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10kspoons · 2 days ago

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Tenna the Lightner

So I just did a replay of chapter 3, finding all the little things I missed the first time (like Tenna's Pipis Room embarrassingly enough), but there's a thread I've noticed throughout this whole playthrough: Tenna is one WEIRD Darkner. Like, weirder than most. I'd even go as far as to suggest he might not even fully be a Darkner at all, at least not in his own mind.

Something to note is that while a lot of Darkners seem to know their own histories, and to be at least aware of the Light World and their object forms, it's not until TV World that we really see how deep that knowledge goes. King tells us how he was betrayed by the Lightners and of his desire for revenge, but doesn't say much about them beyond that -- as if he's only aware of Lightners as a concept, unknowable gods whose presence can no longer be felt. Queen, also, explicitly sees Lightners solely as their search history, and as a computer she doesn't really...interpret those searches correctly, to say the least. Even Spamton and the other Addisons, whose entire existence revolves around advertising specifically to Lightners, don't seem to be too aware of them beyond their job.

But Tenna. Oh boy. Tenna LIVES more in the Light World than the Dark World. Let's begin with the biggest piece of evidence: This image.

This stopped me in my tracks when I first played chapter 3, because of how out of place it is. Even with TV Worlders in general being slightly more aware of Kris and the rest of the Dreemurr family than other Darkners, this image and Tenna's accompanying comment stand out as the first time ANY Darkner has proven they can perceive the Light World directly. Spamton had a blue sky and a sun painted in his shop, things that don't exist at all in the Dark World, but not an actual photo like this. How in the world did Tenna even get this picture of himself, I wonder? Did he have a Shuttah snap it while someone was carrying a mirror nearby? However it happened, the important part is TENNA CAN SEE THE LIGHT WORLD. And in particular, HE CAN SHOW IMAGES OF IT TO OTHER DARKNERS. Note that, at the beginning of all three boards, he shows (or has Mike show) photos including blue skies and sun, more than likely where Spamton got his own idea of "Heaven" to paint.

More rambling under the cut; I'm just getting warmed up here.

There's also the fact that, while other Darkners will acknowledge their Light World forms and even where they're located -- Queen straight-up saying she's a computer, Pippins mentioning they've been lost in the couch, that one Zapper that knew he was from Catti's house, Lancer and Rouxls hopping into your inventory as playing cards -- Tenna is also the first Darkner to identify and talk about his Light World form as if it's his own body, right down to saying he'd join in adventures if he wasn't plugged into the wall and that he'd look better with a tan -- his LIGHT WORLD form specifically would look better with one, that is. He also isn't just limited to knowing about and identifying as his Light World form, either, if he really switched on that music video himself after you give him to Mettaton -- aside from...whatever was going on with Spamton and that glitch egg Noelle encountered in her game, we haven't seen any evidence at all that other Darkners are able to take any physical action on their own, outside of the Dark World. If Tenna can change his own channels, which would necessate physically turning his own dial, and possibly even use this ability to communicate with Lightners in some sapient way as I've seen LOTS of fanartists suggest, it's an ability unique to him!

There's also another moment where he shows more extensive knowledge of the Light World than any other Darkner we've yet encountered, one I think is even more damning:

If you get S-rank on either board and access the special dressing room, Ramb reveals to you that Tenna reprogrammed the video games he has you play himself, using an existing video game as a base. It looks like that wasn't all he was able to do with this skill, though -- while the above effort is clearly unfinished given that you can easily glitch it out with the camera, it's still scarily accurate for someone who's stuck plugged into the wall in the living room, and stuck as a Darkner unable to explore the Dreemurr house on his own. Again, I wonder how he got this knowledge -- did Kris share their house layout with Tenna at some point? Did Shuttah snap photos of the rest of the house? Did Tenna, as my friend suggested, send a bunch of Pippins on an expedition to roll across the floor into the kitchen? Regardless of how he got the knowledge from his limited vantage point, Tenna knows his own house very well, in a surprising amount of detail at that, and he specifically reprogrammed a game to be able to explore it himself.

