Deltarune Weird Route Ramble And Spmaton's involvement in it (spoilers ahead)
I have soooo much I've been thinking about in regards to chapter 5 (Flowery basically just being a younger gijinka of Rudy and how fruity he and Asgore are, MettaTenna being canon and seemingly the best route for Tenna, Aqua resembling Kris when they were a child, The soul and body becoming 2 separate entities with Mew Mew and what that could say about Kris and the player etc etc)
But a thing that just won't leave my mind is Spamton's involvement in Weird Route.
Chapter 4 already recontextualized his cruelty in chapter 2 to be a lot more intentional but soo many people were quick to dismiss weir route as just "a different non canon universe" which... I mean not true but I let it slide because maybe they're right and different interpretations n all that (despite me not agreeing with it at all)
So now with chapter 5 we can clearly see that there isn't just a mere difference in routes you take, all of these facets are absolutely canon to these characters and you get to see these sides of them based on the choices you, the player, force onto Kris.
I'm not here to remove agency from the player when I talk about Spamton, absolutely not. We play an extremely big and important part into how things are gonna turn out in this route and it'd be dismissive to not acknowledge that. I do however think that Spamton wasn't a random choice when it came to who gave us the thorn ring.
For starters with how heavy we a going with the "this is all a game" and "out of bounds" themes it makes sense that the spam email guy who was conjured up during the 90's would be the one doing this as back then specially spam emails were dangerous and several of them hosted viruses that could brick your pc. But also a reminder he is one of the major players when it comes to the game's themes surrounding grief, acceptance and the cycle of abuse in relationships.
Spamton is bitter, arrogant, downright insane and more than a little selfish all of which he is happy to blame Tenna for. No accountability for any potential wrongdoings on his end (which he has done as evident by Tenna talking about an instance of Spamton scamming him) it's all Tenna, Tenna and everyone else in his life- The Addisons, Swatch etc etc.
In normal route he seemingly turns a new leaf after literally beating some sense into him in the Neo fight.
But in weird route he gives you the thorn ring, the object which leads to EVERYTHING else that the player causes in the route.
He laughs about Noelle's eventual suffering ,makes a boomer esque sexist remark about marriage and seemingly only tries to stop you for his own gain and not because he sees that the player is gonna be using the ring for horrible experiements on these 2 teenagers.
Every single horrible thing we witness after that is directly the fault of Spamton giving the player the thorn ring, an action for he never took any accountability for and seemingly only cared about in favor of saving his own skin/helping him achieve his own goals.
It's hard for me not to see Noelle performing a suicide murder attempt as a form to reclaim back her agency from Kris (who she perceives as the guilty one, unaware of the player's presence) and not think "Spamton knew something like this would happen, he knew this would hurt Noelle... And he found it hilarious."
I don't think he is an irredeemable monster, normal route LITERALLY showcases that he's not.
My point is: The two routes illustrate different outcomes for his character, normal route he learns to move on and accept his circumstances and to make the best of them. And in the weird route he dwells on all of his worst character traits and becomes a worse person.
There's more I'd talk about but I'm 1) not smart enough and 2) not confidently incorrect enough to make bold predictions about future chapters so I'll leave it here.
There's about just weird route I keep thinking about and I'm just,,, so vindicated by chapter 5 it's great
TL:DR : Tenna dodged a nuclear bomb/j