How do I live life if it always feels like I'm about to die . soon, you won't remember anything, your real name, your superpower you won't even remember that you're dying . ♪ We're all just ghost stories at the end of the day . Listening with rapt attention when the world told me I was disgusting || || some people go their whole lives thinking that's an okay way to feel They wake up every morning and voluntarily erase themselves . You know I'm not the type of guy to turn my back on a knife And that's why I'm still looking in the mirror|| || And if looks could kill I'd be staring in the mirror . I'm not a good person, I'm barley a person at all . I am almost completely soulless I am incapable of being human I am incapable of being inhuman I am living uncontrollably ||Your ears perked up I perked up when your ears perked up You were all looking around And I hoped it was for me I hoped you were using your sonar systems for me || (We're too scared to do shit) . Gonna go to a show and then come home and probably die . Or frozen myself in time || I've given up my daydreams to dream in place of living . it is such a pain to have to be related to you . to love from to far to call, is not to love at all . And maybe I'll grow out of it
I think it's safe to say a lot of people like Tenna. TV heads are popular for a reason, they're fun! And obviously I'm not going to step on the toes of people making designs because you can do whatever you want. I've simply noticed quite a few people making him very modern under the collar, which is fun and all, but what if he's 90s tech all the way down?
I wanted to make a series of posts on possible things he could have as a television from the 20th century, as well as a broadcast host (since he seems to make his own show and would need to be sending that signal somewhere!) and just a piece of equipment that's walking around. Everything's bendable in that televisions aren't alive, so it's a fun exercise. This first post is just pointing out some things I've noticed that are very present day for such an old man. A quick checklist of things he may not have that a regular TV head or robot character would have, you could call it. I'll try to offer alternatives as well if you want them!
First things first: what is a CRT?
Most people use CRT to refer to the analog television set, however CRT technically doesn't mean that. CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube, and is referring to the device that allows the image to be projected on the screen of the television. As such, know that when I just say "CRT", I'm not referring to the television. For the television set, we're still calling it a CRT TV, which may sound like a mouthful, but it's a pretty important distinction. For Tenna, the different between a CRT and a CRT TV is the difference between his brain and his head. We should know which is which!
It's incredible how CRTs work since it is, when we really really simplify it, electrons shooting through a glass tube completely devoid of oxygen to make an image appear on a screen we covered in phosphor cream. This is kind of a form of radiation, but a lot of things are a form of radiation when you boil it down, so that's not too big of a deal. Just know that most of what's in Tenna's head is what he uses for his display, this big glass thing right here. Basically, electrons are made by a heated filament and then bounce a million times to the screen where it displays a series of images. If you've ever heard that a CRT is radioactive, it's because of this thing. It can make x-rays, which generally you do not want to contact with your naked flesh or eyes. Sorry.
Are CRT TVs made of metal?
I put this one personally because it tickled me how many people do a full body of Tenna and give him a shiny shell when CRT TVs were not like that. If a CRT TV had a metal casing, it would be incredibly unsafe. All technology can hurt you if you fuck up, but since this thing can make ionizing radiation and/or implode with glass, they were especially careful. What's in his body past his neck can be debated, and I'll make a post later on ideas of what technology he may need inside him, but we're going to pretend for now that the rest of him is like a natural extension of a CRT TV. He's full of very thick glass that is incredibly difficult to break, designed to be free of defects, and with other little bits mixed in for durability and x-ray shielding. Yeah, these are one of many inventions that have a bunch of lead in them. Don't lick it even if it makes rainbows.
And so you don't get electrocuted, his ass is not metal. He would be incredibly ineffective if he was. If we used the incredibly simple term for his material beyond the screen, it's just plastic, but if you want to know the science-y one, Tenna's most likely made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS plastic. This type of plastic is used because it's very rigid, very tough, and incredibly resistant to chemicals and temperature. ABS is used in a ton of stuff, from toys to car exteriors to pipe fittings to medical implants. If you've heard recently about something being replaced with 3D printed plastic, there's a good chance it's ABS plastic.
Obviously, that's not as fun to shade if you're going for an incredibly rendered piece, so I can see why people would default to metal, but I've also seen more people lovingly render LEGO bricks than I can count, so I think there's something there for you. Bonus points if you want to bring up how he's probably 30ish years old so you can put all sorts of scratches and dents in there. Who didn't have scuff marks on their childhood TV on the corners?
