And It Simply Keeps Spinning

My name is Spectre 🕰️ They/Them 🕰️ Artist & Writer 🕰️ 21 🕰️ Mostly SFW 🕰️

[spectralclockwork]

[NO SERVICE - TEASER 1]

[ 2 ] [ 3 ]

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for a fic that may or may not happen in the future

[spectralclockwork]

No Service is still happening btw!!!! i put myself on hiatus from working on it until chapter 5 since i anticipate a lot of things might happen that will change how i approach the outline. i know i am not very active on this blog but believe me i am constantly thinking about my projects and hoping to get them out into the world as soon as possible. i may also have new teasers soon as well :)

[spectralclockwork]

I'll also share this now, before chapter 5 comes out and either completely vindicates or makes a fool of me.

I'm very convinced by the appearance of the floradinns that chapter 5's dark world will have a lot of parallels to the New Home segment of Undertale. Given that it's rehashing old enemies (CORE enemies being stronger variants of Ruins enemies), takes place directly after a revelation that shatters the perception of the journey as a light-hearted adventure (Alphys revealing that you have to kill Asgore, followed by the story of Asriel and Chara), and is in build up to a "final" encounter with a king (Asgore himself in both cases). Reflections of chapter 1 would also parallel New Home's reflections of the Ruins, and we're very set up for that given we're on a journey to confront another monarch figure.

That isn't to say that Deltarune has to follow the pacing structure of Undertale, and I doubt that it will, but I am expecting to see a lot of rhyming going on. What it would mean from an analytical standpoint? I'm not sure, which is why this is more of a rant than a fully articulated post, but I think it would be very neat to see.

[spectralclockwork]

I wish more people would entertain the idea that Gaster's association with the number 6 is more than just alluding to the number of the beast (or of a man, as the original quote states).

It's also a reflection of the number 9. A number symbolizing ultimate power and control.

99999 in video games is usually the upper limit of stats you can get and damage you can do, since it just fills up all the available digits to the highest number that can go in them. It's also a number that is typically unobtainable in normal gameplay, requiring cheats or exploits (or a lot of time grinding). Undertale's no mercy route adapts this into its imagery.

Your max HP at the highest level is 99, with a total exp gain of 99999. You hit Sans and Asgore for 9999999 damage (though there are three more 9s in the damage done to Asgore, the effect is the same). When erasing the world, the screen is filled with the repeating number 9.

Furthermore, the 9th anniversary poem for Undertale features the number 9 heavily.

9. 99. 999. 9999. If everything gets high enough, You become invincible. Nothing can hurt you anymore. Nothing can hurt anyone anymore.

It's a number of ultimate power and control. The limits you can reach when you push to become stronger and bend the world to your will. A mark left behind when you go beyond what the game is capable of processing, when you break free of the intended experience in pursuit of either becoming untouchable to anything inside it or seeking things not normally attainable.

Deltarune as far as I'm aware, while plentiful in those themes, lacks the imagery of the number 9 so far. And I don't think this is for no reason. Because that power isn't actually in our hands the way it arguably was in Undertale. We are being guided, proxied, ours is now the force being bent to another's will for their purposes.

6, being the number 9 flipped on its head, doesn't actually change in its meaning. It's just being seen from a different perspective. Whether warped by time and space, or reflected through the glass of a screen. We're seeing the same number, just from the wrong orientation. Someone who holds all of that control, but exists on a different plane from us.

If you looked down at your feet and saw a man standing below you, on the other side, maybe all those 9s would look like 6s.

[nenestansunsthings]

birthday art i made for my friend, @spectralclockwork (what the hell!!!! its not letting me tag u)!!! happy birthday, and i hope u get to enjoy the fun gang for a long long time!! tumblr gets to see them too, because we agree u should see the sweeties

got the version without the birthday greeting under the cut as well

[spectralclockwork]

everyone looook at the sweetie peas from my sweetie pea friend

[spectralclockwork]

assortment of doodles done by request of my friends the other day

+ pluey

[moskvishacreates]

I'm a firm believer in artist Spamton, both in the sense that he likes to draw/paint, and also in the sense that performance, like what he was going to do on TV Time, is also a form of art. He enjoys doing creative work.

[spectralclockwork]

yes yes yes!!! artist spamton is something i hold so so so dear to my heart and i really wish i could see more people talking about it, because i feel like leaving it out loses a lot of what makes his character so compelling and sympathetic (at least to me). it adds so much more depth to his aspirations toward taking fate into his own hands and being on equal footing with lightners, his struggles with fitting in as an addison, and his envy toward swatch and NEO. he doesnt want to be the creation anymore, he wants to be the one who creates!!

[spectralclockwork]

this isn't really a big revelation, more just an observation of how lightners and darkners are written differently. lightners are distinctly person-like in how they act and what their motivations are. they have problems that are grounded in very tangible events, people they have complex relationships with, and these things motivate them to take action in either world. their motivations are dynamic, changing in response to the world around them. they grow and develop in very authentic ways. their behavior is nuanced and contextual, never static or rigidly conformed to a single angle. darkners on the other hand are distinctly character-like. their aspirations are more grand and concerned with the bigger picture of things. they may have smaller more specific goals beat by beat, but typically it all informs the same overarching idea. king wants revenge for being abandoned, queen wants to help people, tenna wants to entertain his family. these core values are felt much more potently in their character because they are made to embody them. their personalities are archetypal, conveying or subverting tropes that connect directly to the themes they represent. everything they do, say, think, and feel ultimately is meant to play into the greater narrative theyre built into.

and this dichotomy matters because it plays into the gap between them that ralsei is meant to blur the lines of. ralsei becoming more of a distinct person isnt just about having empathy for anthropomorphized objects and concepts. its this, being born as a character meant to play a role in a narrative, where your actions have to be informed by the themes you embody and the tropes written into you, and then being able to grow into a complex and nuanced person who can think and act independently of that narrative. and this is only possible through his friends seeing past the fact that hes fictional and treating him like a real person. thats also why the prophecy is so important. it is that narrative that ralsei was written to carry out, but its clear that he resents that role deep down but doesn't feel like he has enough power or influence over the narrative to do anything about it.

in the end, thats what the dark worlds are about. not the objects. its about characters, fiction, stories, and ascribing meaning to them that goes beyond the narrative theyre initially meant to tell. the more you treat these characters as people, the more power you give them over your emotional investment, the more they themselves can become more than what they were made for.

