Mr. “ant” Tenna ~ Deltarune

Name: Mr “ant” Tenna (usually just goes by Tenna)

Age: 30-40 I think? It’s unconfirmed

Gender: male

Pronouns: he/they

Height: 14 feet tall. Though when he gets sad or nervous, he shrinks down.

Species: Darkner, tv monster.

Appearance: Tenna takes appearance of a humanoid Darkner with a TV as his head, possessing no facial features except for a large grinning mouth and a long nose. These features disappear when his screen is turned off. He wears a red suit with two, long coattails behind him, the word TV emblazoned on his suit lapel, a long yellow tie, black pants, puffy white gloves, and yellow pointy, heeled shoes. Tenna has numerous physical quirks that differentiate him from the previous Dark World rulers: he is much taller than anyone else (being around 5 times Kris's height at his normal height), and is rendered as a simplistic 3D model, unlike the rest of the game's characters who are 2D pixel art sprites. Thus, this allows Tenna to be far more animated than any other character.

Tenna grows and shrinks in accordance to his mood, becoming smaller the less enthusiastic he feels. Although hard to tell, he can blush pink. Sometimes, when Tenna speaks, his dialogue appears as stylized fonts. When angered, Tenna will grow fangs and sharp points will emerge from his shoulders. The flower that blooms from Tenna's nose at the end of Chapter 3 apparently appears whenever he feels overjoyed.

Personality: A charismatic and enthusiastic show host, Tenna is extremely energetic and peppy, seemingly wanting nothing more than to entertain his guests. This is for the most part, true as he provides to Kris and the Delta Warriors' every need, modifying games to be to their liking and doing his best to be accommodating. He also tends to make cheeky quips and commentary to keep audiences engaged. However, as noted by his shifty and nervous dialogue at certain points, Tenna is evidently secretive of his true motive, which is revealed to be his obsessive need for attention stemming from his insecurities. In the shadow mantle game levels, Tenna expresses open fear of Kris in particular, distressed that they are not having fun with his games and of them potentially turning him off again.

Additionally Tenna can be vindictive to a spiteful degree as following a perceived betrayal from Spamton G. Spamton, Tenna includes multiple slights towards his ex business partner in his games, at one point even directly blaming him for his inability to utilize technology. As well as during the Susiezilla minigame, where he depicts a giant paper mache head of Spamton and dubs him his "worst hater", ordering Susie to kill him quickly. As indicated in the Newsletter Update, Tenna had heavily pressured Spamton to sign a contract, while ignoring the dire consequences that would come with it, effectively being the cause of their collapsing friendship.

Wanting nothing more than an audience to watch him at all costs, Tenna has no qualms with hurting anybody to ensure that he gets what he wants, kidnapping Toriel and tormenting Kris's party to try to force them to stay. His affable persona also begins to show cracks as he undergoes rapid mood swings from apologetic to depressive and volatile. Furthermore, while mostly nice to his employees, Tenna begins showing more authoritative behavior towards them, forcing them to do his bidding under the clauses of his contracts, though it appears that he already gives them subpar treatment thanks to their poor pay. These outburst's continue to apply to his employees such as the three Mikes as he has continually lashed out them and threatened their contracts if they did not follow his orders.

These insecurities all stem from Tenna's fear of becoming outdated and in part due to trauma of witnessing the Dreemurr family slowly stop watching him and getting into repeated fights, seeing as he wouldn't be able to entertain others if he was thrown away. Thus, despite all his shortcomings, Tenna truly does care for others and wants nothing more than to make Lightners smile. Tenna also holds onto Spamton's original Pipis indicating he misses his old business partner to some degree. Tenna shows much more of this caring side after he's encouraged by Susie of his own self-worth, allowing him to turn his back on the Knight and help the Delta Warriors out.

