15/02/2018 19:00:39 ¶ ●

## The corruptive influence of justice

There are many things that cloud the minds of Homestuck’s protagonists. Many things they lean on, that they draw strength from, that they consider a positive influence in their lives, but that nevertheless serve to distract them and poison their hearts and minds. For John, it is innocence. For Karkat, it is the warrior ethos. And for Terezi, it is justice.

Justice drives many of Terezi’s actions and her understanding of the world. It’s how she justifies helping Vriska feed countless to her giant spider lusus during flarp, it’s how she justifies siccing Scratch on Vriska when flarp goes too far, it’s how she describes the nature of doomed timelines and those doomed individuals who originate in them. It’s the language she uses when psyching herself up to personally kill Vriska once and for all.

Justice, to Terezi, is about violence. Retributive violence, a punishment for evil action. It is a way to understand and interact with the world she inherited from Alternia, and it is riddled with the influence of that awful place, with its utter disregard for life, dignity, or any form of mercy. It is a means of justifying murder.

Justice, to Terezi, is a drug, and it is one she only manages to shake once she kills Vriska and finds that in the face of such enormous action its effects as a palliative are lacking. She relapses, of course, wrapping herself in the blindfolded visage of justice when seeking violent revenge on Gamzee, but this no longer brings her strength against his inexplicable juggalo pro-wrestling skills and begins a sequence shortly leading to her death in the Game Over.

Ultimately, Terezi chooses to shed justice entirely, choosing to use John to resurrect Vriska and, critically, to disrupt her initial pretend game of justice during her introduction, symbolically (and, to an extent, actually) freeing her from its curse.