Tess the real dupe?

[Sundae]

Michael and Isabel never seemed to form a real attachment with her after Destiny. Why should she have any loyalty these people.

Because even if Michael and Isabel weren't that close to her, they still made her part of the group, as did everyone else. And Tess didn't try to have a bigger relationship with Michael and Isabel after Destiny either. Her whole obsession was Max. Sorry, but I don't give her that excuse because I feel it isn't one at all.

Actually that's not really true. Which goes back to my theory that there was a reason why we never saw Tess's character much outside of the interactions with Max (the writers wanted Tess to look a certain way). It was never shown but it was mentioned. Tess had helped Michael all summer after destiny to control his powers. He was cracking rocks in his apartment with her help remember? That plus, I think she did have a realtionship with Isabel, we just never saw it. When Tess got kidnapped by Whitaker...she contacted Isabel to help her. You can argue that she chose Isabel because of Isabel's perceptive powers relating to the subconscious, but I would think you'd need to be close to Isabel for Tess to be the one to contact Isabel from so far away. We never saw those relationships...and I think that was done on purpose.

[Sundae]

I don't know guys. I mean it's possible but you also have to look at the way Tess was raised. She was raised by Nesado who was not human at all. He was the one who made the deal that she turn over the pod squad and bring back the heir to the throne. He pushed the pod squad towards their destinies as well. Tess was probably feed the whole propaganda her entire life. Sure she had a glimpse of a real family and friends with Kyle and Jim but that couldn't have been enough. Isabel did feel a connection to her right away, it wasn't until the dreams started that Tess began to creep her out. In fact she maintained that Tess was normal up until she went to the house. And who knows what Nesado told her of her past life before she met up with the podsquad. For all she knew Khivar taking over could've been a very good thing.

The dupe's protector told them what's what and left. Rath and Lonnie turned kinda psycho, who knows what Zan was like, and Ava wasn't really around long enough to get a glimpse at what she was really like either. She wasn't included in the deal Nesado made to return the pod squad to Khivar. She was given no reason to betray Zan. As far as she was aware Zan was her husband in her past life, end of story. She didn't have a reason to lie and manipulate anybody except maybe getting home, but the people she'd be going home with had killed Zan, who she obviously cared about, why would she want to go anywhere with them after that?

It honestly probably wouldn't of mattered which one Nesado raised, as long as he did his part right.

I agree with all of this. Plus Ava had Zan (even though she said he was always searching for something else...she HAD Zan...they were together). So of course Ava is loyal to Zan...they were together and they cared about each other. Tess didn't have Max...and the one disadvantage to her situation was that Tess remembered her past and grew up with destiny...while Max didn't, he didn't remember her...and that's got to hurt, especially seeing him with someone else on top of it.

Plus...the way Ava grew up...you could tell that she was abused by Lonnie/Rath. She was scared of them, remember when they were all leaving for New York and Ava didn't want to go. Rath was about to get physical if Max hadn't interfered. She was being abused, talked down to, made to feel worthless...so of course she's going to be submissive and quite. She's not going to stand up and scream and fight when she knows it will only lead to more abuse. Lonnie and Rath had a lot of control over her...and the way I saw it....Ava was too scared to act out against them...they were too powerful and she knew that...so she did the one thing that she could, she left...besides, what did she there anymore? Zan was gone...she had nothing without him.

[Sundae]

I've actually thought of this...Ava actually being the real royal while Tess wasn't and I actually had a fic panned but when I got started to write it, it didn't feel right...so I've done a different approach...hopefully I'll start posting it a couple months down once I have good amount written.

There were too many unknowns for Tess to drop her and call her evil. I'm sorry, while I do believe she mindwrapped Max AND killed Alex...I think there was more to all of that than what was shown.

Why weren't we shown how she manipulated Alex? Why weren't we shown what had happened to her when she returned to Antar, Why weren't we show how Whitaker kidnapped her? Why weren't we shown what Whitaker must have said to her or shown how Whitaker hurt Tess? Why weren't weren't we shown anything but the final scene of the revelation that she was evil. There had to be a reason for that.

It doesn't' make sense to me at all...and to me I rather think that there was something else going on under the surface than just call her evil and leave it at that.

