Dont blaze 5k word chara metaposting on my dash and not expact me to scrutinize it to oblivion out of boredom

Don't call that child demon if you're unwilling to interact with the fact that what drives the genocide run is the player and chara is merely a vessel for that

They arent punishing the player for their sins. Sans is already doing that due to being the judge at the end of every run

I like saying that chara is a vessel within a vessel because they are being "possessed" by the player and they are "possessing" Frisk. Theyre more or less a tabula rasa for our own intentions interacting with the game and what you put into chara you get out of them, this is, you're naming them at the start of the game, so they are very much intended to be a vessel for the player. The fact that they are a fleshed out human being beyond the player's actions in the past is, I believe, a direct dialogue with Deltarune and its thematic of determinism, control and lack of it. I could elaborate this a bit more but im not sure being verborrheic gets the point across better

I dont think i ever made this connection... sits down and ponders

@rubsjuice its just that puppet/cat is Spamtons element! The implications of this mannequin resisting his elements, somehow weakening him or catching him off guard, are interesting...

Oh yeaah, I knew this information but i hadn't made the connection that it was weakening/catching him off guard in a more meaningful way than simply mechanics!

My personal understanding of Spamton vis-a-vis the mannequin wearing The Dress That Makes You Trans is that Spamton is a trans woman (or at least transfem) so deep in denial and rejection it's fucking up his whole life. I'd have to do something more extensive to fully explore that interpretation but I think it's such an interesting facet of him. Cognitohazarded by his own damn self

Sorry this is mostly unprompted I just had to get this out of my system.

Addendum (sorry its difficult to read never try to make text in paint.net it all went wrong.)

You ever think about how Undertale uses Flowey to break the 4th wall, without actually breaking the 4th wall? The game merely imitates the vocabulary of 4th wall breaks...

...through the words of a grieving boy who just wants his best friend back

That's why the fallen human is essentially our "role" in the story. That's why Flowey is set up as a player parallel. From beginning to end, this was always a story about Asriel and Chara. In Undertale's story, the role of "player" is, metanarratively, the role of a ghost.

That's why the story is so heavily character driven. That's why progress is marked by helping people move on from the past. That's why the game ends (and can only truly end) by asking us to let go.

It's a ghost story. It's all a fucking ghost story.

sometimes i feel like toby fox made spamton and the addisons especially for people to hyperfixate on. everything about them seems so perfect for people to go rabid about its insane to me

for one, spamton himself pretty much counts for 4 people, those being addispam, big shot spamton, in game spamton, and spamton neo. now sure you mostly see people going rabid about in game spamton but ive seen plenty of people who are obsessed with a version we dont get to see on screen

secondly, even the main in game spamton himself is kinda up to interpretation. loads of people characterise him differently. if i compared two aus to eachother theyd often be very different and depending on the ones i chose could be almost like 2 different people, and then if i compared those to in-game spamton, theyd still be very different. also since you dont see addispam and big shot spamton on screen you dont even know what they acted like so again basically you can make your own guy to fixate on with a few prompts as to what he was like

dont even get me started on the addisons. now im biased as fuck here seeing that ive been fixated on the addisons for like 6 months now (send help) but toby fox basically gave us 4 templates for us to have fun with. sure based off of in game dialogue you have a bit to go off of when it comes to their personality (pink being an asshole and blue being caring for example) but even then every addison in every different au is slightly different and i have never seen two addisons turn out exactly the same. ALSO you dont even know the relationship these characters have to spamton meaning you can have them be siblings, you can have them be friends, or you can ship them based off of what you enjoy. OR you could just ignore them altogether (which a lot of people do lmao)

also another thing is the fact that you dont necessarily need to have your addisons' personalities just reflect off of spamtons. I mean the main 4 addisons give you enough to go off of to make your own, and you are given cyber city, an entire fantasy world for you to put them in. cyber city again is up to interpretation, some people have it be like a normal city, some people make it a utopia, some people make it a hellscape. the choice is yours!!

and even then in game spamton is so versatile. he is perfect for angsty stuff, fluffy stuff, or jsut silly stuff, and none of it is out of character. you couldnt really make an angsty spongebob edit could you, itd be weird and out of characer and no one would take it seriously. but also you couldnt make a silly walten files video, sure people do but its out of character and wouldnt actually happen canonically. but spamton on the other hand. hes the kinda guy who you can draw holding a wallet in his mouth like a cat and generally being silly but also you could draw him sobbing at the bottom of dumpster and neither would be out of character!! AAAA

also extra thing i thought id add but his backstory is also very up to interpretation, like i dont think ive ever seen two people who think spamtons rise and downfall went exactly the same. sure everyone has the same general idea of how it went but some people believe in acid theory, some people believe in puppetification theory, some people have a mix of both, some people have their own idea of how it went down, and with that you can project different parts of your own trauma onto whatever happened to him.

