#mauswheel

I've finally done it. I've drawn all 34 existing recruits! :D

This was an awesome project. I made a tumblr account just for the sake of posting these.

I already had to reduce the image's resolution just so I could post it at all, so I don't know how detailed it'll be compared to the individual ones I've posted already.

Chapter 1 compilation here [x]

Cyber World proved to be quite the challenge, but I am sooooo glad I finally managed to finish it too!!! Here are the close-ups!

Cyber World's Entrance

Cyber Field

Cyber City

Queen's Mansion

Mansion Basement

GIGA SIZE

And now, the honorable mentions (AKA NPCs who would be redundant to draw/were mentioned but don't actually have a design)

Cyber Field: Hidden Plugboy afraid of sliding down, the Red Swatchling that cleans up the exploded arcade, who becomes cleaning buddies with a Rabbick in Castle Town.

Cyber City: A City Werewire who talks about the running cars, Two Red Swatchlings cleaning the streets for the GIGA Queen fight later, who then go remove the Berdly Statue, a City Plugboy who alludes to Spamton and the City Werewire next to them, a billion Maus for the annoying mouse puzzle rooms.

Chapter 2

Deltarune and the Nutcracker

I’d like to make a deep dive at the three subordinates (four if you count the Tasques) who were spared and recruited by Spamton NEO after his hostile takeover of Queen’s Mansion in the Weird Route. Particularly a bit of trivia regarding Mauswheel and the novella "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" -moreso its ballet adaptation by Tchaikovsky- and how this relates to Spamton, Noelle and Kris in Deltarune’s story.

This includes spoilers for Chapters 2, 3 and 4, especially Weird Route, alongside this year's Deltarune Newsletters.

Werewerewire is an optional encounter in which you have to go out of your way to the room where the footage of the creation of the Dark Fountain would be in Normal Route.

Werewerewire, by sheer force of will, absorbed the wires placed upon them by Queen to achieve their freedom. Hence the Wi-Fi symbol. Spamton likely held some degree of respect for Werewerewire in this way, desiring the same for himself. There’s also a cheeky little nod to “The air crackles with freedom.” with Werewerewire’s “The air crackles with fighting spirit!” should you choose the ACT option [BeTough].

The mandatory encounter of the overthrown Mansion, in front of Queen’s mecha, is Tasque Manager, who is doing her "spare" pose when you walk up to her (again, NEO spared her life). She actually shares quite a lot of commonality with Spamton NEO. Including but not limited to using element 6 [Puppet/Cat] attacks and a mutual hatred of Jevil.

I think the Mad Mew Mew relations have already been discussed thoroughly in other theories, so I won’t go into full detail regarding it. Maybe Spamton recruited her to keep the Maice in line? The enemy I want to focus primarily on is the Mauswheel, who doesn't seem to be discussed often.

Likewise they are just as emblematic of Weird Route Spamton as the previous two, it’s just that it isn’t as apparent if you don’t recognize what its character design is referencing. Mauswheel is not just the wheel of a computer mouse.

In the first act of the Christmas ballet, the Nutcracker, there is villain called the Mouse King. Mauswheel who is a trio of Maice connected by their tails, and the Mouse King both reference the rarely documented phenomena of the “Mouse King”. In which a collection of rats get their tails stuck together due to some sticky substance or some other strange causes.

Hence, the Mouse King costumes in the Nutcracker ballets are more often than not multi-headed. Obviously these animals are suffering and can’t survive this way, so I won’t put a picture here. You can look up what it looks like online if you wish.

I’m only personally familiar with “Barbie in the Nutcracker” on VHS with the old CRT and we don’t have either anymore :( From observation it seemed to be a combination of details of the original novella with the simplified ballet plot. I'll do my best to summarize here:

In Act 1, Clara (or Marie or Masha) Stahlbaum receives a Nutcracker toy for Christmas from her eccentric Godfather Drosselmeier, an inventor and toy maker. He has such a talent for his creations (and is occasionally implied to have Wizard powers) that his little wind up dolls and toy soldiers are able to dance in a life-like fashion. When the Stahlbaum family go to bed for the night, Clara wakes up from having fallen asleep on the sofa to notice the world around her has grown massive in size. She’s now the same height of the Nutcracker and the Wind-Up Toy Soldiers given to her brother, Fritz. The toys come to life as the household is invaded by the Mouse King and his army.

Led by the Nutcracker, the Toy Soldier Army and the Army of Mice clash. The Mouse King soon has the Nutcracker on the ropes. Clara comes to the rescue by chucking her shoe so hard the Mouse King takes fatal brain damage before twitching his last. With the Mouse King dead, the curse on the Nutcracker is lifted. The Nutcracker is revealed to be a Prince and invites Clara to embark with him on an adventure to the Land of Sweets and Delights. Act 2 of the ballet is where Clara and the Prince meet the Sugar Plum Fairy to recount their travels.