Powers:

Natural Abilities:

Leadership: Tenna is classified as a TV director as he is in charge of all his employees. When the Lightners escape, however, he loses his employees slowly as he started to have an insecure breakdown. Charisma: With a persona similar to Mettaton, Tenna has great charming skills to convince people to do things with him. TV Physiology: Tenna's greatest feature. Being a TV, he can change the reality of TV World by bringing people with him as well as the scenery by changing the channel. As shown in the battle against him playing a minigame, he uses his head to make the Lightners fight him. In Battle

All-Star Cast: Tenna will use a bunch of laughing stars in a swooping pattern. They can help the Lightners gain score by gaining a lot of Tension Points by grazing them which gives them the amount required to play a minigame. Smash Cut: Tenna will jump up and perform a slice with his hands together, manipulating the Bullet Board. Diagonal patterns of electricity bullets will come from up and down, while the halves of the box shift around to confuse the Player. Rimshot: Laughing stars with smaller ones trailing them will bounce around and unleash bullets as soon as the rimshot plays, making it harder to dodge. Minigame: When Kris ACTs to play a minigame (with just Susie, just Ralsei, or both), Tenna will jump to the center of the battlefield and look at fourth wall with static on his TV screen face. The camera zooms in on his face and lead to a minigame. When the minigame is complete or the time is up, the camera zooms out and returns to the battlefield, with Tenna jumping back to his spot. When performing two at once, the camera backs away to the battlefield and zooms in on Tenna's screen again to transition to the next one. DODGE FIRE: In this minigame, Kris is taken to the Cooking Show set. Kris has to jump over the fire coming from the counter and dodge the fire raining down from above until the timer runs out. Jumping over the fire will earn the Lightners score. PERFORM: The Lightners will be taken to the Rock Video set playing the current section of "It's TV Time!" Kris has to hit the notes with the two buttons to match the rhythm. The more that it's played, the faster the timer for this minigame finishes to end it. PROTECT RALSEI: Exclusive only if the Monster Movie minigame was done. Susie has to ram into the mini Tennas to protect Ralsei by pressing the button to spin-dash into them. Hitting the Tenna's will earn the Lightners score. FIGHT...: With the same set, Susie has to fight golden Tenna three times to win. Getting hit by Tenna or hitting Tenna himself three times will end the Physical Challenge. SHOOT: Like in the Cowboy Minigame set, Kris has to shoot the Tennas from the corresponding windows. They turn redder the longer they stay there and will shoot if left alone too long. DODGE: In this version, the roles are reversed and Tenna shoots the Lightners instead. They must dodge Tenna's scope shots on where he will fire until the timer runs out. SHOOT THE TARGETS: While using the Sharpshoot ACT from the Shadowguys, the Lightners must shoot the Tenna enemies coming in from the right until the timer runs out. BOUNCE THE BALL: The player must use the parasol attached to the SOUL to bounce the ball. This one can end before the timer runs as a number below the Bullet Board will be displayed on how many bounces are left. In the later version, a yellow version of the attack will be tossed in and display small lightning upwards if it hits the ground. DEFEAT TENNA: When the score board reaches the quota of 1,000 points, Tenna will perform all of the minigames repeated up to 0-21 times. When the Lightners reach back to the battlefield, they must aim and shoot Tenna's TV head until his ENEMY HP reaches 0. (This won't count toward lowering his actual HP.) Doing this will end the battle against him and he'll erratically change channels before he does. If the Dealmaker is equipped, the erratic channel change will have an additional transition with Spamton hidden in the corner

Weaknesses: Insecurities: Due to being not wanted anymore, Tenna tends to be a bit of a control freak by kidnapping Toriel in a capsule as well as the Lightners when they saw her locked in one at the Doom Board. He also feels more insecure as his crew slowly left him. He is, however, aware of his actions and feels extreme remorse as he does. TV Head: In the "DEFEAT TENNA" minigame, his TV head is his weakness into defeating him and winning the battle.

