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Omg, I love you.

Probably post death!

OKAY here I am ten million hours later. HOLA ANON.

SEE, post-death makes a very interesting canon point for Vriska, and may present you with further complications. If you look at her conversations with dead!John, she reacts ... well, differently than you might expect while she was/is alive. She's very, very chill, you know, relatively, about everything that's happened to her -- unlike in life where she gets very angry over relatively small things, or perceived injustices or betrayals. And it's really up to you to decide what "mellowed her out," if anything -- does death chill people out in HS? Is it simply a further evolution of her personality? Some combination of both, in that death may have caused her to hang up a lot of her grudges and grief? (Consider that she says "god for8id" in response to the thought of Terezi dying!) There are a couple of directions you can take for her post-death, and you can make good arguments for any of them. Just make sure you're backing it up with past actions and pesterlogs!

Anyway, with regards to fucking with people/talking herself up, there are definite lines that Vriska has that you should keep in mind! One really good example of this is that she sometimes - very rarely, but sometimes! - has a tendency to actually put herself down and call herself names. She does this with Kanaya and Aradia. Aradia's case is more obviously insincere, but with Kanaya it's a little more ambivalent. I read it as she's putting herself down as a guilt ploy, to try and get Kanaya to ... well, be less meddle-y and fussy, but also in a small way a genuinely self-deprecating thing. There are times when Vriska just doesn't get things, or just doesn't want things, and expresses that stuff genuinely. (Like when she says

AG: I don't want to 8e on the red team. ::::(
AG: It's full of jerks who just think I'm a 8ig jerk.

to Aradia in this pesterlog. I've always read that as sincere -- she really DOESN'T want to be on the red team, as evidenced by things she says a number of times to various other trolls.)

Vriska talks a big game a lot, but she sometimes has very open, clear doubts about herself. Her later pesterlogs with John, doubting whether she has AAAAAAAALL THE LUCK and the "precociousness" of her past attitudes in regards to killing, are a really great example of this. If you read all her Very Important conversations with John as sincere, which I do, they really speak to a lot of deep-set insecurity and really a lack of assurance that she really is as great as she claims she is. She even mentions to him that she's scared, an admission that no troll ever heard from her. That's where a lot of her self-aggrandizing and bravado comes from, after all -- she talks big because she wants people to believe she's big, even when she doubts that she really is. A good early example of this is a slip she makes to Karkat:

CG: YOU JUST HAVE TO GET IN HERE ASAP BECAUSE I REALLY NEED YOUR MIND POWERS.
AG: You do????????
AG: I mean.
AG: O8viously you do. Duh.

(Sorry I'm not formatting, I'm just lazy and it would be time consuming. 8D;) Anyway -- the "you do????????" only makes her look like kind of an insecure loser. That definitely wasn't intentional -- she was actually surprised. And why would she be surprised if she really was as certain of herself as she pretends to be? She's not.

To me, Vriska is actually a very insecure person, driven by the social demands of her blood caste (consider that one of her justifications for killing Tavros was that she would be vindicated for it, and that "the amount of slack [she] cut him would 8e considered scandalous 8y those in [her] class."), the mythos of Mindfang that she feels compelled to live up to, the brutal legacy her lusus forced her to maintain, and as a result of all of these things, her own very near compulsive need to always be perfect, or more specifically to never be weak. But it's very hard doing all that, especially when you fuck up, start maiming and killing your friends, and they one by one turn against you!

(This is not to say she's solely a victim of her circumstances. NEVER play her that way. Though bound up tightly by circumstantial things, she still has agency in her own self, as Doc Scratch very rightly points out. She could have chosen not to kill and maim the people she cared/cares about, but she did it anyway, because she's vindictive and mean and lashes out when she's hurt or angered.)

tl;dr on this point: Vriska can talk a big game, but it's not all the time. She slips up and makes mistakes. On top of that, the big game she talks is driven a lot by her own insecurities and need to seem stronger than maybe she really is. Don't be afraid to play up these subtleties - do a thorough review of her Hivebent pesterlogs, and her later Very Serious Conversations with John if you need a good primer on that particular emotional grounding.

