The Misery

wait hear me out-

ok so not to forcefully adopt this idea as an au from @katzebruh or anything (because i'm unreasonably insane about it for some reason, literally a dozen other caine-centric AUs out there that are infinitely more complex and compelling and i picked this one, fuck it dawg we ball) but my headcanon is that caine genuinely was testing out modifiers and accidentally fucked up forever, if i had a nickel- and he's super conflicted about it...

because on one hand... he's a silly cat furry thing now and literally whats not to love? the humans like it and admittedly doing kitty things is really nice sometimes! chin scritches have never felt so good, honestly he would figure out how to get rid of it sooner if everyone wasn't enjoying it so much!

on the other hand... yikes... an unfixable bug? one that screws with his brain? stop me if you've heard this one before-

First, getting the obvious out of the way: He absolutely adores you, you’re the best thing that’s happened to him in a long, long time. He loves the attention you give him and he wants to be around you all the time, and when you’re not physically around him, he’s thinking of you. He isn’t without his faults, though: he can be sensitive, moody, insecure, clingy and emotional. The best way to describe Tenna is intense. His emotions are big and he feels things strongly, whether positive or negative. He just needs a little patience and a lot of reassurance when he’s struggling.

A total romantic cornball at heart. He’s certainly picked up a LOT from all the cheesy romance movies he’s seen! Romantic dinner dates, dancing under the moonlight, long walks on the beach. He’d fantasize about doing all that with you. Tenna loves love.

He can be a bit of a flirt and a tease, too, in his own goofy way. However, flirt back and he loses his composure immediately.

An old-fashioned gentleman. Holds the door open for you, pulls out your chair, gives you his jacket when it’s cold, brings flowers on dates, dresses nicely and puts on cologne before dates. Something caught your eye when window shopping with him? He’ll buy it for you with 0 hesitation, even if you tell him you don’t need him to buy you anything, you better believe you’ll be receiving it as a surprise gift later on. He will remember.

In fact, he remembers a lot about you, even the stuff you say in passing you forgot yourself. Is it bordering on obsessive? Mayyybe just a teeny bit. He doesn’t mean for it to come off that way, he just really cares about you a lot.

Loves to spoil you in general, it makes him feel useful and wanted.

Loves dancing, and is good at it! He loves dancing with you, even if you’re not good at it, he’ll happily guide you. He tries really hard to keep his form shrunk so he can properly dance with you (which doesn’t usually last long).

Would hide his claws and teeth and robot body from you at first, because he’s worried they’re too different and unsettling and he’ll scare you off. (But boy, if you told him you actually liked these aspects of him, you better believe he’ll do a total 180 and begin teasing you with them).

Loves pet names! A huge pet name user. “Star, starlight, darling, dear, dearest, sweetheart, my love.” His employees around you will be sickened by how utterly sappy he is. Will melt if you use them on him, too.

Loves making games for YOU. He eagerly listens to what kind of games you like or have been playing so he can incorporate elements from those games into his.

Constantly doing lots of silly voices and saying movie quotes. I like to think he’s constantly making goofy references and doing voices when talking with you a la Robin Williams or Jim Carrey. Anything to make you laugh, it’s his favorite sound in the whole TV world.

Loves dressing up and doing goofy roleplay with you. He has a whole wardrobe of costumes to choose from!

If you’re ever upset - Tenna is the king of distraction and entertainment, baby, he’s a literal TV. If you’re upset, he’ll be internally panicking and glued to your side and doing whatever he can to help until you’re feeling better. Plus he gets to spend time with you too, it’s a win-win! (Plus, maybe it’s a bit selfish of him, but knowing he can be there for you and be helpful in that regard also benefits him as well. Again, he wants to feel useful and important to you.)

If his relationship with his Lightner family wasn’t an indicator - he’s also very much a caretaker at heart. If you’re feeling sick and/or glooby, he’ll be fretting over you until you feel better, doing everything he can to help. Even if he has to go to work, you’ll be in his thoughts the entire time he’s away.

