#tag talking

[fruitsofhell]

Dumbest part of criticism of SU Future is when people say "Future is character assassination of Steven" and "The show trivializes/poorly represents mental illness" in the same breath. If you think a character whom has suffered immense interpersonal and physical trauma having breakdowns and snapping at people because of being triggered is mutually exclusive to a character being kind and empathetic, I don't think you have a right to speak on mental illness rep.

Seeing a character who is defined by kindness and compassion crack under that pressure of being there for everyone like that is crazy to see in a kids show. Personally I hadn't felt that seen by anything in a while, and it's just offensive as hell to me to say that a character acting traumatized in a way that isn't sad puppy dog eyes means they're mischaracterized or abusive now. That's half the point of Future that Steven didn't know how to express his problems within his role as precious angel.

He wasn't mischaracterized, he was recontextualized. It's like people can accept "this mean character was once nice but changed cause trauma", or "sweet character is now depressed cause trauma", but the reality that someone youre familiar with can change dramatically due to trauma - acting angry and abrasive instead of sad and demure - is blasphemous somehow.

Double points if they then say the gems or Greg were dumbed down to make Steven look better. Like, My Brother In Christ, they are exhibiting the exact lack of awareness you are thinking it's impossible for a person like Steven to have angry or vengeful trauma reactions.

EDIT: Actually not gonna leave this in the tags -

Something-something ableism, something-something not accepting dramatic and unpalatable expressions of mental illness in fiction and likely not for people IRL.

[armiteggio]

checking out at the grocery store and the cashier hands me my receipt and says by the way youre really pretty and i almost drop all my beetroots

[fruitsofhell]

3DWI is crazy cause watching the popular video essays you get supernatural reading which in itself could become its own essay related to themes in the work about people unwilling to reflect where the line is drawn between discussing fantasy and discussing reality, but then also there is an interpretation where there is a somewhat supernatural aspect to the story and its about a sort of community forming around shared subconscious desires to be heard projected onto something else. Mr Petscop is out here writing like 5D stories its so good.

[fruitsofhell]

"I theorize that this amoral villain character has Antisocial Personality Disorder and/or Narcissistic Personality Disorder"

Awesome, you know the definition of some diagnoses - now say something true and profound about the human experience of mental illness.

[fruitsofhell]

I used to be one of those guys when I first joined the Kirby fandom, but everytime I hear a discussion of the series writing that starts with "So the Lore is InSaNe-" and not like, "Kirby has a fun writing style that takes advantage of its cute exterior to tell cool stories that reward player's curiosity and leave lots of room for imagination-" I cringe so goddamn hard.

I kinda just hate that people approach things that encourage investment when they don't expect it as inherently absurd. Like it is fun to joke about how absurd Kirby lore can be, but it really often comes with an air of disrespect or exhaustion rather than like, appreciation that these games are made by people who want to tell interesting stories when they could easily make as much money just making polished enough fluffy kiddy platformers. And when it's not met with exhaustion, it's met with - like I said before - that tone that it's stupid for a series like this TO have devs who care about writing stuff for it. Which is a whole other thing about people not respecting things made to appeal to kiddie aesthetic or tone.

Maybe the state of low-stakes YouTube video essays just blows cause people play up ignorance and disbelief for engagement, but like I STG I hear people use this tone for like actual narrative based games sometimes. Some people don't like... appreciate when a game is made by people who care a shitton in ways that aren't direct gameplay feedback. And they especially don't appreciate it when it comes from something with any sense of tonal dissonance intentional or not.

Anyways, I love games made by insane people. I love games made by teams who feel like they wanna make something work or say something so bad. I love that energy, especially when invested into something that could easily rest on its laurels or which obviously won't be taken seriously. I love this in a lot of classic campy 2000s games, I love this in insanely niche yet passionate fanworks, and I love it in the Kirby series and its writing. Can we please stop talking about it like it's an annoyance or complete joke?

[lockjawmotif]

okay so i work in the deli of a grocery store, yeah? and today i got this guy who came up with his two twin children, around five years old. he walks up to the counter, carrying one kid in each arm, and loudly goes "oh, no, i forgot what i wanted!" and turns to the boy in his left arm and, in a perfect blues clues style voice, goes "caleb, do you remember what i wanted?" and the boy goes "half pound of yellow cheese!"

i, obviously, say "you've got it little sir!" and slice up half a pound of yellow american cheese, handing it to the little boy, who looks it over, nods, and tucks it in his lap.

then the man goes "well, we can't just have cheese on our sandwiches. but what else can we put on there?" and the little gurl in his other arm goes "half pound of ham!" so i nod and say "yes ma'am! what kind?" and she points at a random cut of turkey, so her father nods and says "like she said, honey ham!" i cut half a pound of honey ham, hand it to the little lady, she looks it over, nods and puts it in her lap.

then the man goes "now, what should we have for the side?" and the kids both simultaneously start cheering "macking cheese!!!" and the man spins on his heel and marches off, presumably to find the macking cheese.

later, the little boy comes wandering back to the counter while his father looks on and loudly and proudly proclaims that he wants to know where the mustard is. i point him to the correct aisle, he nods, says "thank you mister deli woman" and walks away.

[genius11rare]

Now its this lol

[word-count-bullet-count]

I've been seeing a lot of knight posts recently. pretty great

[fruitsofhell]

I am amazed by so much about Hazbin Hotel now that I'm finally, FINALLY watching it. There's so much to comment on but I have GOT to get this out of the way that has been distracting me going into the final episode. I need you to know that I'm like grimacing in a mix of pain and amusement rn. I feel like a teacher about to tell a student their essay earned the most entertaining F I've ever seen.

I want to do a little case study in Vivziepop's design ethos in the Cannibal Town bit y'know. I don't have the steam to write a full essay right here but I will try to get into this and how it relates to something that so fascinates me about her art. I was a fan of Vivziepop back in like 2014 when she first gained some notoriety in the animation community from her Die Young short and I watched nearly every piece of her old art content where she expressed her character designs and story ideas. I was really invested in them when I was younger, I thought and still do think her designs and ideas are very evocative in a good way, but which have slowly unraveled with time and scrutiny in all respects.

In her show... there's a district in hell run by cannibals, and the WHOLE gag of them is that instead of being your usual sort of racist stereotype they're a kitschy little victorian looking district who still sing about loving consuming flesh and blood and all that. See, this was evocative IN 2014, but it's not 2014. Which is not really interesting to say in itself because the show is utterly drowning in early 2010s Hot Topic-ass design sensibilities that I will probably talk about some other time, what I'm really getting at is the hypothetical thought process behind this.

Vivzie is a lover of all things impish and vintage, so of course in hell she thinks there should be a place full of cannibals who go beyond the usual stereotypes. And in her mind she's imagining how evocative the idea of smiling genteel demons running around eating human fingers is and goes with it. And a plus for her, it skirts around the racialized baggage attached to the taboo of cannibalism, maybe she even thinks its anti-racist to spin things like this. But like. It really really just stops there.

Hazbin Hotel wants to use its framing of heaven and hell to make a social commentary on morality obviously, and in the way its doing it it also is creating a sort of statement on class. There is this idea of moral meritocracy that angels are exploiting to keep themselves and those humans they like above those they dislike for arbitrary reasons, and just in the language - written and visual - of how heaven and hell are distinguished you see this slums vs metropolis thing going on. But I mean, someone else can probably tell you about how busted it is so I won't get into it, I'll just say that comparing hell to any sort of metaphor for a ghetto where disadvantaged and flawed people are grouped together unsafely looks bad for Vivzie lol.

This is where I come back to Cannibal Town which is so so so SO obviously a chance to make the most blunt-obvious social commentary on human exploitation that Vivzie just DOESN'T cause she finds people in victorian pristine garb talking about eating flesh funny and that is the full extent of her conversation on these ideas together. There's really really nothing else it seems that Vivziepop feels like saying about a kitschy upper-middle class town of people who eat other people other than isnt it funny when upper-middle class people want to eat others. And it does boggle my mind when so much other talk of exploitation, abuse, and class stratification is so laid bare on the table of this show.

