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one-strugling-bean · 2 years

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Random Thoughts on Homestuck pages 3466-3468 & 3472-3475 (aka, Vriska and John talk about feelings post Tavros’s death)

This conversation right here was the first time Homestuck was genuinely able to impact me on an emotional level. Therefore, I wanna talk about it.

(A quick reminder though: this commentary is purely subjective and no one is forced to agree with it.)

(Actually, as long as you are polite and respectful, I encourage you to discuss this matter with me, and point out anything that you might think I have understood wrong.)

(Also, I have only read up to page 3490, so cut me some slack if I say anything wrong story-wise. And no spoilers please.)

But yeah. Let’s do this.

Sooooooo, Vriska. From my light browsing through the Homestuck fandom, there seems to exist a lot of discourse between the fans that like her and defend her actions, and those who hate and blame her for all the crap she does. Right now, I think I fall somewhere in a grey area between the two, although closer to the latter specter of the argument.

She’s an incredibly interesting character, that’s for sure. For me, it’s her extremely grey morals that make her so.

Vriska is someone who consciously plays the role of the “villain” because that’s who she thinks she has to be amongst her friends, and what troll society seems to ask of her – from her perspective, at least. Also, her ancestor was apparently a super badass pirate lady who did many amazing things, so Vriska feels encouraged – pressured? – to also become strong and live up to her ancestor’s image.

She had a demanding lusus, the kind of lusus that apparently only choose to raise “strong trolls”, and fed off of other young trolls, which charged a young Vriska with the responsibility of killing her kin(?) in order to maintain the high-maintenance spider.

She was definitely shaped and molded very harshly by the conditions of her development and growth. So, the Vriska we are presented to in the comic is someone who would’ve probably been a very successful troll in Alternia society, strong and willing to do whatever it took to reach her goals, but also with the emotional maturity of a 5-year-old. At least by human standards.

This is my interpretation of Vriska. Am I too far off? I really hope not.

Right now, I’m at a point with her where while I appreciate her character – what she brings to the table in terms of narrative – I’m far from being a big fan of her as a person. Because like, she’s a bully. :/

And it’s with that notion in mind that we take a step back from Vriska for a little, and focus on someone else: Tavros, aka, the apparent main victim of Vriska’s meddling.

Tavros is weird by troll standards. Karkat mentioned so himself, at some he said something like he doesn’t think Tavros could ever hate anyone.

He is much gentler and overall nicer than the rest of his fellow trolls, and is seen as “weak” by their society's standards. And that's wgy Vriska, from what I understood, decided that she’d “help” him by basically antagonizing him to hell and back in hopes that he'd grow a tougher shell.

I’m mentioning all of this because earlier, I read the opinion of someone that was trying to defend Vriska’s actions towards Tavros, specifically the events leading up to her acquiring God tier, and later on, his death by her.

Basically, their point was the same Vriska herself was trying to explain to John, that she only bullied Tavros because she liked him, and knew that he wouldn’t survive in their world if he kept being “weak”, so she messed with him to try and toughen him up.

Tavros was simply too much of a coward, and so eventually, when the time came and Vriska needed him to be strong (to kill her so she’d get God Tier) he was unable to do it and ran away, leaving her to die alone from blood loss.

And this is the thing that truly leaves me kind of confused and upset because in case it’s not obvious by now, I actually like Tavros and relate to him, and the whole spiel of “weak vs strong” upsets me quite a bit, and I really don’t understand the point of the person that defended her.

I might have interpreted this wrong and let my bias get in the middle of my critical thinking, but…. isn’t it obvious that Vriska’s intentions when she was bullying Tavros were far from wanting to help?

I'm being genuine here, btw. Because I've read a fair ammount of people arguing this.

This was my train of thought: I don’t doubt she did to some degree appreciate Tavros, but you can’t tell me she wasn’t enjoying having power over him. She would relish in messing with Tavros, call him names, insult him for being crippled (despite, or perphaps, especially because she knew she’d been the one to put him that way). She loved being more powerful than him, and using her advantages to give him hell.

