Why Is Swatch A Class Traitor???

Why is Swatch a class traitor???

Thank you very much for asking :)

In this post I'll be using he/they pronouns interchangeably to refer to Swatch. I enjoy the idea of they-pronouns Swatch but at the same time I refuse to believe that the only instance of canon pronoun usage to refer to him is misgendering, as some people posted about before, because that's not how Toby flies.

That being said, before talking about Swatch specifically, I need to explain the logic behind this reading of them. Swatch being seen as a "class traitor" is derived from the marxist idea of class consciousness, or in different terms, the fact that people who are in the same economic position understand each other and therefore owe each other solidarity, the idea that people need to be conscious of their position in their society and side with people who will help their situation and improve their lives.

In this sense, a class traitor is a person who, despite understanding their position in the social strata, refuses to side with their peers and instead either shuns them to appeal to a higher social class, to "appear as one of them", so to speak, or completely refuses the idea that they are part of that class to begin with. A good, palpable example, are snobbish, classist doctors. Doctors are employed by someone – be it a hospital, a clinic, an insurance company, the government in some countries, even in private practice, etc, but they are not, by Marx's definitions, owners of capital, aka someone with the exorbitant amount of money that allows them to control production in a large scale (in other words, conglomerates and billionaires). However, having a higher material condition on average, and having attained this social position through study that was allowed by a higher material condition in the first place, some doctors don't realize that they are just as much of a proletariat as the poor man they are treating, and thus exhibit behavior like discrediting, ignoring or even being hostile to people they identify as lesser, despite the fact that they're supposed to be together, sociologically speaking.

What the fuck does that have to do with Swatch, you ask? Well, Swatch is, to put it bluntly, literally a servant to aristocracy. They are, by definition, part of the working class, and therefore they owe solidarity to their fellow workers. Spamton, in direct counterbalance, is a member of the working class who has been elevated, by one way or another, into a position that makes him just as, if not more powerful than aristocracy. Spamton had become burgoise, though he still retains his origin as a working class salesman, that much hasn't changed in him, as far as we can tell. This seems to be going on just fine, if we are to believe Spamton's response in the Q&A, until Spamton needs a support system, when his business goes belly up to the point that he ends up homeless.

I really need to emphasize this point. Spamton isn't a "funny little guy who lives in a non-house cuz it's funny", not even in-universe. He is, put it simply, destitute. He does not live in the trash because he wants to. And, I think that every clear-headed person understands this, you cannot go from being one of, if not the, richest person in your entire world, to a homeless man living in a garbage can who people pretend doesn't exist, unless your peers and your society have wronged you tremendously. Spamton didn't become a homeless man just because he fucked around and found out, he became a homeless man because he fucked around and found out, AND none of his peers from this time wanted to help him. And, most importantly, this includes Swatch.

As a servant, he must know what poverty looks like. He must know what having a material condition worse than the ones you surround yourself with is like. And they did nothing to help, or maybe even contributed to Spamton's isolation, which is a separate can of worms I don't have the energy to look at gameplay videos for at this time of night.

For real, does the guy who sells Spamton's bowties with the label removed, and refers to him as a "crooked salesman", and plays it coy and laments when Spamton goes off the deep end sound like they have class consciousness?

Do they sound like they wouldn't shoo off a poor, hungry plugboy from the palace's kitchen back door?

Swatch has apparently rejected his origin not only as a metaphorically working-class artist, but the fact that he could empathize with other working-class people as well, including the less fortunate and the desperate. This makes him a class traitor, by Marx's own theory.

Of course, there's a lot more nuance to Swatch and Spamton's relationship, especially the fact that Spamton isn't the perfect portrait of a poor victim and is very combative and aggressive, which doesn't make people very willing to empathize with him in the first place. There's also the power inbalance and dynamic involved in the fact that, when Spamton lived in the Pandora Palace, Swatch was his butler as well, and that might complicate things from Swatch's end.

At the end of the day, this is just my own takeaway from Swatch's words about Spamton, and Spamton's words about Swatch. This doesn't mean much for anything besides my own understanding of Deltarune and what sort of fun dynamics I can explore in fanworks, nor does it mean I am claiming it as truth, but I do think it's an interesting exercise in media analysis.

Edited to include a few more words on Spamton becoming burgoise cuz I meant to do that but forgor lmao

This is some really tasty analysis, highly recommend reading it

The basic premise of this theory is that the Angel from the prophesy and everything that relates to them ends up being the player, and there's a lot of really good arguments in that favor. I hadn't really thought about it from this perspective before and it totally makes sense

drink up

Some remarks about Spamton's hair

This is so minimal and so stupid but it's a detail I really really like

It just dawned on me that this?

this little bitch has a comb over, not a pompadour or slicked back hair or whatever. In the cungadero air freshener, he has a widow's peak, and presumably that's him in the past, right? Which means he probably doesn't have all that hair to spare anymore. How tragic for him

Which means not only that he's trying to hide his receding hairline, it also means that the comb over is all fucked up in Spamton NEO's sprites, truly showing his unhingedness

Look at this balding middle aged man. Stupid motherfucker

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?

the amount of times spamton lets kris know and emphasizes he won’t/can’t force them to do anything hits me so hard

he says it not just once, not twice, but three times. so its clearly really important to him that kris knows that.

