✴️Mostly reblogs + my art sometimes✴️
🔸ESP/ENG, OCs, fanarts, random stuff🔸
🔸Ocasional anxiety induced rambles🔸
🔸Yeah, this blog is like my diary at this point🔸
yall ever lose interest in something so you stop seeking out content for it and your brain will be like. wow its so crazy that that thing used to be everywhere and then everyone stopped talking about it. so crazy that it fell off like that because nobody is talking about it on my personal curated social media and youtube algorithms. surely no other factors here.
OKAY so i think a huge part of Tenna’s character is the fact he is a performance artist. I will say I was in performance art groups for an undisclosed amount of years and there’s. There’s a certain vibe 🆗 there’s specific mindsets and attitudes that I feel Tenna speaks on in rly specific ways that I dont see dug into very often.
Tenna’s whole psychology sort of orbits around the fact he’s an entertainer. He lives to serve you, but he’s not exactly necessary. His self-worth and self-expression and overall ability to keep others happy are all psychologically melted together. You can see he genuinely loves to entertain and finds it very fulfilling, but the nature of that requires a level of people-pleasing and repression.
more under the cut bc this is fr a 4 page essay
Being a literal object made to serve the lighteners definitely underscores this, but I can't think of any other darkeners that are this, uh… neurotic? unwell. about it. (well there’s a certain puppet secret boss im side-eyeing but he psychologically goes the other direction. Flips a middle finger to god and tries to ascend to another dimension. classic.)
Tenna’s survival literally depends on if other people are happy enough with him or not. And to do that he’s forced to act a certain way. In obvious ways like always having to keep the energy up and ignoring conflict,
but this extends to trying to suppress his own negative emotions, thoughts, and needs, being forced to do things that are against his own morals,
and a fawn response to threats.
There’s a sort of conundrum with the nature of performing arts where it’s kind of inseparable from your physical self. Whether you're using your face, voice, hands, etc. (or your whole entire body, in Tenna’s case), when a comment or critique is made of your performance, there’s just one less degree of separation between the thing you put out there and your whole You (I love TV = I love Tenna :) no degree of separation from the abstract concept of TV and his own idea of himself). So there’s the whole self worth thing already tied up in there. I’m not even gonna get deep into that one I feel like we know where that one’s going.
But the other question becomes, exactly how much of myself am I willing to give up for approval? What’s the right way to balance self-expression and individual identity with giving the people what they want? ... Or do we bother balancing it at all?
(and this is true of any art anyone puts into the public eye, but performance art is just kinda extra weird about it, by nature. For example, actors are expected to get hair cuts, keep or change their bodies to be a certain way, they lack anonymity because their face is tied to their art, so you're expected to behave a certain way when you're off the clock too-- it just requires so much more self-editing.)
Tenna’s such a beautiful example of this. In a very unsubtle (imo) way you see him bulldoze his own emotions for the sake of performance, upkeep his own denial to try to keep the happy facade up, and go to lengths to hide personal information. And it’s obviously stressing him out.
He’s internalized it to the point where it’s starting to come out in odd ways that dont make sense anymore, too.
"everyone's gonna know I..." know what. that youre a single mother. babygirl what are u talking about. + we all agree that the audience in the second one is like. some sort of manifestation right. can a professional please give this guy some cognitive behavioral therapy im begging
And then the dude does not know when to give it up. In a bad way.
There's a saying that originated from broadway i think, “the show must go on.” There’s a cute happy song about it but the attitude in the showbusiness is very real. It doesn't matter what you're personally going through, you’re expected to show up and perform no matter what, Or Else. Or else you ruined everyone else’s months of hard work, or else the show will suck and it will be your fault. In a lot of performing art mediums, there’s no retries, either. You mess up on stage and your moment is stained forever :) so you better do it right! no pressure.
In Tenna’s case, the “or else” is “or else you get sliced into ribbons”. He’s expected to pack up Toriel, keep it a secret, and keep the fun gang occupied for an indefinite amount of time until the Knight picks up its to-go order. Ive said it before and ill say it again this dude is doing like 5 hours straight of comedy improv with a gun to his head HE DOESNT EVEN RLY WANT TO KEEP YOU HERE. HE RUSHES YOU THRU THE FIRST BOARD, ROUND 2 WAS VAGUELY SLAPPED TOGETHER, AND THE BONUS ROUND IS NONEXISTENT THE MAN IS FREAKING OUT BACKSTAGE TRYING TO KEEP IT TOGETHER. OR ELSE.
And then he has a mental breakdown live on stage and he just has to keep going. What other option is there.
And then his crew leaves, and his friends leave, and Mike leaves. But Tenna doesn't get to leave. The show goes on. Until the very end he's still cracking jokes and trying to herd you back to the board. Even his boss fight with the fun gang is just More Games!! He acts genuinely confused if you start whacking him in his fight!!
it's kinda meta in a way that an amount of people read Tenna's on-stage mental breakdown as a sort of temper tantrum for not giving him enough attention, which is similar to the way celebrities irl get dismissed when they go thru mental health issues. so so many signs pointing to how much he actually does not want to do any of this and is very scared. i mean to be fair that's the lie he gave us right before his battle. (covering up the deal with the Knight for Kris)
Maybe Kris/the knight really DID promise a reward, but the way he gets nervous as hell and shakes when he's alone with Kris-- that's not the usual reaction to someone you expect a prize from. they both know what the consequences are.
In conclusion: Tenna is a patron saint of performance art to me and all of his lovely complexes and mysterious deal with Kris perfectly represents the secret psychological horror that is to exist at an audience’s whims. Thank u for staying this long here take this shitpost as a reward
Pondering my initial reaction to Tenna for his birthday and I think what struck me first and foremost about him is I’ve never seen an antagonist before or since that is trying to avoid the conflicts in the story as much as I wanted to and it led to a lot of personal reflection on why that is.