The ballet spends the remainder of its second half with everyone vibing to international dessert-themed dances (Arabian Coffee, Chinese Hawthorne tanghulu, and others) before Clara finally awakes from her dream.

Depending on the version of the famous Christmas ballet that the theater may modify as they see fit, the dream may or may not be implied to be real. It’s a very innocent and simple plot, in which one can draw many comparisons to Deltarune and its Dark Worlds.

In the darkness, household objects come to life, complete with fully fledged lives and histories despite only being briefly sentient to the outside view. The heroes defeat an eccentric, villainous monarch with the power of friendship (and violence). In the second chapter, a girl is led across a fantasy world, where she’s unsure whether it’s real or merely a figment of her subconscious. Said girl is also deeply afraid of mice.

This might just be tangentially related, but the game also features numerous Ribbons as equips in the game. When her brother Fritz had carelessly broke Carol’s Nutcracker toy, she repairs him with a ribbon from her dress. He is wearing it into battle with the Mouse King.

The shtick of the Holiday Family is that they are Christmas-coded. Though the story follows its own unique religion around the Legend of the Deltarune, God and Jesus Christ are still figures in this world (Tenna, Rouxls and Alphys say “god”, and Noelle says “Cheezus”, which is a Christian-friendly way of saying The Son’s name in vain), implying Christianity is still a thing in UTDR.

The game features elements of Devils (Jevil, the ever present appearances of the number 66 and 666 in relation to the mysterious Voice), Angels (Noelle, Spamton, the Titans, and more) and other famous Christian symbology and themes. Spamton himself has a proclivity for religious delusions, especially in the normal storyline as he seeks out the player SOUL to reach [HEAVEN].

Remember how, of all things that Tenna could have called Spamton in the Bonus Room cutscene, the writing landed on “rat”? As a figurative term, the “Mouse King” or “Rat King” -which are interchangeable- is referred to as a ruler or leader figure who lives off of others.

The Mauswheel is patrolling the room of Queen's portraits with Spamton's mug plastered all over them. Spamton parasitized the mansion with his Pipis, away from its original ruler. That being said, Queen does nothing to stop the invader as she was searching for Noelle and Berdly. Perhaps it was because Queen only just got back the GIGA Queen Mecha after you defeat Tasque Manager in her mandatory encounter. Nonetheless, like Tenna, Queen concerned herself only with the Lightners, to the detriment of her subjects.

Everything about the Darkner selection all the way down to their placement in the mansion when Spamton NEO takes over feels quite deliberate. Werewerewire's placement in the mansion to me signals towards Spamton NEO's desire for freedom, either through control over the Dark Fountain or escaping to a world beyond the Dark. Only, the projection that Queen had filmed of the Fountain being made by the Knight isn't there anymore.

If we consider Spamton’s role in the Weird Route, Spamton is exploiting the dangerous situation between “Kris” (the player) and Noelle to profit off of Noelle’s suffering. Noelle was already struggling with saying “no”. The player was already pushing her around. Yet rather than helping her in sympathy of being puppeteered just like him, he instead helps the player in placing her in a pliable trance-state, all the while making cruel jokes at her expense.

When you confront him as NEO, he calls her Kris’s side chick and a term that Noelle herself said on her own blog was racy. Spamton diminishes her power and agency despite making her even more powerful with the Thorn Ring. He sits and watches the pair of teens gallivant about, freezing Cyber World’s populace to leave a gaping hole in Queen’s defenses.

The first thing he does after taking over the Mansion is to trap his former friend Swatch and the Swatchlings in the Color Café. Using the petrified body of an innocent Darkner (Rouxls), who hadn’t done a thing to him, as a door stopper (The fan-restored Board 3 in Ch.3 implies that Darkners are still cognizant when they are petrified, by the way). Spamton had just suckered two teenagers into doing the heavy lifting for him.

Like any scammer, to Spamton, Noelle is not a victim, she’s just a mark.

And yet -if one were to accept the Spamton Sweepstakes ARG as personal canon- Noelle is the only Lightner to have read the little puppet’s emails after his fall from grace and cruel transformation. Noelle wanted to make sure any fan mail she got was read, even browsing her spam folder’s contents. Spamton is so grateful to be read that he sends her messages like “hochi mamas can get big too” and gifts her a self-replicating Pipis as his “first charity”. Something he had only ever done for his partner, canonically.

Spamton thought of Swatch [[Easels]] and Tenna [[CRTs]] as his friends because they had listened to him. Swatch giving Spamton their best hospitality they can muster and Tenna treating Spamton as his equal. To the little spam mail fated to be ignored. It’s why losing them the way he did had hurt so badly. Thus, this endearment extends to holidaygirl1225, a faceless name among many others. The Pipis crashes her Cat Petterz game eventually.

They don’t say a word directly to each other in canon, yet Noelle and Spamton I find to be fascinating. Their stories are both about loss of agency, yet I disagree that Spamton’s mental illness should override his own agency with what he does in Weird Route.

