I Went Ahead And Did Some Important Setting Maintenance To This Blog, Including Setting Up A Real Theme.

I went ahead and did some important setting maintenance to this blog, including setting up a real theme. Let me know if it looks cool enough, i'm still tinkering with colors. I've got some good metaposts cooking in the oven right now to share

I’m not trying to be like “Spamton was never happy” because I don’t think that’s accurate, but I don’t think that being famous was something he enjoyed as much as he makes it sound like he did.

A lot of celebrities will say that fame makes it harder to form relationships, because there’s always that question of “are they really my friend/lover/etc or do they just want to be near me because I’m famous” that lingers in the back of their minds.

Spamton probably had better relationships back when he was with the addisons, it’s easy for me to imagine him internally doubting his new friends and refusing to get overly close to them when he was a big shot, because he’s always worried about the possibility of them only liking Mr. Number 1 Rated Salesman 1997 and not the real, genuine Spamton G. Spamton that’s hidden behind his big image. 

And at this point, he doesn’t want anyone to see the genuine Spamton, that Spamton was unsuccessful and forgettable and it’s uncomfortable for him to think about who he really is. Or who he really “was,” because he’s trying his best to put his addison days behind him. He can’t fathom the idea that anyone else would want to see the genuine Spamton either, especially when he can be a big shot for them instead, so even if he made new friends that would have been supportive and would have wanted to get closer to him, he just pushes them away and stops them from forming any kind of deeper connections.

Also, it’s probably worse since he needed help to get famous. He wouldn’t be where he is without Mike and the person on the phone, and he’s so happy and grateful for his success, but it just makes his image seem all the more fake. He sees all the posters of his face around the city and thinks, is that really me? Is that really what people want me to be?

Oh god, and when he falls from grace and his business fails. That had to have been his worst fears coming true, because none of his new high-class friends were there to help him. As soon as he was no longer big, they just left him to struggle alone. 

What if he had tried to form a deeper bond with them, what if he hadn’t kept them at arm’s length the whole time and had been their friend instead of a friendly acquaintance? If there was something that he could’ve done to build those relationships, it was too late to do anything now, and he’d already left all of his old friends in the dust when he became big, so he’s burned all of his bridges. 

So Spamton has to face the consequences alone. Nobody hardly even notices him struggling. And after the neo fight, when it seems like he’s actually died, who is there to care about him? If his popular friends even noticed, they don’t comment on it, they don’t cry for him. 

The only one from his days of fame that seems to remember him? Swatch. Swatch has sympathy for him and his fate, but they’re giving him the kind of pity you’d give when you read in the paper that an old has-been celebrity died. It’s kind of them to speak of him in a sympathetic light despite everything, but at the same time it’s a cold, informal type of sympathy, not the kind of sympathy you’d show to a friend.

The only ones who on some level cared about Spamton through everything were the addisons. They pretend not to know him if asked, and if they were aware of what happened to him post-eviction, then they looked the other way, which was cruel of them. But there was probably bad blood on both sides here, and both Spamton and the addisons likely did and said some less than kind things to each other. I don’t think it’s fair to blame either party for the fallout Spamton had with them, it seems like they all had a hand in causing it.

But before everything went wrong, the addisons used to socialize with Spamton over at the cyber grill, they treated him like any other addison even back when he was small and unsuccessful. They were the only ones who even attempted to check on him after he was evicted. They go as far as to close their shops, the foundation for their sole purpose in life, just to take a moment to properly mourn him.

The addisons weren’t there for him as much as they should’ve been, but in the end, none of the people he knew when he was a big shot were willing to be a friend to him after things turned sour. It was only his old friends the addisons who still cared enough about Spamton to try to honor his memory in some way.

I'm replying on my UTDR metaposting blog, I hope that's fine

As more people pointed out, Chara is not a "prince", even if they were to be in the game in this sense. Toby Fox wouldn't literally misgender a character just to do a red herring in a prophecy he wrote. Second of all, Undertale and Deltarune are completely unrelated. There are themes that were introduced in Undertale that carry over to Deltarune, and there are definitely parallels between the two games, but these worlds are not the same continuity and the creator explicitly told people that they should not be thought of as the same continuity.

It also does seem weird that of all three of the characters you point as "fitting the prophecy to a tee" Kris is the only one who actually resembles the character sillouette shown in the prophecy image. You'd think either all of them match, or none of them match. It's really hard to find inconsistence like the one you're theorizing to be real in Toby's storytelling. This is simply not how these games are constructed.

List of other characters that fit the prophecy to a tee according your own logic:

- Kris, Susie, Ralsei (this i personally believe is a red herring because Ralsei is an unreliable narrator AND he doesn't resemble the sillouette of the prince of the dark as closely as Kris and Susie resemble theirs)

- Kris, Susie and Lancer (he's more of a prince than Chara because he's literally the son of a king in this same continuity)

- Frisk, Sans and Asriel (since we're putting undertale into the mix)

- The player, Monster Kid and Gaster (you have to wonder why Gaster is always associated with the dark, no? He certainly fits the role of a prince)

- Chara, Asriel back from university, The Knight

Seriously, the list goes on. If all you're evaluating is the single sentence ("A HUMAN, a MONSTER, and a PRINCE FROM THE DARK"), it is way too vague to draw any conclusions. It could literally be anyone. Chara is not in Deltarune in the same way they are in Undertale, if they're there at all. I know about the theory that they interrupt Gaster in the goner maker and I do believe it has merit, but I don't think we have enough information to say anything conclusive about Chara, the prince from the dark, or anyone else in this prophecy.

I'm sorry, but the fact that Kris, Gaster, and Chara fit the Deltarune prophecy to a tee just can not be overlooked.

P.S. And when you consider that both Chara and Gaster are shown to have knowledge of other worlds and that ALL THREE OF THESE PEOPLE KNOW OF YOUR EXISTENCE, all of a sudden it doesn't seem so coincidental.

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

"Swatch is Crowbar" okay Mafa. Tell us more

I'll do you one better, watcher, I'll make a List:

Both are triangular

Both are in charge of well-dressed buff men (and women) (who wear bowties)

Both have horizontal-like relationships with strong women that use whips as their primary weapon and are all about commanding other things or people

There's more similarities but I'm fast approaching the image limit and tumblr doesn't like it when I do that on an ask. Here's the rest of the list:

Both can be very rude (Swatch moreso passive-aggressively or behind people's backs, but they can definitely be rude if they want to; Crowbar takes a more physical stance to rudeness)

Both take pride in their leadership, even though Swatch seems to have a better relationship with the Swatchlings than Crowbar has with the rest of the Felt

Both are middle-management (they lead other people, but also have a boss they respond to, and in both cases they respond to that person with passion and loyalty)

They're both weirdos (affectionate)

Both are bisexual royals

Both the Felt and the Swatchlings rely heavily on colors for self-identification

Knowing how many other references to Homestuck there are in Deltarune, this can't be just a Very Specific Coincidence. I'm not sure what this means in the grand scheme of things though.

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