In design and narrative this show really likes to touch on these deep but kinda basic tenets of social commentary but keeps doing the 2014 Hot Topic reversal of motifs and then just leaves that there like its something in itself. MMMaybe we could be doing more to say something about how when a bunch of people are arbitrarily thrown together in a lawless area under very broad assumption of moral degeneracy some seek to wield powers over others by reinforcing their simultaneous dehumanization. And how then those slumlords try to sell scraps of privilege to enrich themselves and stuff and how bad that is.

Like we kinda do sometimes, but then you have Cannibal Town which could have so fucking obviously been about liiiike??? IDK, the overlord of the area is someone who takes peoples souls and then gives them an insatiable urge to consume both physically and material goods that is symbolized through cannibalism and exploitation of other demons so that they are further reliant on the overlord??? ANd they all sit in their little village thinking theyre above others because they keep everything so orderly only by running themselves on the exploitation and consumption of other human resources. I don't even fucking know man but I just know that the Cannibal Town in the show is nothing but a joke and wank session for Vivziepop's historical fashion fetish and it drives me up the wall.

I want to be really invested in the politics of this world but this Vivziepop motherfucker just wants to create things like the town of white middle-class victorian cannibals for the lolz.

[unikhroma]

how it feels to look at/listen to your own creations and enjoy them and appreciate how far you've come as an artist

[sparrowlucero]

like the most politically neutered movie of all time unironically

[whereisthesun]

I HATE MORAL OCD. well i shouldnt say hate thats a strong word. and i dont want to sound like i hate people WITH moral ocd because i dont of course. i just hate having it. but i shouldnt think that, i do like having morals, its just stressful to be thinking about them so constantly and scrutinizing every little thing i do or think. but really thats the least i could do so i should at least try, right? just because i suffer from— no, struggle with moral ocd doesn’t mean i should just stop thinking about things all together, thats not what im saying and i should make that clear, but i

[astral-scout]

party rockers in the

[lockjawmotif]

yeah, this is my pet knight, she's a rescue. i gave her a brief act of mercy and she followed me home and sat outside my door to guard me from intruders. she swore her undying allegiance to me in exchange for a gift of grace and now she sleeps at the foot of my bed and weeps when im late coming home. and yeah, she only eats wet food because she's a snob, also.

[fruitsofhell]

Why is "Magical Mental Illness" ft. Spamton G. Spamton

It's honestly a shame that my delay in playing Deltarune has led to me not making an essay about Spamton already. There are so many things to be said about that wretched little man on every level from character writing to the narrative and gameplay mechanics. And while I would love to be an expert on most of these in order to give a great opinion, I am only a semi-expert in one thing - and that is Psychology in character writing. Even with finally playing the game, it took a few things beyond pure brainrot to get this essay out of me that are important to keep in mind. One, was a video essay I was watching about this very topic which was not sitting well with me. At times the essayist seemed to deliberately negate the in-universe readings of Spamton in order to blunt force certain labels onto him, and at others they hastily stepped over grounds for interesting psychological insights. This then reminded me of the other important aspect, that being some advice my Abnormal Psychology teacher gave my class on what can only be described as an actual blorbo diagnosis roleplay assignment. She advised us to avoid characters from stories too stepped in fantasy because it can at times be near impossible to seriously put a scientific label on that which was meant to be magical through and through. We're not playing Matpat here.

As an avid lover of both fantasy fiction and psychology, I have run into this paradox plenty, to the point I even once had a name for it - "Magical Mental Illness". It is just a fact of the medium that you will often run into characters who express traits discernable as real psychological dysfunctions, but with entirely magical logic behind them. Spamton, in all his spastic glory is a perfect example of this, to the point it is barely even worth pointing out. But what is worth pointing out is how that line between the clinical and magical does not have to be the end of the conversation. ==My gripe with that essayist is not that they chose an incorrect, haphazard way to look at Spamton, but that it did not provide the most satisfying synthesis==. Especially with a game like Deltarune which subtly revels in blurring the line between the real and imaginary for characters and players alike. It is very concerned with how we relate to fiction through how its fiction relates to its own meta-fiction, creating new layers of meaning to explore. Humans have been relying on stories as windows to our souls as long as we've been writing them, and especially as reference for when our souls become troubled. It's only natural that in that legacy, we begin to read about what it even means to read a story.

