strongly to it, unable to make eye contact with undyne (eye contact is talked about above) and she comically overreacts to her kiss in the pacifist ending

oh! she also keeps her space from undyne in the ending, playing her game system instead while still spending time with her. often for us it takes a while to get used to irl intimacy and it's best for us to just have spaced, presence-based time with our partners at first!

autism can often stunt creativity... to an extent! we take a lot of inspiration from existing media (this also explains autistic children often making recolors of existing characters)! that's why mettaton's basic design is so plain while his ex form is obviously inspired by anime

alphys does not display much body language in her sprites other than basic hand signs. body language is incredibly difficult for us, and often we have to exaggerate them to look "normal". this can be seen as the game's art style as well but it's always fun to analyze it!

also! when she waves her arm around in mettaton's quiz show when infodumping about mew mew kissy cutie, it can easily be seen as stimming! hand flapping/arm waving is a very common stim