People on this site joke a lot and yearn a lot for toxic, doomed by the narrative yaoi in their media, but Toby Fox delivered some of the best doomed toxic yaoi in the last decade with Spamton and Tenna and it's honestly incredibly impressive because it feels so real.
Two people who are so lonely and so afraid of being forgotten (be it because of the natural passage of time, being just plain annoying and intrusive, or both) that it turns both of them into a black hole that absorbs literally everything around them into their own ego like a tarnished suit of armor (it couldn't be me that's difficult/obsolete/irritating, it's everyone ELSE that's wrong) that the only thing they can do once they find each other is collide and inevitably destroy themselves
We see that in Spamton and Tenna's relationship (whether it was orchestrated to fail by Mike or not), is that they both believed they were getting something for free from the other (guidance on how to succeed/love/validation), when reality, the cost was that it shifted their already horrific levels of co-dependency from the Lightners onto one another. As a side-effect of both of them becoming too big to fail, they both became incredibly fragile, who's success and continued happiness relied solely on the other. It only took one mess up- one misinterpretation- to ruin everything, and now they both blame the other for their failure to appeal to the Lightners anymore. Their relationship was ALWAYS doomed to fail because in the end, despite any positive feelings they may have had for one another (be it love or friendship or just plain idol worship), they both put aside any genuine emotion for one another that may have blossomed for their own ego.
The one thing that could have saved both Spamton AND Tenna was honest, earnest, communication, and that's what's so tragic about it, because this happens in real life to people all the time. Without honest communication, relationships crumble- especially business partners, but I feel like they had something deeper. They were earnest in one way with one another, and that was how direly terrified they were of being alone. With proper communication they could have figured something out, been better for each other, and maybe grown past their fear of obsolescence out of, if nothing, mutual respect for one another's skills.
Yet they didn't. They chose the fickle whims of fame and the adoration of strangers over what could have been real. They chose a fantasy of popular anonymity (and probably money, at least in Spamton's case) over each other. Now at the end of everything Tenna doesn't even recognize Spamton, but he still keeps a pipis hidden in a dresser, and when he has a breakdown, just like Spamton did in Chapter 2, the first person he blames for his failure is his old business partner.
Because at the end of the day- to the both of them- it couldn't have been me, it couldn't even have been that other people have lives outside of his influence. It was obviously THAT guy, my old partner, how dare he leave me like this/not teach me to be able to sell things/learn how to use email?
They're more co-dependent now than they were even when they were together, except now it's divorced flavored. Tenna's mannerisms and speech are even Spamton flavored, but considering everything, who was actually coping who in an effort to stay relevant?
Relationships take work, and practice, and above all honesty, which is something that neither of them had the ability to exercise until they were both about to die- and that lack of empathy and genuineness is what made their relationship fall apart with heartbreaking inevitability. Time caught up to them in more ways than one.
If that is not the most toxic of doomed yaois to grace your radar idk what is.
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