if there’s one thing spamton deeply cares about, it’s the ability for people to make their own choices. to be able to think for themselves. just to have the option to follow their own judgment. you can of course, still persuade someone to do something, because if you persuade someone that’s still them weighing the pros and cons for themself. they still have the option to choose. he’s pretty principled in this regard.

he wants kris to be able to make their own choices too. as a puppet he can’t have that for himself, and he sees a kindered soul in kris—he sees them as an extension of himself, and so whatever logic applies to him applies to them as well, including his principle of the freedom of choice. that also means the concept of consent would be extremely important to him. he does not want to force his will upon others.

and that’s another point i should touch on. here’s another few lines that strike me as profound.

spamton immediately acknowledges after saying “NO, I DIDN’T HEAR ANYTHING JUST NOW!!!” that something was said, rendering the former line that he didn’t hear anything as bullshit. it’s really hard to put this into words, and i can’t describe it as anything other than desperate. he is so consciously aware of how fucked he is. but for whatever reasons he has a hard time being direct about it.

i do not believe this was due to some metatextual force preventing him from asking for help. i think it’s just his personality and his principles.

he doesn’t want to force his will on others. so he has to do it indirectly. he’d feel a bit of shame, i guess, in asking for help. i mean he does want help but he needs to ask for it indirectly. you know how some people are like, “just asking …. for a friend”? it’s EXACTLY like that. he knows he needs help and does want help but he can’t accept that. he can’t let himself seem cringe and maudlin with no good reason. so he has to cast his personal sentiment off into the objective ether and like, separate it from himself, or subject it to logical scaffolding. he doesn’t understand why someone would value individual sentiments over reason; it feels like an accident for him to be feeling something. unless he assumes control over it for the sake of creating a deliberate sentimental impact on others, he’s got the “if i said anything worrying no i didnt <3” mindset.

you could get it out of him but only if you sat down and went, “okay. let’s be real with each other..level with me. tell me your demons and i’ll tell you mine. fair?” and he realizes he has nothing to hide or lose. because what’s happening here is that you’d be giving him persmission—consent. he doesn’t want to drop something heavy on you if the context is not appropriate for it. he doesn’t want to impose his will on you. he won’t force you to listen, he can’t force you. the world does not move towards him, he moves towards the world. he needs your consent that it’s okay first. because otherwise he senses that he is bringing the atmosphere down. that is why spamton was so quick to brush off his cry for help. it wasn’t professional. it wasn’t in his controlled presentation that he chooses to manifest for the sake of others. and it’s like, “fuck i cant do that to a customer. fuck me. they don’t wanna hear that. i need to be a good host to them.” (and good GOD i feel that SO fucking hard it’s unreal. “how are you feeling?” hey hey that’s MY thing to ask. let’s not get too carried away.)

anyway. going back to the beginning, these lines, not only just by themselves in isolation, but also in the context of being repeated for emphasis, is genuinely one of spamton’s most touching aspects i think. auhhaaahhgghhh

spamton is a funny horrible little bastard that exudes pure slime and sleaze. if spamton had a canon voice it would be some utterly hellish choppily bitcrushed hackjob combination of rocket raccoon, king candy, the clown from the animaniacs episode “clown and out”, bill cipher, and that horrible little demon rumplestiltskin from shrek 4, intercut with random clips of big shot autos and youtube poops. spamton has stolen someone’s gender twice and the half his personality that isnt pure concentrated essence of scumbag is obsession with becoming a pink mecha with built-in makeup because he saw mettaton once and got gender envy. the only emotions he still has the capacity to feel are hatred, hatred 2, hatred-misery flavor, and several forms of rage available only to birds and chihuahuas. spamton has rabies and every disease including several bird ones at once and is only alive because they’re all too busy fighting eachother. spamton is on a heartstopping amount of crack at all times. spamton has liead so much his nose is longer than his legs (to suck up crack more efficiently) and and spamton impales people with it. spamton looks like the guy from saw mated with a trollface. spamton is catholic but the g stands for god is dead. spamton would take candy from a baby. spamton would take a baby. spamton would get into black market organ sales. spamton spends his entire time onscreen remorselessly manipulating teenagers to get them to let him try to murder them or selling them sadistic torure-rings to get them to commit genocide and calling a teenage girl a hoochi mama multiple times. spamton is literally just flowey/chara without the power to act on the isolation-induced genocidal childmurder hate. spamton is a spam email gjinka. spamton looks like every single homestuck character at once. spamton says fuck. i guarantee “little sponge” is just toby didn’t think he could get away with calling kris a little shit. spamton is not smiling, it’s more like “i’m showing you the things i’m going to use to rip out your fucking jugular if you don’t give me your kromer right now bitch i’ll kill you I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU”. spamton is old man mcgucket if he used to be a used car salesman and when opening the back door of any establishment one must be careful to shoo away the wild spamton and it’s miniature clones with a broom lest it drop to all fours and hiss at you like a raccoon. spamton is the deltarune universe’s cut-me-own-throat dibbler. if the deltarune timeline of internet development was anything like the real world spamton is pushing 50. spamton sold cars but never had a driver’s license. spamton is either dark mettaton or mettaton 10 years from now after his mtt-tv brand falls apart. spamton’s parents are the guy in the kirby anime and ea-nasir. spamton has a typing quirk. spamton looks and sounds like the vengeful ghost of a woodpecker that drowned in a hair gel factory accident. there is a disturbingly large chance that spamton mpreg is canon. spamton would sell cryptocurrency

did i mention half of his attacks are throwing his implied mpreg spawn at you