[Cocogurl]

When Max saved Liz, he maybe gave her a little push, especially in her perceptiveness about people !

That's a very good idea. I mean Liz was right about the people that came into their lives a lot. Ms. Topolsky both times, Tess and Nasedo, Ava.

[Sin]

Yeah but you have to imagine that she was pretty secluded from everybody but Nasedo.

I just have to but in here at this part. Tess was given a wonderful gift when the group pardoned her for her actions after the games she played with Max and Isabel when she was first introduced to them. She was given a blank slate and everyone began to accept her as part of their group. She was given the chance to be apart of them and Tess chose not to be apart of their family.

Even when she was finally with the other aliens the only ones whoever really seemed to bother with her were Jim and Kyle.

You can't force people to be your friend. It's a two way street. Tess never showed any interest in the humans. So it's unfair to ask them to put forth all the effort in building a relationship with her, when she never wanted a relationship with them in the first place. Tess didn't fit because she didn't want to fit. She hated Liz, didn't give a damn about Maria and thought that both Kyle and Alex were means to an end and toys to be used for her disposal. She didn't even care to cultivate her relationships with her alien family Isabel and Michael, she used Isabel to get to Max and used Michael and his one track alien mind to force Max to see things her way. She didn't want friendships, she didn't care about anything but her wants and her desires. She didn't even really care or love Max she only wanted him for as a status symbol for her. You can't be Queen unless you have a King.

Michael and Isabel never seemed to form a real attachment with her after Destiny. Why should she have any loyalty these people.

Why is it up to only Michael and Isabel to cultivate these relationships? This just solidifies that Tess didn't care about either of them.

Tess had helped Michael all summer after destiny to control his powers. He was cracking rocks in his apartment with her help remember? That plus, I think she did have a realtionship with Isabel, we just never saw it. When Tess got kidnapped by Whitaker...she contacted Isabel to help her. You can argue that she chose Isabel because of Isabel's perceptive powers relating to the subconscious, but I would think you'd need to be close to Isabel for Tess to be the one to contact Isabel from so far away. We never saw those relationships...and I think that was done on purpose.

Tess only sought out attention from Isabel and Michael if it could benefit her in some way, leading the way by focusing more on their past life on Antar, developing their powers, etc. was used to force Max into dealing with their destiny. Tess guiding Michael by practicing their powers was a preemptive move to push Max towards focusing on their alien problems, not out of friendship. We never even saw Tess unless it was with Kyle or Max most of the time. As to her relationship with Isabel, that was only used as a way to get close to Max (Crazy, TLAV, FS) after she introduced herself she had no use for her other than that. I think Surprise just showed that Tess and Isabel had more control of their mind powers than anything else. So Tess naturally sought out Isabel because she was better as the mind stuff then Max and Michael. If she wanted someone to save her she logically should have asked for Michael, or emotionally called out for Max.

[begonia9508]

In my opinion, Tess used all the possibilities at her disposition to manipulate people, humans and aliens, for her own interest!
Let see what she did to Alex: she had the destiny book and planed a fake trip to Sweden even giving a wrong number (Liz tried it several times and when they answered, nobody knew Alex and the name was wrong!)
She certainly enroled him in Las Cruces under a wrong name, let him do the translating job and put the bomb in the office... as well as making fake pics, involving the blond girl who at the end was totally human!
To see her at Alex's funeral was another proof that she was really malicious:
going to the burial to the boy she killed and looking sad!
Of course at this time, it wasn't seen directly it was her but who profited of it?
Her alone and not Nasedo bc he was already dead!... Nicolas? It was never proved that he helped her, if he was still alive!
We never knew it 100 % at all! When Tess destroyed the skins at school, did she do it or was it only a mindwarp for the roswellers??
We can only compute about it!

EVE

[Rowedog]

Yeah but you have to imagine that she was pretty secluded from everybody but Nasedo.

I just have to but in here at this part. Tess was given a wonderful gift when the group pardoned her for her actions after the games she played with Max and Isabel when she was first introduced to them. She was given a blank slate and everyone began to accept her as part of their group. She was given the chance to be apart of them and Tess chose not to be apart of their family.

