Andi&'s Banamblings

Anyway what r your thoughts on this? Do u think Kris likes, dislikes, or is neutral about tenna?

…. Man, is that a million-dollar-question if I ever heard one.

Kris is already a very emotionally guarded person. Like, we are in a uniquely distant position, generally unable to hear their words or see most of their expressions…

…But even the people who knew them all their life are often unsure of what they’re thinking and if they even like them.

Including Tenna. Like, one of the folks who wonder if Kris dislikes Tenna is Tenna himself.

And this Sword Route dialogue does at least seem to confirm that, like, even with Kris' words and expressions being generally imperceptible to the Players, Kris was legitimately not smiling, laughing or giving Tenna any sort of positive feedback through Chapter 3.

My general read on the situation is that Kris’ emotionally withdrawn behavior is something they developed relatively recently, due to all the Shit going on in their life, while Tenna mostly remembers them as the more emotionally expressive child who used to regularly ‘laugh and cry’ at his programming. So Tenna is very anxious about his inability to get that kind of reaction from Kris anymore, while folks who know Kris as they are now don’t really get it. Kris is just kinda Like That and it doesn’t mean they’re not having fun.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are having fun or like Tenna either… We really don’t have enough data to make definitive statements. Kris doesn’t seem to resist if we tell them to insult Tenna…

But if you tell them to compliment Tenna instead, Susie’s reaction doesn’t indicates that they said it in an overtly insincere manner either.

So maybe it proves Kris is too indifferent to Tenna to really resist insulting or complimenting him?

Kris' damage output during Tenna's Boss Fight is another interesting detail. On a normal Route, Kris is holding back against Tenna, doing half their usual damage output, which might indicates a reluctance to fight him……… But if you do the Sword Route, Kris suddenly does a lot more damage than normal, triple the regular amount against Tenna instead.

So I'd guess this is less about Kris' personal feelings about Tenna and more about the Knight's plan. Kris and the Knight seem to be working together, Tenna's role in the Knight's plan is to stall the heroes while the Knight does their thing…

So holding back in the fight as much as they can is Kris' subtle little way to try and help the Knight. Much like they also hold back in the fight against the Knight themself.

And then in the Sword Route, the thing that changed is…

Now that Tenna had accidently spilled even the vaguest details about their deal in front of the Player, Kris wants to make sure he stays quiet… or maybe they're just really pissed at him. Either way it makes them far more aggressive and dangerous if you let them attack Tenna.

I think maybe this extra damage isn't born of an emotional dislike, just simple pragmatism for what is the best for Team Knight's goals... but that still implies a serious emotional distance from Tenna - compared to Kris' clear moral conflict when the Knight's plans seem to clash with what's best for Susie, a person they actually do unambiguously like.

There's also the two non-Spamton Check results you can get for the Tenna Boss Fight, the standard one which is just kinda… extremely mean to Tenna. This is basically the worst thing he could imagine someone thinking about him and especially if this Check is coming from Kris.

And the Sword Route One is really....interesting.

It's clearly referencing Kris' increased damage against Tenna and I kinda read it as almost goading the Player into letting Kris attack him, but maybe this 'sadly' can be read as sincere. If these Checks are influenced by Kris' own emotions and feelings (which feels likely to me, although it's also important to note that this is still unconfirmed and might change depending on certain Narrator Theories), it might be Kris expressing regret for the fact that they feel like they have to attack Tenna with all their (tripled) might? Although I personally did read this 'sadly' as kinda sarcastic, if I'm honest.

Kris also doesn't flinch when 'killing' Tenna in-game the way they do with Susie and Ralsei.

(And that was before most of their big friendship-building moments with Ralsei in Chapter 4, when they still were, as far as we could tell, at best just kinda okay with that guy…)

And even the fact Kris and the Knight roped Tenna into their plans could potentially be a bad sign, considering, like…

But that really depends on how much the Knight and/or Kris are aware of this part of the Prophecy. A lot of people assume that the Knight, at least, knows the Full Prophecy, but nothing has really been confirmed yet…

Still, none of these little details really bode well for Kris' feelings for Tenna, and that's without getting into the way that, like you mentioned, Tenna puts Kris into games that just remind them of their total lack of control over their life and also keeps bringing up stuff that's clearly uncomfortable to Kris to reminisce about.

