ah thank you so much! getting compliments about tenna even this close to release warms my heart a whole lot. (it's so strange to think that soon i won't immediately associate the name tenna with just her!) i'm glad those parts of her character resonated with you because they were important for me too! one thing i set out to do with tenna was to make a character that, while not being an exact prediction of what the character might be like in the game, sticks true to the core philosophy of "empathetic subversion" in undertale and deltarune. and the cliches i wanted to empathetically subvert were ones a lot of people might have grown up with — the older, oft-criminal, grizzled man who grows to be like family to an innocent young child (annie does it, all dogs go to heaven does it, plenty of batman adaptations do it,); the comical cartoon bossman who usually ends up posing the not-so-threatening threat of the week to the heroes; the old-time mobster. what would it be like to examine where those traits might come from? how would i make a character that felt like a real person with real emotions out of these old cliches? and so often we see men in those roles — what if this archetype was a woman instead?
as well, deltarune is a game that already has a ton of heart and earnestness in its approach to gender-nonconformity, and that means a lot to me as a gender-noncomforming person. it also "empathetically subverts" the way gender-nonconformity is often treated in media — rather than being treated as an abnormality, it's a natural part of who characters like susie and ralsei are. i wanted tenna's portrayal to come from that same place of heart and earnestness too — so i'm always happy to hear someone was touched by her in that regard! she is very cool, i think!
