this post about how we might be making Tenna unhappy by keeping him in Castle Town in order to get more interactions and lore, as well as the tags on it below, got me thinking. I wanted to make my own post about my thoughts on Tenna’s character arc post-chapter 3, especially after the winter newsletter cutscene, and my perspective on the choice of giving him away vs keeping him in Castle Town. (this is not me saying there’s one right option, it’s just my personal view on the subject!)
wonderful tags by @night-creeps and @narrativecontradictions!
I feel very similarly to the above about Tenna’s future, and I have since very shortly after chapter 3 first came out.
Tenna clearly is still very much struggling in Castle Town; he’s leaning on his old habits of treating his employees poorly, taking his anger and pain out on others, and staying in denial of his own faults. he just wants to be adopted by a new lightner and leave everything behind. he also clearly wants to be a better person! he feels guilty for what he’s done, but is finding change very difficult, and still isn’t taking responsibility for his actions and how they affect others.
he feels like he’s just playing pretend because he is — Tenna’s in denial of almost every aspect of his life, and he has been for years. he’s been in denial that the whole Dreemurr family is changing and moving on from who they used to be, he’s in denial that he treats people like trash, he’s in denial that Mike has been gone for a long time, he’s in denial that he’s never stopped caring about Spamton, and he’s in denial that something terrible happened to Spamton because of him. he plays pretend in his mind because he can’t bear himself, or his life, the way they really are — which is why he needs to face his reality and all the things he’s done, not keep running from them. he can’t keep going through life not thinking about the things he finds too painful. and he can’t truly move on, he can’t fully heal, without coming to terms with himself and his past.
change doesn’t happen overnight. this is a terrifying adjustment for Tenna; he’s been the same thing for so long — a once-beloved object whose purpose was to desperately try to keep a family who could never really know him happy, at the cost of everything and everyone else. he had no choice if he wanted to survive. now he’s on the cusp of becoming something completely different to what he’s always had to be, an unfamiliar concept — a person in his own right, someone who lives for himself and his friends, no longer scrambling to find a way, at any cost, to be an entertaining object, to survive just a little bit longer. someone who can just… be. just because this adjustment is going to be hard doesn’t mean he’s not going to get there in the end. he can still change, he can get better if he truly tries. but first…
Tenna needs to understand that he can find his own happiness, that he’ll still have worth even if he’s not entertaining lightners; he doesn’t need to be someone’s object to have purpose. most of the darkners in Castle Town already seem to be realizing that, but Tenna hasn’t. these darkners have been freed from the obligation of playing their roles perfectly — they can be whatever they want to be. they’re enjoying being their own people and are content to be in Castle Town, at least for now. they're figuring out who they are outside of their "purpose,” finding their own meaning in their relationships with other darkners, ones they never even could've met if not for Castle Town, instead of simply being at the mercy of a lightner's whims.
Tenna should get to have that too, even with his baggage. he should get to find his own sense of purpose, explore who he is as more than just an entertainer for lightners who can choose to discard him at any time, and who can never know Tenna as he really is. being around these darkners in Castle Town who are finding joy in themselves and each other could be so good for him, once he’s able to open his mind to it.
he also very much needs to heal from his past, and being cut off from everyone he's ever known without any true closure or atoning for his past mistakes is not going to do that. he needs to face himself and his actions fully, and stop repressing every bad thing he doesn't want to acknowledge. he needs to stop "playing pretend." his relationships with his employees and Kris will likely be a key part of that, but a vital, inextricable piece of Tenna and his past is also Spamton.
Tenna clearly is not the least bit over him and everything that happened between them. it's been ten years and he still brings Spamton up at every opportunity, yet can't even bring himself to say his name. he clearly cared about Spamton so much — he slipped up and admitted it himself in that cutscene — and he knows in his heart that he wronged him. but he can't reconcile in his mind that he's responsible for something horrible happening to someone he loved so deeply, all because he was selfish. so he tries to push that huge weight of anger and guilt and blame he really feels at himself onto Spamton, rationalizing that Spamton must have stayed away of his own volition, that he just ripped Tenna off and then abandoned him and never truly cared about him, because he can't bear thinking of the alternative; that something awful really did happen to Spamton, that he couldn’t come back, and, in Tenna’s mind, that he’s the one who did that to him. because at least if Spamton abandoned him, Tenna doesn’t have to blame himself — and live with that pain forever. (and at least Spamton is safe.)
if it’s still weighing this heavily on Tenna's heart after ten years, these deep feelings of regret and anguish are not just going to go away, not until he can accept the truth of what really happened. until he faces Spamton again and understands the whole story, that their care really was mutual, and explains himself, Tenna is never going to be able to let the shame go and fully let himself heal.
i'm fairly confident at this point that this is where Tenna’s Castle Town storyline is leading, and i fully believe that this is the best — and most narratively satisfying — path for Tenna from where he’s at now.
