#mafa writes

PART 1 - Typing quirk breakdown -- bracket Hell

This is undoubtedly the most important and hardest part to get. Beforehand, I'd like to outline a few canon things about them that are important for your bracket positioning and word choice:

100% involuntary

Are an artifact of addison hyperlinks, because they too use brackets to link to the products they sell

Used to censor him, very deliberately (more on that in a bit)

Spamton has a bit of control over them by choosing his intended words or the length of his phrases.

According to the myriad of official Spamton material out there, I've outlined a few options for where you replace words in a sentence for him:

In place of subjects, objects or verbs, but only one of them per phrase. Try varying between sentences, don't replace only objects or only subjects. Add ons to sentences, like calling someone's name, or filler phrases, are fair game regardless

Replacing entire chunks of sentences, especially as longer brackets

In place of people's names, except for Kris, and maybe Susie. Ralsei is dealer's choice

WITH EXCEPTION. Of when he is speaking in short sentences, of three words or less, except when one of these words is censorable, or someone's name (see below). He often uses short sentences to circumvent his brackets. More on that later.

Well, now I know where to put the brackets. But what's inside them? I came up with a few basic rules for contents:

Advertising speak -- the canned phrases you hear in ads, telemarketing, clickbait and whatnot.

Semantic adjacency -- replacing words with a synonym, antonym, bastardizations or typos, or something semantically related.

Censoring -- we all know these, $4.99 life, little sponge. Wacky phrases or garbage symbols that replace clear swear words, things he shouldn't say in polite company ("AND SOMETIMES IN THE MORNING, A LITTLE [Hyperlink Blocked]"), or things that are related to his contract, the knight, or his benefactor.

Namedrops -- of movies, tv shows, song titles, games, and brands. Ideally, input the year of release or a copyright/trademark symbol after it.

Quotes -- not just of things he or other people said now, but of things said in the past, ad reads, commercials, movie, tv show and song quotes, memes, everything goes.

[Single] and [[Double]] brackets -- when to use??

This is also dealer's choice, and the single vs double bracket thing doesn't seem to have a canon pattern. Sometimes he even uses three or four. But I'll talk about the rules I use, because I run this typing quirk like the navy.

I use single brackets for semantic adjacency, censoring, namedrops and meme quotes. I use double brackets to signal it's a media quote (including ads) and him directly quoting something someone said, either himself or someone else. Double brackets, for my intents, signal that it's a voiceclip inserted into his speech, while others are usually his normal voice distorted, bitcrushed or glitched.

Other quirks

Spamton has other quirks of his speech that should be peppered in among the brackets frequently:

Word and phrase repetition, especially when distressed. It's important that they are not stutters, they are full words and sentences. Sometimes, brackets replace repetitions sequentially ("[Why] DID YOU DO THIS!? WHY!? [Y]!? [Yellow]!? [Gamma]!?")

Frequent typos, including using the wrong symbols (a comma or a quotation mark instead of an apostrophe, for instance) and homophones. My advice? If you make a typo while writing his dialogue, and it's not too egregious, keep it. If it's funny, definitely keep it.

Awkward spacing. (good to communicate cadence and when he glitches and freezes! Use this one more sparingly, though). This also works on the opposite direction -- he sometimes puts words together, like they're variables; HonestMan, HotSingle, etc.

When he's being very serious, melancholic, or scared, he might speak in normal lowercase with proper capitalization, and no brackets. This isn't something to overuse. Use it for impactful things.

PART 2 - Writing style

This is honestly the part I would recommend you start with first. This is the actual character voice you give Spamton. It's a bit your mileage may vary, of course, but if you wanna do it like I do, I break it down like so:

Cadence

Word choices he makes

Brackets then come to replace these words

Before you figure out the brackets, you have to figure out what he wants to say, and how he wants to say it. This can even help guide you on which words to pick to replace, or which words or sentences will come in the brackets.

My personal method is: I pick an accent cadence from an East Coast big city, something like Boston or New York (I choose Boston, but you can do whatever you want, even outside of East Coast). This helps you figure out which words he emphasizes, where his voice raises and dips, the vocabulary he uses, which words he sticks together or drops entirely, etc. If you get through this and you're confident, you have a good Big Shot Spamton Human AU character voice already. Lose some coherence and eloquence, add in a stutter if you want, and you have yourself a human AU current day Spam.

Then, after, you gotta mix this cadence with youtube poop cadence. This comes naturally if you were raised watching them all day long, but if you haven't, I recommend going on youtube a day or two to get your brain rotted a little bit. This also helps with bracket replacement as well as glitches and gags.

Finally, the brackets come in. With a solid base like this, figuring out where brackets go and what goes inside them should be fairly easier.

Some notes:

Sometimes a sentence will only make sense with brackets. This is normal

Sometimes a sentence will not make sense at all. As long as it's intended, that is also normal

Always prize readability over game accuracy. Spamton's speech quirk is definitely not as organized as this, but this is optimized for readability and ease of writing

PART 3 - Personality

Okay, look. Describing Spamton's personality could be a master's thesis on media analysis. I can't write the whole thing here, but I'll try to get the cliffnotes. This is extremely personalized from writer to writer, so if yours diverges from mine, or you disagree somewhere, it's perfectly fine.

Fast paced, manic speaking. Even when he's tired or relaxed, he still speaks fairly fast. Think of the cadence you built up for him!

He talks a lot. A. Lot. He can keep up a conversation with himself, and it's not because he likes the sound of his own voice, but because he just has so much to say, and he will jump from subject to subject at will.

Spamton is smart, don't forget that. He is observant and attentive, but this is cleverly masked under his wacky, manic, unstable persona.

He is also! Stupid! He does things for the bit! He lies for fun!

But he never lies when he's being serious. He may embezzle the truth to make himself sound like more of a victim, but everything he has said so far that sounds like him talking out his ass trying to get pity points has actually been true (about Swatch stealing from him, about Tenna ripping him off and betraying him, among others). You can trust him, he is an HonestMan!

Do take his trauma and mental illness into account, though. Remember he is implied to have been homeless for something along the lines of 20 years, he was already afflicted with divine madness back then, and this has severe impacts on how someone reacts to others, presents themselves, and their outlook in life. Spamton might be more aloof when in company of strangers, he might not be kind, he might be more selfish than you want him to be. And that's fine. It's part of who he is now.

BONUS - HIGHLIGHTS

So, now that we know the method, how about we see it in action? Here's a few personal highlights of my personal writing utilizing his method, between 2021 and today. Sorry if some of these are for ants: