Terezi Pyrope ♎ gallowsCalibrator (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seerofnothing) wrote2012-12-03 11:26 pm
seerofnothing) wrote2012-12-03 11:26 pm
personality
Alternia's people, trolls, bleed different colors.
From ancient times to present, there has been a caste system based on the color of one's blood. There are thirteen known blood colors, one of which is mutated and one of which is extinct. Mutants who fall off of the caste charts completely would be at the bottom rung of it. Next comes red, then brown; yellow, lime (extinct), olive, jade, teal, blue, navy, indigo, purple, and red-violet. There are certain abilities afforded to certain castes naturally, such as psychic powers, and slight physical characteristics as trolls age. Such as eye color! There is also longevity: red-violet or tyrian trolls live much longer than the lowbloods. Besides these things, there is no difference between a rustblood and a blueblood.
This caste is enforced violently. It was perpetuated by class warfare over the course of hundreds of years, and despite there being no real differences between the people, it is vehemently believed in. The highbloods will grasp at anything they can to continue to rule, and it's been that way for as long as anyone can remember! The caste enforces a very strict no-weakness policy; lowbloods are looked down upon as not being as strong or as good as the highbloods.
In theme with "being good enough"... children are taught the meaning of survival of the fittest in a very literal way. Slow or disabled children are often killed outright, and as babies they are made to survive without any sort of help. They are adopted by monsters once they reach a certain age, and it's again implied that these monster parents sometimes kill the children for being weak. This is a "lusus", and despite not being able to communicate with their lusus, trolls form very strong bonds with them. As trolls age, they take on a mutually beneficial relationship: the troll feeds and takes care of the lusus while the lusus acts as a protector, which is nothing to scoff at. Generally.
Now, with all of those things in mind... Take a look at Terezi.
She has literally raised herself. She was chosen to raise an egg for a dragon lusus that does not hatch her entire life. When her lusus does hatch, she dies immediately. She doesn't live around other trolls, instead living in a tree to better care for her lusus-- and it's easy to guess why! The egg is fragile and other trolls do not hesitate to kill. An egg that size is good eats. But because of her isolation, she grows up daring and bold to those above her in the caste.
In spite of her isolation, she grows up to be socially fluent.
Terezi is an incredibly social person. Her personality is not at all reliant on others-- she is extremely independent-- but she finds a lot of enjoyment in other people's company. A large chunk of this is because she just likes to have fun, and people are very fun. She has her own sense of humor and doesn't deviate for other people's comfort. She likes to do silly things and pretend she is dead serious, sometimes to the point where she buys her own bullshit. She isn't humble but often pretends to be a lot more confident than she actually is!
But the other significant factor into her wanting the company of others is because of how lonely she is. Having grown up without anyone to care for her, she seeks out comfort in others. Being liked is very important to her, despite her attempts to convince herself otherwise. This can take the form of romantic interest or platonic interest; she does not shy away from flirting or letting her intentions be known. She can be shy with direct, bold declarations... but she will ultimately take that step if she really likes someone.
That said, she won't wait around forever for someone else to make their move. If she tosses the ball into their court-- which she will, thank you-- then it's their move and that is that. If she really, really likes someone, she's willing to wait a long time. But as new opportunities and feelings emerge, she will abandon people. Her love of people is intense and short-lived.
She is easily bored. She takes a sort of comfort in people and things that are predictable, but also tends towards people and things that are more wild. She tires of people who are easier to deal with and craves excitement. It is why she and Vriska Serket are such a good team for the while they are friends. Vriska is violent, a little unhinged, very boisterous and extremely imaginative. All of that can be said of Terezi as well! And that is exactly why they can keep up with each other.
Before the incident that leads to her being blinded, Terezi plays a sort of live-action roleplay game with her friends. It is called FLARP, and it is extremely dangerous! She is a little bit of a daredevil then, and a lot of the time their campaigns are against other children. They kill countless people together, Vriska and Terezi, and they do it happily. They love to play this game together, and they think they are hot shit because of it. Together with her best friend, Terezi helps feed other trolls to Vriska's gigantic spider lusus. She never kills anyone directly, but she watches. This is normal fair.
But after she is blinded, having lost one friend (Aradia), another maimed (Tavros), and Vriska the source of it all... she regrets her actions as a member of their FLARPing team. She is embarrassed of it. She abandons Vriska despite their history because she believes Vriska is wrong for killing people. And considering how she acted before that, this is a major change of heart. This does come with hypocrisy. She justifies the people she helped kill as being "bad", and her friends were "good". She didn't give a god damn about lives before it was someone she cared about.