(We can't hear (read?) Kris' half of this conversation, but Tenna's reaction seem to suggest they were Very Obviously Not Happy with what he said.)

Maybe they're emotionally mature enough to separate their dislike of the things Tenna say and how uncomfortable he often makes them from a dislike of Tenna as a person and also emotionally mature enough to recognize that they and Tenna share very similar trauma but just cope with it in very different ways. Their readiness to become BFFs with Susie seem to indicate they are capable of it, but...

With relatively little information or character moments that indicate affection towards Tenna, my interpretation is that they're indifferent at best towards him. They probably don't hate him or actively wish he was dead or anything, but he's more of a tool to their and the Knight's plan than anything.

Although… being treated like a tool to the Knight's plan might just be another thing that Kris and Tenna have in common…

Of course, part of the tragedy of Tenna is how, like, even in the best case scenario, even if Kris did find Tenna's personality fun and realized they were both working off the same trauma and honestly did not want him to come to any harm despite the Knight and their plans… Even if Kris likes Tenna, they're never gonna love him back the way Tenna loves Kris.

From Tenna's POV, he is a member of the Dreemurr Household just like Kris is. I make a kinda jokey post before about how he's technically Kris' 'Lesser Dad', but it's probably more accurate to say that Tenna thinks of his role as 'the Household TV' as it's own established familial role on the same level as 'uncle' or 'older brother'. In Tenna's eyes perspective, he and Kris are family, he lived with Kris all their life, watched them grow up, helped raised them by providing them with endless hours of fun and entertainment…

But for Kris, that was literally just the television, an inanimate object. There are a lot of very sweet Tenna fancomics showing him, like, comforting Tiny Kris during difficult times in their childhood, and these comics are wonderful… but it's important to remember they are depicting Tenna's perspective of these events. Or, well, Tenna certainly remembers that at the time he wasn't actually actively comforting and entertaining Kris in his Darkner form - he does know that he was just a Light World Television that was used to watch cartoons or play games, but for Tenna this feels equivalent to actively being a pseudo-parental figure comforting and taking care of Kris.

But from Kris' perspective, they were literally just watching TV. Maybe they have some nostalgic attachment towards the TV itself (AKA Tenna) for being an oasis of escapism during difficult times, or maybe they attach these emotions more to the actual specific shows and games they liked or to the people they shared those moments with… They just didn't experience these moments the way that Tenna experienced them.

So the Shadow Mantle originally belonged to Seam, a Card Kingdom resident, before…. 'someone took it'...?

Only for it to mysteriously pop up TV World, which is the Dreemurr Household.

And notably, John Mantle themself never confirms that they stole the Mantle, only that they’re the one currently holding on to it. And, like, moving from one Dark World to another without being physically carried by a Lightner is, right now, an ability that only Ralsei seems to possess.

But… TV World does actually have a lot of connection to other Dark Worlds, and Card Kingdom in particular… because Kris keeps nicking school property and bringing it back to their house.

So, like, is it possible that Kris is the one who stole the Shadow Mantle from Seam in the first place? And that’s why it was found in their home for John Mantle to take?

Maybe they did it intentionally as part of... whatever long game they’re playing… or, well, I guess that could’ve been an innocuous action depending on whatever the hell the Shadow Mantle is in the Light World and how long ago that was?

Lost where the forest would grow, the children followed the pointed tail.

… You know, I’ve been seeing a lot of people assume that “where the forest would grow” must mean the forest surrounding the Shelter. I mean, it certainly makes sense considering this is a place we know the Dreemurr and Holiday Kids have explored in the past…

And the growing importance of the Shelter itself…

But I do think it’s not the only option right now. I mean, not only is the entirely of Hometown surrounded by a forest (not just the area near the Shelter), but….