I think that's the key to my theory: Tenna wants to know about and explore the house he inhabits, and not the Dark World created from it. Hell, he barely has ANYTHING to do with his own Dark World -- at certain points in the chapter, a Shuttah will describe what things were like before Tenna came, and what lies beyond his studio. At one point they describe a "great wilderness" that's clearly supposed to be the kitchen -- "frozen waste" (the refrigerator), "watery basin" (the sink), and "metal desert" (stove or oven), as well as the "purple cliffs" that are definitely supposed to be either the couch or stairs. At another point towards the end they mention others who left for "the far land", and that a "legend old hermit" knows the way; as far as I can tell at this point, this has to be referring to the toys and books Toriel took from home to her classroom, with fellow teacher Gerson possibly being the hermit?

But all of this is outside of Tenna's studio, where he's in control -- literally, the guy can and does do whatever the heck he wants in there, laws of physics be damned. The STUDIO is TV World, but it lies within a much, much larger Dark World taking up the rest of the Dreemurr house. A Dark World Tenna clearly wants absolutely nothing to do with, and why would he? He's not in control. The Darkners there don't cater to his whims, aren't bound to his contracts. He's built his own world, whose entire purpose is to be whatever he wants it to be...

And he builds it to resemble the Light World. Or, to encapsulate his family's Light World.

Literally everything in Tenna's studio is a memory of the Dreemurr family, HIS family. The cowboy shows Asgore used to enjoy, he has a set for that. The cooking shows Toriel used to watch, and the kids used to make fun of, he has a set for that. All of his prizes, from the floral cowboy shower curtains to the chocolate candy to the sink fur traps to the talker-backer(?) are geared toward an individual member of the family, save for two -- the Ralsei plush (either for Ralsei, assuming Tenna thinks he's a relative, or for us, the player, as others have pointed out), and the family car (which Tenna admits he drives every day himself if you visit his bonus room! In other words, HE INCLUDED A PRIZE MEANT FOR HIMSELF AS A MEMBER OF THE DREEMURR FAMILY). And it also extends to his memories of the Holidays as well with Dess' music video channel, and even a song she herself enjoyed and shared with her younger sister.

(Yes, Raise Up Your Bat is a real song in-universe. And Tenna must've enjoyed it himself too, if he kept it around!)

All of this is not just a cry for his family's attention, to go back to watching him, but to be included in their lives beyond that. His fondest memory is of being watched by everyone during the holidays, with an area just outside the walls of his studio even modeled after that, with snow and Christmas trees scaled up to Tenna-size. But, more importantly, I feel like he enjoyed being a part of the family in those moments, not just being watched by them. He watched his family shrink from that point, until no one tuned in anymore, and he doesn't seem to be aware of where they all went -- Tenna's shocked when Kris tells him Asriel went away to college, like he didn't even notice the kid who'd enjoyed video games with Tenna grew up. He suggests Asgore return to watch the cowboy show he liked, and DESS return as well, as if he's unaware of what happened with her (Maybe. Tenna does backpedal a bit on that one -- I'm guessing he HAD to have at least seen the news reports of her disappearance.) Notably, he doesn't actually mention Toriel's and Asgore's divorce, only them arguing, claiming it's a normal thing for couples to do -- COUPLES, as in still together, not former partners. In general, for someone so obsessed with his family's attention, he either pays very little attention to them in turn, or he's locked out of the loop, and given he frequently asks Kris about specific people I'm guessing it's actually the latter. Tenna is not aloof, he's driven by loneliness and desperately WANTS to know about his favorite viewers! He misses them dearly, in more ways than just as an audience, and that might be a big motivation for why he modeled his game after the house, a subconcious desire to escape from his own reality and find out for himself.

