No, those options are still available. Do you for some reason think your ancestors had it easier? That they didn't suffer if they participated in mob violence or strikes? People died, nekosattva_chan. DIED.
Just because you have decided those options aren't available to you personally for some reason doesn't mean they no longer exist. You don't speak for everyone.
Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation,artfully labelled with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result was just what might be supposed: many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field,– feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery.~Fredrick Douglass
Assuming Kressel theory is real, I see the relationship between the SOUL and Kris as a parent who had specific expectations for what they wanted their child to be, and then the child not fulfilling those expectations. Because the child is not a doll that we can speak for, nor are they a vessel for our own desires. The child is their own person, and we must respect that. Of course, the child does things we don’t agree with and as a parent it’s our job to try and steer them in the right direction.
The Weird Route is denying our child the right to be themself, forcing them to make decisions they don’t agree with, and pushing them away from people who would turn them away from the path we have in mind from them.
The Normal Route helps to steer Kris in the right direction: one where they are happy and have their friends by their side. The Weird Route turns Kris towards us and away from the good influences that are their friends in favor of us having total control over their life.
Honestly I’ve recently been really intrigued by stories where parents possess their children because of how parents are known to live vicariously through their kid. That’s kind of what we’re doing with Kris. We’re projecting our desires onto them, and we’re using their body to interact with the world of Deltarune even though we aren’t physically in the game. We are living through them.
Nature is incredible, you can really see just at a quick glance how these evolved to speak together in rhyming riddles while performing a spooky dance, laughing at you because they're The Wee Creatures Three and you will Never Get Their Key.
”all language is approximation” believers when my autistic ass finally weaves together the exact right linguistic phrase that conveys pure information and shatters qualia as we know it
It's been just over a year since Deltarune chapters 3 & 4 released! I did the 3D work, which mostly means Tenna 📺 I figured it's been long enough to share some "behind the scenes" stuff, starting with a look at the Maya file for his static poses...
I'd individually render the poses to get that early 3D shine ✨ Here's some of them at their original resolutions! I would work from text descriptions from Toby, and sometimes there'd be a Paint sketch to help out. Gigi drew the concept that I modeled from and some poses too!
I had a lot of fun pushing myself to match the dynamic poses Toby had in mind for Tenna - making him so crazy and expressive was something I couldn't have done without his prompts. He'd draw the faces on afterward too, which really brought Tenna to life!
(lots more after the Read More cut...!)
Here are some of the Paint sketches Toby drew to help me with specific Tenna poses! I love seeing his drawings LOL, genuinely really good and evocative 👍
There was a time when I was struggling to capture what he wanted for these specific Tenna poses… Until Toby acted them out himself, and I thought, "Ah, it's like that. I understand." and then I was able to make them just how he pictured them.
When looking through the renders and choosing what to share, I laughed at these two… Remember when Tenna had a gun? Remember when he bent over in a very specific way that might remind you of another, different image? No? Maybe you don't…? Well. Don't worry about it.
These ones are cute… Tenna is pretty cute sometimes! Has anyone ever thought this? Actually, before people knew he was going to be a strange 3D sprite the Whole Time, I was worried people wouldn't like the style and it'd sour people's views on him. I'm glad that didn't happen.
Toby thought it would be funny to have Tenna do some really smooth, mocapped animations sometimes - specifically free to use ones that often pop up in other things. An extra funny part to me is how many frames these take up in the game, and how his tails are stuck to his legs…
Speaking of mocap, Toby wanted Tenna to use custom mocap animations as far back as 2016 - Ten(na) years ago! I got an Xbox Kinect at the time and learnt how to set this up, but then never used it. Here's a look at messing with mocaped stuff again in 2022. So Normal.
Don't bother trying to help him here, he's just being dramatic 🙄
I particularly like these poses - I think I improvised most of these just based off the context they get used in… I always liked posing his tie and coat tails as if they were also parts of his body he could move. Which I guess they are?
After I rendered out the individual poses in high quality, I'd force the color palette to be limited to just a few shades and then I'd shrink the result down to pixel sized sprites. Like these! I'd tidy them up a little, but they'd really get improved on at the pixel scale by Clairvoire.
As well as Tenna's sprites, I also worked on his intro "movie"…! Seeing people be completely overloaded by this on first playthroughs would always make me laugh. In game, there's a ton of extra editing done by Everdraed, but my unedited cut looks like this ⬇️
This was the entire storyboard I had to work from, and I'm realizing now that there's the note "put him in car etc" that I never did and actually don't know what it would mean exactly. Working on this had me listen to the accompanying audio many times, but it's good so it's okay.
Here are a bunch of random clips of the Maya project for Tenna's intro movie. This is how movies get made, I think!! Yeah… Just like this.
Say it with him, folks!!
For the 3D Ralsei clip from the intro, Toby really wanted it to look a certain way, and drew more sketches for guiding me with this part than any other. They genuinely helped.
Remember how Toby's original storyboard has the note "covered in slime and shrinks"? That meant I had to learn how to make 3D slime. You can see my tech advancing here.
I'm really happy with how the final Tenna animation at the end of the intro movie turned out! It wouldn't look as good if it wasn't for some 2D animation to reference from SmallBuStudio, so thank you to them for the help! Tenna is cute… Huh, I already said that…?
