Vriska Serket

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Character
Name: Vriska Serket
Occupation:
Relationships: Terezi Pyrope (moirails), Kanaya Maryam (ex-moirails), patron troll of John Egbert
Fandom: Homestuck
Other: associated zodiac sign: Scorpio
chat handle: arachnidsGrip
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Vriska Serket is a troll from the webcomic Homestuck.

Canon Biography

Pre-Hivebent

Vriska FLARPed frequently as a young troll with Terezi Pyrope in order to feed the bodies of her opponents to her lusus. During a game against Tavros Nitram and Aradia Megido, Vriska used her mind control powers to make Tavros jump off a cliff, rendering him paraplegic. This ended her friendship with Terezi and kicked off a a cycle of revenge that ended with Aradia dead, Vriska minus an arm and eye, and Terezi blind.

Hivebent

When entering The Medium, Vriska's lusus was severely injured, and Vriska decapitated her. She commissioned Equius to create a soulbot for Aradia as a peace offering, but this did not go according to plan. Aradia removed her from the blue team, and she joined Karkat on the red team, as Tavros's server player. Eventually, Aradia ends the revenge cycle by almost killing her, whereupon she fails to convince Tavros to strike the killing blow and ascends to God Tier.

Fandom

As of May 2022, Vriska is the twelfth most commonly tagged Homestuck character on AO3, with more than 6k works.

Vriscourse

Vriscourse is the discourse about Vriska. It happens a lot.

Vriska is a highly polarizing, morally grey character. Even for a troll, she often acts cavalier and enthusiastic towards violence, having killed, maimed, and/or manipulated most of her friends, and has a severely dysfunctional approach to romantic relationships. For these reasons, she is also strongly disliked within canon. In Karkat's first conversation with her, he calls her "THE MOST VILE BACKSTABBING SOCIOPATH WHO EVER LIVED."[1] Vriska often behaves rudely and egotistically. A command line also referred to her as "the huge bitch."[2]

Her main controversial relationship in canon was with Tavros Nitram. She flirted intensely with him in both red and black quadrants, the vast majority of which he did not reciprocate, and briefly mind-controlled him to both these ends. After rendering Tavros paraplegic, she also bullied and insulted him for his disability, including building him a house full of staircases. Many fans hate her primarily for this relationship, seeing justification of Vriska's actions as abuse apologism.[3][4][5][6][7]

Fans have also criticized what they see as disproportionate hate for Vriska, especially when compared to popular male characters, as sexist backlash to a rare complex female antihero.[8] Fans argue that she has intriguing and fleshed-out relationships, and is a victim of a society that twisted a young girl propelled by a desire for heroism into a villainous role.[9][10][11]

Vriska also sees herself as an antihero, achieving greater good through unsavory means when others find them too distasteful.[12]

Vriska and TPTB

Andrew Hussie has a weird and meta relationship with Vriska.[13] The self-insert character of the same name proposed to her and was beaten up. (Vriska-hating fans have accused Hussie of treating her as a Creator's Pet[14].)

Kate Mitchell is a controversial BNF and big fan of Vriska. She also wrote Vriska's Pesterquest route and is a former writer/director on Homestuck^2. Vriska's Pesterquest route contained a reference to the "Vriska did nothing wrong" meme and ignited a fresh wave of Vriscourse. [15]

Shipping

The most popular Vriska ships are Terezi/Vriska, John/Vriska, and Kanaya/Vriska. A 2018 analysis of her FanFiction.net tag found that she was most commonly shipped with John, Terezi, and Kanaya, in that order.[16]

Memes

Fanworks

Archives and Links

Resources

References