ok sorry that was so long thank you for reading my very biased ramble about why spamton is perfect byeeee

"the player is a character in deltarune" not as in "the player is not us" but as in "we are playing a role in a role-playing game, and that role comes with certain characteristics that we are assumed to have. there is a construct of 'player' that the game assumes we are."

critically the game assumes (and induces this in us!) we have nostalgia for undertale, and that we are somewhat inclined to view the fantasy worlds as having less consequence than the "realistic" world of the light world. these interlocking character traits are commented on and deconstructed by the game, because these beliefs directly lead to us having a harmful view of the characters in the game and the dark worlds!

basically i think the "character" we are assumed to be is treated not unlike the "character" we play in undertale's no mercy route. not that having nostalgia or being a completionist are inherently bad things, of course, but I think both games are trying to explore those things as something that can cause harm to worlds we have near-absolute control over

yknow i think the fact that the utdr community tends to skew younger is a little unfortunate for how some of toby fox’s utterly brilliant writing is lost. i dont think younger people quite see the full scope of the meta horror element of video game easter eggs without having been a part of the pre-internet/early-internet world. icepalace_glaceir and egg especially i dont think will hit people quite the same if they never played games in the era before social media.

it’s hard to overemphasize how isolating playing video games was before the internet became an organized, tagged, easily-searchable universal database, or even before it existed at all.

if you were lucky, you knew maybe one other kid who played the same games you did, or had a sibling close enough in age to you to take interest. that was it. other than that, you navigated these worlds completely on your own, having to learn their rules and what their “normal” is without any outside guidance. if you were poor (and you most likely were), you only had a very small number of games that you would play and replay endlessly. you would explore every inch of terrain, examine every polygon, out of pure habit more than anything.

so when something in that familiar lattice is suddenly, unexplainably different, it’s horrifying in a way that’s really hard to put to words. it’s coming home to your solo apartment to find your furniture newly askew. it’s the unknown, the fact that all the rules you thought you understood are being broken. and through all these gnawing feelings, there’s absolutely no one you can tell who will understand, and those rare few that can will most likely not believe you. so whether it’s an easter egg, a glitch, or something else - it’s you, alone, having to newly rationalize this foreign invader to your world. will you shut the game off, hide it away on a shelf to never think about it again? or will you investigate further to try and grasp it? every individual reacts differently - but they all know the overpowering emotion that came with finding it.

it’s why we fell for mew under the truck, for san andreas’ bigfoot. almost every single one of us had some personal event, some elusive experience that sounded so unbelievable to any outsider - and yet it happened. the concept of what could and couldn’t be in a video game became muddy, uncertain. “every copy of ___ is personalized” might be a joking phrase, but that really is an accurate way to describe how it felt. or, with the fact that having a dirty cartridge could cause bizarre, unique occurrences to occur - how it actually was. some people question why one would be afraid of antipiracy screens. well, this all is exactly why.

all this is why i find utdr’s current direction for gaster so transfixing. “he” is not a character to me - to me, “he” represents this concept. of being able to peer through the tiniest crack in the foundation of a digital world, and to see something peering back at you.

i guess i should wrap this up with an example of this phenomenon that i actually personally experienced, so people don’t think i’m dramatizing this.

in the original animal crossing for gcn, there’s an incredibly rare easter egg which can occur when traveling from the main town to your island via kapn’s boat ride. there’s a very, very small chance that your boat will pass over a massive shadow, far larger than any catchable fish you can encounter in the game.

whenever this event was posted about on early internet forums and personal sites, it was met with an inevitable wave of irritation and scorn. posting about this “huge fish” would earn you the title of liar, attention seeker, or - if you managed to take a blurry photo of your CRT - hacker/troll.

but it was real. it was always real - a purposeful, scripted event so rare and specific that it could easily pass as fake. documentation nearly 20 years after the game’s release could finally confirm it as such, beyond a reasonable doubt.