However, her feeling all of these things doesn't stop her from abandoning Aradia post-death. She calls her "depressing to talk to" and avoids her now that she is a ghost. She doesn't go out of her way, but she does do it. She also attempts to get Dave killed, betting his life on a coin flip. She does rush out in tears when it happens, but it remains that she thought it would be funny.
Being blinded gives her some perspective.
As a result of the way she was blinded (mind control), she was able to speak with her lusus. She speaks to her every day when she goes to sleep! It's a unique thing that not many trolls are able to do. Her lusus teaches her ways to sense the world without vision, and through that and their speaking, she feels incredibly blessed to be blind. The fact that she's able to draw a positive from something as negative as having her eyes seared says a lot. She also wakes up on Prospit around this time-- Prospit being a dreamland.
Just as the clouds of Prospit show glimpses of the future, Terezi is a Seer of Mind and so she is able to foretell a lot of things. In her attempts to avoid certain outcomes, she paints herself into a corner and makes them come true. She sees herself as an extension of something like fate, and she loathes it. She watches as most of her friends are killed one by one, and then... she is given the choice of killing Vriska and living on, or letting Vriska live on and everyone else dying. To Terezi, there is only one choice. She must move forward, even at the expense of someone she still cares about very deeply. She can't let everyone else die. She can't let herself die. So she kills Vriska, and they move on.
This is another thing that gives her a major change of heart.
She calms down. She is still quirky, still funny and herself. But she stops taking herself so seriously. She is more honest with herself. She relaxes but at the same time learns to truly hate herself. Nothing consoles her about Vriska's murder. She tries to think of it from every angle. There is nothing that helps; she says it's not her fault, she says it was just. But in the end, her feelings remain unchanged and Vriska is still dead.
Her self-loathing is most evident when after that, she meets someone she has always admired. This person is Latula Pyrope, her ancestor! She grew up thinking about Latula, who she knew as Redglare, and modeling herself after her. She thinks of Redglare as everything she could ever want or hope to be. It's her ideal. So meeting someone you've always admired and having her appear to be liked better than yourself by your friends is bound to be extremely hard. And there was a little disappointment there. Meeting someone you worship is never exactly how you picture it to be, after all!
She used to dream of being a Legislacerator, which is a troll hybrid of lawyer and bounty hunter. She was extremely taken by the story of her ancestor, and grew to love justice and the law as an extension of it. She studies religiously and plays out courtroom drama with her toys. Terezi has an incredibly strong sense of what is wrong and what is right, though from human standards it might be a lot warped! She loves the brutal efficiency of Alternian law, and longs to be such a well-oiled machine.
From ancient times to present, there has been a caste system based on the color of one's blood. There are thirteen known blood colors, one of which is mutated and one of which is extinct. Mutants who fall off of the caste charts completely would be at the bottom rung of it. Next comes red, then brown; yellow, lime (extinct), olive, jade, teal, blue, navy, indigo, purple, and red-violet. There are certain abilities afforded to certain castes naturally, such as psychic powers, and slight physical characteristics as trolls age. Such as eye color! There is also longevity: red-violet or tyrian trolls live much longer than the lowbloods. Besides these things, there is no difference between a rustblood and a blueblood.
This caste is enforced violently. It was perpetuated by class warfare over the course of hundreds of years, and despite there being no real differences between the people, it is vehemently believed in. The highbloods will grasp at anything they can to continue to rule, and it's been that way for as long as anyone can remember! The caste enforces a very strict no-weakness policy; lowbloods are looked down upon as not being as strong or as good as the highbloods.
In theme with "being good enough"... children are taught the meaning of survival of the fittest in a very literal way. Slow or disabled children are often killed outright, and as babies they are made to survive without any sort of help. They are adopted by monsters once they reach a certain age, and it's again implied that these monster parents sometimes kill the children for being weak. This is a "lusus", and despite not being able to communicate with their lusus, trolls form very strong bonds with them. As trolls age, they take on a mutually beneficial relationship: the troll feeds and takes care of the lusus while the lusus acts as a protector, which is nothing to scoff at. Generally.
Now, with all of those things in mind... Take a look at Terezi.
She has literally raised herself. She was chosen to raise an egg for a dragon lusus that does not hatch her entire life. When her lusus does hatch, she dies immediately. She doesn't live around other trolls, instead living in a tree to better care for her lusus-- and it's easy to guess why! The egg is fragile and other trolls do not hesitate to kill. An egg that size is good eats. But because of her isolation, she grows up daring and bold to those above her in the caste.
In spite of her isolation, she grows up to be socially fluent.
Terezi is an incredibly social person. Her personality is not at all reliant on others-- she is extremely independent-- but she finds a lot of enjoyment in other people's company. A large chunk of this is because she just likes to have fun, and people are very fun. She has her own sense of humor and doesn't deviate for other people's comfort. She likes to do silly things and pretend she is dead serious, sometimes to the point where she buys her own bullshit. She isn't humble but often pretends to be a lot more confident than she actually is!
