okay coming back to it now. very large parts of terezi's entire way of reacting to things center around vriska, no matter what terezi era we're talking about. when they were kids and friends, when they had their falling out and hated each other, when she had to live with the guilt of killing vriska, and when she had to live with the knowledge that she needed vriska alive to be happy and to fix the alpha timeline; it all comes back to vriska serket.
vriska's not an easy person to be friends with, largely due to her own unique issues. she was in a position where she had to grow up and conform to alternian societal standards much faster than any of the other trolls to survive, given the nature of her lusus. she had the strength of personality to pull it off, for better or for worse, so vriska spent her childhood pushing herself into being as adult and dominant as she could possibly be, following in the footsteps of mindfang and cutting out or belittling anyone who couldnt keep up with her. and she liked terezi! she knew about redglare and was a little bit obsessed with terezi, especially the parts of terezi that imitated redglare, and terezi probably really liked that attention and played into it quite a bit. she modeled a decent chunk of her personality after redglare's story, with the legislacerator ambitions and the dragons and the connection to vriska/mindfang, and ended up closer to vriska than anyone else. they were a team, and they had fun together, and vriska's entire attention was on her, at least the positive parts of it.
vriska's interactions with tavros (and probably also several others, including eridan, karkat, kanaya, and whoever else failed to meet her standards) were a very immediate, real example of what could happen if terezi lost vriska's attention and became 'l8me,' in vriskas eyes. not only would it be personally devastating to lose focus from her best friend, but it would also be potentially very, very dangerous to terezi, and I think terezi definitely knew that. when the scourge vs charge drama played out, we see terezi hesitant to act against vriska in her conversation with aradia; she warns aradia to let her handle it, but doesnt take action quickly enough. she's definitely trying to stall and let people cool down some, but aradia wont let it slide and retaliates against vriska herself, leading to vriska's retaliation back against aradia, of course. the stakes are higher, vriska has proven again that she wants to always have the last say, and terezi has to either let it slide, kill her altogether, or retaliate too weakly and open herself up to direct danger from vriska. she chooses to try and kill her (saying as much in her conversation with vriska right before the cue ball explosion, btw), but ultimately vriska survives and blinds her back.
at this point, terezi chooses not to continue to escalate. she says its because vriska blinding her is the best thing to ever happen to her; while I believe that's probably true to an extent, given that it put her in contact with her lusus, there's more to it than that. it completely stops the conflict between the trolls--she was the last harmed, and she doesnt want any payback; vriska is satisfied having the last say and shouldnt have an excuse to hurt anyone else. which is all well and good! but this action, choosing to set her own grievances aside for the sake of keeping the peace, is like..... classic self worth issues. couple that with terezi's favorite part of herself--her blindness--being inextricably tied to vriska, as something vriska did for her; terezi's self worth is now also inextricably tied to vriska. but terezi doesnt want anyone to see that, so she jokes and laughs and acts strangely to throw people off. if people think shes a weirdo because she WANTS them to, shes winning, right?
karkat I think is the only one who gets close to seeing behind all of this. vriska doesnt come CLOSE (which btw is why I dont really like endgame scourge sisters as moirails!! I think terezi is great for vriska but vriska is still terrible for her!!! preretcon terezi and (vriska) as matesprits makes much more sense to me but whatever). karkat has a real talent for seeing through people's bullshit to what theyre really thinking, and he's probably second in the 'forced to grow up early' race between the trolls (except its a little different for him because its more beneficial for him if he hides himself, rather than making a dominant stand like vriska), and he really, really likes terezi. I think they gravitate towards one another post scourge vs charge bc karkat just has this unconditional love in his heart for..... everyone, really, but especially terezi, and thats something terezi with her low self worth really relies on to recover from vriska not being her friend anymore. but karkat is his own bag of worms; he has so much going on and he gives conflicting signals and hes scared to commit to her (mostly because he has a hard time fitting in with troll romantic patterns tbh) and that drives terezi away because she thinks he doesnt like her as much as she likes him. also, I think at this point shes probably starting to consider him a better person than her, possibly due to his refusal to associate with vriska from the start, which comes to a head later pre retcon (that one DEVASTATING convo betwen them in the meenah flashes). so she runs away.
dave is really easy to talk to when all terezi wants is to hide from her feelings and her friends, because that is absolutely what dave wants too. they fall really quickly into a surface level only rapport and become really quick close friends by just.... being the person the other can talk to without it being a federal fucking issue. its something terezi really needed in that moment, and something that worked for dave at the time too. but still, even that relationship was all about vriska, because by this point terezi knew vriska was spending all her time talking to john. and terezi might 'know' that there is no john versus dave thing, but vriska thinks there is, and is certainly acting like the dave vs john thing is actually a terezi vs vriska thing, and its hard for terezi to stay out of that completely; shes the one who brings it up to dave, after all, and they talk about it more than john and vriska do iirc. and isnt it funny how, despite knowing that dave would never reach god tier or surpass johns ability, terezi picked him anyway and sided with the underdog without a fight? how she rolled over and let vriska win again?
(also, retcon timeline side note!!! I bet it really fucked with terezi when john told her not to date dave either because it didnt work out and wasnt good for either of them, but especially not for dave!!! she was just trying to have some easy fun without any sweeps old drama like with vriska or karkat and heres john from another timeline telling her going down that path would be bad for dave!!! alt terezi didnt tell him to do that!!! aishdjchjswbgdjchsjsj)
anyway. when terezi finally gears up to have her showdown with vriska, its not for her own sake. its because vriska killed tavros, and because terezi was pretty sure she had killed a few others as well (incorrect, but like.... of course terezi was gonna think that she was obsessed with vriska from the start), and because she felt as though there was only one way to save karkats life (and her own, and some of the other trolls, but please. we all know karkat was the one she wanted to save). and whether in the retcon timeline or not, terezi has to live with the knowledge that she can't escape vriska's hold on her, and she doesn't even want to. she's damaged goods, because she should HATE vriska; everyone else does, and shes done so many awful things, but terezi apparently cant live without her. and that breaks her in both timelines; more dramatically without the retcon, but still in the retcon timeline as well; she just is able to hide behind vriska's force of personality more in that timeline, just go along with the person she's stuck with by her own volition. so no, her self worth issues didnt come out of nowhere.
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