His name is an obvious pun on the word "antenna" and "ant". The name "Ant" could be a reference to his antennas, which slightly resemble an ant's. Toby Fox has stated in a tweet that he originally planned for Tenna to have more insectoid traits, such as having two pairs of arms and a proboscis-like nose, but scrapped them as he didn't like the idea. Thanks to his close relationship with Spamton in the past, Tenna frequently references him in-game: In Tenna's introductory VHS, he's depicted shooting a blue orb he calls an "egg". Not only does this orb resemble a pipis, Spamton claims "egg" is a slur for them, reflecting their mutual disdain. He often references their past together, lamenting that Spamton promised to teach him about the internet before disappearing. His battle themes heavily utilise leitmotifs used by Spamton. More accurately, Spamton heavily utilises Tenna's motifs, seeing as the ads and background tracks in the TV World imply that these motifs were Tenna's before Spamton stole them. His outfit heavily resembles the outfit Spamton wore in the past. During the Susiezilla minigame, a cannon styled after Spamton's old appearance with its eyes blacked out will appear as a boss enemy. Later during his boss fight, one of the minigames based off Susiezilla will feature Ralsei strapped to a statue styled after Spamton. When entering the Bonus Room and going to its rightmost passage, a special cutscene will play if Spamton Neo was spared earlier: the Delta Warriors find a cupboard with a pipis inside, catching Tenna's attention and forcing them to hide. Tenna laments that his "secret" is out and that he'd take anyone to comfort him, even Spamton. Spamton will emerge from Kris's pocket to try and reconcile with Tenna, only for him to freak out and, mistaking him for some creature after the pipis, would spray Spamton with foam before placing the pipis in a safe location. Tenna is the only Darkner to explicitly reference Noelle's missing sister, Dess, by name, seeing as she used to come over to the Dreemurr household very often. At least some of Tenna's animations come from Mixamo, a 3D animation software and library. In said library, his dancing animations are known as "Silly Dancing" (The Cabbage Patch) and "Swing Dancing" (Charleston "Crazy Legs"), while his kicking animation is the Roundhouse Kick variant of "MMA Kick". During the first round, one of Tenna's sentences consists of the word "STOP". This is stylized as a stop-sign, albeit one that's blue, which is a reference to Sans' explanation of how blue attacks work in Undertale. During the cutscene where Tenna's TV screen starts glitching and flickering after his defeat, the Undertale "GAME OVER" can briefly be seen in one of the screens. Despite not being a secret boss, Tenna shares many similarities with the secret bosses of previous chapters: Like Spamton and Jevil, Tenna's Light World form is an object that's considered useless or obsolete: joker cards are often discarded during poker games, spam emails are typically ignored, while cathode ray TVs are considered old-fashioned and out of vogue. This is reflected in Tenna's fear of being ignored. Additionally, he, like the secret bosses, was very successful until his fall from grace, being watched every day until the Dreemurr and Holiday households drifted apart. He has a quirk with his manner of speaking, having coloured special effects for certain words in his text boxes. He has voiced dialogue (mainly his catchphrase), and lacks a text box portrait in his overworld dialogue. However, he does have a portrait of sorts which appears in his text box during certain game show battles (such as the first fight against Lanino and Elnina), as well as his boss fight. He is clearly mentally unstable, snapping violently when Kris refuses to keep playing along and exhibiting rapid mood swings. His boss theme uses leitmotifs from previous secret bosses, mainly Spamton's, with a portion of it at around 25 seconds in possibly being a short section of the "freedom" leitmotif used by most other secret bosses. He appears to be based off a stage of grief, his being bargaining as he tries to ensure his own popularity by kidnapping Toriel and forcing the Lightners to follow his show. He also constantly reassures himself that he's still popular. Similarly to Queen, Tenna appears to be a caricature of one of the parents of the Lightner he's most close to. In this case, he appears to be an exaggerated version of Kris's father, Asgore: The two are both pariahs to their original families, with Asgore getting divorced by Toriel and Tenna being an unused television. They both try their best to appeal to Kris and appear "fun", with Tenna setting up his games and Asgore trying to show as much affection as possible to them. They are both evidently struggling with their abandonments, with Tenna trying to assure himself that he's still relevant while Asgore seemingly wants to show Toriel "what really happened" to make her forgive him. They both seem to be hiding more than they let off: Tenna evidently has his own schemes, which are revealed during Chapter 3's climax, while Asgore seems to not only be planning something, but may have connections to the Dark Worlds thanks to possessing a Black Shard, an item that is a