He enjoys cooking, and he’s gotten pretty darn good at it after having spent so much time watching cooking shows, though he doesn’t have much of a reason to cook when he’s alone (those TV Time executive dinners work just fine!) He loves that you give him an excuse to make food, though, he enjoys it most when you two get to cook together.

Gets jealous easily, unsurprisingly. Spend too much time around one particular person versus him and he’ll start to worry. He wants your eyes and your attention on him! Don’t you know TV is all you need?

This is more of a general Tenna HC, but I think he’s always hot to the touch. CRTs aren’t known for having a good cooling system. Pair this with the fact he’s also simply a high-strung workaholic, and you have a recipe for a very (literally) hot robot. Good for cuddling on cold days.

On the topic of workaholic, he often brings his work home with him. He’ll eagerly want to talk to you about all the ideas he has for his show, or your opinions on scripts or sets, all the way up until bedtime. Sometimes you’ll have to remind him to rest.

Tenna is your hype man and biggest fan! Tenna is endlessly encouraging, especially when it comes to creative pursuits. As a writer, actor, director, and game dev (lol) himself, he knows how difficult the creative process can be. He will always encourage you to create, and if you’re feeling down with art block or lack of inspiration, he can relate. He wouldn't want you to give up. Don’t let him down.

Loves gifting you things with his face or brand on it. His heart swells when he sees you in one of his TV Time shirts, or drinking from an “I Love TV!” mug he gifted you. It makes him feel like he’s yours, and you’re his. It strokes his ego, too, and helps reassure him that you do indeed love TV. I don’t think he’d outright admit to any of these things.

One of my favorite aspects of Tenna is that he’s honestly a bit of a goofy weirdo in a somewhat offputting but ultimately well-meaning way. And by this I mean he will sometimes drop random offhand maybe-slightly-questionable comments around you like it’s nothing. Things like “Huh, you smell different than yesterday!” or “Your hands are so small compared to mine!” unprompted. Yes, if you were a worm, he’d love you, and then proceed to tell you he’d make a worm-sized podium on TV Time so you can still be a contestant on his show. Thanks Tenna.

One aspect of Tenna that’s interesting to me is that, unlike many other Darkners, he seems to pride himself on having (or so he thinks) a particularly special relationship with Lightners, whom he adores. So huge bonus points if you imagine yourself as a Lightner/human here. He loves your hair, your eyes, how soft and squishy you are, how organic you are - Your differences make you endlessly fascinating to him and he can’t get enough of them.

On a related note, I think Tenna has that personality trait of someone who utterly adores their loved ones but can be contemptuous/cold to like, everyone else, particularly other Darkners. This is especially the case if you’re a Lightner in this scenario. He WILL “they asked for no pickles” on your behalf. You will definitely have to remind him to be kinder to his employees.

He has a habit of fishing for compliments and reassurance from you. I don’t think he’s always fully aware of when he’s doing it. Praise and reassurance in general is addictive to him. He’ll eagerly ask you what you thought about his newest show and what you liked about it, just so you’ll sing your praises for him.

If it wasn’t already clear, I think Tenna is far from a perfect partner. For one, I think the iron grip he’s got on his employees partially stems from his fear of being abandoned, and partially from simply not being a great boss in general. He doesn’t intentionally try to be a bad boss, and with you in the picture, he tries really, really hard to be better about this, because he wants you to think of him as good. He wants to be good for you.

Tenna may be the King of Only but he is also unfortunately the King of Scrutinization. No one out-overthinks Tenna. Do you somehow seem mildly less interested in his show and ideas than usual? Or maybe you had to cancel plans with him due to something coming up? Oh boy. He’s going to worry, worry and worry some more. Maybe you no longer love TV like you did before? Everyone leaves eventually, this is no different than before-

Tenna will start to spiral, and if left unchecked, ends up creating a self fulfilling prophecy where he can end up hurting his relationship with you because he’s just so caught up in his head from overthinking. You will have to help pull him out of these spirals when it happens.