you, a normal person who likes to have fun: vriska would not be a slytherin. she has all of the traits and flaws of a gryffindor
me, jacked up on 20 years of harry potter and 8 years of homestuck meta: you’re right 100%, but the thing about harry potter and the hogwarts houses is that they weren’t decided by personality traits alone. slytherin was a house made up mostly of purebloods and rich old world wizards, and being much like the other houses was a bit of a tradition carried on throughout generations. politics in harry potter weren’t very well thought out — if a character was evil they were almost always a slytherin, which also meant they were rich and racist like, collectively. with that being said — if you align the harry potter caste system with the trolls’ caste system and actually interpret the stories and backgrounds of each characters in terms of the potterverse, it only makes sense for eridan, gamzee, equius, and vriska to all be in slytherin, as it aligns with their social position and values. vriska would probably be a figure not unlike draco malfoy, whose unfortunate birthright and cruel family forced her hand into becoming a monster. by actual definition vriska isn’t a slytherin, because she’s not very cunning and what have you, but when interpreting her story into the potterverse it fits best to put her in slytherin. within the narrative of homestuck she was a victim of parental abuse and abuse caused by her placement in the caste system of her society that took away her agency and made her a child soldier — the only real way to transplant a character like hers without stripping away key parts of her personality is by putting her in a similar social setting
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.
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