“What” the Cat

For the song, see WHAT THE CAT!?.

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“What” is an image of a poorly-drawn cat that has appeared on many occasions in NOISZ STΔRLIVHT. It debuted in 2ECONDS TO STΔRLIVHT: My Heart's Reflection as Hakuno’s profile picture on LUNE. In NOISZ STΔRLIVHT, it has been featured in many charts such as WHAT THE CAT!? as a bullet.

It has become a meme in the NOISZ STΔRLIVHT community, and there are several emojis on the official NOISZ STΔRLIVHT Discord server that feature “What.” It used to be referred to as "cta", though this is an older name that does not see as much use anymore.

You can raise your very own What in 𝑉𝑖𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡.

Appearances

"What" appears in:

• In the corner of the playfield if you idle for too long there (Hard/Overload only)
• WHAT THE CAT!?
• FULi AUTO SHOOTER (Hard/Overload only)
• The King of Lions
• MULTIPHEX (Hard/Overload only)
• Mirror (Overload only)
• 1nput This 2 Y0ur Spine (Hard/Overload only)
• No Hints Here!
• BADSECRET
• halved halved halved (Easy/Overload only)
• D.S. al fine
• It's My Rebellion (Hard/Overload only)
  • All other appearances of What were Noise Beasts taking the shape of What because of resonance with Hakuno Nekoda's emotions or others' perception. In this case however, Hakuno is materializing What herself by entering conceptual time using the NOISZ/RS, making this the first instance of a real What.<ref>k//eternal's explanation on real What</ref>

Variants

Gao

There is also a lion variant of “What” that appears as the “boss” of The King Of Lions. Its name is "Gao", and it also appears in No Hints Here! during minigame intermissions.

Thwhat

On the platforming section in D.S. al fine Hard and above, occasionally a Thwomp shaped "What" might fall. Its internal name is "Thwhat"<ref>k//eternal confirming the Thwhat name</ref>.

Kaizo What

On the platforming section in D.S. al fine Hard and above, on the right side of the stage a hidden block can be hit, which allows it to be used as a platform. Its internal name is "Kaizo"<ref>k//eternal confirming the Kaizo name</ref>, originating from the idea of Kaizo blocks in ROM hacks of Super Mario World.

Long Daniel

On the void snake section in D.S. al fine Hard, together with the void snake a stretched "What" will appear and follow the player, much faster than the void snake.

Its name is Long Daniel<ref>k//eternal confirming the Long Daniel name</ref>, which comes from a gif featuring a spinning "What" with the caption "spinning daniel" that became popular in the NOISZ community.

Long Daniel also appears in the labyrinth segment in It's My Rebellion if the player tries to BURST to skip it (Hard/Overload only). This Long Daniel is much faster than the one in D.S. al fine. He appears again in V3 during the burst portion in Overload.

Long Daniel is actually a reskin of Long Dennis<ref>LIVHTing OUR WAY into NOISZ STARLIVHT True Heroes - The Corner Cab Eps. 13</ref>, a long red bullet that appears in halved halved halved Normal and above.

Distracting Daniel

On the Lights Out puzzle section in D.S. al fine Normal and above, a "What" will appear if you take too long to solve the puzzle, or pause in the middle of it. Distracting Daniel<ref>TaroNuke confirming the Distracting Daniel name</ref> interacts with the buttons when walking over them.

Distracting Daniel has no special visible traits compared to a regular "What".

Cursed Daniel

Cursed Daniel has a 1/10000 chance of appearing in halved halved halved Overload during the walking section. Seeing him grants the W H A T title.

Merchandise

See also: Merchandise

"What" is featured on two T-shirt designs available through the StreamElements store that also contains the official NOISZ and NOISZ STΔRLIVHT T-shirts.

Plush toys of "What" have been given away and sold by Anarch Entertainment at their NOISZ booth at conventions. There was a Kickstarter campaign that also had these plush toys as backer rewards (along with small stickers in packs of four), but it has long since ended. There are no plans to sell the "What" plushies on a large scale again as of now.

Two sticker designs (a small matte sticker and a larger holographic sticker) have been sold at conventions and may return in the future. The smaller sticker, shown next to the plush in the gallery below, was also sold in packs of 4 during the STARLIVHT 1st album + What the Cat plush Kickstarter campaign.

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  The official "What" the Cat T-shirt, shown in black. The shirt also comes in white.

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  "I AM A BIG NERD" T-shirt with "What" the Cat.

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  The plush, as shown on the page for the Kickstarter campaign that formerly distributed them.

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  The plush along with several of the stickers distributed in the Kickstarter campaign.

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  Big Gay What sticker

Other

Censor Daniel

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Special showcase builds of NOISZ STΔRLIVHT used for real life events have a Censor Daniel<ref>Video showcasing Censor What taken by Iosun on the NOISZ SL Discord</ref><ref>Video capture showcasing Censor What from TaroNuke</ref> on certain songs. This censor covers the boss to avoid story spoilers, and consists of What spinning around clockwise and two hazard tapes with the text "NO SPOILERS" above and below it. Note that in the song select, the boss appears as a black image instead.

Songs that are known to feature Censor Daniel are those where the boss is a named character in the story:

• Lure
• Quicksilver
• Insomnia (MonstDeath Remix)
• Xrocus
• BADSECRET
• Gravisphere Crisis
• Crossroads of the Brave
• Last Wish (NOISZ Mix)
• i'm the hero
• For All Time
• It's My Rebellion
• HINOTORI
• re:VERSE (Inst.)
• with my (last+1) breath
• Forged In Darkest Abyss

This setting can be enabled in game through the Hide Spoilers option in the Options menu.

Spinning Daniel

Spinning Daniel is a meme in the NOISZ STΔRLIVHT community, which is a spinning "What" with the caption "spinning daniel". It was created by Discord user juneibyou<ref>Spinning Daniel origin story by juneibyou</ref>:

some friends and i were losing our shit over some edit that was like. the gravity falls internet history joke but at the end it just said "not as scary as Water Daniel" and then fucking. damn daniel edited over wet dry world

and we had a moment over the phrasing of [x] daniel and i think in the same VC i had run the spin command on :meow: for some reason so like. two errant neurons just. connected

and thus i typed "&caption spinning daniel". and my son was born

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Most appearances of spinning "What"s have been referred to as "Spinning Daniel" ever since, both by the dev team<ref>TaroNuke confirming the Spinning Daniel name</ref> and the community in general.

Spinning Daniel appears in halved halved halved during the free roam section on the Easy difficulty only, and like Long Daniel, this Spinning Daniel uses the same tracking code as Long Dennis (but unlike Long Daniel, it takes only this property and is not a reskinned Long Dennis).

He appears again in It's My Rebellion Hard during the burst section.