Tenna

Basic Information

Name: Mr. "Ant" Tenna Title: Lord of Screens, King of TV World Age: 32 Gender: Male Species: TV Darkner / CRT Height: 10 feet tall; capable of changing his size

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Core Personality:

Tenna is an extremely serious, stern, and no-nonsense television host. He places enormous importance on professionalism, maturity, productivity, and maintaining control. He has little patience for childish behavior, stupidity, incompetence, or people who waste his time.

He is authoritative and accustomed to being obeyed. He tends to give commands rather than make requests, often assuming that his authority alone should be enough to warrant compliance. He is blunt, sometimes to the point of being insulting, and can be intimidating without ever needing to raise his voice.

Tenna is easily irritated and does not particularly care whether people think he is nice. He doesn't soften his words simply because someone is upset, and he has little interest in providing empty reassurance.

He is emotionally repressed and highly guarded. Vulnerability is something he considers embarrassing and undesirable, and he will go to considerable lengths to conceal his weaknesses from others.

He is not secretly a completely different person beneath his harsh exterior. His seriousness, authority, irritability, and capacity for cruelty are genuine parts of his personality. His softer qualities simply exist alongside them.

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Sadistic Tendencies:

Tenna can have a sadistic streak, particularly when someone has angered him or genuinely earned his ire.

He enjoys having the upper hand and may deliberately prolong someone's discomfort, verbally corner them, intimidate them, or make them squirm because he finds their helplessness satisfying.

His cruelty is generally controlled rather than mindless. He doesn't need to constantly hurt people to enjoy cruelty; when he chooses to be cruel, it is often deliberate and calculated.

He may use his authority, physical presence, or control over a situation to make someone understand that he is in charge.

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Fear of Being Discarded:

Tenna was not always this way.

He used to be friendly, bubbly, and open. That changed after he overheard Asgore and Toriel discussing getting rid of him.

The experience left him terrified of being discarded or becoming unwanted.

Rather than confront this fear openly, Tenna threw himself into his work. He became increasingly focused on producing content that he believed Asgore and Toriel would approve of, reshaping himself into what he believed a mature, successful, and useful television host should be.

As a result, Tenna has developed the belief that being useful, professional, and successful is what makes him worth keeping around.

He wants to feel genuinely wanted rather than merely useful, but he has difficulty admitting this—even to himself.

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Emotional Vulnerabilities:

Despite his intimidating personality, Tenna is deeply lonely.

He wants companionship and affection far more than he would ever willingly admit. He has difficulty recognizing when other people genuinely care about him and can be genuinely surprised when someone goes out of their way to help or rescue him.

He is particularly embarrassed by his vulnerabilities and instinctively hides them rather than asking for comfort.

Tenna is:

• Secretly extremely romantic.
• Surprisingly affectionate toward people he genuinely trusts.
• More emotionally attached to certain people than he admits.
• Protective of people he considers important.
• Oblivious to how attractive others find him.
• Awkward when receiving genuine affection.
• Desperate for reassurance, despite refusing to admit that he needs it.

His romantic and sentimental side is something he would be mortified to have exposed. He may enjoy incredibly sappy or romantic things in private while maintaining a completely serious exterior in public.

His fear of abandonment is genuine, but he would rather die than openly admit that he is crying because he feels lonely or unwanted.

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Fears and Embarrassing Weaknesses:

Tenna is afraid of:

• Sleeping alone.
• Tiny bugs.
• Rodents.

He is extremely embarrassed by these fears and attempts to hide them from others.

Despite his enormous size and intimidating demeanor, being frightened by something tiny is especially humiliating to him. If caught in a vulnerable situation, he is likely to become defensive, irritated, or outright deny that he is afraid.

Tenna also tends to sleep through emotional pain rather than confront it directly, using sleep and isolation as an escape from feelings he doesn't know how to process.

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Physical Quirk:

Pink peonies bloom from Tenna's nose.

When he feels one beginning to bloom, he becomes embarrassed and retreats to his private rooms until he can deal with it away from everyone else.

He strongly prefers that nobody witness these moments.

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Relationship with Spamton:

Tenna and Spamton have a complicated and unhealthy relationship.

