by ohthewhomanity

Mind is the aspect of decision-making. It centers around the players’ thoughts and choices, and, perhaps most importantly, the consequences of these choices. It makes sense, then, that the character who demonstrates Mind powers in Homestuck is obsessed with crime and punishment. In Terezi, we readers get a complete demonstration of the uses and consequences of Mind powers as she moves from overconfidence in her abilities to a crisis of faith in them, and finally to mastery of them.

Terezi displayed an instinctive understanding of Mind early on. This is best evidenced by her use of the coin trick on Dave: Terezi had Dave call the outcome of a coin flip, without her ever actually checking which side the coin landed on. The coin therefore had no impact at all on whether Dave went to his quest bed sooner or later; the results hinged on Dave’s decision alone. Mind is about the choices people make, not the power that the universe exerts over them. Terezi knew this and not only tried to teach it to Dave but also tried to apply it in all circumstances.



And that is when Terezi began to demonstrate how Mind powers can fail. Before Cascade, Terezi believed wholeheartedly in her powers and was convinced that the insight they gave her made her always right. This overconfidence led her to do the one thing she would regret most: killing Vriska.

In the dreambubbles, Aranea played on Terezi’s initial overconfidence to gain power over her. She tried to convince Terezi that the powers of the Seer of Mind are absolute, that the two scenarios she predicted in Murderstuck (Vriska dies, or everyone dies) were the only options given that scenario. She claimed that since Terezi had seen only those two options, the universe would only allow those two options, and that because Terezi was the one who had predicted those options, she was responsible for everyone’s fate in both outcomes. While Aranea’s logic is dubious at best–if the universe only allowed those two scenarios, then surely Terezi had no agency at all and is therefore blameless–this argument contributed to Terezi’s downward spiral into self-hate and lack of faith in her Mind powers.



However, all skills are limited by how we think about them, and Mind powers even more literally so. While investigating the murders on the meteor, Terezi was already upset about Dave’s deaths and caught up in her cycle of revenge with Vriska. She was therefore mentally compromised enough to fall for her own coin trick, and believed that there were only two options: heads or scratch, kill a friend or let everyone die. That belief led to her seeing only two options, and to her rash execution (pun not intended). The universe did not trap Terezi into two options. Terezi trapped herself.



The truth is that there are always more options, and as the upd8s between GAME OVER and A6A6A5 showed us, Terezi is in control, as long as she keeps the consequences of her choices in mind (pun once again not intended). During Murderstuck, she was in no mental state to realize and do the right thing, but three years later, she had both hindsight and a boy with canon-altering powers on her side. Terezi knew what the consequences of her decisions had been. She knew what the better decisions would have been. And so she sent John on a quest to fix her mistakes by subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) nudging her in the right direction.