[spectralclockwork]

i promise ive been working on some things in the background, especially in regards to No Service, which definitively WILL be happening hopefully sooner than later if all goes well.

to make up for my silence, have a wigglypaint tenna i made in like 15 minutes to see if i enjoyed drawing in it (i mostly didnt, but the tenna is cute)

stay tuned!

[spectralclockwork]

maybe a bit controversial but my take on "when you have a bat, everything looks like a ball" isn't that it's hinting to some crazy dess lore involvement with the page, but rather as a critique of that approach to trying to solve deltarune's mysteries. 1225 is a significant number in deltarune for plenty of reasons, and that makes it really tempting to cram it (and therefore dess) into any place that seems like it might fit. its the heaviest hammer (bat) that we have, and there are a lot of nails (balls) open to get hit. but dess isn't the answer to every single question. 1225 isn't the code to every single lock. the fact that the response to 1225 doesn't follow up with the move forward prompt like other answers do is a very clear indicator to me that 1225 is not only the wrong answer, but also the wrong mindset to have when trying to pick apart deltarune. theres more to the mystery than just dess. not everything is a ball.

[spectralclockwork]

has anyone been cataloguing the email responses yet? i haven't gotten mine yet but i'm itching to go through and see what everyone else is getting

[spectralclockwork]

i have not had the time yet nor current mental capacity to fully dissect this but while everyone else is talking about the spamtenna implications here i NEED to know if anyone else is thinking about what this means for theories that connect mike and friend and what this changes about our perception of the latter if they are connected or even one in the same (which i often hesitate to jump to the conclusion of but in this circumstance i need to entertain the idea)

there is NO reason to give tenna that warning if you were the one executing the consequences of the contract ESPECIALLY if you planned to do so as an inevitability like many people assume (since the falling out that comes after the contract supposedly had to happen in order to have tenna fulfill the cleaving prophecy down the line). which means that either mike (or at least the real mike who gave tenna that warning) =/= friend or friend ISNT acting in the same interest as whatever forces orchestrated spamtons fall (OR A THIRD MORE NUANCED THING!!!!!)

[spectralclockwork]

what i reallg need to do is give myself a full refreshed perspective and review everything we know about mike and friend separately, because i've never fully believed that they're wholly one in the same (even less so now) but i cant overlook how massively prevalent the callsigns for friend are around the fake mikes (and no i dont believe its the same as mike=friend being another theory being made light of because friend's callsigns are far more abundant than any other reference made in the fight or cutscenes. just in case that was up for debate). i would be very happy to be pointed in the direction of any sources of indexed information on either of the two that isnt just the wiki. i will probably be doing my own firsthand research as well

[spectralclockwork]

i have not had the time yet nor current mental capacity to fully dissect this but while everyone else is talking about the spamtenna implications here i NEED to know if anyone else is thinking about what this means for theories that connect mike and friend and what this changes about our perception of the latter if they are connected or even one in the same (which i often hesitate to jump to the conclusion of but in this circumstance i need to entertain the idea)

there is NO reason to give tenna that warning if you were the one executing the consequences of the contract ESPECIALLY if you planned to do so as an inevitability like many people assume (since the falling out that comes after the contract supposedly had to happen in order to have tenna fulfill the cleaving prophecy down the line). which means that either mike (or at least the real mike who gave tenna that warning) =/= friend or friend ISNT acting in the same interest as whatever forces orchestrated spamtons fall (OR A THIRD MORE NUANCED THING!!!!!)

[spectralclockwork]

mettaspam is a relationship built on soul crushing mutual gender envy and thats why its awesome

[spectralclockwork]

[NO SERVICE - TEASER 3]

[ 1 ] [ 2 ]

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Feeling of being watched...

[spectralclockwork]

had a brainworm the other day about the angel/devil symmetry between spamton and tenna. spamton is your fanatical buy your way into heaven type of scam that preys on desperation and a need to escape from guilt. the televangelist who promises your donations will be remembered when you climb to the gates of heaven and is then found flying private jets to offshore vacation homes, all in the name of spreading the good word. tenna is the cartoon devil. the suave businessman of fire and brimstone who works in soul binding contracts and fine print. who has already won from the moment you sit down in his office because you signed your life away in the waiver that got your foot in the door. and the contracts will never save you no matter what youre getting out of the deal because they exist exclusively to bind you to his domain, where his word is law.

[spectralclockwork]

rubs my chin. since we have heavy evidence that asgore will be present in or at least have a hand in the chapter 5 dark world, AND there seems to be a subtle progression of ralsei being defined more distinctly from asriel (kris especially going out of their way to point out that they look very different), that the next step of that arc could be asgore seeing ralsei and explicitly mistaking him for asriel, maybe to the point of treating him the same as or as a stand-in for asriel and ignoring any of ralseis or anyone elses attempts to correct him.

ideally this would end in ralsei very loudly and definitively proclaiming himself (or herself? 👀) as a unique person deserving of respect and recognition.