Kris and the Player: Hand in Unlovable Hand

Before getting too thick into the weeds, it's important to explain what I mean by this double layer of fiction and how it connects to us. In almost all popular stories you have a perspective character or presence to serve as the audience's middle man, and for Deltarune that character is Kris. But Kris is not as passive as the usual protagonist, as they appear to be acutely aware of and tormented by their role as the player's vessel for peering into their world from outside the game. Somehow, this poor 14 year old within their own world has fallen victim to some sort of possession facilitated by a third party beyond them and the player, and the mystery surrounding this predicament and what meaning the story will find in it is one of the pillars of the narrative intrigue. One that ironically draws us into being active participants in this torment of Kris as we seek to understand how to break it for them.

I was actually watching a different video on Kris' backstory when I stumbled across another magical mental illness blunder in analysis that also inspired this essay. The essayist was explaining a part of Kris' backstory told by an estranged friend, Noelle, who describes how Kris used to have a habit of suddenly freezing and staring off into space for some time before coming to again and quietly reorienting themself. As someone watching the video to comprehend the in-universe and meta-narrative implications of this, I was very surprised when the essayist interjected by declaring this evidence of Kris suffering from absence seizures. Unlike the dramatic spastic seizures that typically come to our mind, absence seizures are as Noelle described, where people lose consciousness and freeze in place for periods of time. This interpretation was not useless. It did hint that Kris may have suffered extreme stress during that time in their life, and more importantly, it was a comfort to the essayist who made the connection from their own experience with the trait, but it does cut off discussion on its own. At best absence seizures may have been an active reference Toby Fox used to write the behavior, especially to make it something that people around Kris could attribute to a non-magical source, but in this world of possessions and mysteries that cannot be an answer in itself. Kris is a magical character in a magical context, and no matter what their behavior looks right now, it is more than likely magical mental illness.

Frustrating as those two essayists' reasoning can be, I can't fault the instinct. Honestly as I was watching that video beforehand I was sussing out in my mind a headcanon diagnosis of Kris that could contain the metaphorical strengths of their character and maybe speak some spiritual truth to that disorder and its humanity. One of my first instincts was Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I cringed away from it aware that it is a negative trope to portray alters as adversarial or invasive. But that trope, or more the language of it without the direct clinical label - magical DID - has never stopped being attractive to me, because even if it doesn't align with the psychological truth of the disorder, it does still with a broader metaphor. Maybe its selfish, but when I read of DID, an inevitable theme or story of it arises in my mind that reminds of my personal struggles with identity. How parts of me sometimes felt foreign and cancerous, and how learning to carve parts of those out of me was a silent triumph I longed to express or see expressed in stories around me. In Kris, I see my own middle school age self who lost the superficial childish dreams which defined her and moved through life in a daze as she tried to understand what truly ran her before finding it and taking back control. That thinking can come off as medieval or psychoanalytical, but as a writer I think it can be important to recognize it as a tool of empathy as well. A way for an unafflicted soul to find a root in themselves that at least emotionally blurs the line between themself and this clinically defined "other".

As we'll see with Spamton, this exercise in relatability between players and Kris goes deeper than just the initial experience of struggle, but into that wish to see oneself reflected elsewhere. Deltarune is not a story that needs to have specific discernible labels to its characters' internal struggles, because its not about the answer as much as it is about carrying a question with oneself into another realm. As I or another player may carry insecurities about control of the self into Deltarune, Kris carries their own into the dubiously metaphorical Dark World. As of right now, it is somewhat hard to say whether the Dark Worlds are as real as the life of Kris and their fellow lightners in the Light World, and I doubt this boundary will cease to be toyed with anytime soon. At the end of the first chapter we can see the hint that the card and board game themed Dark World was related to a closet of alike toys, and the connection was made explicit when Kris is told to bring the characters - the darkners - of that previous session into a new ground established in chapter 2's computer lab. But, at the end of each chapter, just as the player could begin to say to themself it may have all been a dream, Kris tears the player's will out of their body and reminds them how willing this game is to confuse the borders of reality inside fiction and out. Making Deltarune a rather inappropriate choice for attempting to draw clean borders between a clinical and magical character psychology.

