It’s truly hard to overstate just how much Spamton’s mere existence is a nightmare for himself. Like, arguably the life of everyone in the Deltarune universe, and especially the Darkners, is an existential nightmare. Spamton’s just on a whole other level. This is Advanced Existential Nightmare.
Cause yeah, on some level it’s always kinda depressing to think about the idea that all Darkners are bound to the fact that they are created from inanimate objects and the emotions Lightners associate with them. That this forms some sort of irrevocable inner essence and Purpose they can never change, even if they truly wanted to be something else. No one can choose who they are in this world and so on.
But like, at least most of the other Darkners we met can get some sort of contentment from following the role they have been given. Tasque Manager loves managing things (and Tasques), Lancer is a playing card who ultimately just wants to play around and have fun, Queen seems to truly love being a useful computer who can supply Lightners with endless hours of entertainment and knowledge in her own egoist way. Even King’s initial angst was based around no longer being able to fulfill his purpose.
But Spamton… as the living embodiment of Spam Mail, he was created with the desires of your typical spam-mail; advertising and/or scamming people. And he was created to be obsessed with the things that your typical Spam Mail talks about; success, fortune, status and [[BIG SHOT]]. But he was also created to be utterly terrible at accomplishing these things.
He’s Spam Mail, Spam Mail is weird, obviously scammy and generally gets ignored or thrown away. And no matter how much Spamton wants or how hard he tries, by the basic nature of his being, he can never actually be good at this. And he also can’t, like, understand that maybe salesmanship isn’t his thing and take up macramé or something. Because that obsession is also part of his basic nature. Spamton’s basic nature is to be forever frustrated, desperate and miserable.
And that’s exactly why he’s the first Darkner we’ve seen who’s truly set on cutting his puppet-strings. I think that a lot of the ‘Freedom’ he wants is freedom from that utterly miserable lot in life. To longer be bound by the rules of Being Spamton. On some level it’s probably about breaking the Rule of Nature that means he has to be a failure, that he can’t truly become a [[BIG SHOT]] on his own. He wants to overthrow God so he can get the financial success that feels he deserves.
(I know some people are angry at the Mysterious Voice on the Phone for abandoning Spamton, but I do wonder if it wasn’t basically inevitable. That the Mysterious Voice, regardless of what they wanted, could simply not subvert Spamton’s Failure-ness forever)
And that’s kinda tragic cause it’s shows that even when trying to break away, he’s still doing so through the lenses of the existential curse that’s causing him so much suffering. To be free is to get [[BIG]], and the only way to get [[BIG]] is by scamming and tricking and manipulating. Because as long as he’s Spamton, those are really the only things he can do.
But on some level, I think, he might also want to be free of that. Maybe it started as wanting to break away from the ‘script’ that means he’s bound to be a failure - but with time, I think he also grew to want to want different things. It’s clear Spamton is very distressed about losing the friendship of the Addisons and Swatch. He considers his own loneliness as one of the most defining traits of his own existence (he always start projecting on Kris on the basis of both of them being lonely). But he literally can’t put his obsessive quest for success aside and focus on his relationships. He literally can’t.
Outside of, I guess, the Pacifist ending to his NEO fight. That’s the one point where Spamton was able to put his ambitions aside for the sake of friendships.
But however brief it was, it still feel like it meant something to Spamton.
