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bifrostworms · 2 days ago

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for being such a beloved character in undertale, i think deltarune mettaton doesn’t get the amount of love he deserves. maybe i just haven’t looked enough in the right places, but finding stuff with him feels like such a specific niche i have to dig for even though he’s very connected to certain darkners (and even when he's involved, it's often mettaton ex). i do think it’s a result of fanon reducing ut!mettaton down to “sexy leg robot” so much that even his sweet moments in that game get brushed aside. sure, you have to get the mystery key and backtrack to even know about the diaries in his house, but what’s a toby fox game without digging for secrets? i guess you could argue we don’t know much about dr!mettaton - not even seeing him and instead having to deduce it's him talking behind the ghost family's door via his speech patterns - but the thing is that we know mettaton. we know mettaton, we know who and what he is when his dreams have come true, and in this world he's not there yet. he doesn't have that, and his words and visual absence are glaring proof of that.

(chapters 3 + 4 spoilers ahead - this is the part where i tell you that this is a very long deltarune mettaton analysis post after the cut.)

we know who he is in undertale before his stardom because of the diaries, even!

without collaging screenshots of absolutely every entry here, we know that mettaton was a ghost that lived on a snail farm in waterfall with his cousin, had dreams of being a star while living with a form that didn't feel like his, and had those dreams come true after he formed human fanclub and became friends with alphys.

deltarune mettaton doesn't know alphys. deltarune mettaton is a depressed shut-in in a small suburban town called hometown. he lives with his two cousins, only one of whom has a job, the other staying inside and not showing her face just like he does.

deltarune mettaton is a bit of a nobody.

this is the closest we get to actually seeing what ut!mettaton was like before becoming a star. it's the ugly part of what life looks like when you're depressed and don't feel like yourself. it is, for all intents and purposes, a story about being transgender. ut!mettaton is a ghost who transitions to feel like a person, his ideal body emphasizing his heart-shaped soul that looks like a human's.

(in another timeline, ut!mettaton takes a form that emphasizes his monster soul instead; it sits where the right-side-up human soul heart would be. his hair is out of his face and shows off his lack of an eye, he has giant flashing wings and an arm cannon, and as stage lights are blaring, you kill him in one hit.)

dr!mettaton isn't there yet. he's still just a ghost and hides behind the door, refusing to even show himself. he certainly has dreams of becoming big, though.

i can't talk about deltarune mettaton without talking about spamton.

of course, the connections to spamton neo and mettaton neo have been made before, but i digress. i've seen people who don't realize those connections are there, or even argue that oh, it has nothing to do with mettaton at all, actually. the thing about spamton is that he, too, has dreams of becoming a big shot. the key to that is, in his words, a heart-shaped object and a heaven-piercing workout-ready body hiding in the deep abyss of queen's mansion.

in the undertale 9th anniversary newsletter, toby fox shared some unused music rejected for deltarune chapter 2, and an unfinished extended version of Power of NEO was among these tracks. toby said that "one of my goals for DELTARUNE was for players to finally be able to challenge a 'real' version of Mettaton NEO that didn't just end in one turn . . . Eventually, the boss concept evolved to involve Spamton, and with that, the music changed as well."

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however, in BIG SHOT, you can still hear the same leitmotif featured in Power of NEO - the Battle Against a True Hero leitmotif that plays when you fight undyne the undying. the concept and music might've changed, but the connections between mettaton and spamton are still very much there.

the spamton neo fight itself features a yellow soul shooter mechanic reminiscent of the mettaton ex fight in undertale. one of spamton neo's attacks features bombs alongside tiny spamtons, and one of mettaton ex's features bombs alongside tiny mettatons. in undertale, you're fighting mettaton ex in front of an audience - in deltarune, spamton neo begs and prays to a nonexistent audience as the stage lights are shattered. i also do think it's interesting that before everything, spamton takes a phone call that makes him go crazy - and during his fight, mettaton ex takes callers and decides to stay as the underground's star.

the basement robot that spamton neo uses as a body is, as we can learn from talking to swatch after the boss fight, the embodiment of a lightner's dream.

mettaton, shy as he is, went to the library's computer lab, drew up an idea of a body that feels like his in ms paint, and then deleted it. he drew up a tall body, one with giant rainbow wings, an arm cannon, and heeled knee-high boots. in this world, mettaton doesn't have the resources to have the body he wants. his best friend who's a royal scientist in another world is only a high school teacher in this one, after all, and he doesn't even know her. human fanclub has no way of forming - the internet's gone down, and mettaton doesn't have anything entertaining to do right now.

