Ok Intro Out Of The Way. I'm Gonna Reblog Some Of My Own Posts Now

ok intro out of the way. i'm gonna reblog some of my own posts now

Do you see my vision?

Okay, I've cooked lunch. Let's get to real cooking now.

Basically once every few years I like watching a 100% playthrough of Majora's Mask (usually that ancient commentated one by Zelda Dungeon but this year I opted for a single video 10 hour no-commentary HD mod playthrough), and this year as I was practicing this tradition I started reflecting upon what I like about MM. It's not just that its themes are more reflective of death, it's not just that everything in it is written in a way to always culminate in the end of the 72 hours. What I like the most about it is how compact it is compared to OoT. The lack of Hyrule Fields means that everything in Termina is closer together. It feels like a more closed, more comfortable experience than the vast expanse of Hyrule.

Another thing I really like, and that's more coincidental than anything, is that the models and characters are all more or less the same as in Ocarina of Time, but they all have completely different roles and relationships to one another, although not exactly that much different from OoT. This is what made my synapses fire up at 1 A.M. to post the sentence "I think Undertale is Majoras Mask for Deltarune's Ocarina of Time" nine hours later after i wokeup

Here's my reasoning: I mostly understand Majora's Mask as an allegory for Link's existential crisis and his way of coping with loss and change from the end of OoT when he chooses to continue being a child. Termina is all centered around the idea of imminent impact, imminent change, something you can't control and yet will still come, the end of a world as you know it and beginning of something you don't know. That's a very vivid picture of what Link might be feeling during OoT, realizing he's not a fairy boy and becoming a knight for a princess and being part of a prophecy that perpetuates for generations and having to defeat the literal incarnation of evil who is a huge buff man and having to grow up and travel through time and link's like 12. That's a lot of change in an incredibly small amount of time. Of course Link'll be thinking about it for a while.

So, taking the interpretation that Majora's Mask is allegorical, I circle this back to Undertale and Deltarune: I think Undertale too is some sort of allegory for Deltarune. Deltarune is obviously the more expansive game of the two, has been worked on the longest and was intended to come first. All of the characters that appear in Undertale are present in Deltarune in more... Let's say grounded roles, and sometimes less idealistic than in Undertale. To illustrate my point:

"divorced mom and dad" -> "mom who lives in isolation and dad who lives far away and also they're the royals"

"suddenly there new grocery shop owner and his little brother who i wanna befriend so bad" -> "two cool skeleton brothers who showed up out of nowhere that everyone likes and who are your best friends"

"old man who died long ago who was beloved by all that you've never met" -> "old man who is still alive who tells you cool stories and is super smart and fun to hang with"

et cetera

Add onto this the concept that Undertale is a comfortable and safe game, which is something I really like. When I first played it, Undertale made me nostalgic for something I've never experienced; nostalgia without a subject. Finally, after 8 slutty, slutty years, I figured out why. It makes me nostalgic for a time in your infancy where you understand the world as friendly, because you're still too small to have experienced much more than your own home. Everyone is looking out for you and nobody wants to harm you. Undertale feels so comfortable to me because I know no characters in that game are dangerous due to bad intentions (which is another part of my disdain for evil gaster headcanons but i'm getting ahead of myself there), and I know that most of the characters, when they are threatening, are just putting on a show to interact with you (I promise you, if you play Undertale with the mindset that all of the monsters are either humoring or babysitting Frisk it turns into such an amusing little game). And in that regard, it's very contrastant how different Deltarune is. Deltarune is more mature in that sense – in the idea that there are ill intentioned people in the world, people who are not giving themselves the responsibility to be nice to kids and teens, a world that is more complex than a teenager would wish it to be.

So, in summation, Undertale appears to be an allegorical, idealized, safe world based on the world of Deltarune. Whether this means that Frisk is a representation of Kris from their own perspective, or something else, I don't think we have the information to figure out yet. But what would this mean for their unrelated-ness?

I do believe that when Toby let everyone know that Undertale and Deltarune were Unrelated, I don't think he meant it "completely". I think he meant it in a way to stop people from viewing them in a linear way, as in, one is a sequel to the other, in which the same logic and lore would apply. I think Undertale and Deltarune are related in either of two ways:

Undertale is fictional inside of Deltarune (thus, it actually has 3 levels of fictionality which is something I wanna talk about some other day)

Undertale is a rearranging of the Deltarune universe (if you're a homestuck girlie, effectively a post-scratch universe), in which some relationships and worldly rules are maintained and some are reworked towards a specific goal.

I think that, by the time Chapter 7 is published, we will have the answer to this, but for now, there's not enough canon info out there to draw any conclusion, including the one this same theory brings up: What is Undertale an allegory for?

(personally, I think it'd fit within the themes of escapism and idealization turned into unhealtiness, as well as the wish every older teen/young adult has to return to childhood, but that's again a topic for another post)

But yeah. This is why Deltarune is Ocarina of Time and Undertale is Majora's Mask. Enjoy the meal.

Do you see my vision?

I feel like Spamton would enjoy gambling, slot machines especially. I’m not sure why, it’s just a thought I had

I don't think so. He does say he is not in it for the money, but for the freedom. Plus you tend to lose more money than you gain...He would not want to re-live that.

I did hear a long time ago that casinos are apparently designed in such a way that it's easy to get lost in, and I think he would hate that.

Personally, I'm a "Spamton is in his 60s" truther. I think he became big in his mid to late 30s after a really long time of struggling business (at least a decade! For desperation purposes) and then being big got to his head so much that the fall made him forever washed up, a dead salesman (him being in his 60s is also a good way to link him to Death of a Salesman, which to me sounds like a big inspiration to the character, since in the play Willy Loman is also in his 60s. Too old to be productive, too young to be set for life).

I think that if he's in his 60s now it's interesting to think about what it does for his "cultural age", so to speak. A guy in his 40s now grew up in the 80s, in an era where brands and franchises have been thoroughly figured out. He'd do a lot more brand references to things he likes, for instance. But a guy who grew up in the 60s and 70s? Spamton would've been exposed to hippy culture, the rise of huge corporations and the collapse of the american dream cultural phenomenon in a formative age, which, at least from my perspective, complements his character really well. I think that because all the values he's been taught as true and correct are now a thing of the past — it reinforces his washed up desperate themes, as well as the more unsavory aspects of his character.

Spamton himself is a thing of the past, which is why he was left to collect dust in the trash. Forgotten, antiquated, useless. No wonder he goes insane.

I’m a “Spamton is even older than 45” truther.

On Spamton and Villany

I thought about writing this because I think reflecting on his role in the narrative is interesting

He's a villain in the sense that he's an antagonist. Literally has a mini boss battle, a secret boss battle and is the main antagonist and final boss of the alternative route. When you lay out his story and his actions he quite literally behaves like the evil corporate guy from a late 90s movie about dogs saving the day. It's impossible to deny he's a villain, even as sympathetic as his story as told by him makes him seem to be

Just because a villain is sympathetic and relatable doesn't mean that they're not a villain, and just because a character is a villain by definition doesn't mean they can't be sympathetic and relatable. More often than not, villains really do turn out to be more sympathetic and relatable simply because they need to be more developed for them to make sense as a villain (have motive and reason, etc), which isn't always the case for protagonists and heros.

That being said, Spamton is a fascinating character because while he's a villain and he's a pretty shitty person in general, his backstory, the way he frames it for the player, and his entire side quest make him extremely appealing, to the point you're pretty much willing to forget or brush aside all his bad behavior, because after all, he's nothing but a poor little meow meow

And that's exactly what he wants you to think.