Spamton Don't Seem Too Well, Does He?

Exploring the Dark World with a focus on Kris is what finally leads us to the one and only, collective delight of millions, Spamton G. Spamton. He is beloved for being a masterclass in how to lead players into the depths of a stories machinations (1). From pithy lore to fundamental existential questions, Spamton's rich character arc encompasses it all brilliantly, but it's not where to begin, as it is not where Kris nor the player begins. First impressions are critical after all, and Toby Fox has pretty much never let looming implications get in the way of a damn funny character. From his very first textbox after bursting out of a garbage dumpster, Spamton is equal parts incomprehensible and memetic. Players will literally freeze up in utter bafflement as they take whole seconds to comprehend the gaping blank space in his dialogue, with may just giving up on understanding its intention and filling in the gaps either way (2). Uniformly capitalized text, keyboard smash-esque grammatical errors, odd meter, and most famously, randomly bracketed text abound. Yet somehow by the end of the first bossfight, most players walk away thoroughly engaged in trying to translate his quirks into YTP impressions or an otherwise stilted and manic tone. He disappears after this first encounter till the final area of the game, but its nearly impossible for a player to not be thinking about him after.

(1) See a great, and highly inspiring breakdown of his character construction in Designing For's video on him!

(2) For examples of what I mean...

These unique mannerisms of Spamton's are where we find Toby Fox's employment and mastery of one of the most common tropes used to convey insanity and instability in a character. It is a tell-tale example of disorganized speech, specifically through a pattern resembling loose association where the words of the subject are strung along by superficial rather than descriptive content. Usually loose associations sends oblivious sufferers on a chain of associations far beyond what anyone but them can understand, but Spamton's writing seems to marry the idea with concentrated dialogue by way of the system of bracketed text. Spamton will splice tangentially related sales-themed slogans and phrases directly into his sentences before picking back up. Trying to say something along the lines of, "Why be a little whelp who hates its pathetic life," becomes --

> "WHY BE THE [[Little Sponge]] WHO HATES ITS [[$4.99]] LIFE"

-- A real life loose association phrase meanwhile would likely have taken "little sponge" and began starting a string of words related to the kitchen sink. The genius on display here, is that Spamton succeeds in getting his very important deal-making scheme across while also reading as utterly insane to the player. It's a careful balance of chaos and conscientious use of the player's time, which adds a character-rich twist to this common cliche. As players acclimate and move on from the encounter, they will likely begin to put together more and more patterns in Spamton's speech which fuels the intrigue.

By the time players return to Spamton's shop and spend even more time delighted and/or terrified by his erratic personality, it begins to become clear that 'crazy' in its more dismissive reading is not the whole picture for him. Really it started with his referencing of Kris' "[[HeartShapedObject]]" in the first scene, which may have been lost on disoriented players, but not on the character themself who visibly, autonomously flinched away from Spamton at the mention of this device which binds them to us. But these revelations are still for a time buried under another mountain of equally well-written quirks that have players continuing to second guess Spamton's legitimacy. At his shop, away from the eyes of Kris' fellow party members or surrounding darkners who have already declared him crazy, Spamton unveils the roots of his madness to them and the player. His catchphrase "[[BIG SHOT]]" begins to take form as an analogy for some kind of higher state of being related to Kris' world, or possibly even the player's, and it is self-evident why he seemingly can't shut up about it --

"> I'LL GET SO. > I'LL GET SO. > I'LL GET SO. > I'LL GET SO. > I'LL GET SO. > I'LL GET SO. > [[Hyperlink blocked.]]"