chip of the Knight's blade. They are both obsessed with returning things to how they were before Dess's disappearance; Tenna yearns for the days when the Dreemurrs and Holidays would use him, while Asgore wants nothing more than to be a family with his wife and children again. Tenna's determinant death at the end of Chapter 3 is likely meant to parallel Asgore's own demise at Flowey's hands in Undertale, seeing as both are overjoyed to see their families reunited and offer them to go live their lives happily before getting ambushed. The song that plays after winning against Tenna in the final fight and just before Tenna is nearly killed by the Knight, "Hall of Fame" not only harkens back to Spamton Neo's defeat with its HEY! EVERY leitmotifs, but also seems to have a short leitmotif section from the Tera Raid Battle theme of Pokémon: Scarlet and Violet, another piece of music Toby Fox composed. According to Toby Fox on his Twitter page, he had conceptualized Tenna sometime in 2016. He was initially supposed to be rotoscoped off a Kinect with a styling similar to Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective's 3D models, but was ultimately given his current style after the former looked incredibly bad. Thus, Tenna's current model was rendered by Chelsea Saunders instead. Tenna coincidentally shares a name with an equipment management company. This would result in said company getting review-bombed with positive reviews by fans of Deltarune upon the release of Chapter 3. Toby Fox was uncertain about audiences liking Tenna all that much, being paranoid that they would think he drew in too many similarities from Spamton, who Fox was previously worried about prior to the release of Chapter 2. Coincidentally enough, much like his predecessor, Tenna was able to stand out for all the right reasons and instantly became a fan favorite. Tenna is the only main antagonist in a chapter thus far to have a personal connection to Kris prior to the game's events. While it is mentioned by Ramb that most of the Cyber World and the Card Kingdom interacted with Kris and Noelle during their childhood years, none of the Darkners there seem to remember them. After the release of Chapter 3, many fans have noticed the presence of a discarded CRT television and video game console next to a mailbox in Undertale's Garbage Zone. Given the presence of the Dummy! leitmotif in both Tenna and Spamton's themes, as well as their association with trash and the fact that Deltarune was planned before the release of Undertale, the community theorizes that these are their actual alternate universe counterparts. Tenna's face's design could be based off the word "TV", which when rotated ninety degrees anticlockwise, resembles a pointy nose and a mouth. This is reinforced by the title card in Tenna's intro sequence, which has the word "TV" on a small TV graphic before the letters morph to resemble Tenna's face. During the Bonus Round, Tenna's bizarre usage of pipes may be related to an incident where Kris flushed a bath bomb down the family toilet, something that likely caused an argument as shown by Tenna stating that "The family's fighting again". Some speculate that Kris got the idea from something they saw on the TV, which is why Tenna is apologetic about "the pipes". During said segment, the unidentifiable black things that slither out of the pipes are disembodied ICE-E heads, as seen in the game's files. Tenna seems to be based on TV Dinnah, a major antagonist of the 2009 real-time strategy game Little King's Story. Aside from both of them being humanoid televisions, they both force the protagonists into both quizzes and fake cooking shows, force the player to control an 8-bit version of the protagonist(s), shoots at them as a cowboy, and both of them break their respective games' art styles. The T-Rank room after the first round seems to confirm this, calling Tenna the "'Little King' of his story". Coincidentally, around the time Chapter 3 was released, a song titled "STATIC" would feature a CRT-themed version of Hatsune Miku who not only shared the same themes of separation anxiety and nostalgia as Tenna, but also a catchphrase of "don't touch that dial". As such, many netizens have joked that Tenna is based off this version of Miku and have drawn fanart of them together. Tenna's colour scheme seems to resemble the colours of AV adaptor cords. Tennas original design was supposed to be more ant-like with four arms and being able to suck up nectar with his nose as said by TobyFox on twitter. Thanks to starring in a Fangamer commercial, Tenna has the most voiced dialogue of any Deltarune character. Tenna is currently the one and only Darkner who has more than two Check descriptions. In the Normal Route, it asks "Isn't it about time you got a new TV?" which depicts Tenna's determinant outcome of being thrown away. In the Sword Route (if it's completed), it states that he's very fragile despite his large size, meaning he's very sensitive and insecure. This could also foreshadow how he was killed in one strike by the Knight. With Dealmaker equipped, Spamton foreshadows Tenna's determinant death at the Knight's hands. He is also the first and only character in Deltarune to be in 3D, while the others are in 2D drawn with pixels.