vriska really was a broken abused child tho. like i’m not saying she did nothing wrong or whatever, she’s like chronically stupid and full of bad decisions but like. she was a teenager and her life was so fucked up. it was so fucked up. she hates herself so much. she’s gay and considers herself unworthy of love because she’s impulsive and has poor social skills due to chronic childhood abuse. i love her and feel sorry for her and that’s just how it is on this bitch of an earth
keys to understanding why ppl love vriska, or understanding why u still root for her beyond her awkward funniness and pseudo charisma, or understanding why you feel bad for her but can’t figure out why:
1) she’s being abused by her guardian figure almost as blatantly as dave is. when she touches on this there is an underlying sense of anxiety and pain that sets her apart from her peers, much like dave is set apart from the other kids bc his guardian is blatantly abusive but (like vriska) he isn’t sure how to come to terms with or acknowledge it, much less explain it to his friends. in vriska’s case, her friends (for decent enough reasons) resent her for being insufferable regardless. outside of homestuck itself the paradox space comic “vrisky business” deals with this heavily and i while bring this up on a regular basis it’s still true
2) doc scratch is a pedophile. beyond being obviously a child predator, one of his primary targets is vriska. vriska is an easy target, of course, bc she’s already been dealt a pretty fucked up hand in life. vriska calls doc scratch as a “creep” more than once, to his face, refers to his behavior towards her as “getting off on [a young girl]”, and expresses extreme distress towards him continuing to have conversation with her when she’s asked him to leave her alone. she mentions that she’ll log out so that he’ll leave her alone… but then he takes control of her account and forces her to log back in and talk to him.
i mean i feel like this is laid on pretty fucking thick but in case the implication went over your head: it’s a metaphor for CSA lads
terezi alludes to the damage doc scratch has done to vriska during her own (rife with sexual innuendo and all around fucking creepiness, because he is Literally a pedophile) conversation with doc scratch while trying to get revenge on vriska for aradia’s murder:
“no wonder she snapped” – vriska took a sharp downturn under the influence of doc scratch, and the reader sees it firsthand. the murder of aradia was largely orchestrated by doc scratch, who forced vriska’s hand even while she frustratedly explains that these are her friends and she didn’t want to hurt them
here’s the whole pesterlog, since it’s all pretty telling:
take note that vriska calls doc scratch a “sick fuck” almost immediately after he contacts her. she’s very much backed into a corner here. tbh there’s a looot to pick up on in this conversation between them re: vriska being abused by an adult man
I find this really fascinating, since I am a victim of childhood parental abuse and yet I hated Vriska because her behavior towards Tavros was reminiscent of my abusive parent. Admittedly I was pretty young when I first read it and I could not pick up on metaphors for shit, and definitely missed the part about her being a victim as well. While I am coming to see her more as a grey character (thanks to things like this) I am still not sympathetic to her belittling of others and harsh self-righteousness. Survivors can be as kind as anyone else and their unhealthy behaviours shouldn’t be dismissed because of their past trauma.
Yeah, absolutely, plenty of perfectly interesting characters ping to close to home for me to enjoy. Heck, plenty of actual real people come too close to my trauma buttons for me to want to spend time around them or be a part of their healing, even though I still sincerely wish healing and mental healthiness for them.
So this isn’t meant to be a “you are wrong for not enjoying these characters” post.
This is just me picking at what pings me about them.
I have major imposter syndrome in my life. I was raised by an abusive narcissist and have hella fleas from that. I have a lot of trouble distinguishing extrinsic and intrinsic motivators. I am a pleaser and an overachiever, and I have lots of trouble not letting external sources define what my identity should be or how I should pursue happiness. I am meanest to others when I say the things in my head that I am already saying to myself. (I don’t think I do this much anymore. I am getting better on both ends, but I hope especially the first.)
Anyway.
Characters that externalize their self-hatred onto others in ways I find interesting: Vriska, Bakugo, Loki
These are not nice people; these are, in fact, distinctly abusive people. To me, they are also engaging, sympathetic, and more than anything fascinating characters because they are all so clearly unhappy. Because they are all, so clearly, equally cruel to themselves.