That is completely open to interpretation. For all we know, she may have felt that she couldn't work her way into their tight knit group and had just given up trying. And thanks to sloppy writing on the writer's behalf, we'll never know. Like you said, friendship is a two way street and while they didn't show Tess making an effort, they also didn't show Michael or Isabel - or any of them for that matter - making any effort to welcome her into the group. I don't think it's as black and white a situation as you make it out to be.

[Sin]

That is completely open to interpretation.

How so? Tess didn't like humans, that much is canon. She either felt that they were insignificant, didn't mean anything and we means to an end, she showed as much pretty much every chance she got. She didn't care about Alex's feelings, nor Kyle's we saw that in Departure. She didn't care at all about Liz being in danger with the FBI. She never showed concern over Maria, etc. She even wants to mind wrap the guard in VLV to get into a club, something which horrifies Liz. Tess came in pretty much isolating the entire group from herself from the beginning, and she never rectified the situation. She never tried to rebuild those bridges and she put forth no effort to even try to be friends with the humans in the group. This is one of the reasons why Tess never fit in with them, not because they isolated her but because her beliefs, her practices, hell her attitude was not conducive to foster friendships with the group. She had biases, she was pretty much a bigot in that regard alone and that was very much her own fault. You can't be friends with someone who doesn't respect you or find you to at least in some semblance be an equal and she never wanted to be equal with Alex, Maria, Liz or even Kyle for that matter. So off of jump street Tess was at a disadvantage her not because the humans were unwilling to be her friend (I think the only one who was truly unwilling was Maria) but because she was never interested in having human friends.

So at this point I have to disagree. I know that redeeming Tess is another big thing with many as of late but I often think that there is a revision of who Tess actually was. She wasn't some shy ingenue that was being forcibly ousted from the group every chance they had. It's not as if the mean humans were horrible to her. Tess showed no desire to be apart of the human/alien relations group. And that was of her own desires here and that's not something that was retconned last minute the show never showed Tess having a genuine interest in the humans.

She always saw them as means to an end, we can see that from the way she treated Alex, Kyle, Amy Deluca, and others. Tess never tried to be nice to Maria, she hated Liz she never liked the humans to begin with. The only semblance of kindness she showed to the humans was with Kyle and even that was conditional, Tess only showed interest in Kyle when Max was willing to give her the time of day.

She never wanted to have relationships with humans. She saw them as less than we saw that from the beginning and the end and even various times in the middle. So that in effect created problems with her inclusion, when you go in hating a good half of the group then it's pretty pointless. Tess didn't want these bonds or interactions.

For all we know, she may have felt that she couldn't work her way into their tight knit group and had just given up trying.

This would imply that she at one point tried with all of them and that never seemed to be the case. When did she try to befriend Alex? Liz? Maria? Liz for the most part was actually pretty friendly to Tess all things considered yet again Tess wasn't interested in building that friendship. She was often rude and dismissive to both Alex and Maria and she pretty much just used Kyle for amusement and all of this is before the big reveal. It's one thing to say that Tess tried so hard to become apart of them (which I don't believe there is evidence of) and fault both sides. But Tess never even put in that effort from what I got.

As to her relationships with Michael and Isabel she ignored them pretty much through out season two. She only wanted to Max, so her lack of relationships within the group were her own doing. Even taking away her initial introduction to the group and the harm she caused with her mind warps.

I would also say that the group was weary of her due to the consequences of her own actions. You don't go about making friends with people when you hate one of the core people in the group (Liz), disrespect and insult two other people in the group and deride their place in it (Maria and Alex), and manipulate the other two people by playing with their minds literally, (Max and Isabel). Tess had a lot to make up for and she wasn't interested in fixing the bridges she herself burnt.

And thanks to sloppy writing on the writer's behalf, we'll never know.

Tess was always written like this. To state that this only happened half way through would be implying that episodes like TLAV, FS, and the like never happened.

She was always Max oriented about everything to the point where no one else mattered to her. This was nothing new. Tess didn't even love Max, even her was secondary to what she wanted which was her role as queen and her going home by any means necessary.

Like you said, friendship is a two way street and while they didn't show Tess making an effort, they also didn't show Michael or Isabel - or any of them for that matter - making any effort to welcome her into the group.

