im always baffled when people insist giving tenna to mettaton is his perfect happy ending. the scene with king felt like such a massive warning shot about how tying his self worth to serving and entertaining others has degraded his self-esteem and mental health, to the point where he’ll accept even blatantly backhanded praise. its effectively just letting him continue to live in denial by being moved away from anything that could force him to address how bad things have gotten and keep digging himself into this hole hes made where hes almost suicidally desperate for any validation.
he needs so much help and he isnt going to get it at mettatons he needs his castle town healing arc!!!
Exactly! Giving him to Mettaton is confirming his belief that his only path to survival and worth is being useful as an object!
More people need to learn not to take it at face value when something seems like a good outcome or situation, especially with a character like Tenna, who puts on a smile and pretends like he's fine even when he's miserable (at least in front of Lightners), who consistently settles for bad options, and who believes his only possible futures are "be useful" or "be thrown away", because he doesn't think he has any worth as a person and would only be kept around if he's serving his purpose. (Susie doesn't fully understand his situation, hence her being positive about giving him away and not realizing that this could be bad for him.)
The reason he acts like staying in Castle Town is only a temporary thing for him isn't because he wants to leave behind the Fun Gang and all the Darkners he knows (as someone who gets strongly attached while also struggling to develop and maintain friendships, which isn't gonna change if he's given away), but because he doesn't believe the Fun Gang would want to have him around long-term.
His low self worth and social isolation/rejection by others (which fuels that low self worth), including his experiences in Chapter 3, leads him to believe that no one likes him as a person or would keep him around if he's not being useful, and that he can only survive through his purpose as an object. He's also physically very big in both the Light and Dark World, so he's anxious about taking up space if he's not useful; that's why he responded so weirdly to Susie asking "...aren't you normally way bigger?"; he saw his size being pointed out as confirmation of his fears that he's "too big" and needs to become useful to justify taking up space (hence him immediately asking the kids to find him a new owner).
As for him settling for bad options, he wanted to stay with the Dreemurrs/stay in the house that has been his home for many years, but when it was made clear that this isn't an option, he settled for being given away to someone else and surviving that way. King doesn't like Tenna as a person and only liked laughing at his expense, but Tenna settled for this and accepted it as validation. Tenna wants to hang out with the real Mike, his actual friend, but in the absence of Mike, he settles for the impostor trio, despite clearly being unhappy with the way Small Mike treats him; not enough people recognize that the reason he's spending time with the trio is that he struggles with making real friends, so he settles for this game of pretend, in which there is no genuine mutual bond being formed, and in which at least one of the three people he's playing with (Small Mike) consistently infantilizes him.
Also, like. Are we forgetting how precarious it is for Darkners to be property of Lightners who don't know they exist? Toriel is a sweetie, and she was still going to throw away the TV, because she didn't know that Tenna existed and that doing this would hurt him. The TV was just an object to the Dreemurrs, and Mettaton isn't any better; some people just like him more as a character, so they want to believe he's special. But no, the TV is still just property, just an object whose only worth is its usefulness (if the TV is broken, Mettaton won't take it, because it's useless). It's baffling to me whenever anyone thinks there's a real bond being formed between these two if the TV is brought to the Ghost House. No, the TV is just an appreciated object, Tenna is not being appreciated as a person, which is what he actually needs. (Even if you think they'd get along if they got to meet as people, in the absence of a Dark World, that isn't happening; there's a barrier preventing any real communication between them.)
It's also worth mentioning that, at least as of now, we don't know if giving Tenna away would prevent a Spamtenna reunion, and Tenna very clearly needs Spamton. He's still talking about Spamton in the Chapter 5 cutscene, still grieving, and what happened to Spamton is a major source of his misery, and the only person who can help him heal from that is Spamton himself. Spamton is also the only person who truly understood Tenna and connected with him deeply; Tenna needs him in order to not be so alone. Plus, having Spamton back could help him rebuild his friendship with the real Mike.
And thematically, reuniting Spamtenna fits with the theme of hope and defying fate, defying the forces that separated them, which clearly don't believe they should be "allowed" to be together and live for themselves rather than their purpose.
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