i understand not wanting to demonize either character and i feel like it should be a given that no UTDR character is ontologically evil, like i feel like we should all already be operating under that assumption. that said you cannot be serious if you say something like 'well Spamton still signed the contract knowing something bad would happen, so technically they're both at fault here!' BRO Tenna MADE him sign it. yes, Spamton knew something bad would happen if he signed it. Spamton also didn't WANT to sign it. it was hardly a fucking choice on Spamton's part if Tenna didn't intend to give him any other OPTION
Tenna says in his own words here that he made him do it. and he easily could've used different language, he could've said 'persuaded', or even 'sweet talked,' like in the Sword Route, which adds some ambiguity, but no, here he very transparently says he MADE him sign. also in Sword Route, with...unsettlingly odd grammatical details at the same specific part in both EN and JP, he emphasizes just how LONG it took to get Spamton to finally sign:
"FINALLY, FINALLY ? HA HA - -" very weird sudden question mark interjected after 'finally,' with brief laughter
"やっと... や っ と ..." / "FINALLY... F I N A L L Y ..." spaced out hiragana on the second 'yatto', lending a similar vibe as the EN version
ever since Chapter 3 came out i've been extremely curious as to what specifically Tenna said or did to get Spamton to sign that contract, given that it was apparently a painstakingly long process, and that Spamton knew there would be severe consequences for it. imo the way this specific detail in the text was written and localized feels like Tenna may be omitting information, but generally speaking, it's there to emphasize a significant amount of time, effort, and tirelessness on his part
also, 'Tenna didn't know for sure if something bad would actually happen!' i don't think the point of that dialogue was that something bad might not happen, and it clearly wasn't Tenna's takeaway from Mike's words either. Mike did not say something terrible MIGHT happen. he said something terrible WOULD happen. and Tenna said that he KNEW this, that something terrible WILL happen as a result, and he still did what he did anyway. him not knowing the specifics of the terrible thing that would happen and going through with it anyway doesn't make the situation better, it's literally just another reason he shouldn't have done it. especially given how obviously Spamton did not want to sign
i absolutely believe Tenna when he says he cared about Spamton, people can sometimes hurt people they care about, and compelling characters often do that! in that moment though, even if he believed he did, i think Tenna did not care more about Spamton than he cared about extracting his secrets by any means necessary, and that was, in Tenna's words, something he did knowing there would be significant consequences. and of course, how could Tenna have possibly have guessed the actual nature of those consequences? he probably assumed, not unreasonably, that it was something more material, more fixable, especially for someone like him, a very powerful Darkner all things considered. but what gets me isn't necessarily that he justified it by deciding, uninformed, that he could probably help Spamton with it in the aftermath, whatever it would be-- it's the fact that, despite Spamton's resistance, Tenna still made that decision FOR him, PRESUMED for both of them that the fallout would be worth the trouble, PRESUMED that Mike and Spamton's concerns about it were less pressing than his own
and. also. just to point out. "I could have helped him! I WOULD have!" alright man. except you had an opportunity to do exactly that literally the moment after Spamton signed. when he picked up the phone, turned (somehow) visibly pale, and ran out of the room, by Tenna's own account. and when that happened, as we know, Tenna did not follow Spamton, he went straight for the phone instead. the FIRST opportunity Tenna had to help, to at least try to check on him, he didn't. and afterward, he doesn't even recognize Spamton's visible distress in hindsight as something he should've cared about, instead he decides that, no, Spamton must have ripped him off. "I could have helped him! I WOULD have!" but you didn't. in fact you kind of fumbled that shit so immediately that it's actually unbelievable
and NO i'm NOT SAYING TENNA IS EVIL he is not evil he is an excellent and greatly flawed character who i very much enjoy and love and i will not tolerate the insinuation that he is evil. and also no i'm NOT saying Spamton by contrast is a totally reasonable person or that he's never done anything wrong or that it's super cool that he daydreams about murdering people he believes he's been wronged by, frankly a lot of the time he directs his rage in ways that are. the opposite of productive (understatement). in fact maybe 7 out of the like 10 things he's apoplectically angry about all the time are probably not remotely justified but like. that CRT at least DID fuck him over BIG time. he was right about that. i think he deserves to be angry about that
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