Do CRT TVs have wires?
We all know why this is on this list. I don't have to say it. And yes, CRT TVs have wires, just a lot less than you're thinking. By "a lot less", I mean this is what the inside of one looks like, with a quick video of someone taking one apart.
Highly recommend watching videos of people taking old technology apart, btw, it's addicting. But anyway, this is a bullet point for a slightly separate reason. It may be tempting to have an art or fic where someone is taking Tenna apart for whatever reason.
Taking apart a CRT TV, like all technology, is very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. CRTs can emit radiation, the actual TV can be high enough voltage to kill you. To safely take apart one of these for repairs, you'd have to ground the power. That is one of the main wires in a CRT TV, actually. It's very foolish to do CRT TV repairs while the television is plugged in, AKA while it's on, AKA while Tenna is awake. You could definitely swing this as him showing trust to the other person that they can poke around his innards while he's unconscious, or of course, if Susie's doing it when he's kinda-almost-dead. Just, uh, don't do it while he can still react and talk. That's a pretty good sign you're going to get zapped.
For a lot of wire stuff it would probably make sense to do more AV inputs and outputs. Those would most likely go right into the back of his head, but if you fenaggle it to be in other places that'd make sense too. I personally think his neck is probably just those cords lol and it's a great way to get a pop of color in him. It's most likely also how he has a microphone if you want it physically connected to him.
Do CRT TVs have fans?
Another one that makes me giggle because I see people write this who are more used to doing computer-y robot people as their writing focus. I'm sorry babes, Tenna is no spring chicken. He's not your MacBook that wails in agony when you try to play Minecraft, he's not that Windows laptop that vrrrrrrrrrrrrrs when you dare to put it on a blanket. He does not have a fan. In the days of the CRT TV, if he got hot, he got hot, and he had an oven inside of him to force him to cool off, but it took a long time. I know a lot of people want to bring up fans to talk about him ~overheating~, but it isn't quite like that.
This doesn't mean you lose the idea of him needing to cool off. Quite the opposite, really. Anyone else really like to touch the front of a CRT TV after it's been on for a while? How it kind of hurts but in a good way? You know, that little zap? Just a nice way to get around that. Of course, when people talk about a CRT TV getting really hot, it's a good idea to have a fan in the room. Maybe Tenna has an old box fan in his chest to help him thermoregulate? Food for thought, I guess.
Do CRT TVs have pixels?
This is a toughie and something that I find really fun: in a way, CRT TVs predate pixels as we think of them. LCD screens have pixels as set objects on the screen, tiny panels that cover it. CRT TVs do not, and I can explain why they don't but that's a huge thing that will take several paragraphs and pictures and I can post about at length later, so for now just take that they don't. Images in general have pixels, but they aren't projected on the CRT screen how they would be on a pixellated screen. This is part of why a lot of people got rid of CRT TVs, since this makes the pixels come out "blurry" compared to the clean, high resolution of an LCD screen. You can adjust a CRT TV to project more pixels since it doesn't have them as a set number of resolution on the screen the way an LCD TV does though! I think a lot of people have seen this image before but I'll put it here anyway as an example of what this means appearance wise. Still pixels, just doesn't look like it.
Honestly, it makes Tenna's appearance in the game that much more interesting. His pixels don't stay in the same place the way they do for every other character, with defined outlines and the same sized pixels throughout the story. Him shrinking and growing could be seen as him setting the resolution on his monitor to accommodate how many pixels he wants to be. He doesn't have an outline like everyone else because he doesn't have the set pixel count, instead approximating it the way all CRT TVs do! He already had some light reality bending powers given that he can teleport us wherever he wants and put up a "technical difficulties" screen, but him using an ability that powerful for something so seemingly inconsequential is insane. I'd also recommend looking at Tenna's sprites on a CRT TV if you track down one of those videos, because his appearance in the normal game compared to that intro cutscene on a CRT TV is crazy similar and I love it.
That's all I have for this first post. Very introductory, very basic. I know some things because I grew up with CRT TVs, some things because I have a degree in media stuff and had to take classes on the history of television and cinematography, and some things because I just kind of got curious and wanted to look into it. Obviously, I don't know everything to ever exist, but I know not everybody wants to do the digging I do for fun on old technology or knows where to look.
I'll be making more posts under the tag "ant tenna anatomy" if you want them, and my ask box is always open! Any questions you have, I'd love to answer.
