How do you decide when to use Spamtons little speech quirk and what to have him say? Your writing for him feels so natural!
Spamton’s speech pattern is surprisingly tricky! It has a lot of weird little things to it, haha. I’m glad you think I’m doing a good job though. :D Generally I try to keep in mind a few things for him...
Spamton misspells things a lot, but not always in the same way (with exceptions). He also likes substituting numbers for letters, usually in words that get caught in a spam filter to try to get around it but not always. ( [[Amazed at thi5 amazing transformation?]], NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING AB04T! , SOMEONE LEFT [There] SOULS, [Lyeing Around......] , YOU FILLED YOUR [Inventorium] WITH [Half-Pr1ce Sallamy], AND THE [Number on theB4ck]!, [Unforgettable D3als] , [Pr3mIUm luxjerry w4tch] )
When Spamton takes over the narration or influences it, he still misspells things. (CONGRULATIONS YOU ARE THE 100th VISITOR!!! )
Spamton is bad at tenses and mixes them up a lot. This is one of the most endearing things to me for some reason, haha. ( I'M SO [Proud] OF YOU, I COULD [Killed] YOU! , I HAVE [Becomed] NEO. , MY ESTEEM CUSTOMER, THAT GUY [Steal my look]!! OKAY, MAYBE HE [Steal]ed BACK WHAT I TOOK FROM HIM, WE WILL ALSO [Divorced] )
He messes up pluralization or grammar related to it at times. ( HOTSINGLE, 100 CUSTOMER, AN [Valuable Item])
He actually swears a fair amount but it’s usually censored. ( YOU'RE [$!$!] RIGHT! , DEALS SO GOOD I'LL [$!$$] MYSELF!, [$!?!] THE PRESSES! )
His capitalization in his bracket words/phrases is inconsistent and he spells things wrong in them at times as well. He usually capitalizes the first word though. ( [[A LimiTed Time Only!]] , [[Designed BY The Classics]], [[ Sucbscrube ]] , THEN [[WHY]] GO TO A DUMPSTER!!! , YOU'VE GOT THE [[LIGHT.]] , [ succumb to the worm ], SO HAVE I GOT A DEAL THAT'S [sweet Sunday creme] TO ANY SELF RESPECTING [Ball Nut]! , [fluffey] , [Pracitce]).
His capitalization in general is kind of all over the place. ( LIGHT nER! HEY-HE Y HEY!!!, THat'll be 1997 KROMER., ENL4RGE Yourself, I USED TO be A BIG SHOT. , I WOn'T FORCE YOU. , It's still DARK... SO DARK! )
He gets the verb in sentences wrong at times or has too many/too few words in a phrase. ( HEAR THOSE [Balloons]???, [Cool down with a]!!!, [Wake up and the smell the] MY DEAD CARCASS!!! ) His grammar also gets wonky, especially with the tricky homophones like your/you’re or their/there/they’re. ( YOUR A BIGSHOT!! , WELL LET THIS BE A [Email] , SHOW OFF YOU'RE [Big Shot] )
He sometimes doesn’t finish a sentence at all, or leaves a blank space. ( BUY [KeyGen] FROM ME AT [The Low Low Price Of] , MEANWHILE I CAN [sneak out the back] AND, [Hurry now]!!! [Blink] AND YOU'LL MISS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! , THAT'S WHY THEY'RE COMING TO [kill] ME RIGHT NOW. THEY'RE COMING TO ). Sometimes he just says one or two words or sentence fragments. (MONEY NO, KEYGEN) He likes repeating unfinished sentences as well, usually when he’s worked up about something. ( THE MEN INSIDE WOULD THE MEN INSIDE WOULD , I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO. )
He uses periods to emphasize certain parts of a sentence and sometimes he just leaves brackets or carets or other punctuation in his speech. ( YOU'RE LIGHT neR< AREN'T YOU? , GO BACK. AND PUT. THE DISK. BACK. WHERE YOU GOT IT. ).
