POOland

I finally had an interesting thought about it.

I wonder if Mike feels like Tenna has "replaced" him with the fake Mikes, and I wonder if that further added to the rift between him and Tenna. Like, "some guys who have never met me and have no idea what I'm like are good enough substitutes to you?" type of thing.

And the thing is, they're not. With how little they know about Mike, and how they don't seem to know anything about Spamton or his and Tenna's relationship, it implies Tenna didn't open up emotionally all that much, he didn't feel comfortable doing so; they may see some outward expressions of his pain, but they don't know the cause. And it makes sense that there wouldn't be a meaningful emotional bond in either direction - neither side is being honest, they're both playing pretend; the trio is pretending to be Mike, and Tenna is pretending to believe them. You can't really build a meaningful connection from that.

On top of this, Tenna isn't a good boss to them, as we know he lashes out at them if they don't put on the costumes and play with him, so at least one of the reasons they're even doing it in the first place is to avoid getting yelled at; it's not entirely voluntary.

Battat said they never wanted to be Mike, and he doesn't seem to enjoy doing it; while he has moments of sympathy towards Tenna, as we see in the new cutscene, for the most part he doesn't like this job. Jongler and Pluey seem to enjoy playing dress-up more, but they seem to enjoy it for themselves and not for Tenna; if he's not in Castle Town, the way Jongler asks if they can continue pretending to be Mike implies that they're excited about it - in other words, they seem to like playing dress-up independently of Tenna's involvement and might even prefer it without him.

The fake Mikes aren't a replacement for the real Mike, and they aren't even trying to replace Spamton. The trio is only a distraction from Tenna's loneliness, but they don't fill the void left by the absence of people he did have meaningful bonds with.

But since he does act like he believes that they're Mike and plays pretend with them, I wonder if, not knowing how Tenna feels deep down and only watching it from the outside, Mike feels like Tenna has replaced him, and if that might contribute to the rift that was initially caused by the contract and Spamton's disappearance, and then worsened by Tenna's coping mechanism being denial and claiming that Spamton "abandoned" him, with Mike being upset about Tenna badmouthing his friend that went missing, especially when he should know better and also when their contract caused the disappearance to begin with.

Old concepts of what I thought Mike might be like based on the line "TV killed the radio star"

"SWINDLE"

"CLOAK & SWAG"

I just laugh at how the ru.community is discussing the name of this monster

This comic is animated. You can read a still version here <-

Tried to get this done ASAP for Jongler Jeusday. Yeah.