-- he sputters like a broken, creepily aware toy. What would in a clinical sense be a delusion is the main drive behind Spamton's entire character, a delusion of control that something or someone above him is pulling the strings of the world, and perhaps one of grandeur at his unflinching certainty in his ability to rise above it.

A new quirk in his disorganized speech also emerges in his shop dialogue which goes from a diet loose association, to abrupt breaks in tone and subject mid sentence. One of the chilling examples is triggered when Spamton tries to discuss some "knight" character - a focal point of fan theorizing - but breaks into frantic apology as soon as the words leave his mouth. Before a player could even suspect if this was a reaction to Kris, he screams --

> TOO MANY EXCESS VACATION DAYS?? TAKE A GOD DAMN VACATION STRAIGHT TO HELL

-- Most definitely alluding to some other confrontation. In another, bringing up your fears (which could be related toward God knows how many aspects of this sidequest) leads Spamton to a sudden departure from his unending award-winning grimace, as he solemnly asks, "… can anyone hear me? Help…", before immediately springing back to life--

"> HUH??? WHAT?? NO, I DIDN'T HEAR ANYTHING JUST NOW!!! > … BUT IT SOUNDED LIKE THEY WERE TALKING TO YOU."

-- Both can be read as a new flavor of break-down in speech content, and the first one especially as some sort of traumatic flashback, but to keep consistent I believe they could be best read as hints of otherwise unreferenced hallucinations. Perhaps trying to speak of something forbidden triggered accusations in his ears causing him to panic and lose his train of thought, or he accidentally parroted a line out loud (echolalia) and tried to deflect as in the last case.

Leaving the shop, as with the first bossfight, is another crucial point where Spamton has sold a second layer of himself to the players as a personality and character^1^. While the full glory of the former won't crystallize until his final confrontation, the latter has been established well enough by now players are choosing to buy tickets to however all this insanity comes together. That insanity is very clinically and unsurprisingly diagnosable as Schizophrenia. Disorganized speech, paranoid delusions, and possible hallucinations are all hallmarks of the disorder and especially its archetype in fiction. His constant smiling affect could even be lumped in with motor dysfunction too if it weren't for the fact that his kin, the adisons display this naturally too. From the backstory the adisons tell of him as an easter egg, a broader picture of Spamton's life as this living corrupted computer ad comes into focus, in a way which could thematically be read as mood disturbances. A life of never-ending career failures perhaps the result of a persistent depression, only to be broken by a psychotic mania in which brute force of personality and ideas - hallucinated from phone static - sent him soaring into the heights of unsustainable success. But that requires more assumptions about him than are necessary, and in the end the core takeaway here is that Spamton presents with highly readable psychotic symptoms.

So there you have it. A clinical, psycho-pathological reading of Spamton G. Spamton from Deltarune. Satisfied? Hopefully not, because I ignored nearly everything about him that is relevant to the story being told. As Spamton becomes more psychotic to the player, he also becomes more comprehensible in parallel. At the same time players can begin to read him as a paranoid schizophrenic, they realize that his paranoia in all its bracketed glory is directly on the money. He recognizes a power dynamic between the worlds of this story that most others are oblivious or apathetic to, and accurately implicates Kris' role within it while soliciting their favor. His associations are less loose and more censorious, and from their syntax-breaking nature, likely not by the volition of him or anything related to his plane of reality. Even his grossly broken text I attributed to hallucinations may be displays of the raw power some of these characters carry in the narrative, and the fear and disorientation they strike in its subjects. While he is doubtlessly still mentally unstable, he is by no means out of touch with reality as the diagnosis of Schizophrenia defines. Spamton is explicitly speaking arcane truths, not the psychological noise that makes up the real disorder of Schizophrenia, no matter how much his mind is struggling to carry that truth's weight.