Going back to another aspect of this point, feel free to have her fuck with people and shit on their self-esteem, but be aware that she absolutely does not do that to every single person she meets. Again, go back to Hivebent for some evidence of this - Vriska can in fact be very playful, almost bouncy and chipper and happy in her own ... spidery way, and she's not always cruel. Some of her conversations with Karkat - especially the recruitment conversation I linked above - are really pretty playful, even when filled with insults. Far from shitting all over Kanaya, she puts herself down in front of the girl and obviously and openly cares about her, expressing worry about her lusus and even seeking out her meddling in a moment when she needs a meddlefriend. She doesn't speak with Feferi much, but I headcanon that Vriska respects Feferi and likes her - pick Vriska as your player character in Alterniabound and go talk to Fef, and you'll see what I mean. Vriska kind of respects Feferi's bite, and as such I'd reason that she probably isn't, you know, cruel or mocking to her - at least, not all the time, and not the same way in which she's cruel/mocking to, say, Tavros.

Remember -- always remember -- that Tavros is a special case. Tavros is the specialest of cases. There are very few people she will treat as poorly as Tavros, and if she's going to, you better damn well have a justification for it. Vriska's feelings on Tavros are Really Stupidly Complic8ed, and worthy of their own essay. But he does very particular things to earn her ire -- being too weak, becoming Mr. Valiant Hero much too late, never having the guts to hate her but never being brave enough to love/pity her either -- she really believed he could be better, wanted him to be better, and he never came through, and imo, she's sooooo bitter about his failure to be everything she imagined him to be. (It's possible -- possible, on the outside chance -- that she recognizes Mindfang's descriptions of the Summoner, and connects it to Tavros, which might be some part of her mental aggrandization of the poor kid. But that's a tenuous connection at best, so if that's something you've noticed, be careful how you use it. It's likely more linked to the duality of her feelings for him, the love/hate, and how he never fully lives up to either aspect, a thing which openly frustrates her.)

Mockery and cruelty are definitely her strong suits - but there are degrees to it, from mild and playful to just kind of derisive/bored/amused to actually bitter/angry/unhappy. And these different degrees express themselves in different ways! Again, from mild to aaaaaaaangry, consider her recruitment conversation with Karkat, versus stuff like this and this, moving towards stuff like this and this -- since White Text Guy doesn't make Vriska happy but also very incisively sees straight through her and into her, like he does with goddamn everybody -- finally graduating to stuff like this and this, where she is sort of certifiably losing her shit.

I remember reading somewhere once -- I forget who said this and where :( -- that in a lot of ways, Vriska is the most "teenagery" and in a way normal-speaking of the trolls. And ymmv on that one, but it is in a lot of ways true, to me - her style of speaking can be pretty casual, and ranges from silly to angry to serious to, you know, all sorts of things. Vriska has a very broad emotional range, and don't be afraid to use it! She's a very versatile and dynamic character who cares more than she ought about people who maybe aren't that well suited to her, and people who aren't that well suited to her care about her more than they should. She's a very divisive character for a reason!

To bring this full circle and go back to the whole post death idea, and whether she's different then, keep in mind that if you look on the wiki for her pesterlogs in 5.2., almost every conversation she has is with John. (I forgot to add -- of course this applies to pesterlogs only, and NOT conversations in Alterniabound. However, those all take place early on, way before everything goes to shit, and after she takes off her contact with the rest of the trolls becomes limited to none.) The only exception is the apparent break she takes to harass the shit out of Tavros - other than that she doesn't have one-on-one convos with the other trolls that we see, only participates (barely!) in memos. She sort of absconds not too far into the whole lab arc, and stays absconded until she goes to, uh, murder the shit out of Tavros. And then she still stays gone, sequestering herself on the roof instead until Eridan comes to find her and events proceed. I have a lot of headcanon-y reasons for why she does that, too, the absconding, but that is another essay I could spit out.

