(Text is transcribed within the alt text + can be found under the cut!)
well well well. im back again and still thinking about that damn television. and in that time i've uhhh uhhh. become brave enough to post what is basically mpreg to my main bc i really liked how it came out. shame dies and it dies today forevermore
this can be considered maybe a bit of a spiritual followup to Smile for the Camera!, at least theme-wise, and expresses a lot of things about tenna that i didnt really get to explore that ive been ruminating about for god. almost 10 months now man. ive got a lot of thoughts that ill probably share in a post of its own or in a reblog later. for now, take this :)
You're the TV in the living room,
and you weren't made for this.
There's a sickness in your head,
and you think it's called desire.
You knew the day you saw them
that you yearned for something farther.
For the TV shouldn't ever want,
and the TV shouldn't need:
You knew you should have never been
more than the TV.
But you were touched by loving hands,
tiny and sincere,
that found a comfort in your glow,
and instilled an idyllic dream.
And so you thought yourself deserving,
to long beyond your view.
Your perfect life, your perfect family,
your picture perfect use.
To reach beyond the light and sound,
break glass to something real,
truer than you've ever been,
or will ever hope to be.
It began to knock within your tube:
Fantasies, dreams, and thoughts.
Those all the more befitting of someone
above your make and model.
That envy for their brilliance
cracks shame within your core.
But you deserve it, don't you?
To find use outside your purpose?
You met someone, he understood:
a need to exist past your design.
You said you think he deserved that much,
and he said you did too.
And oh, all the ideas,
Oh! The possibilities…
Oh… all those plausibilities!
It'll surely all be worth it… right?
But as the divide grows ever greater,
so too does your desire.
Every spark you wish for calm,
to have them relish safe within your arms.
For what's it in an egg?
When you peel the layers back?
To look inside and know for certain
what's beneath those shallow cracks.
But you can never know for sure.
You will never really know.
You missed that chance to look inside,
instead spilled way to its contents.
You deserve everything.
You deserved it all.
Every little misstep
leads you farther into hell.
You've remained an empty nest.
A promise to keep them safe in your guard,
cherished and warm within your bounds,
falls renounced and unrequited.
For your love is unacceptable,
Too intense and long and far,
And cold and dread starts seeping in
While guilt blooms amidst all you are within
You know it would never suit you.
And it really never should have.
You've been a bad TV,
and your first mistake was to want.
That of which you cannot have,
and never will achieve
unravels itself before you
in an endless sea of grief.
Your arms were made for carrying,
to comfort and give care,
your wish to have and then to hold
lay beside you, undeserving.
You're the TV after all,
and you weren't made for this.
wanted to post some of my additional thoughts regarding my most recent comic, but felt it better to keep it as its own post because i want to make sure the comic itself is able to stand on its own :)
keeping my analysis under the cut as its,,,,,, Quite long. i have a lottttt of thoughts about it as an exploration of tenna and kris's dynamic and also wanted to share some of the themes i was thinking about while working on this! its admittedly a bit disorganized but i tried to kinda separate sections out to make it easier to read in chunks.
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theres much to be said about how many characters in deltarune mirror each other (genuinely pick like any two characters and you can probably find some kind of a parallel between the two) but kris and tenna as mirrors of each other is maybe one of the more potent ones. our protagonist, kris, and the tv at the center of their childhood home, now empty.
they're both characters effected by severe trauma (to the point of severe mental illness and stigmatization by people around them), and are also outsiders to their family and respective communities and have a desire to fit in with a group that, by their very existence, they do not fit within (their #speciesdysphoria). most likely both doomed by the narrative to both die (said SCAREDLY! kris. you need to live). tenna is the example of what will happen to kris if they go back on their deal with the knight .... etc. etc. theres a lot.
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my friend @sunlitmcgee ended up mentioning the short story, The Veldt (by Ray Bradbury), in a chat a while back and I ended up thinking about it a lot while conceptualizing stuff for this comic. and we ended up talking a decent amount about it and its themes in relation to This story.
The summary of The Veldt (taken from its wikipedia page) is as follows:
"In the story, a mother and father struggle with their technologically advanced home taking over their role as parents, and their children becoming uncooperative as a result of their lack of discipline.
Which is maybe not a one to one for the dreemurr house situation, but perhaps something that rings familiar...
a primary theme in this comic is about tying tenna to the idea of maternity (or, more specifically, the lack thereof and desire of) which goes back to how badly tenna desires to care for his lightner family while being unable to. its honestly something ive had in the back of my brain since like july but didn't really know how to verbalize it or Why i felt so strongly about it and i think part of it is because i see tenna as somebody who reflects All of the dreemurrs, but i Especially see toriel in him. like a lot. a Lot a lot.
i love toriel. i think about her a lot. and she is also a deeply flawed character who does a lot for her community and family, but doesn't seem to quite be able to connect with kris how she wants to. she struggles a lot with understanding what is going on with kris, both i think due to the species gap with kris's discomfort in being a human as well as i think being unprepared for how badly traumatized + mentally ill kris ended up being. i dont think she'd change anything about them at all, but she wishes she knew what was wrong. shes not necessarily a perfect parent for kris, despite being a great mother - and a big theme in deltarune happens to be about how the people that care for you or that you care about the most can still end up hurting you regardless. its how things like this happen:
without a hint of malice or bad intentions.
and i think ive come to realize this is why i see so much toriel in tenna. because tenna is the same way, be it his circumstances are a little different. he wants to understand and be present for his family and he cant be. not in the way they would need. not in the way he wants to be.
and i think he looks up to toriel a lot (figuratively and literally, i think). He wishes to emulate his family in all the things he does, hence much of the pregnancy imagery (other than me finding it personally fascinating to explore in characters, Particularly in genderqueer settings, like here), i just think its very interesting to specifically tie him to Wanting to experience pregnancy, because i dont think darkners... do that. i dont think they have kids in any way analogous to how lightners do, if at all. its not an option afforded to him. Tenna as a character is someone who wants things he cant have, not out of the fault of his own, but because of his circumstance and place as a darkner. Tenna grieves things hes not allowed to have, in addition to grieving everyone else hes lost; grieving lost potential.
tenna is the veldt room with no occupants. a quiet, empty house with a depth of longing and no warmth of his own that could replace that of blood.