Garbage Noise

One of the connections that always chilled me in the Spamton story was the notion of the "garbage noise" which the adisons report coming from the speaker of Spamton's phone. I was sure to make this period in Spamton's life where he communicated with a mysterious benefactor over the phone a psychotic one in the mood disorder model for that fact. It is on very purposefully ignorant surface-level evidence that a player could say Spamton's insanity came from nothing, but there is a very fun detail in how they themselves can come to hear this garbage noise. If a player opens Kris' phone and tries to make a call, a shrill mechanical tone tears through the receiver instead of a simple text-description of static. Toby Fox wanted the player to understand what "garbage noise" was, but he also wanted the player to understand exactly where it comes from - any line from the Dark World into Kris' Light World. I can't get enough of obfuscations like this in storycrafting, especially here where it simultaneously combines two ideas at once. We only know of nonsense coming through the phones of the Dark World, but we have heard that it is a divine, higher plane nonsense for Spamton. Whether it once gave way to a clear voice or not does not change its deeper content, and in a way, as much as it may invalidate Spamton as a rational subject, the idea it never sounded any different is revealing and chilling.

Why is it that Spamton presents so bluntly as psychotic when we know he is truthful? Even the source of his madness or genius can't be determined as of now as anything but the darkner equivalent of cosmic background radiation! Well, this is because Toby Fox, deliberately or subconsciously, is drawing on centuries to millennia of fictional ideas to shape this character, not our beloved scientific labels. Without a doubt the most modern framework applicable is that of lovecraftian knowledge and memetic hazards, where the world hides are cosmic facts to be learned that tear the psyche of its learner asunder. I could write an entire other essay on how Spamton is quite possibly the most creative and delightful take on this trope ever created, but sadly, claims like that require substantiation. But, with my pre-existing knowledge of psychology and capacity to wax philosophic, I would like to go beyond that thesis as a historical statement, and more so as a theme or story. The story Deltarune is getting out of this reference to the Schizophrenic archetype, the way I could infer the story of DID out of Kris. What the platonic ideal of this human experience means to Deltarune for Toby Fox to write Spamton as such, and what Deltarune intends it to mean for us.

Throughout human history, we have, frankly speaking, not understood a damn thing about what was happening to or around us. When humans saw the subset of ourselves who ranted and raved about things no one else could see, hear, feel, nor touch, there was a natural mix of apprehension and fascination towards them. We are pattern-seeking animals, nonsensically so even at our healthiest, so of course when our kin passionately speak of patterns found in that which we cannot begin to comprehend, we are drawn to the idea of novel and potentially revolutionary knowledge. But routinely, even in superstitious societies, many have tried to follow the patterns drawn by them only to come to naught. Even those afflicted, once in better health, may reflect and find nothing but psychic noise. But every now and then the pattern leads to something, whether that be a religion, a theory, or just a spark of imagination. Imagination for a world where we create the patterns, and tell the characters within and ourselves which to see and which to ignore. For as harmful as many portrayals of schizophrenic and psychotic behavior based on this fossil of reasoning can be, like those distortions of DID, I can't help but see an attempt for empathy in them. A wish to create a world where the disorientation, isolation, and exhaustion of the psychotic mind we see can find a form of radical acceptance.

The product of this story holds true for Kris and Spamton within the broader narrative of Deltarune, with its open look into how reality becomes fantasy and how that fantasy reinforces reality. Spamton is a character with a shocking amount of impact on Kris, despite them being more aware than any other lightner of the falseness of the Dark World. It is more than just the flinch at Spamton's mention of the player's soul inside them, but their desperate striking of the shell in the basement during the Spamton fight fakeout, and being so emotional after Spamton's defeat that it elicits concern from their party-mates no matter what words the player puts in their mouth. To Kris, Spamton - this ridiculous embodiment of a spam email thrown in the trash - should be no more than an overly interactable and self-aware cartoon. Spamton's words, his actions, and his ambitions have no reason to matter to them, most of the insights he gives are into Kris' own vision. But they nonetheless highlight something in it that shakes Kris to their core, and causes them to look down on this speck of a man from their higher plane, and squirm in empathetic agony. Spamton's struggles speak to their own; speak to freedom, captivity, choice, autonomy. Things that Kris has been struggling with silently since the player opened a save files, and which Kris is for the first time hearing put into words. Passionate, direct yet censored words. Coming from a 3ft tall spam email, but coming from something nonetheless.

