revolutionarygays:

roselalondetrash:

swamp-wizard:

next time youre about to make an “actually dirk is a sympathetic softboy and vriska is an irredeemable sociopath” post i want you to really close-read homestuck and look deep in your heart of hearts and try to convince yourself that if their places were swapped dirk would not be feeding people to a giant spider

It’s flippant to say that the main bone people have to pick with Vriska is her abuse by Spidermom, though.You could put many people in Vriska’s shoes and they would do the same things as her for their own survival while not being like her. It’s not like Feferi is a controversial character, for instance.

I don’t think Dirk (while not a “sympathetic softboy”) would treat Tavros, among others, in the same way Vriska does. Nor would he engineer Bec Noir’s creation, or meddle with Jade in the same way. 

i mean of course nobody has a bone to pick with vriska BECAUSE she was abused, and i don’t think that was the implication of the original post. in fact, people tend to just generally disregard that vriska was very blatantly abused altogether when they criticize her character – which is ridiculous, because characters like eridan and equius are given the benefit of the doubt when they’re infinitely less deserving.

the obvious reason people dislike vriska is because she was abusive and a bully. the bec noir and jade thing i care less about because they’re forgivable, but people genuinely hate her because she hurt tavros. and that’s fair!

but like, every other murder she committed was done because she had no other choice. she was very obviously terrified of her (massive, dangerous) lusus and just as terrified of living life without her lusus. doc scratch even engineered her murder of aradia and manipulated her into acting on his suggestions that she hurt her friends. vriska was a very easy target for a pedophile/child abuser like doc scratch who needed someone with poor social skills, poor impulse control, and pent up anger because of her already abusive situation. abused kids are extremely easy targets for being further abused by adults looking to exploit them.

bringing up feferi in this instance is pointless, because feferi’s situation was nothing like vriska’s. that was the whole point of this post. the only character whose childhood had as much suffering as vriska’s – and in a tangible way that caused them suffering readers can easily understand as being caused by an abusive parent – is dave’s. sure on a surface level feferi’s lusus is a demanding guardian with specific and dangerous needs (much less horrifying than spidermom’s, though) – but this never fell on feferi. eridan helped her. feferi was likable and upbeat and seemed generally well-adjusted compared to the other trolls, far from the neurotic mess vriska was dealing directly with the needs of her guardian alone (and the only person who ever “helped” her (terezi) hated her for good reason, unlike eridan who was thrilled to help feferi). vriska bears the characteristic hallmarks of a child from a broken home and an abusive parent. this is very much intentional and while a lot of people (for whatever reason) never picked up on it, it’s incredibly apparent in the narrative. the comic “vrisky business” was written by hussie himself and actually shows first hand how bad things are for vriska with her lusus and the emotional damage it causes her on a fairly regular basis. not to mention her interactions with (vriska), which show the reader directly that vriska hates herself and – in her own words – has never been happy in her entire life.

there’s no other character you can really compare to vriska beyond dave, who grew up in a society very different than vriska’s. it’s not to say this excuses vriska’s treatment of tavros and her other “friends”, or that people aren’t completely valid for disliking her, it’s that when attempting to compare her to other characters or put other characters in her shoes they fail to understand the scope of her situation or the severity of her abuse, nor do they understand that these were things the reader is SUPPOSED to understand about vriska.