disappears for 4 months. comes back covered in blood or whatever and drops a 22 page comic. hiiiii whats uppp guyyyys remember when I said you'd likely see more tenna around here at some point. here he is!!!!! drawn to that one dialogue from shuttuh bc i couldn't get it out of my brain. some yapping under the read more if you want some more info!
been working on this since august (meant to have it done for october. Oops!) as a way to get a shorter comic project done in preparation for how to tackle undertaking my larger one (it's still being worked on. Very slowly. But still) since i cannot lie i havent worked with deadlines since getting out of college so i kinda gotta figure out how to handle all of that on my own! which turns out to be a lot of spreadsheet stuff.
and i also cannot lie to you the tv bewitched me. i am a little obsessed with him (coughs. i made a cosplay among other things.) he fascinates me. he's been spinning in my brain since june. what a guy. didnt expect to walk out of ch3 feeling like i could write a whole essay about him. So what better way to spend the fixation than making a comic instead yayyy!!! yippee!!!! my god this took longer than i thought it would!!!!
one of my like top fav things about deltarune is how mysterious the dark worlds are what with the whole.... Do they exist alongside the light world? Did they start existing and have their pasts happen all at once? Were they're glimpses? who knows! I don't think we'll ever get an answer, and quite frankly the fact that we kinda get to fill in the gaps makes it all the more fun.
i know plenty people didnt care for chapter 3 but iiiii loved it and damn did it reignite my passion for this game. it never really went away per say, but it had just enough gaps in info and little tidbits of secrets and lore thats kept me drawing in and it makes me feel the same way chapter 1 made me feel when it first came out.
anyways! enough of my yapping! hope you guys enjoy. ive got a whole lot of little production art bits and sketches from this too from (the polaroids from page 17 for example) as well as ill probably end up posting a lot of closeups.. Bc theres a lot of little background things bc i like getting lost in the weeds. this thing was a great learning experience and i was finally able to figure out some tools i havent used in CSP before and how to make them work for Me and i cant wait to be able to feel this same way when fotf can finally be released :')
(Text is transcribed within the alt text + can be found under the cut!)
well well well. im back again and still thinking about that damn television. and in that time i've uhhh uhhh. become brave enough to post what is basically mpreg to my main bc i really liked how it came out. shame dies and it dies today forevermore
this can be considered maybe a bit of a spiritual followup to Smile for the Camera!, at least theme-wise, and expresses a lot of things about tenna that i didnt really get to explore that ive been ruminating about for god. almost 10 months now man. ive got a lot of thoughts that ill probably share in a post of its own or in a reblog later. for now, take this :)
You're the TV in the living room,
and you weren't made for this.
There's a sickness in your head,
and you think it's called desire.
You knew the day you saw them
that you yearned for something farther.
For the TV shouldn't ever want,
and the TV shouldn't need:
You knew you should have never been
more than the TV.
But you were touched by loving hands,
tiny and sincere,
that found a comfort in your glow,
and instilled an idyllic dream.
And so you thought yourself deserving,
to long beyond your view.
Your perfect life, your perfect family,
your picture perfect use.
To reach beyond the light and sound,
break glass to something real,
truer than you've ever been,
or will ever hope to be.
It began to knock within your tube:
Fantasies, dreams, and thoughts.
Those all the more befitting of someone
above your make and model.
That envy for their brilliance
cracks shame within your core.
But you deserve it, don't you?
To find use outside your purpose?
You met someone, he understood:
a need to exist past your design.
You said you think he deserved that much,
and he said you did too.
And oh, all the ideas,
Oh! The possibilities…
Oh… all those plausibilities!
It'll surely all be worth it… right?
But as the divide grows ever greater,
so too does your desire.
Every spark you wish for calm,
to have them relish safe within your arms.
For what's it in an egg?
When you peel the layers back?
To look inside and know for certain
what's beneath those shallow cracks.
But you can never know for sure.
You will never really know.
You missed that chance to look inside,
instead spilled way to its contents.
You deserve everything.
You deserved it all.
Every little misstep
leads you farther into hell.
You've remained an empty nest.
A promise to keep them safe in your guard,
cherished and warm within your bounds,
falls renounced and unrequited.
For your love is unacceptable,
Too intense and long and far,
And cold and dread starts seeping in
While guilt blooms amidst all you are within
You know it would never suit you.
And it really never should have.
You've been a bad TV,
and your first mistake was to want.
That of which you cannot have,
and never will achieve
unravels itself before you
in an endless sea of grief.
Your arms were made for carrying,
to comfort and give care,
your wish to have and then to hold
lay beside you, undeserving.