Spamton's struggles do not fall on deaf ears for players either, no more than Kris' do, drawing them deeper into every moment of every interaction between these scheming characters. When a man in the real world speaks of being tied to metaphysical strings and reaching a new plane, others in their superegos understand this to be baseless, but still feel something metaphorical to hold on to. All of us feel patterns which cannot be measured as materially as we would wish on a daily basis. Ones we can connect partially to tried and true philosophies of science, even religious doctrines, but which we strain not to turn into something too cosmic, for fear of chaining ourselves to unreason. An abstracted, diffuse lack of control in life has inspired everything about the human condition down to the delusions of that hypothetical man. But when this intangible captivity is molded and sculpted into a lower reality, into a story, it can become more real, it can become comprehensible and acceptable. So when we are insecure about feigning more knowledge than we could ever truly know about our own cosmos, we create miniatures and have them discourse with us about the patterns we have brought into pseudo-existence. And crucially, for all the pity or fear we cast upon those sick with societal and psychological superstition, we imagine a world where people like them can speak a real truth. Where listening to them and indulging in their passion through all the insanity is not just unashamed but objectively correct. Where the story - not the reality - of psychosis makes sense.

Watch Me Fly [[Mama]]!

But at the same time, knowing that we cannot truly grasp past our own cosmos anymore than a fictional seer can be rewarded with realness for his insights, we often can't help but write a bitter ending. Deltraune puts Spamton within a unique position, where by being from a world within a world, there was at least that one plane for him to jump to. There is a version of Deltraune where Spamton became a "[[BIG SHOT]]" and entered the Light World. But that is not the version of Deltarune that Toby Fox wanted to tell, because that would be about a hypothetical less real, less true to existence for the player than a spam email coming to life and begging them for money. If Spamton's schemes had succeeded, it likely would have been too unreal for that anyone to even consider trying to diagnose him with a real world sickness, because his failure is what gives him that tangibility. That fantastical caricature based in a true story of human existence allows us to explore our dreams and to blur the lines between ourselves and those we deem a simultaneously wretched and idealized other.

Like Kris cutting the strings of Spamton's big but not "[[BIG]]" enough body, we cut the strings of these dreams to allow sobriety to wash over us, reminded that no character nor person can move past their dedicated realities. Spamton then resigns himself to being an aspect for Kris to carry throughout their adventure, offering: "Let me become your strength." A silent passion once again, after the bombast of his performance that reminds us that it was a truth at one point, spoken by something, by someone. Spamton's lust for freedom, control, and understanding will stay in Kris' heart throughout their own character arc, and once they have succeeded or been cut down in parallel, we, the players, will have an aspect of them with us as well. A reminder that someone out there, some artist named Toby Fox, recognized a truth that we resonated with for all its potential absurdity, and spoke it long enough for us to dream and wake again. Hopefully with a clearer image of the world around us, in all its utter incomprehensibility and infinite meanings. A few of those meanings we hold in our back pocket just became a bit clearer thereafter.

That is why we have magical mental illness. Some of it is ableism and people wishing to assert an arbitrary boundary between sanity and reason, some of it is patronizing misplaced sympathy for struggling people, some of it is a profound meditation on the power of knowledge. It all gets a bit jumbled together after so many years, so many iterations, so many countless voices contributing to the noise that forms into what we would call a trope. But that history of meaning-making is beautiful and it is present in Deltarune. In amazing crystal clarity before the game is even a third of the way finished, may I add. The piecemeal nature of this story is perfect for letting ideas like those of Spamton get as much room to breathe as they can, as I can only imagine the game has more knockouts like him in store, but it would be a crying shame for them to all drown each other out in one single release window. Perhaps because Deltarune is a story about characters digesting stories, it makes most sense too for there to be delays - no matter how asynchronous - between adventures. If people want an excuse to understand why Kris reopened a Dark Fountain at the end of Chapter 2, just think about how hungry we all are to get another bite out of this game and its resonant characters this June!