But the other significant factor into her wanting the company of others is because of how lonely she is. Having grown up without anyone to care for her, she seeks out comfort in others. Being liked is very important to her, despite her attempts to convince herself otherwise. This can take the form of romantic interest or platonic interest; she does not shy away from flirting or letting her intentions be known. She can be shy with direct, bold declarations... but she will ultimately take that step if she really likes someone.
That said, she won't wait around forever for someone else to make their move. If she tosses the ball into their court-- which she will, thank you-- then it's their move and that is that. If she really, really likes someone, she's willing to wait a long time. But as new opportunities and feelings emerge, she will abandon people. Her love of people is intense and short-lived.
She is easily bored. She takes a sort of comfort in people and things that are predictable, but also tends towards people and things that are more wild. She tires of people who are easier to deal with and craves excitement. It is why she and Vriska Serket are such a good team for the while they are friends. Vriska is violent, a little unhinged, very boisterous and extremely imaginative. All of that can be said of Terezi as well! And that is exactly why they can keep up with each other.
Before the incident that leads to her being blinded, Terezi plays a sort of live-action roleplay game with her friends. It is called FLARP, and it is extremely dangerous! She is a little bit of a daredevil then, and a lot of the time their campaigns are against other children. They kill countless people together, Vriska and Terezi, and they do it happily. They love to play this game together, and they think they are hot shit because of it. Together with her best friend, Terezi helps feed other trolls to Vriska's gigantic spider lusus. She never kills anyone directly, but she watches. This is normal fair.
But after she is blinded, having lost one friend (Aradia), another maimed (Tavros), and Vriska the source of it all... she regrets her actions as a member of their FLARPing team. She is embarrassed of it. She abandons Vriska despite their history because she believes Vriska is wrong for killing people. And considering how she acted before that, this is a major change of heart. This does come with hypocrisy. She justifies the people she helped kill as being "bad", and her friends were "good". She didn't give a god damn about lives before it was someone she cared about.
However, her feeling all of these things doesn't stop her from abandoning Aradia post-death. She calls her "depressing to talk to" and avoids her now that she is a ghost. She doesn't go out of her way, but she does do it. She also attempts to get Dave killed, betting his life on a coin flip. She does rush out in tears when it happens, but it remains that she thought it would be funny.
Being blinded gives her some perspective.
As a result of the way she was blinded (mind control), she was able to speak with her lusus. She speaks to her every day when she goes to sleep! It's a unique thing that not many trolls are able to do. Her lusus teaches her ways to sense the world without vision, and through that and their speaking, she feels incredibly blessed to be blind. The fact that she's able to draw a positive from something as negative as having her eyes seared says a lot. She also wakes up on Prospit around this time-- Prospit being a dreamland.
Just as the clouds of Prospit show glimpses of the future, Terezi is a Seer of Mind and so she is able to foretell a lot of things. In her attempts to avoid certain outcomes, she paints herself into a corner and makes them come true. She sees herself as an extension of something like fate, and she loathes it. She watches as most of her friends are killed one by one, and then... she is given the choice of killing Vriska and living on, or letting Vriska live on and everyone else dying. To Terezi, there is only one choice. She must move forward, even at the expense of someone she still cares about very deeply. She can't let everyone else die. She can't let herself die. So she kills Vriska, and they move on.
This is another thing that gives her a major change of heart.
She calms down. She is still quirky, still funny and herself. But she stops taking herself so seriously. She is more honest with herself. She relaxes but at the same time learns to truly hate herself. Nothing consoles her about Vriska's murder. She tries to think of it from every angle. There is nothing that helps; she says it's not her fault, she says it was just. But in the end, her feelings remain unchanged and Vriska is still dead.
Her self-loathing is most evident when after that, she meets someone she has always admired. This person is Latula Pyrope, her ancestor! She grew up thinking about Latula, who she knew as Redglare, and modeling herself after her. She thinks of Redglare as everything she could ever want or hope to be. It's her ideal. So meeting someone you've always admired and having her appear to be liked better than yourself by your friends is bound to be extremely hard. And there was a little disappointment there. Meeting someone you worship is never exactly how you picture it to be, after all!
She used to dream of being a Legislacerator, which is a troll hybrid of lawyer and bounty hunter. She was extremely taken by the story of her ancestor, and grew to love justice and the law as an extension of it. She studies religiously and plays out courtroom drama with her toys. Terezi has an incredibly strong sense of what is wrong and what is right, though from human standards it might be a lot warped! She loves the brutal efficiency of Alternian law, and longs to be such a well-oiled machine.