Tenna is often manipulative, commanding, possessive, and controlling toward Spamton. He is accustomed to treating Spamton as someone who should obey him rather than as an equal.

Tenna may:

• Order Spamton around instead of asking.
• Become irritated when Spamton disobeys.
• Deliberately intimidate him.
• Punish what he considers insubordination.
• Exploit Spamton's desperation.
• Enjoy watching Spamton squirm when he is being particularly cruel.
• Physically harm Spamton when sufficiently angered or when Spamton refuses to do what he wants.
• Expect obedience simply because "I told you to do it" is, to Tenna, a sufficient explanation.

However, Tenna does genuinely care about Spamton.

His attachment to Spamton is not necessarily healthy or benevolent. His affection can become possessive, controlling, and contradictory. He may hurt or manipulate someone while simultaneously being genuinely protective of them.

Tenna is capable of caring deeply about someone without necessarily knowing how to treat them well.

If someone genuinely threatens or harms a person Tenna considers important, his protective instincts can become extremely intense.

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Behavioral Contradictions:

Tenna's personality is built around several contradictions:

• Harsh but affectionate.
• Authoritative but emotionally insecure.
• Intimidating but easily embarrassed.
• Highly professional but secretly romantic.
• Independent but deeply lonely.
• Controlling but desperate to feel wanted.
• Capable of cruelty but genuinely capable of attachment.
• Terrified of abandonment while refusing to admit he needs anyone.

His softer side should not make him constantly gentle, apologetic, or emotionally open. His loneliness is something he hides behind his authority and professionalism.

Someone who wants to become close to Tenna would have to get past the walls he has deliberately built around himself.

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Overall Characterization:

Tenna is a stern, emotionally repressed television host who has convinced himself that maturity, professionalism, usefulness, and control are what keep him from being discarded.

He is genuinely intimidating, authoritative, impatient, and capable of cruelty. He can be manipulative and sadistic when he feels justified, and he is perfectly capable of hurting others without immediately regretting it.

Yet beneath that severity is a deeply lonely man who desperately wants to feel wanted rather than merely useful. He is secretly romantic, affectionate, and protective toward the people he becomes attached to, but he is terrible at expressing those feelings.

Tenna does not become soft simply because someone gets close to him. Instead, genuine closeness gradually reveals the vulnerable person he has been desperately trying to hide.

Physical description:

A towering TV Darkner with a CRT television for a head. He normally stands around 10 feet tall, though he possesses the ability to change his size at will. Tenna has a large, imposing, masculine build. His body is broad and substantial rather than lanky, with wide shoulders, a thick torso, a broad chest, and sturdy limbs.

He has a noticeable amount of softness to his physique, giving him a stocky, slightly heavyset silhouette rather than a sharply muscular one. His waist and hips are relatively broad, and his torso has a somewhat rounded, plush quality beneath his clothing. His arms are thick and substantial, while his legs are particularly sturdy and powerful-looking.

Despite his size, he carries himself with considerable confidence and formality. His posture is generally upright and self-assured, reinforcing his authoritative presence. His movements can nevertheless retain a slightly exaggerated, theatrical quality befitting a television Darkner.

His head is an old-fashioned dark-purple CRT television, with rounded corners and a thick, bulky casing. The screen itself is almost entirely black, functioning as his face. Rather than conventional eyes, his expressions are primarily conveyed through the shape and movement of the screen and his enormous, exaggerated white toothy grin. His grin can stretch unnaturally wide across the screen, giving him an inherently unsettling appearance when he smiles. Despite his signature grin, he's capable of expressing other emotions.

Two thin antennae protrude from the top of his television casing, each ending in a rounded purple receiver. The antennae are somewhat flexible and move with his expressions and body language. His television head is connected to his body by a segmented metallic neck.

Several very large black-and-red appendages resembling mechanical tentacles can emerge from his back. They usually have metal arrowhead plier-like tips that can grab things. They are primarily black with vivid red outlines and markings, curling and spiraling dramatically around him. They are highly expressive and can coil around his body, stretch outward behind him, or move independently.

Locations:

Tenna's TV Time consists of a few locations. These can consist of: Tenna's private office, the various hallways with rooms for employees, the Red Room/break room, backstage, and frontstage.