(Explanation under cut)
I went in assuming Tenna was gonna be almost how he gets portrayed in fanon frequently where he was fixated on making people play his games forever out of loneliness/need for attention, and I kinda braced myself from the start for when he stopped being “fun” and fell into his role as a villain. Like the archetype that wants to make people happy or play with them and loses it when people try to leave. Taking the nostalgia motif into a predictable childish behavior.
Around the weather duo fight I initially thought that’s why he was trying so much to make them stop arguing, and I was nervous going out towards Toriel the first time because I thought it’d be a breaking point where the gang got punished in some way for going somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, but that’s when I reached the part that made me reconsider everything I’d seen up to that point:
He pretends it didn’t happen and tries to move on. It felt like flinching for a punch that never comes. It had me reconsidering his behavior up to that point and realizing how much effort went into just trying to keep people happy for the sake of conflict avoidance, but it wasn’t until the Doom Board that everything clicked fully and unsettlingly into place.
This. This right here immediately brought me harshly to exactly why he was acting the way I would have tried to.
Doing my best to not get too personally detailed in the “how Tenna personally affected me” essay, but most of my upbringing involved most family members arguing with each other frequently and primarily living with a loud and irritable parent who would generally use anyone nearby as a venting target whenever they felt the need to, so most of the coping I’d learned and even been explicitly told a couple times was “stay in your room, play your games, don’t worry about it” while hearing said argument very clearly from the other room. Later on this would lead to using headphones most of the time to try and drown out noise or generally shutting down and spacing out or hyperventilating any time I got scolded for long periods of time, and it really didn’t fully click with me how or why this happened until this moment.
Because at that moment I knew the exact feeling behind that statement. You can’t stop it, agree with them, let them vent, go hide and watch something if you can get out. Brace yourself.
Especially with his position as an object fixed in the middle of the house and not being physically able to get away from the situation, while perceiving oneself as the cause of the argument, (Tenna’s guilt as his position as a positive form of entertainment and distraction, myself and I’d wager Kris as well’s as the subject of argument in a divorce, honestly there’s a whole other essay to be had about how chapter 3 reflects Kris’ emotional state and upbringing) causes him to feel trapped and helpless yet simultaneously culpable for what he’s experiencing, and the feeling of being trapped in a situation you don’t want to be in, especially as a result defending a stance you only go along with for a promised end result (his deal with Kris & the Knight) hit exceedingly close to home. You even see it throughout the rest of the chapter where he folds immediately after any threat he makes out of desperation and trying to keep his employees around.
This is what really stands out to me about Tenna as a character. He’s forced to experience horrible things while partially blaming himself for it and tries everything in his power to try and prevent conflict at every turn. He straight up doesn’t fight you until you’re right in front of Toriel and he has no other options. And that’s what I sorta wish I could see more about in his fandom portrayal. He’s not looking for attention or guilt tripping to get his way. He’s scared of another fight while being forced into conflict by a deal he has no real other choice but to take (it’s essentially “sell out your family or die” at this point) and can’t take it when he can’t keep the act going and people start turning on him. I think the one time I’ve seen this really well portrayed is Dark Fountain Within by @/tennas-t-v-time but I’d love to see it explored more often.
Anyways rant over. The TV made me come to terms with the psychological impacts of divorce and generally being around family members that barely tolerate each other. Happy Tennaverssary.
Thanks to ultrasounds, the genders can be assigned before birth. The people are so excited to conform they throw “Gender reveal parties” to make sure their offspring exist in a strict binary since before they can even form thoughts.
i know folks are gonna call me a pedo for this one, but i grew up seeing my mom and grandma naked. they had health issues and at times needed care and help showering. and i truly think more kids need to be shown the nonsexual reality of naked women at a young age. there is nothing sexual about my grandmothers breasts, they were simply body parts. more women die of heart attacks because people are too afraid of breasts to do real chest compressions, because they are scared to touch their breasts. the sexualization of our bodies literally kills us. i need people to be more normal about naked bodies and i'm 100% serious.
if you are a parent, or may become one, or you are otherwise likely to arrive in the situation of caring for a child while they eat, promise me this: if a child doesn't like a certain food or food group, you will ask them WHY. and specifically, you will pay attention to either confirming or ruling out "it makes my mouth itch" or "it makes my stomach hurt," both of which are medically important info that children may not provide unprompted. which i know because this PSA has been brought to you by "i spent my entire childhood and much of my early teens eating peas and lentils while wondering why everyone else liked the Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation so much, like were they a bunch of legume masochists or something, before i finally realized that Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation was in fact a sinister demon appearing only to me, and her true demonic name was: Legume Allergy"
we've definitely posted about this before but if i see one more person act like the only forms of childhood trauma that exist are abuse from family or sexual assault i will actually start crying and it will be so so so loud everyone will hear it from every corner of the earth
THE SCHOOL SYSTEM !!! PEER ABUSE !!!!! ISOLATION !!!!!!!! RACISM !!! SEXISM !!!!!! MEDICAL ABUSE !!!!!! NONCONSENSUAL SURGERY !!!! POVERTY !!!! SO MUCH MORE !!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
edit: i made this in a high school enduced rage and didnt expect it to blow up like this ?
anyway i love trans people i love intersex people i love people with personality disorsers i love aspec people okkk
i love these lines so much it's like one of the few times Tenna talks out of his stage persona character. hashtag his bitchiness. hashtag his passive aggression. do you think his internal monologue is like this
and then this one is from the bonus round board that got cut from chap 3. 🫵 SELF CENSORSHIP EVIDENCE