to me spamton is, to an extent, a sort of representation of mettaton’s dreams of becoming big. of course, spamton’s his own guy with his own issues that don’t relate to mettaton, but the parallels are absolutely there. you could not have spamton without the existence of ut!mettaton. you could not have spamton neo without the hopes and dreams of the little ghost lightner making a drawing in the computer lab. it’s very interesting to me that the body mettaton draws is the neo body; there’s no emphasis on the soul anywhere, but it being the no mercy version of himself reads to me as some sort of repression. mettaton doesn't have a high self-esteem; he still just thinks of himself as a monster.

at the end of chapter 2, there's a froggit in front of the ghosts' house who says that sometimes, it hears beautiful singing coming from over there, wondering if it's a ghost. if you knock and ask mewmew if you could talk to someone else, mettaton teases about you being a fan of a nobody like him, then asks if you could bring him something entertaining tomorrow.

now it's time for me to talk about mr. ant tenna.

unlike the subtlety that spamton has, tenna is, in my opinion, a walking mettaton reference. he's a box-shaped TV host wearing a red suit with a yellow tie. Live Report! literally starts playing right when the second board ends (albeit lacking the It's Showtime! leitmotif lol). if i had a nickel for every time a toby fox game had a robot TV host force a nonbinary child to do a cooking show, i'd have two nickels, which isn't much but it's funny that it happened twice.

the beginnings of Death by Glamour and It's TV Time! (along with CORE and TV World) share a pretty similar melody as well!

that's enough about tenna and ut!mettaton, though. what i want to talk about is tenna and deltarune mettaton. in the light world, tenna is a TV that's been watched less and less over the years as the dreemurr and holiday families began drifting apart. tenna is all about nostalgia compared to ut!mettaton's modernity. tenna just wants to be watched, and although later on in chapter 4 the prophecy said he would die, susie gives him hope that he'll find a new home.

after church in chapter 4, susie brings tenna to castle town. it's not his forever home, though; in the light world, this is just him sitting in a dusty old storage closet with nobody to watch him.

when you knock at the ghosts' door again, you have the option to give tenna to mettaton. Cue The Most Objectum Shit I've Ever Seen.

jokes aside, this is the best possible result for the both of them. tenna, the personification of kris' feelings about being a child of divorce, finds a new home. toriel had a parental lock on him - he'd been a family TV. his parental lock is now gone, and the first thing mettaton watches on him is the risque music videos that dess would watch back then. it’s not just about mettaton, either; as we see in undertale, the ghosts love TV. tenna has a new family to enjoy his time with. just like susie, he just needed to find the right people. i don't think i'd be wrong to say that this is a narrative about a child of divorce leaving home, growing up and moving on.

for mettaton, tenna is exactly what he needs in his life right now. remember: we know mettaton. right now, he's hiding in the dark at home and not feeling like himself. but back in undertale, it was his enjoyment of human media to be the first domino to fall leading to him achieving his dreams. in that other world, he's a star. he has a source for entertainment now; a source of inspiration. He's Seeing That TV Glow. if i'm to theorize a bit here, i like to think this is leading to human fanclub finally reuniting in deltarune. whether alphys can actually make him a body is something else, but nonetheless, it's an opportunity for them to become friends and bond over media together. at the end of the day, a pre-transition mettaton is finding happiness amidst his dealing with dysphoria. being trans isn't all about despair, after all.

bit of a sidenote with more theorizing, there's the theory going around of mettaton fusing with the TV. i think the use of not "someone," but "somebody" in this flavor text here is an interesting piece of that idea. fascinating implications for tenna too.

but other than that. speaking of finding positives: mettaton is so kind. in undertale, the side of him you see the most might be how much he adores himself (which, when you have a body that actually feels like yours? you sure do become happier and start liking yourself a lot more), but when he shows care towards people, he really means it. he decides to stay in the underground because of the positive impact he's had on everyone. at the end of a true pacifist run, he makes his way back home to waterfall and gifts his old blue dress to a fan. he cares for his best friend alphys (he thanks her for making his dreams come true, and in the alarm clock dialogue he agrees to be a literal heater for her) and his cousin napstablook and his friend shyren. he goes back and makes amends with the latter two, having left them behind and now inviting them to take the stage with him. he thanks frisk for reminding him he has fun performing with others.

in deltarune, mettaton may be sad and invisible, but he's still so kind. he still calls everyone darling and beautiful. he humors susie when she says that kris' TV has a name and sounds incredibly endeared at the idea. he's the most vulnerable he's ever been here - he doesn't like himself, he calls himself a nobody, he thinks you can't possibly be knocking at the door to talk to him - but it doesn't stop him from calling everyone sweet nicknames. deltarune mettaton is in a very different set of circumstances compared to undertale mettaton, but he's still mettaton, and the core of him is still there. he has just as a compelling story as much as undertale mettaton does and i wish it were appreciated more for what it is - a story still about being trans, but showing the aspects of what that looks like while struggling with dysphoria, and still finding trans joy within it.

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