I disagree. the entire group accepted her as a part of their group even after the havoc she caused their group for Max and Liz and the hardship that she caused for Isabel and her blatant rudeness and disregard for the humans. Liz was often very nice to her, she was never rude even though she probably had ample reason to be. Kyle was often kind to her. Maria was the only one of them that out right hated her.

They accepted her and she was apart of them. It's not their fault if Tess thought that she was better than the humans and thus didn't want to have contact with them. You can't force people to be your friend, and it's not Michael and Isabel's fault that Tess only saw Max and didn't care about them.

Tess wasn't so isolated. She had plenty of time to make friends, she had plenty of time to reconcile with the others and set things straight if she really wanted to have these connections. The fact that she didn't just proved that she didn't care and that she only wanted what she wanted and that was her title and a trip home.

It's not like everyone in the group were just big bullies to her. The fact that Tess didn't have any friends in the group and didn't mesh were consequences of her own making due to her obsession about destiny and complete disregard of the people in their group and the disregard for their free will. To be completely honest who would want to be friends with a person like Tess? She completely took choices away from them and often forced them to do what she wanted, she was manipulative, hurtful and forceful at her best.

I don't think it's as black and white a situation as you make it out to be.

If the show had made any attempt to show Tess as a person who wanted the friendship of the humans and Isabel and Michael I would agree. But Tess wasn't even a friend to Max the object of her affection, most of the time. So that isn't going to fair well for the others who were less than dirt to her.

[valentinebaby]

Yeah but you have to imagine that she was pretty secluded from everybody but Nasedo.

I just have to but in here at this part. Tess was given a wonderful gift when the group pardoned her for her actions after the games she played with Max and Isabel when she was first introduced to them. She was given a blank slate and everyone began to accept her as part of their group. She was given the chance to be apart of them and Tess chose not to be apart of their family.

Was she though? I mean season 2 premiers and yeah sure Michael and Tess are blowing up rocks. We saw that okay some interaction. And the fact that Tess was the one helping Michael and not the other way around leads me to believe she was making some sort of effort but we really don't know what happened there. You know when I was reading this the first thing that popped into my head was the scene in Ask Not where they all go to the UFO Center to kill Brody. Where was Tess? They all decide Brody's an enemy he has to be killed and they're going to do it and they what left her behind? Liz's always had Maria's and Alex's loyalty and it was obvious they had no love for Tess. Maria and Liz see them walking down the street together and Max got a lecture from Maria about it and all they were doing was talking. When Nesado died Tess went to live with Jim and Kyle. Why? It was safer? Michael had his own apartment and alien powers wouldn't she have been safer with him, with her family? In Surprise I believe it was Isabel who pointed out that no one had exactly been nice to Tess. And it's safe to assume that they'd known who she was for over two months by that point. Two months of the only three people like her on the planet not being very nice to her, and not including her in their decisions. Not treating her like the family they supposedly were. I'm not saying I blame them given her entrance into their circle and the things both she and Nesado did, but it couldn't have been easy for her either.

[Cocogurl]

Like you said, friendship is a two way street and while they didn't show Tess making an effort, they also didn't show Michael or Isabel - or any of them for that matter

Yeah, but Michael and Isabel didn't make great strides to become better friends with Liz, or Maria, or Alex. But you didn't see any of them become murderers and backstabbers. I'm sorry, but I'm not giving her the excuse that nobody made her feel welcome in the group, because that is NOT an excuse to me. To me, it doesn't matter that Michael and Isabel didn't go out of their way to make Tess a better part of their group. From the minute she got to Roswell, she knew what she and Nasedo were planning to do to the podsquad and that was all that mattered to her. Let's also not forget how Tess tried to break into the group in the first place. Mindwarping and manipulating. That doesn't inspire much trust from the people around you. Maybe Michael and Isabel didn't really try to have a better relationship with Tess because deep down, they sensed that even though she was one of them, she wasn't like them.

Sorry for my rant. It's just to me it doesn't mattered that Max didn't love her, or that Isabel and Michael didn't form a special bond with Tess. Non of it even comes to close to comparing to the fact that Tess came into their lives with plan to deliver them to Kivar by any means necessary.

Lol, I can't believe my thread sparked a debate!