Fellow CRT TV owner / person who grew up with CRTs here, with some more trivia that might be useful for Tenna art / fics / headcanons:
I looked it up and CRT TVs maxed out at 48 inches, anything bigger than that is usually a projection TV which is a completely different animal (I've had both).
A 48" CRT TV like Tenna likely is at his size weighs about 400lbs.
General rule of thumb is that each inch of screen width uses 10000 volts. So that 48" CRT uses 48000 volts, all of which which GOES INTO YOU if you touch it without discharging it first!! Also CRTs remain charged for a long time after being unplugged, meaning just turning one off doesn't make it safe to mess around with. Please please please DO NOT open up ANY old CRT TV for cosplay or other purposes unless you know what you're doing.
The glass is NOT a cover, it's literally the front of the CRT. It's very thick leaded glass, but it's not a LOT of lead so it's not TOO bad to lick, just don't, like, eat dinner off a TV screen.
CRACKS IN A CRT SCREEN ARE VERY VERY BAD. Like, The TV Is Permanently Fucked bad. CRTs work because they are basically a giant vacuum tube, and a crack in the glass would allow air to get inside, ruining it.
It's also entirely possible for a damaged CRT to explode, or rather, implode, since vacuum tubes are pressurized.
Burn-in, which Tenna mentions he totally does not have at one point (lying), is when a particular image is displayed for so long on the screen that an afterimage is permanently etched into it even when the screen if turned off. You see this a lot from video games, especially with CRTs in old arcade cabinets, and on computer monitors -- screen savers are in fact a method to reduce burn-in by displaying a different, constantly-changing image after a period of idleness. If you're playing a video game on a CRT TV it's important to NEVER leave it paused or otherwise on the same screen for too long!
You actually shouldn't just throw a CRT TV out with the trash like Toriel did (if you don't cart Tenna off to Castle Town / Mettaton's house first), they actually contain a lot of toxic chemicals including the aforementioned lead and have to be taken to a dedicated e-waste center for disassembly.
Something else Tenna mentions that some people might not be aware of, and that OP started to talk about above, CRT TVs technically only have three colors: Red, Green, and Blue. Each "pixel" in the screen is actually composed of these three colors, which you can see if you get close, and it's the specific amounts of light shining through each one that mixes those colors into the final image!
Here's a closeup of CRT TV pixels so you see what I mean:
Some sensory fun: Some people have mentioned this but the sheer amount of electrons shot towards the screen while the TV is in use makes the screen really staticky to the touch -- I used to enjoy sticking balloons and things to them when I was younger. (It also makes them really annoying to keep clean since dust and pet fur STICKS) That really thick ABS plastic does tend to warp very slightly over time, the edges not quite coming together as cleanly, and so pressing in on the sides of an old CRT TV or monitor can make it creak and pop. And also sound-wise, there's a very distinct sound most CRT TVs make when you first power them on, as the CRT activates and the screen degausses (de-magnetizes) -- it varies depending on the specific model but in my experience it's usually kind of a quiet pop followed by some crackling.
The screen also takes a few seconds to "warm up" before fading in and showing an image.
Back in the days of antenna TV, those "rabbit ear" antenna on Tenna's head were pretty common -- something important to note is that these were often aftermarket, and were NOT ACTUALLY ATTACHED TO THE TV. You'd plug them into the TV's coaxial port and they'd just sit on top, and you'd adjust them as needed until the signal came in clear enough -- there was always at least a little static when dealing with over-the-air programming, and it heavily depended on distance from the individual station's broadcast towers as well as time of day and weather conditions! (There are REASONS why the Weather Duo are Tenna's seconds-in-command!)
Antenna TVs did NOT get a ton of channels. Unless you live in a really big city market you'd usually only get a few local channels. And in 2009 (in the US at least) broadcasters switched over from analog to digital, meaning that old antenna TVs no longer work at all without special converter boxes! Tenna's so obsolete today it's not even funny... ;-;
The CRT Whine. It is real, just maybe a bit more audible to people with sensitive hearing (like myself) -- CRTs do indeed make a constant noise while they're active! It's a very quiet high-pitched tone, kind of like that "ringing in ears" noise a lot of movies use, that is best heard with the TV on but muted.