The thing I keep coming back to is the words “where the forest would grow”. This is a ‘future in the past’ tense, the grammar here implies that the forest grew after the children got lost in that area. But obviously, the forest around Hometown doesn’t seem like something that could’ve grown after/during Kris’ childhood… those trees are decades old at least, right?

So for me that implies, like, maybe some sort of time-manipulation shenanigans, or something else that allows the forest to grow freakishly fast in just a few years? Or that the ‘poor children’ are not actually any of the kids we know, and this is actually about something that happened to one of the previous generations of Hometown, much farther in the past? Something that inspired the creation of the Shelter in the first place?

Or… maybe we are talking about an entirely different Forest? One that we do know appeared fairly recently in the blink of an eye?

While we’ve had all kinds of fields and castles and basements in the various Dark Worlds, this is the only “Forest” we’ve gotten so far. That would give us an actual place that fits the description of “where the Forest would grow”.

And while it doesn’t really make much sense to imagine kids getting lost inside a single classroom…. Well, what about an earlier Dark World opened in that same location? Since every Dark Fountain makes a different Dark World, even in the same place… and this is often perceived by the Darkners of those Dark Worlds as the passing of eons.

So an earlier version of the Card Kingdom (opened up by Baby Kris and/or Tiny Dess, for example) could’ve lacked the Forest location of the Card Kingdom we know and thus be the place “where the Forest would grow”….

And, like, while I understand the logic behind people associating that line with FRIEND… it is important to remember that the one explicit connection the game has made so far for this Phrase is with the Forgotten Man.

Who has been consistently depicted standing behind a Card Castle Forest Tree, long after that Dark World has passed.

And of course, not only does the fact that Darcy, who owes their family nothing, has kept and continues to keep this secret for them even after Elizabeth’s refusal deepen the gratitude she begins to feel for him after the letter of explanation, but it also liberates Elizabeth to fall in love with him. Because Elizabeth-who-wants-to-marry-for-love would never be happy marrying someone who didn’t know the family secret in advance. She had resigned herself to spinsterhood because she couldn’t be satisfied with having to hoodwink someone to have their hand, but also couldn’t put her family at risk by trusting someone who wasn’t bound to them by more than an engagement. (Maybe she was even tempted to confide in Wickham at one point, and hasn’t Darcy’s letter proven she was absolutely right not to yield to that passing thought.) But Darcy figured it out himself, and he’s kept her trust, and she could fall in love with him without guilt—if she hadn’t already turned him down.

So, there’s been a couple people who have tried to figure out what happened to Luigi’s electricity powers after Superstar Saga since Mario still has access to fire powers. Sure, there are more thoughtful and reasonable analyses out there especially around Luigi’s abilities related to machines, but I’m here to offer a silly one.

1. Most touch screens actually work by detecting the electrical current between your fingers and the screen, hence why typical insulating gloves make them unusable, even if it’s a thin layer. (It’s also why getting water droplets on touchscreens makes them harder to use.)

2. Luigi is seen using objects with touch screens (most often whatever modified gaming console E. Gadd has provided him that basically acts like a cell phone) without taking his gloves off. Just ignore the obvious animation reasons for this; Watsonian analysis is more fun than Doyalist for stuff like this.

3. It’s unlikely that he’s got work gloves modified to conduct electricity. (Though if that was the case, that would be an interesting choice for other reasons.)

Because they gave this game a voiced protagonist, Bethesda has invited me to analyze the sole survivor NateNora as a person and my analysis says that because it doesn’t really matter much which spouse you choose to literally fridge that they’re one of those couples who have been together since high school and as a result are basically two halves of the same braincell.

Tempted to actually put this on spotify so I can secretly stream it at work...

A wizard who casts spells through guns

A wizard who casts spells on guns

A wizard who turns things into guns

A wizard who has a gun

a gun that shoots wizards (as bullets)

a gun that shoots wizards (with bullets)

another object that has been transformed into a gun by a wizard

a gun owned by a wizard