Like, example:
Loki finds out he’s an ice giant and literally tries to genocide all ice giants. And on the one hand, hello, genocide, wtf, but on the other hand it is impossible for me not to see that as the intensely suicidal gesture it is. Notably, immediately after his attempted metaphorical suicide is stopped, he literally jumps off a bridge.
Now Vriska. Damn, that girl is messed up. Does anyone even know why she walked Tavros off that cliff? Does Vriska? What the fuck. What the fuck.
You want to understand what’s going on in Vriska’s head, you just have to look at the conversation she has with her dead self. (Andrew Hussie is a master of metaphorically presenting serious mental issues like depression and suicidal ideation as conversations w/ self. See the conversation Dirk has with AR.).
I mean, seriously, this shit is vicious.
She explicitly points out that she’s never felt happy. (And later that she’s never felt safe.)
She explicitly characterizes her own desire to be happy as “selfish” and “narcissistic.”
She is not allowed to want small, nice things that make her feel safe. Not only is she not allowed, wanting happiness makes her bad as a person.
And she repeatedly frames all this in the most gaslight-y, emotionally charged, self-hating language imaginable: “the worst kind you’re capa8le of”, “stupid”, “self-indulgent”, that she deserved “to get killed”.
Live Vriska frames personal growth as explicitly incompatible with happiness. She is supposed to do what’s necessary (as defined by unclear sources, but most strongly linked to her ancestor and her society) and live up to exterior expectations.
Live Vriska frames this intensely vitriolic, negative, self-hating take on life as “harsh truth” that she (dead, happy Vriska) “USED to understand.”
Live Vriska is not allowed to feel bad when bad things are said about her because these “tiny little 8arbs” are harsh truths and part of life (and not, you know, devastating and abusive attacks on her sense of self and desire for happiness/safety/stability.)
Live Vriska has normalized abuse. She does not recognize it aimed at herself. She, in fact, mirrors and echoes and amplifies the abusive messages she has internalized, both to herself and to the people around her.
Vriska, quite explicitly, believes happiness is selfish, believes she is not allowed to feel bad about abuse, believes she deserves anything bad that happens to her, considers herself an inherently bad person, and hatesherself.
And the thing is, like:
Vriska is 13-16 over the course of the comic.
13 year olds aren’t born with these ideas existing in their heads. They learned them somewhere. They heard them over and over. They were hurt, repeatedly, and repeatedly told that wasn’t hurt, that was harsh truth, and having bad feelings about what was happening made them weak and selfish. Made them deserve what happened to them. Their sense of normal and not normal and abusive and not abusive was deeply distorted by their childhood environment.
(Like, possibly, having a parental figure who has trained you to sacrifice other child victims to her for your own continued survival.)
And, you know, I also think we have evidence that Vriska’s particular mental set up makes her more vulnerable to this. Shades of BPD or NPD, she seems to react very strongly to perceived criticism and to have a very externally-defined sense of self. We know she can hear other people’s thoughts; we know she is sensitive (or even hypersensitive) to other people’s perceptions of her.
We see this even in the happier, shaking-off-old-patterns, dead Vriska. Dead Vriska spends some time with a (significantly older) troll she admires and you can see how malleable her sense of self is, her sense of goals and values are, as she almost completely remakes her identity in Meenah’s image.
Also, returning to the topic, hell yes Vriska is abusive towards others. Hell yes she causes a lot of harm and emotional damage (and death!!). And hell no those people don’t owe her any more of their time or trauma.
But I do think it’s clear her abusiveness towards others hella mirrors the patterns of abusiveness she’s playing out in her own head. You can see the things she says to herself in the things she says to others. You can see her turning around and mirroring the “hard truths” she’s internalized, and all the uncontrollable scariness of the world she’s in. (If you don’t do these things, if you don’t live this way, you will be hurt and you will deserve it. You will deserve to die.)
And I still don’t know what the fuck was going on when she mind-controlled Tavros off a cliff in some kind of hysterical fit, but just in writing this post I have had the dawning, creepy realization that that was a very chilling manifestation of “I’m hurting you to help you grow/this is the only way” coupled with the enactment of a suicide.
…..Yikes.
Anyway, tl;dr: I find Vriska very interesting and I am like 99.999% convinced that live Vriska has the (so far) failed character growth arc and dead Vriska has the actual successful character growth arc (as resolved by her eventual reunion with much healthier partner dead Terezi).
just moving along like everyone else 