it's so interesting to think about how they set tess up to be 'the mouth piece' (and maybe even mouthpiece lmfao) in the tessjoel dynamic because we spend so very little time with her canonically but it speaks volumes about her and plays such an instrumental part in how i write tess. there's a key factor here, in that she's naturally good with people. she was a people person before the outbreak. perhaps even more back then than tess is now but she's learned how to make it work for her in ways she never would have imagined. between herself and joel, it was a no brainer: she is the better one at verbal communication. they share similar traits in that they don't beat around the bush. bullshit isn't their style. their most commonly used form of communication comes by way of directness. it just comes more organic when it comes from her. people tend to respect tess because of these qualities. while tess won't hesitate to use violence and for the most part won't lose sleep over having to do so either she is the most formidable enemy with nothing more than her words. she bears a gift at being able to hold people at arms lengths without them even knowing she's doing it. they invite her in and before long they seem to forget she's had one foot out the door the entire time, ready to move on to the next thing if this doesn't serve the purpose, if she needs an escape plan, if there's bodies left behind or not. these carefully crafted words she chooses all come down to one thing: tess's ability to turn herself from formidable enemy to compelling ally. she can be anyone they want her to be if they are everything she needs them to be. it's the building blocks to how tess has learned to build trust with others. regardless of whether she is to actually be trusted or not is irrelevant so long as they think she is. of course, tess can and will (situation dependent-) keep her word. and in a world where everyone is lying through their teeth just to get by she's had to rely on her ability to be trustworthy to sustain how she operates. this isn't to say that tess doesn't lie. on the list of things she'll do to ensure another day of survival lying doesn't even make the cut— it's just common sense. question her motives. do not ever question if she has the power to follow through. although generally speaking, people still tend to trust tess even if they know she's lying or more accurately to who she is as a person, omitting pertinent information. the latter being something she does far more often than outright lie. which if she, herself, was to up against she would say are the same thing but she's never once claimed to not be a hypocrite.
being the mouth piece means a lot of things, but above all else it means she has to know people; what makes them tick, how to turn an olive branch into a whole damn tree, their strengths and weaknesses, and without fail— the one tess has to know the best is herself. it's not just about being able to talk the talk and walk the walk. she knows nobody would take her seriously if she couldn't do either of those things. but the only reason she's so confidently able to make the plans and execute them for an audience is because she's acutely self aware of who she is a person. the good, the bad, the tortured, the ugly. all of the things that tess so methodically looks for in other people she's had to also dip deep within herself to find. it's the art of self-preservation. if she didn't do the work, she would leave herself vulnerable. it's a much more difficult feat to outsmart someone who knows themselves for who they really are at the root of it all. the way their own body and mind responds to crisis. what they have to gain. what they have to lose. and how to compartmentalize it all. so nobody can ever (if she doesn't let her guard down) do the things she does to other people back to her. tl;dr - the game showed us tess was the mouth piece, or the brain if you prefer, but what they really told us is: this is what makes tess the most dangerous. this is how tess survives in a world turned wasteland.