We also have someone we can look at for another side to this: Ramb. The guy's a Plugboy explicitly stated to be from Cyber World, even fondly recounting his own memories of Queen, Swatch, and Spamton. But while he now lives in TV World, he doesn't belong there -- that one Pippins mentions that, despite themself being from Card Kingdom they didn't turn to stone because they fit in with the other inhabitants, but Ramb never did, and so he became a statue in the end. Like Tenna, Ramb also has a very close attachment to Kris, someone who played with him as a toy and broke him out of his normal role -- I feel like this makes him a nice foil for Tenna, who might also feel as though he doesn't belong, as attached to the Light World as he is. Tenna breaks a LOT of the rules Ralsei sets forth for Darkners like himself, even if he still wants to fulfill his purpose of entertaining the Lightners above all else. He's understandably devastated by the idea that he's due to be thrown away, for being old and obsolete -- and rather than accepting it as Ralsei suggests, the idea that he's gotten old breaks Tenna completely and he does what he can to ENSURE he won't be tossed onto the curb. He captures Toriel and is willing to hand her over to the Knight, and also captures and tortures Kris and Susie for even suggesting that they're tired of playing his games. And most interestingly, with them trapped in prize balls, he takes it upon himself to play the game for them -- Tenna gladly becomes Player 1, something Ralsei has to be FORCED into, stating it's something he's not supposed to be! I also find it interesting that, despite not even having a chair for himself nor even a reason to be there (having an in-game avatar to give hints instead), Tenna absolutely insists on joining the Fun Gang for the video game rounds, with his absences to take calls only being temporary, rushing back in to rejoin afterward. It could be Tenna wanting to keep an eye on them, making sure they don't try to leave and/or see their reaction to the games he created, but more than that, I get the feeling he just wants to be included, since these are the moments he gets especially chatty and friendly and un-host-like, letting his antennae down so to speak, like he's just playing video games with his friends and/or sibling!

There's also a couple very subtle hints that, like Ramb, Tenna doesn't really feel like he belongs in TV World, at least not anymore, and his desperation to maintain control of his former employees during the latter part of the chapter could partially stem from that. His shame over keeping a Pipis being one, and the other...well. It seems pretty benign to a Lightner, but from a Darkner's point of view Tenna playing a "TV Statue" in the Suziezilla game has to give one pause:

Finally, there's the specific, loaded words Tenna uses in Castle Town for being given to another Lightner to enjoy: "Adopt." "Forever home."

Tenna doesn't just want new viewers, he wants a new FAMILY. And specifically, he doesn't want a Darkner family, he wants to become part of another LIGHTNER family! Because he saw himself as a Dreemurr, until Toriel wanted to get rid of him. A lot of people like to point out Tenna's mental health issues coming from being a child of divorce, but I'd say there's a little child abandonment and social isolation going on in that TV head of his too. Maybe that's why he and Susie get along so well, given her own implied neglect, and is one of many reasons why Tenna so urgently wants to impress Kris, another non-goat monster welcomed into the family.

In a lot of ways, Tenna turns the formula established in the first two chapters of Deltarune on its head. In those, we had a main boss character, a cruel ruler whose presence dominates their particular Dark World and whose plans involve destroying or expanding into the Light World. And then, a secret boss hidden somewhere in the chapter, requiring effort to find / battle but always with certain themes behind them: Freedom. Reaching beyond the Dark World's confines into "Heaven." If you look at Tenna, he's the latter type of boss rather than the former: He cruelly rules his studio, sure, but it's just a small part of the larger Dark World, his sphere of influence basically limited to those he suckers into signing his contracts. He isn't even the final boss for his chapter, with the Knight taking that role. He has zero ambitions at all for the Light World, but he knows of it far more extensively than other Darkners, with its entertainment literally beamed into his antennae at all times, and in his own way Tenna yearns to reach out to it in turn, to gain his freedom from obsolescence. To break the rules, and be more than just an old, obsolete Darkner.

#save #tenna

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