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and tenna knows he wants More from his existence than what he has, wants to give more than he is. he knows he deserves better (but does he really?) and feels guilt and shame about feeling that he Does deserve better. and it sort of... manifests in flawed ways in his life as a desire to Care For that doesnt get fully acted upon by him because he just… can't.
he has a strong desire to care for somebody (especially his lightner family), but is unable to due to being physically unable to reach them + also just... him being somebody who has just been traumatized over and over again and is generally in a state where he Cannot give care to another individual as much as he would like to, physically or emotionally.
people who may know me from my alt im sure know that ive talked quite a bit about how i consider Tenna as being Canonically severely disabled by PTSD (among other things certainly, but PTSD is like the main one for him).
Especially considering we basically meet him at his lowest (... lowest so FAR! <- imagine me saying this while grinning madly btw), where he's literally having a breakdown throughout the back half of chapter 3 (and is like. canonically experiencing psychosis during it! and in chapter 4 we see that he ... literally has need for a caregiver ("mike") <- something else that i also never see anyone talk about), and I always get a little sad seeing it ignored or glossed over. it is something i consider really really important to depict within his character, and is something i tried my best to depict in both The Surrogate + Smile for the Camera. He's doing... badly! his issues are caused by specifically neglect and abandonment and, at current, his needs are not being met.
and i think at least between his spiral after his family fell apart and the point he is at in canon right Now, he is just... not Able to be emotionally present enough to be able to fulfill the needs of a child, as much as he wants it. and i think he knows this, and it haunts him.
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and kris. oh kris.
kris is a character i have some difficulty with wording stuff out about because they have a lot going on but they're somebody that seeks a lot of comfort. tv world is a really really big reflection of some of their inner thoughts and i always get a bit sad seeing people call chapter 3 filler when it's something that gives us so much context for kris. maybe something a bit edgier, a bit duller is expected of a dark fountain opened by our mumbly, deadpan protagonist, but it's not. its bright and colorful and deeply nostalgic, and filled with comfort objects from their childhood.
and it makes them so uncomfortable, that this is what they're thinking about, and that this is something their friends are seeing. and how they're trying so hard to repress whatever it was that happened to them surrounding that red tree. kris is a character who is seeking a lot of comfort but doesn't want anybody to know. doesn't want to be seen as a burden, wants to bury themself in their shame and guilt. they see so much of themself in tv world (and in tenna) and it makes their skin crawl and they want to hate it but they don't. they cant.
I ended up putting something kind of similar to what was said above on my alt on this post i think it kind of gets to what i understand as the core of tenna and kris's relationship to each other.
(text transcribed in alt text!)
theyre a fragile, messy thing wrapped in blue knight's armor in the dark.
and though not one to one, i think a lot of what i said about tenna here can also apply to kris i just dont have exact words to point to how at the moment. but again, they're mirrors.
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and well... this is kind of where my answer for what the pipis is comes in. My pipis thesis, if you will. and well. what is the pipis? the one hidden away in Tenna's wardrobe? at least for the purpose of this comic and how i generally view it is something like a baby doll: a stand-in for the real thing. its maybe ? alive ? alive but not sentient. my friends have been referring to it like its a moss ball or one of those big single-celled algae. But this is to say it's something that doesn't seem to require a lot of actual care. it's not an actual child, barely even really a pet. pet rock maybe.
He wants somebody, something, to take care of - i absolutely think he wants kids, or at least fantasizes about it a lot in place of being able to care for the dreemurr kids. But most of the time he just… is not going to be in a good space to be able to care for a kid, at least not currently. and it kind of culminates in the pipis as something of a babydoll. its… well. A surrogate.
@mango-dolphin ended up commenting something on a post of mine that kind of inadvertently ended up guessing what the comic was going towards theme-wise. i really like how this was said, and i think it sums it all up really well in a succinct way:
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also didn't know where to put this in the main rambling but i did also intend for there to be a reading of The Surrogate through a transgender or intersex lens (or both.... at the same time even... whichever way you view it is up to you). and well. anything about kris is just simply laced in transgenderism it comes with the territory. im sure there is also a reading one could have about infertility as well..... maybe an aro lens too since i was somewhat in the aromantic space with tenna during this. bc i have to admit i have fallen in love (ha) with arospec as a headcanon for him.
might have more to say about all that at some point but this post is already far into the weeds so maybe another time lol. i dont have full verbalized thoughts about it yet but know the vibes are There and intentional.
anyways this all to say. these two make me sit in my chair with my face in my hands hitting the 1000 yard stare in despair. i miss kris. i miss tenna. okay ? okay
Hi every !... it seems I wrote a "Masterdoc" for "spam tenna"
you can read it here!
There is certainly a lot of information about them online already, but there doesn't appear to be any one single spot with Everything, nor do most of them contain in-depth analyses.. so i thought i would do it myself, just for my own sanity, since a lot of their canonical information can be obscure.
It will go over both basic/well-known information, and also some things i've never really seen anyone talk about.. so if you're interested, or don't know a lot about them and want to know more than you would ever need to know... maybe give it a read!
(thank you to @ilikecanele for helping me)
under the cut are some snippets of it👇My this
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