character analysis: Tenna & Toriel parallels
One thing about Tenna that I find really interesting is how he reflects Toriel (I'm thinking especially of Undertale!Toriel). It's a little more clear how he obviously reflects Asgore (his nostalgia, ignorance, and neediness), but he's also so Toriel too as a consequence of Kris making the fountain. I want to discuss their connection and how Tenna highlights Toriel's struggles and flaws.
At least in the case of Tenna and UT!Tori, both characters are terrified of being left behind, stemming from something in their past. there's not too many differences between Tenna & Toriel in moments such as this:
Toriel's determination to destroy the exit because she believed she could protect the human child from getting killed is far more altruistic than Tenna's motives (mostly about his happiness, but also theirs - he wants Kris to smile and laugh) - but Toriel is also incredibly lonely in Undertale, just like Tenna. her loneliness is part of what motivates her to act. she can't bear the thought of being alone again here.
Preceding your attempts to leave the RUINs, your time with Toriel is especially "safe": zero harm can come your way. everything is laughably anticlimactic. you're asked to walk down a hallway where nothing happens. Toriel literally holds your hand through every puzzle. This level of railroading and the lack of any genuine threat is supposed to feel like it could overstay its welcome: you have to be willing to leave the ruins and experience real danger.
Similarly, Tenna's game boards are meticulously nonviolent and he has gone out of his way to modify the "original game" to be, according to Ramb, "some big ol' blasted line from A to B. Primo. Boring. Stuff." There's no way to actually get hurt in his game boards: should you somehow take significant damage, he will revive you with TV Dinners. He constructs perils for you to face: quizzes, mini-bosses, he will skip the block puzzle if you don't push ralsei, he hyper-railroads you and refuses to let you explore if you, for example, venture into "unfinished areas".
Her overzealous helicopter-parenting is clear in both games. Even in Deltarune, without the grief of losing two children and watching six other children pass through before dying to Asgore, Toriel struggles with giving her children much freedom. She puts parental locks on her TV to prevent the viewing of music videos. She freaked out when Asriel and Bratty kissed during truth-or-dare to such a degree that even Tenna references it. The consequence of this appears to come across in things like Asriel trying to confess his sins to Father Alvin despite no such standard related to sinning in their religion.
Toriel's cautious parenting and overall reputation is at odds with the part of her that Rudy describes as "Fuzzy n' sweet on the outside, a total NUT on the inside!": a party animal, a force of chaos, can't hold her liquor without getting wild ā she seems to downplay and suppress this part of herself to those around her, such as when she tries to dissuade Rudy from talking about their past.
In a way, this is similar to the parental locks on Tenna that restrict certain parts of him. When those locks are off, the Tenna we get comments immediately on someone's ass and airs a salacious music video. So there's a kid-friendly, all ages appropriate Tenna being presented on the surface, but another layer of Tenna that goes against the grain of that image.
When Toriel's not being puritanical about PDA, she's nonetheless a deeply loving and sweet woman. While she's not necessarily doing wrong by Kris by holding their hand and walking them into school everyday, and it's hard to know how Kris feels about that kind of affection, i can imagine it might be a bit stifling. Having a parent who is very rigid on the practice of their morals, and is very overprotective... for Kris, who struggles with intrusive thoughts best summed up by ERAM, that can just so happen to be a crazy combination.
Like Tenna, Toriel also struggles with understanding why Kris is the way that they are. She's poured plenty of time and effort into raising them as a mother should (repeatedly taking the How to Care For Humans book out of the library). She also accepts that Kris has "quirks" like carrying a knife around (she seems weirdly permissive sometimes). But she still also worries about how Kris is doing these days and identifies that something is wrong with how they've been acting.
Toriel's concern for Kris' behaviour isn't too far from Tenna's concern: wanting Kris to smile and laugh, wanting to know that he's doing something right. Already that's a very parental feeling, and it's probably how Toriel feels right now too.
In both cases, I think it's fair to say that both toriel and tenna feel that they need to have complete control over a given situation, especially if they feel some sense of protectiveness or authority over someone, and get upset when they feel they can't keep them around.
While UT!Toriel is more lonely and more desperate, bear in mind that DR!Toriel is also grappling with loneliness, and in fact she does so while sitting right next to Tenna. She can't help but reminisce on Kris' childhood. Just because she's not as bad as Asgore in terms of wanting the past back doesn't mean that she's not deeply nostalgic for it.
TL;DR Tenna functions as a proxy for BOTH of Kris' parents, the Secret Third Thing of the family. It's easy to identify the traits he has in common with Asgore, but he's also so similar to Toriel and it's so sad. Both of them are propelled by loneliness and a parental instinct that is well-intentioned but sometimes misguided. My Dreemurrs <3