CRT TVs do NOT have HDMI ports. Please do not give Tenna anything with an HDMI plug, he won't have any clue what to do with it. Instead here's some ports you might realistically find on a CRT TV, in order of modern-ness:
This is an S-video port, which is a slightly higher-quality video input introduced in the mid-90s. Usually you'll see these paired with RCA (below), and they're used for game consoles and MAYBE DVD players.
This is an RCA port, also called AV composite input, which is BY FAR the most common type of input you'll find on a CRT TV. It's used for game consoles, VCRs, DVD players, and most other devices. Note that the yellow cable is for video, while the white and red cables are for stereo audio (left and right channel), though on some older sets you'll find yellow / white or yellow / red for mono audio.
This is a VGA port, which isn't really that common on TVs (though I've seen a few!) but is UNIVERSAL for computer monitors.
This is a coaxial port (pronounced co-axial), commonly shortened to coax. These are primarily used for cable and antenna hookups, though occasionally older pre-RCA VCRs will connect using coax as well. Sometimes these are labeled UHF / VHF like the port below, since they largely serve the same functions. These do not usually plug straight in but instead need to be screwed onto the port using the rotating hexagonal metal piece at the end of the cable -- I also recommend using a small wrench to make sure you get a tight fit!
This is a UHF / VHF port, which was largely phased out by the mid-80s in favor of coax. These were also used for antennas, as well as game consoles via adapter boxes like the one in the second picture below. These also do not actually plug into anything, you have to physically screw on two metal prongs using a screwdriver.
As an 80s / 90s CRT TV, Tenna would definitely have both RCA and coax inputs. If he's newer he could have an S-video port, while if he's (much) older he might still have UHF / VHF, but not both at the same time. VGA input would be unlikely but I have seen it on CRT TVs so it's definitely possible, so Queentenna fans don't despair! Hopefully all this helps someone out there plug shit into this old man.
“And if you’ll give me 40% of the MOST POPULAR VOTE, I’ll give you my SPECIAL REWARD... A year’s supply of NON-GLOOBY SLIME!!! Never or BARELY used!!!” Tenna concluded his speech with a huge smile, jetting his hands up in double peace signs.
The crowd roared in confused enthusiasm as Tenna gave a gracious flurry of low-FPS bows, pausing only for the occasional stink-nose at his audience plants who weren’t throwing enough 3D roses.
Eventually, the room fell silent. It was Senshi’s turn to speak.
He puffed out his chest, took a long, sweeping look over the audience… and shook his head.
“I can see not all of you are eating properly.”
The crowd murmured with embarrassment.
“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it’s time to take the turkey out of your icebox. I have seen the ingenious technology with which your people store food... and I have also seen the waste which results from such convenience.
“The food you take had a life. Beasts grew fat on the grass of the field, plants grew from the sun’s rays, and mushrooms grew from minerals in the cracks of caves. And yet, it sits in your iceboxes, collecting moisture until it perishes.
“Eat what is given to you. Because its life will make you stronger, too.”
Without another word, Senshi left his podium and stepped away from the stage. The crowd murmured in confusion. “Is he really like that?” somebody said. “I only remember reblogging the photosets of him tripping and showing ass.”
--
Back in the Green Room, Tenna wrung his antennas nervously.
“Y-y-you think they liked me!? They HAD to!! I mean, I don’t know what Asgore was thinking, getting that weird haircut and running that food waste campaign, but… YOU thought I did good, didn’t you, Kris?”
Laios nodded aggressively, a streak of blue face paint peeling from his forehead.
“You did AMAZING, Tenna! By the way, now that we’ve seen all your insider campaign secrets, do you have any more videos of Susie? Especially her tail... If I could get a look at that, I could finally tell if she’s a dinosaur or --”
THWACK. Fake antlers butted Laios’s head.
“LAIOS?? Weren’t we dressed up to help SENSHI???” Marcille hissed, gesturing awkwardly with her hooves.
Suddenly, Tenna turned to the two adventurers.
“Hey, WAIT a second. SOMETHING’s not right here...”
Laios and Marcille held their breath.
“Where the heck are my POINTS!?”
Just then, the door opened. Chilchuck took one step into the room, whistling and holding a large bag.
Everyone turned to him.
Chilchuck paused, took a step backwards, and closed the door.
“CHILCHUCK!!!” yelled Tenna.
“How come Chilchuck got to stay Chilchuck!?” yelled Marcille at the same time.
--
Meanwhile, in outer space somewhere, some guy was making out with a rock.
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