Sometimes he has spaces in the middle of words or in the wrong places ( DID YOU HAVE AN YMORE?, I'M A SALESMAN , ). Sometimes it’s just a mess in general ( DOESN;T IT?KID? ), and sometimes he likes to combine words ( [HonestMan] , [handsomeGuy] ).
My general approach to this is just to keep any typos I make while doing his dialogue lol.
He drops out of caps usually when he’s scared or thoughtful (not accounting for after his battle), and usually when he’s thinking about Mike.
A fair amount of his substitutions are vaguely threatening or allude to some kind of violence or suffering. He mentions death, dying, and screaming a lot, usually in unexpected contexts ( PRICES SO LOW, EVERYONE I KNOW IS [[Dead]]!!!, VACATIONING IN [Burning acid] , NOW I'M THE [[It Burns! Ow! Stop! Help Me! It Burns!]] GUY! ).
Sometimes these threats are relevant warnings if you know what he’s up to ( TAKE THIS DEAL AND YOU WILL [[Die]]!! IT'S THAT GOOD!!!, [Die Now] AND I'LL THROW IN [50] [Bullets] FOR FREE!, THIS IS [One Purchase] YOU WILL [Regret] FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE! ). There’s always a sort of “off” vibe to him that makes him feel a little dangerous.
As an aside, Spamton talks about people beating him up a lot.
He likes turning phrases about refunds into non-refunds, haha ( [No Money Back Guaranttee] ). He’ll sometimes just admit outright he’s trying to scam you ( HOW'S AN INNOCENT GUY LIKE ME SUPPOSED TO [Rip People Off] , [What's yours is mine] AND [What's yours is mine]. ).
He’s extremely excited and shouting almost all the time, so he very rarely has only one exclamation point about anything. Usually it’s three but it can go higher. Just go ham on the exclamation points lol.
[[Hyperlink blocked.]] is a tricky one. He does use it a lot, but the context for it is hard to pin down. Usually it relates to things like souls, what it is that’s controlling him or what it wants, or how exactly he wants to escape it. Other times it’s sort of privileged or secret information that would be caught by a filter and blocked, or it’s some scammy thing or another that’d be blocked for user safety. Usually it’s something that someone wouldn’t want the player to know.
He does use sales pitch, adspeak, or internet slang substitutions a lot, ( [Friend Request Accepted] , [[Anything You See On TV!]], [[Workout-Ready Body]], [Luxurious Basement Apartment] , [[Pass My Savings Onto You!]] ) but not all the time! A lot of his substitutions are single words, usually on an odd tangent to the original word or just unusual in general ( [Deep Abyss] , YOUR [[Ant-sized]] [[Rapidly-shrinking]] LIFE!! , [Wacky Stacks] , [Little Nipper], LIKE MANY [buzzing] AND [burning] CREATORS, GET OUT YOUR CYBER [skin wallets] ).
Sometimes they’re just a normal word in the sentence ( YOU GOT [Guts] KID!! , [Part] OF MY BEAUTIFUL [Heart], LOOK IN MY [Eyes] LOOK IN MY [Nose] LOOK IN MY [Mouth] ).
I tend to think about his substitutions a bit like the Orz, where a substituted word has alternate or deeper meaning than you’d think BECAUSE it was substituted. By [LIGHT], did Spamton literally mean light, or does light have another connotation to it he’s adding that’s not clear? I like thinking of the substitutions adding a potential multiple meaning layers to a word, haha. Maybe he can’t help it, or maybe that particular word is hinting at something more...
He can say full sentences without any substitutions in them, but they’re rare ( WHAT ARE THESE STRINGS!? , YOU'RE LEAVING!? WHAT ABOUT MY DISK!?!? , TOO MANY EXCESS VACATION DAYS?? TAKE A GOD DAMN VACATION STRAIGHT TO HELL, I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING I HAD! MY LIFE ADVICE! , BUT KRIS, IF YOU REFUSE. THAT'S YOUR CHOICE. I CAN'T FORCE YOU.). Interestingly, they often involve him saying he can’t force Kris to do something, something he says over and over and over. He seems very preoccupied with it.
