#vris & j the two gay gamer nerds who are both like YEAH im NORMAL im not like tjose OTHER gays

[vriskaserketdaily]

May I get your professional opinion on Spider8reath?

professional opinion: it's cute and good for vriska but ultimately unrequited

from john's perspective, he and vriska had a couple of really intense conversations during what was already kind of a stressful day for him, and then he heard nothing from her for like three years. he never saw vriska's last messages to him, because she actually sent them to rose in the hopes that rose would forward them to john. prior to the retcon, john even explicitly states that he finds vriska strange, offputting, and dangerous, and that he kind of hates her!

on vriska's side of things, it's quite different. john has absolutely no context on who she is or what she's done, which is very freeing. the sheer fact of his humanity is what allows vriska to be vulnerable, to admit her shortcomings as a troll of the cerulean caste (namely, feeling guilt over killing tavros). he is at that point the only person in her life she has not alienated through her actions, so naturally she developed some pretty strong positive feelings for him!

personally, i think at least some of her feelings are based on comphet---she tends to place guys on impossible pedestals and is endlessly disappointed when they fail to live up to who she thinks they should be. and a guy from an entirely different species in a completely different universe who you have had the chance to quietly observe for most of his life and who has no preconceived notions of who you are at all seems like a pretty good unattainable emotionally unavailable parasocial blank slate!

until, oops, she dies. and there's a dead john too. and this john knows even less about her than her john.

i think that vriska's attraction to the idea of john as a supportive, empathetic figure (as opposed to the real john, who can be kind of a dick) might have been some of the reasons that they didn't work out in the afterlife---again, for all the guys she "dates," she seems so much more invested in the roles they should be playing (eridan as dualscar, tavros as the summoner) that she pays very little attention to and has very little regard for who the guys actually . . . are. and john very adamantly does not let that happen to him.

i think they work as "kisrails"---a pitch/pale semiquadrant. john is something of an unwitting blackrom casanova, and while he doesn't like vriska he does still feel a certain responsibility towards her. and while john might not be the malewife of vriska's dreams, he is the one guy she knows who can dish it out as well as take it. they do bring out the better parts in each other, or at least john brings out the better parts in vriska.

also i think it's funny to headcanon them both as homophobic gays. john would never say so, but he DOES privately agree when vriska calls dirk and jake a pair of [slurs she definitely cannot reclaim]