Phew!! That's a lot of Tenna. I hope it was fun to look through my posts! Oh, one more thing - the Fangamer Mr. Tenna Figurine just straight up uses the 3D model I made, which I think is really funny and cool and nice. Check it out if you want! Thanks for reading!
ok so this is another long shot but a few years ago there was a twitter post (in japanese i think?) that had measurememts for how to make this book stand thing out of cardboard that you could use to double up books and use up more space on shelves
back then i made a bunch of these but by now i lost the pic and dont know how to find the original post anymore
if it comes down to it i can just take one apart and get the measurements from there but i would be very grateful if anyone happens to have the original post or something similar??
don't mind how long it's been since i made this post, anyway i realized that i don't even need to take one apart to get the measurements when i can literally just unfold it and refold it /FACEPALM
so anyway here is the diagram for anyone else who is interested!!
this requires pretty big carboard pieces, if you have a really big box or something you can make it from one piece, but if you don't, you can also just make each of the pieces individually and then tape them together
and then in the end you put it together like this!!
and then when you make a bunch you can put them all next to each other and stack your books like crazy
EVERYONE START GETTING MORE USE OUT OF YOUR SPACE NOW!!!!
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.
am i the only one who wants to see more fanart of ralsei and spamton interacting? or susie and spamton
i feel like i don't see any of him and ralsei (im sure there was some when chapter 2 had come out more recently but i wasn't in the fandom that time lmao)
having memory issues while also being mutuals with several people who like to change their url & pfp on the regular is really funny bc its like. ok i dont recognize you but you Smell Familiar so i guess you can come in.
i've been thinking about the implications of movie genres on deltarune for a bit now following the phenomenal carol holiday essay which briefly touches on asgore's affinity for cowboys and superheroes as related to them being genres where justice is really forgivable and simple, where one good guy stops bad guys for a just cause, and always gets the girl (even if he had to lie and kill to do it), and since then i've been also really intrigued with the other genre that gets a lot of attention in deltarune, actually Way More thus far, which is horror, and it's everywhere. because susie identifies with monster movie monsters (susiezilla) and noelle loves horror movies, and then you kind of see it everywhere.
i was recently raving about the use of horror in deltarune because it is often the subversive space, it's the space where villains and final girls dominate the footprint of the genre, and it's famously historically (very problematically) queer. because it was always telling stories that stood in for cultural anxiety, it depicted characters who were different and it's become an affirmative and often reclaimed and celebrated genre in spite of and because of its history. carol clover's Men, Women, and Chainsaws explores the nuanced relationship of horror and gender politics — one of the things i remember is the androgyny of horror in killers and survivors alike;
The Final Girl is boyish, in a word. Just as the killer is not fully masculine, she is not fully feminine... (...) Lest we miss the point, it is spelled out in her name: Stevie, Marti, Terry, Laurie, Stretch, Will, Joey, Max. Not only the conception of the hero in Alien and Aliens but also the surname by which she is called, Ripley, owes a clear debt to slasher tradition. (40)
clover was criticizing the genre for this (for valid reasons), but i think it's also this semi-androgynous soup of heroes and villains in horror, plus the fact that villains become the face of the film and girls become the heroes, and the whole thing is always a bit camp and hyperbolic, that they attract the disenfranchised as an audience. for a brief moment, the gaze might be flipped on its head.
a movie like Evil Dead 2 which is the blatant real-world "Blood Crushers 2" (susie hasn't seen the first, and the protagonist's severed hand attacks... Basement), is the reverse case. you have a male protagonist named Ashley (whom clover considers a "Final Boy"). the movie is a cult classic with a comedic edge, and Ash is doing all sorts of looney tunes-esque gags against his own hand. it's not a movie that takes itself and its protagonist as seriously as a western or an average superhero flick. that noelle and susie are attracted to horror instead is reflective of their worldview, where things that are scary or strange might not be.
and, also, i recently watched Aliens so thinking of the blatant xenomorph inspiration with queen's design has been really hitting. like oh... of course. the xenomorph, a species with a queen mother... a character who represents a maternal horror. the queen xenomorph is not really an intentionally malicious force as Aliens presents it, rather, just a mother making the logical conclusion towards protecting and proliferating its species/its offspring, a simple survival calculation. the queen only actively attacks ripley in vengeance. for dess and noelle, who watched horror together, and who both certainly have complicated relationships with their mom, the xenomorph imagery on queen comes through in what it means to have a monster mother. and it comes through in queen's behaviour, as she makes a calculation seemingly to do what's best for the lightners, even if it doesn't hold up under the human morality microscope.
just so much to think about with how horror and movie monsters get employed in deltarune, how they weave themselves into the story. how they stand as the angle through which noelle and susie can put a subversive worldview to words. susie aligns herself with the movie monster only to find out... she is maybe the final girl. i am also led to think about the framing of the girl as a second hero alongside the contradictory prophecy panel "And last, the girl / at last, the girl". I don't think i have a central thesis for this analysis, but it's very fun seeing the bits and pieces of a genre leaking its way into this game's story and having it mean something... quite subtle.
it's fun to think about going into chapter 5 that susie identifies so heavily with susiezilla, which goes without saying is a godzilla reference — the guy with a FAMOUS destructive beef with japan. chapter 5 will hopefully have a lot of interesting generic interplay in this regard....