but the thing is, as someone who played a lot of animal crossing, i had a personal experience that colored my view of this event very differently. i’ve come to internally refer to it as the “big fish nightmare”. it’s very much what it sounds like - a nightmare about animal crossing, where you encounter a huge fish. you might only glimpse it, or you might try to catch it, among many other things. but it involves a massive fish, and a sense of fear from the fact that it absolutely did not belong there.

the only problem is that this description isn’t a personal experience. my siblings had this dream. my friends at school had this dream. and in the tags of another post i’ve made about animal crossing fish shadows in the past, i could see complete strangers mentioning having this dream. it’s understandable why, because of how much time you spend in these games assessing fish sizes, that it might show up in your dreams in one way or another. psychologically, it’s very normal, and not something i consider any way in paranormal.

but knowing this experience, it gives me a greater insight to the visceral reaction that posting about this easter egg would garner. i have the lingering sense that, to at least one person, their stirred emotions weren’t exclusively over the thought that someone was clogging discussion with a bunch of screenshots of an edited save.

it was the thought that, somehow, the big fish that you saw in your dreams wasn’t content with staying there.

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:

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:

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.

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.

To answer your first reply, why does there only have to be one human in the Deltarune prophecy? While it is true that every person of royalty in Deltarune we've encountered so far is a Darkner, that doesn't automatically mean that the "PRINCE FROM THE DARK" is guaranteed to be a Darkner/monster. Although it is very likely the prince will be a Darkner, it's not quite set in stone (at least not yet).

You are right about Chara not being a Deltarune character, but the reason I think otherwise is that people have made theories discussing possible hints that Chara may be in Deltarune. The best one out there is one made by @suzyundertale that points out the second speaker at the start of the game (the one who discards our creation) might be Chara by analyzing the Japanese translation of Deltarune. (I also highly recommend that you look at their discussion with @doge-w-a-bloge as it offers a lot of insight on the subject.)

And let's not forget, at the end of the No Mercy Run they say "Let's erase this pointless world AND MOVE ON TO THE NEXT." That would imply, however, that the No Mercy Run is a canon, which is a whole can of worms in and of itself. I personally don't think that the No Mercy Run needs to be canon for Chara to make an appearance in Deltarune.

But these are just my opinions, and speaking of which, thank you for sharing yours @rubsjuice

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.

drink up

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

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

Like yeah, the first spam email was sent 45 years ago but I like to think Dark Worlds are already created with a history spanning several years, as evidenced by Jevil referencing having been asleep for 100 years in his dungeon when the abandoned classroom had only been locked since Father Alvin was a child and backstory events in Cyber World going back to at least the 90s, even if its Light World counterpart is a computer room furnished with computers running Windows XP, which was launched in 2001.

Anyway, to get back to Spamton, I like to think he was at least in his mid 20s when he became a big shot in 1997. His desperation to get more sales feels less like “bright eyed youngster on his very first job” and more like “guy who has been at it for a decent while but his numbers just won’t improve and things are getting dire” to me.

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.

this is not a good take. I respect the dedication but this post reeks of using buzzwords to sound intelligent and i think you have horribly mischaracterized Swatch, and I would like to talk about it.

I am so sick of this fandom and how it treats Swatch. And though i usually hate sticking my nose into things i just. i need to talk about them. Forgive me if this is ramble-ish its 4am and I haven't been in this fandom for a while so im working off a lot of memory.

To start with. They are a butler working for Queen. they may be the head butler, but they are literally a servant of hers. they would not have the power to speak up or disobey her to help Spamton even if they wanted to if they want to keep their job. The notion that they have a "higher place" in the social strata is an absurd one. the only dialogue we see from them is from the perspective of a costumer. they aren't going to be open and honest with you. they have to maintain a level of professionalism with Kris. Most of it reads as a scripted sales pitch if anything. because they're doing their job. and even then, there are multiple instances where their exasperation with Queen seeps through quite clearly.

I also want to point out the hypocrisy in saying Swatch, a butler, a SERVANT, is a class traitor, but saying that Spamton, who was a CAPITALIST who got rich and famous enough to live WITH THE MONARCH, who PARTOOK IN THE SYSTEM, is not? He WAS a crooked salesman as far as we know. his first boss fight is him trying to scam Kris out of their money and/or their soul. Swatch may work for Queen, but to say that they have abandoned the working class to favor the elites is ridiculous and to turn around and defend Spamton for doing exactly that is dishonest.