At the same time, I also don’t doubt that Vriska believes she was helping him all this time. That she was the one in the right. That the suffering he get from her was Tavros’s own fault for being so weak. That, while yes, she does feel some remorse now, she was still in the right for killing Tavros. And yeah, by Alternia standards, I guess she is. Can’t argue there. As she told John, he was a much lower-class troll actively disrespecting her, and she had already been super merciful not to kill him before, instead "befriending" and playing with him. But enough was enough and all that.

She still feels guilty about it, but that shouldn't be relevant because whatever her own feelings and other people's beliefs may be, according to their society, she's justified. She had something to back her up.

The crux of the problem is, there’s no Alternia anymore, no Troll society, and most of the trolls that she’s left with don’t really care about the way things are supposed to be.

And this leaves her – and me – with the current conundrum: now what is considered “right”, and where does that new "right" leave her standing?

She doesn’t know. But by her friends' reactions, she probably has some clues.

Vriska is still a teen with feelings, so remorse and guilt are a given for her since she did care about the people she hurt. I’ve also read some people trying to defend her with that – the fact that she’s obviously feeling regret – but I honestly don’t see what that changes. What should that matter, if she keeps repeating the same mistakes?

Regret and guilt aren’t really valid unless they’re able to stop you from re-committing said mistakes, and try to make amends instead. Which, yeah, she tried a few times, but none of those tries were exactly sincere or convincing.

(I was trying to say unbiased here, but I think I blew that by now. Oops.)

When she kills Tavros, I can’t see anything there but an emotionally stunted kid having a tantrum and destroying the core of her misgivings instead of trying to sort through them.

She was upset to realize that Tavros had finally gotten more confident, but only to act against her of all people, and let that emotion fester, blind and control her. This led to Tavros dying by Vriska’s hand in an act of thoughtless violence, although later on, when she finally calms down from the tantrum, she feels remorse and realizes she fucked up. Again.

What happened with Aradia could be interpreted as pretty much the same, right? Vriska got upset, didn’t know how to deal with it, so she destroyed the source of her anger. And when guilt knocked on her door, she could lean on the rules of their society to condone herself.

But again, the reason why now with Tavros things are slightly different is that that society doesn’t really exist anymore and no one really gives a fuck about its rules.

I guess the question right now is how many times Vriska will continue to fuck up this way until she realizes how “weak” she actually is.

The reason why I appreciate her character so much is that I think it just gave me so much insight into the insides of the mind of a bully.

Meanwhile, the reason why I don’t really like her all that much is that she’s just generally a bad person, and has yet to show honest signs of wanting to change for good. As much as I loved her conversation with John, I really don't think that qualifies as such.

I honestly hope this is the last time this crap happens and she finally learns for good now. Maybe John can help her get there. I believe he could.

It just makes me sad that lives were already taken, meanwhile.

RIP Tavros. I liked him a lot, really. Maybe it was just me, ‘cause I’m a bit of a softie myself, but his gentle ways were a breath of fresh air when I was reading Act 5 Act 1. Everyone was so intense all the time, it was kinda nice to have someone calmer I could relate to in all the brashness going around.

But then again, that’s also what made him a target for Vriska, and what eventually got him killed. His “weakness”.

It’s like what Vriska said about Karkat, who’s just as much of a softie beneath all his grumpiness. They probably would’ve thrived a lot better on Earth. The alpha kids’ Earth, I mean. Not sure about ours, sadly.

I am getting sad writing this. Homestuck, why would you do this to me?

Eh anywayyyyyyyy, I doubt ayone will read this, but if you have gotten this far, thanks a lot ^^

Imma gonna continue reading now, have a nice day

#i cant believe i wasted 2h on this #is this the homestuck experience??#if so its very tiring #also i am expecting the dead kids to come back one or another #im iust sad they had to die once at all #:/#i really hope anyone who reads this doesnt take it too seriously #i dont wanna start a fight with anyone #but i needed this vent #homestuck commentary #homestuck #homestuck trolls #vriska serket #tavros nitram #dunno what else to tag

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