rosilycantankerous

Vriskapologists keep taking her redemption as a fait accompli because she’s sorry. Seriously, throw a rock and there’s a weirdo on Tumblr sobbing that no one will give her a chance now that she’s changed her ways and see this as proof that Vriska is the true victim here. Ok, I know a lot of Homestucks are really young but that’s just messed up and I hate seeing people swallow it. Remorse does not mean you have to let that person back into your life, as if you’re being the bad guy if you choose not to do so. Think about all the reasons this would be a Bad Thing to believe as a teenager.

But anyway, if you think of redemption as working a 12 step program for psychopathoholics anonymous, Canon!Vriska died right around the time she was seriously approaching the fourth step (making an honest inventory of yourself, your actions, your impact on the world, and the wrongs you’ve done) and poking at it with a stick. That’s a good start, but considering her lonnnnng history of false repentance and the way she has of using people’s trust against them, other characters would be under zero obligation to believe her. And that is, as you’ve said, her own doing.

Example of Vriska using patching things up after an argument as a chance to do more harm: Hey Aradia, go outside and see what your boyfriend’s up to! Example of Vriska using people’s trust in friendship as a weapon: see above.

Example of Vriska using people as tools: see above, but with lots of blue and red flashing lights.

Anyone who ever trusted Vriska to suddenly not act like Vriska has been mutilated, tortured, skewered, glubbed to death or fed to a spider by the start of Hivebent. The only trolls left in existence are the ones who know her well enough to know they cannot trust her to do anything but follow her usual pattern of behavior. This is the best friendship she can hope for, and it’s her own doing. Tragic, yes. But you’d do the same exact shit if it were your friend she murdered.

Going off the 12 steps again: the fifth step would be to be honest and tell everyone in her life how she understands her actions to have harmed them, and I honestly cannot imagine Vriska pulling off that kind of humble honesty after seven hours of chatting with a dude on IM. It would be lame if she did!

I can barely imagine her working the fifth step at all, period, because in my experience people don’t just suddenly come to have perfect insight after a lifetime of fucking other people over. But this IS a fantasy comic, so who knows.

The thing about the fifth step is, there is no expectation of forgiveness on the part of the wronged. That is a crucial part of the process—to understand that there are some things you cannot make right, ever, no matter how sorry you are, and to learn to live with that. You can’t force people to forgive you. You can’t blackmail them into letting you back into their lives. You can only clear the slate and start over. I get a huge vibe of “how dare people not let it go that she crippled Tavros! She felt horrible about it!” Of course she did, she’s a screwed-up monster of a kid but she’s still a kid and she still has feelings, regardless of how much she tries to be Mindfang 2.0.

Forgiveness is fucking hard. It takes years. It takes serious honesty 100% of the time and is a fragile process. it’s hard to write, too, which might be why actual redemption is something Vriska never has to undergo in these magic past-harm-b-gone fics or readings of canon.

Her actions are made to be OK by blaming Alternian society for being so fucked up, or her lusus for being bloodthirsty. Blaming Tavros for what she did to him because he was “a wuss” and claiming that she was “just teasing” about apologizing for his paraplegia, blaming Terezi and Eridan for “abandoning her”, blaming Aradia for having attacked her with ghosts, blaming everyone for not trusting her (GOSH). All this victim blaming is just gross. Even if it’s just fiction. When I see it I go “how does this person not see how fucked up that is?”

Or her actions are acknowledged as fucked up, but somehow being 13 makes her innocent of the concept of right and wrong and she gets a pass. I think a lot of 13 year olds would be annoyed about being likened to mindless infants by this lousy excuse for a justification, but whatever.

Or her actions are made to be terrible bad things she did, buuuut she’s better now because she feels really bad n stuff. Lazy, shitty writing, and insultingly blind to the way people work. Hussie writes people who are fascinating because they are complex. Don’t reduce them to cardboard cutouts just to have a hero you’re comfortable with.

I love how other characters are supposed to just randomly have no problem with her despite the horrible things she’s done to them, but we never see the process of coming to trust each other again. They’re just supposed to go back to being friends because Vriska is cool and we should all think she’s cool—the arrogant, nobody-counts-but-me attitude that caused all her problems in the first place.

I like dissecting people. The reasons they do things, the problems they have, the way they work around them. And I hate seeing such prime fodder for a redemption arc as Vriska Serket get utterly bulldozed because somebody can’t admit that the character they identify with is a complete bastard quite a lot of the time and that dealing with the consequences of their actions will take a lot of fucking work.

It would be utterly fascinating, though, if someone ever did.

Vriska is way more interesting when people address the two wildly different halves of her character—the gleefully psychopathic bully and the genuinely confused little kid who does seriously shitty fucked up things to her friends and then wonders why they always leave her.
She’s an unstoppable grade-school bully who’s getting beat up at home. Pity her, try to understand her, admire her guts—just know that if you don’t stay the fuck out of her crosshairs she will take it out on you.
And being on the receiving end of all that passed-along trauma? NOT FUN.
I find this view of the character much richer and more compelling than the too-prevalent image of a poor helpless misunderstood victim swooning into John’s arms with all the consequences of her crimes conveniently wiped away by the magic of Sorry Fixes Everything.