Continuing with the Spamton stuff, you cannot take a character who's entire theme is how lonely and angry at the world and the people in it at their word like that. Of course he is going to feel like Swatch "pretended to be his friend" because he probably feels BETRAYED. Granted, they probably participated in his downfall because of their position. but Spamton is an unreliable narrator, and a morally grey person at best. what makes Spamtons lines about being betrayed by queen and swatch the direct and whole truth, but Swatch lamenting about him being a "valued customer" them "playing coy". why does one character get to be objective in their perspective but the other is an evil bootlicking petite bourgeois.

They are lamenting that he fucked himself over by trying to use an old robot body to achieve the delusional dream of reaching "Heaven". if anything they're bitter ex posting on main lol.

I want to make a point of talking about this line specifically.

this line is so fucked to me. where. WHERE are you getting this level of CRUELTY from them? because they have personal issues with spam?? they very clearly have history together in some capacity and maybe they're a little more harsh about him but there is NOTHING about them in ANY of the rest of their dialogue that would suggest something like this. This is a very strange leap to take from them being offended that Spamton would steal their look to sneak into the basement.

Here are some bits of Swatch's dialogue that I feel give a little insight into them outside of just being a shopkeeper for Queen's cafe.

Especially that first one. They very clearly put on a persona when working to appear as professional and collected as possible. I think it is entirely unfair to base your opinions of a character on how they behave when you only see them through the POV of a customer. Especially without taking into account why they might behave that way. This idea that swatch is some sort of uncaring asshole is ridiculous to me, but its one i see all too often.

Swatch comes across as quiet, and reserved. their dialogue is almost entirely neutral and practiced, and when they do slip a little and they reveal irritation or displeasure, they apologize and/or correct themself. Maybe they're a little cold. but that doesn't make them a bad person.

Alright. So. Clearly this is a subject I have alot to say on lol. Im not mad tho just very passionate abt Swatch =] I would like to stress that this is not an attack against you, op, I just think that this is an extreme mischaracterization of a character I am quite attached to, who I feel gets given the short end of the stick a lot and is used as a scapegoat for spamton angst far too much by the fandom at large. You have cherrypicked dialogue to make a point, and then additionally chose to read it in the least charitable way possible. You are projecting a harsh political alignment on a character who doesnt have NEARLY enough screentime to warrant such a deep dive, and using dialogue from a character who is explicitly shown to be unreliable and possibly entirely insane (/affectionate), who also has a rocky personal history with, and thus and obvious bias against them as evidence to your claim. it is simply bad media analysis.

other than that, i hope you have a good day, and i wish you nothing but the best. /g

I personally cannot read Swatch as anything other than a class traitor because they directly enforce the class system that places them as a servant. Two instances demonstrate this: firstly, the fact that, as the original post mentions, they continue to sell Spamton's items with the tag cut off, effectively and materially benefitting from his misfortune; secondly, the clear implication, from Spamton's response to why he can't go to the palace himself ("WHAT!? GO MYSELF!? KRIS!!!!! NO!!!!! THE MEN INSIDE WOULD THE MEN INSIDE WOULD"), that the Swatchlings (of whom he is in charge) function as a security force that keeps unwanted visitors out of the building and presumably keep the status quo as it is.

This does not imply that they do this out of senseless malice or that Spamton is any better. As the original post states, Swatch is still a worker, and their position of privilege is entirely conditional. That they are arguably acting out of self-preservation does not negate what was stated above; regardless of your interpretation of his attitude towards their position, their role is that of a class traitor definitionally, seeing as they are a member of the working class that acts in favour of the system that oppresses them. As for Spamton, I think you're reading the original post as more charitable to him than it truly is.

The original post explicitly refers to Spamton as a worker elevated into the bourgeois class and, consequently, implicitly and inevitably, a class traitor. If anything, it's something they have in common: conditional privilege (although, of course, Spamton's position was much higher) that can and, in Spamton's case, was stripped away due to a failure to fulfil these conditions. This is not a judgement of either people's moral character. If we want to examine that, the post itself gives a frank overview of Spamton's:

None of this implies, however, that a system that allows even such a person to go homeless isn't harmful. Swatch enforces such a system despite it oppressing him as well. This does not make them ontologically evil, nor does the original post imply it does. Reading them as a class traitor is both coherent and enriches the text to me because it expands the themes of upward mobility and intra-class struggle that are present in Spamton's arc (I could go on about those for days) and asks thorny questions about what happens when the power dynamic between two people changes and what relative privilege means in the face of both absolute privilege and destitution, and how even the most absolute privilege can be stripped away. And, as per the original post, I'm not trying to say that this is the only reading you can make of him, but it is not one that does a disservice to them.