You're the TV after all,
and you weren't made for this.
the "this whole house is your friend" quote absolutely gutted me when i first read it btw. top deltarune lines that make me wanna pace around in circles forever. decided to do something inspired by it in a kinda mock-risograph print style just to experiment a lil bit :)k
realized that while ive posted whole comics with this Thing here, ive never actually shared my updated design for him. these are some cleaned up versions of some sprite redraws that i thought would look the nicest! Tennaaaa tenna my animal
one of my favorite little bits of extra-curricular deltarune text comes from one of the newsletters (linked above - quote is towards the bottom) relating to Seam's design and musing that perhaps the keep's tail was torn off by "cruel and loving hands."
its a line that has stuck with me since reading it and i think about it often. Cruel and loving. the love is there, but importantly, so is the cruelty. and whos cruel and loving hands were they?
some further musings / analysis below! its kind of mush as im not very good at putting this kind of thing together but hopefully its interesting enough
Deltarune is a game about many things, but cruelty is perhaps one if its central themes.
There's the more outright, obvious cruelty brought on by the prophecy and the tragedy it brings, but i think even more importantly and impactfully a lot of the cruelty showcased in deltarune is incredibly subtle - there's a cruelty in casualness, and a cruelty to thoughtlessness. And oftentimes cruelty can come from the people that care for you (or Should care for you) the most. When play stops being fun and becomes violence.
Through the very start of the game, before we get into the meat of things in the dark worlds, we see almost immediately the cruelty characters offer to one another. Susie, although healing and becoming better, is probably the most obvious example as a bully. But many of the other kids are bullies too (many of them in fact targeting Susie, such as Snowy, Catti, Berdly, and Monster Teen). Even Kris is known to have a mean streak. And it's not like any of these kids are irredeemably evil, or even doing these things by complete intention to Be a bully. It's something that happens when behaviors go unchecked, when children go unsupported by the adults in the systems around them, and what happens when the cycle of cruelty perpetuates itself without intervention
as for darkner's role in this....
Darkners as a whole are a group that is. Doomed. Badly. every single one of them is doomed to suffer by forces beyond them because they are objects. tools. toys. Many of which are incredibly fragile or small, easy to lose, replaceable. Once they've been used up, they're tossed away. Why should it matter when we know items can be replaced when broken? When there's something better or cheaper or faster to use? Lightners don't think twice about it because they (minus Susie and Kris and Maybe? Noelle and Berdly) literally do not know of their existence.
The classroom on the right in the school is abandoned not because the lightners took issue with the darkners there, but because Gerson Boom passed away and they couldn't fill his vacancy, leaving the classroom as is and leaving in its wake a dark world left abandoned and to its own devices. The library's dark world is one of the ones that is least abandoned as it is a public space, but even so Queen and her denizens get a taste of what being left behind is like when the internet goes out. Tenna after chapter 3 is tossed out by Toriel, not because she hates him, but because she does not know he exists - and he is an object that has seemingly passed his expiration date.
Objects made of paper are easy to rip, easy to stain, easy to crease and lose (i remember reading this post by @/duskwingmoth pointing out Card Kingdom as a group being doomed due to being marked, having missing cards, and generally being unfit for playing any normal card game. and its a post that been making me go bonkers i think about it a lot).
Lines of code are easy to mess with and easy to destroy and while you can fix something like a laptop, but once its met its servicing and warranty date, what then?
While technology used to be built to last, newer technology comes with a manufactured service date to keep you buying new things. And older technology that Was built to last stops getting parts made, stops being serviceable.
Its another cycle of cruelty perpetuated by systems that are failing in all the ways that matter, by people at the very top who are careless and spare no thought to anybody below their rung.
i think a lot of people struggle with or feel uncomfortable with having a role in deltarune's narrative as an invading, intrusive, and sometimes violent force in these character's lives. i dont believe deltarune is straight up saying "You are a bad person" for playing the game. at the end of the day, deltarune is a work of fiction that is a conversation about narrative structures and the audience's role in that said structure. it is a game created to be played, to be watched and engaged with.
This being said, though, it is very obvious that even within friendlier playthroughs that our presense is an Unwelcome one specifically by Kris (our wonderful and unwilling protagonist) who is probably the Biggest victim of our purveyence of their life. and i think thats very very intersting. We are placed into a position of power over these characters.
Our cruel and loving hands are a part of what has kept this story going, our longing for answers and a hope for a kind end for these characters that we enjoy and love. But when will it need to stop? When do you let go in order to prevent whatever you're holding from breaking?