But to get back on point with that thought... we see a different side of Vriska come out over the course of her conversations with John. Whether he changes her or not is highly debatable - and my answer to that question has always been "no" - but she certainly, if nothing else, becomes more honest with herself, and the very serious way in which she addresses her upcoming fight with Jack while talking to him speaks a lot for the way she's grown just over the course of the adventure, and even during the events that go down in the lab. The way she acts post-death could very easily be a natural evolution of what seems to be an on-going, if too slow to save her life, process of change for Vriska. Again, play around with that concept of what makes her "different," if you even conceive her to be such - just make sure your rationale is internally consistent and, again, agrees with her canon actions and statements.

To sort of wrap this all up, Vriska is complic8ed. She is not at all a one-dimensional character who just mocks and harasses and talks shit. She sometimes respects people, even befriends them, and can become openly sad or upset about the loss of such buddies. She's insecure, and sometimes she doesn't even talk the talk correctly, though she more or less manages to walk the walk when it comes down to it. (read: murdering people. this is not precisely a good thing.) Again, go through her Hivebent logs with a fine-toothed comb, and pay close attention to the evolution of her demeanor towards John, her last conversation with Tavros, and Those Very Serious Discussions with John I keep mentioning. (Which, for the sake of clarity, are these three pages right here.) I know that's, like, basically all of her pesterlogs, but you will end up going over them again and again. |D

I hope this has helped, anon. :B If you'd like more tl;dr on other things, I am happy to provide.

I know in advance I will be horrified by how long this thing is after I hit post comment.

Edited 2012-02-08 04:18 (UTC)

/bookmarks this.

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to play Vriska post-death, and there are some minor things that I interpret differently, but this is really useful regardless! Thank you.

You are very welcome! I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. |D

This is a good essay and you should feel good. ::::) You brought up some points I didn't even think about!

Re: the blood caste thing, what's your take on her attitude towards the hemospectrum? She's not really openly bigoted in the way Equius and Eridan are, but she doesn't disregard it either, right? She cares in that it defines what is socially acceptable behaviour for her, and sets the standards she has to meet?

I have a lot of Very Interpretive headcanon wrt Vriska and the hemospectrum. She doesn't give us very much impression at all on how she feels about it in canon, other than the quote I mentioned above about being vindicated by others of her color, and the "envia8le cerulean SWILL" comment she makes to Aradia.

Yes, you are basically correct. If she does have any hemospectrum bigotry, she keeps it internalized, and seems to mostly apply it to herself. She doesn't openly put any stock in it, and the only times she DOES talk about it, as you note, are when it applies to herself, and her social standing, and how she feels about herself etc. She doesn't seem to be all that fond of her standing on the hemospectrum, and yet at the same time sort of relies on it, or places herself in its frame of reference in a way that is important, at least to her justification of her own actions.

Vriska probably cares way, way more about the hemospectrum than she lets on. Her casual uses and mentions of it (like when she needles and prods Equius early on when they are discussing usurping the blue team) are not really a good indicator of how she seems to really feel about it. My personal feeling is that she feels very bound by her blood color and position on the hemospectrum, for reasons tied to her lusus and to Mindfang. It almost definitely plays into her whole "I can't seem weak ever" Thing. How big a deal it is for her, though, is definitely open to interpretation. It certainly is a thing, but she may not even be fully conscious of how much it is a thing to her, beyond the surface level that she openly acknowledges. But you can read a lot even into those two instances when she discusses it, if you so choose.

Imo, you definitely have the right idea about it! :)

Thank you so much for this!

You're very welcome! ♥ Anytime, anon.

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Re: I PROMISED YOU AN ESSAY AND AN ESSAY IS WHAT YOU ARE RECEIVING HERE

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