Similarly, Spamton also has symmetry with Clara’s companion, the Nutcracker. Even being depicted as a nutcracker rather than a marionette in numerous works. The multi-animator project below also features Kris as one of the aforementioned wind-up Toy Soldiers.

In the normal story with the power of friendship (or violence), we “break” Spamton’s curse so-to-speak. Kris sees Spamton for the crooked and violent man he really is, and still has him around them. I’m sure Kris could just chuck away anything they don’t want whenever the player isn’t looking if they felt otherwise. Spamton doesn’t have to be a victim and only a victim to be worthy of being saved. A redemption arc wouldn’t mean much if it did.

He is either grateful for their compassion, or respectful of their strength. His appearance didn’t change, unlike the Nutcracker to a Prince. Spamton in the normal story is simply trying to be a better person and bury the hatchet with his old relationships, now that he has been safely rehoused into Kris’s pockets as either the Dealmaker or the PuppetScarf.

To summarize the comparisons, Spamton, in the Weird Route, is an allegorical Rat King. In the normal storyline after defeating NEO, Spamton is more akin to Clara’s friend and companion, the Nutcracker. The player can opt to violently shoo Spamton to scurry away like an insignificant pest and disappear from the narrative by not taking his deal. We can enable him to further dig himself deeper into his twisted plots for revenge as just another villain of Noelle’s story. Or, we can give him a second chance at life as Kris’s companion. Though our choices in Deltarune may not change its ending, they still do matter.

If you’ll forgive a little theorizing; I’ve noticed many are split between the Flower King Dark World (for the “Field of Pink and Gold”) and the Festival Dark World (to correspond with Snowdin for the “Undertale in Reverse” theory) for Chapter 5. Given that Chapter 4 already gave us multiple Dark Fountains, I don’t see why it can’t be both in one Chapter, IMO.

Ice Wolf is following Mayor Carol’s design by decorating the town’s festival as Christmas themed, but the flowers are provided by Asgore from his flower shop. Maybe the Festival Dark Fountain will heavily feature the festival food like the Land of Sweets and Delights?

Thanks to the Fall and Winter Deltarune Newsletters, it is heavily suggested that the story of Spamton and Tenna’s partnership alongside the mysterious benefactor, Mike and the terrible, no good, very bad cat will be strongly weaved into Chapter 5’s narrative.

The original novella by E. T. A. Hoffman frames the Nutcracker as a tragic figure who was thrown out of the Castle of the spoiled Princess Pirlipat after he had saved her from the curse that was transferred onto him. The King had promised Pirlipat's hand to whoever could break the curse, only for them both to go back on their word. The book concludes after Marie woke up from the dream and later swears that she would love the Nutcracker no matter what he looked like. Later, her mother announces that Godfather Drosselmeier's young nephew has arrived. It was through her heartfelt declaration that the curse was lifted and he became human again.

It remains to be seen if Tenna will put his money where his mouth is and do the same for his old partner in the future.

I also just want to draw attention to what happens to Spamton NEO at the end of Weird Route as opposed to the normal playthrough and the weapons he drops. The Bonus Zone cutscene with Tenna and Spamton in Chapter 3 can trigger with either the Dealmaker or the PuppetScarf only on a normal playthrough. The cutscene will not trigger with the PuppetScarf on a Weird Route save on the other hand. Suggesting that Spamton can either become his own strings alongside his own glasses, or he can have the PuppetScarf violently torn from his body by Kris as he’s left to rot.

Noelle has flavor text for all items even when she is no longer in your party. Noelle’s reaction to the PuppetScarf is that they “feel like guitar strings” interestingly enough, likely reminding her of her sister. The PuppetScarf is Spamton NEO’s literal strings. Remember “Pull the strings and make them ring”? Or a phone ringing? Or the Thorn Ring?

Recall Spamton's Angel motifs, the Jevilstail and the two prophecies within the same room in Third Sanctuary where the Princess Ribbon is located?

Spamton NEO is elevated from an optional encounter to a mandatory one in Weird Route. NEO was struck with Noelle’s Iceshock, not her Snowgrave spell at the conclusion of his battle. The screen fades to black, and we don’t get to see the aftermath. Spamton is not with you as the PuppetScarf in Weird Route, as otherwise he would surely attempt to strangle Kris upon the first opportunity. I would strongly argue that as per rules storytelling, any characters who get off-screened without being confirmed dead as a doornail remain able to return at any time.

Consider that Spamton was the very man who had sold you the Thorn Ring in the first place. That the player can force right back onto Noelle’s finger to lock Kris onto the forbidden path. Surely, the salesman knows more about its true nature and origins. He never sold an instruction manual along with it, now did he? Spamton, especially in the Weird Route, still has his uses the story.

day 103 of drawing a deltarune character badly every day until my tenna plushie arrives