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TabberCanonGrayedCanon • link=Aranea Serket/Dubiously Canon}}Dubiously Canon
For the post-scratch version of this character, see Aranea Serket (post-scratch).

Aranea Serket is one of the pre-scratch trolls. She wears red shoes, white pointed glasses, and a blue long-sleeved dress with a white Scorpio symbol. She has her hair at shoulder length and wears a necklace with the Signless' symbol, mirroring Mindfang's similar fascinationHS with the figure. It appears that she is also older than the other troll players, having "lived" in the dream bubbles for so long that time has lost meaning to her. Though she works against Lord English, the actions she takes to achieve her goals steadily become highly morally questionable.

Concept and creation[]

Etymology[]

When the suggestion box for Vriska's name was open, "Aranea" was one of the suggested names, given by Radiation. Aranea's name is derived from araneus, which is Latin for "spider" and is pronounced a-RAH-neh-a, "Araneae" serves as the name for the entire Order of spiders which separates them from other Arachnids. Derivatives of it are used for numerous taxonomic ranks from Suborder down to Genus. Aranea was also the name of one of Charlotte the spider's daughters at the end of Charlotte's Web.

Biography[]

Aranea hero mode

Aranea's first appearance

Within the A1 iteration of Sgrub, Aranea's role was the Sylph of Light. She is shown to have reached god tier, and has some kind of healing powers, to the extent that it's possible for her to restore Terezi's sight. Aranea spent three sweeps in a failed session, only to seek out Echidna for a way to reset the session, prompting Damara Megido to initiate the scratch. Aranea was then killed along with everyone else in the session by Meenah Peixes, in order to not be completely rewritten by the scratch, and entered the dream bubbles that Meenah's A2 descendant created.

She initially appearsHS in a black void, waving and smiling at Jake after he blacked out. Jake later describes her as both some sort of spidery vampire and the girl of my dreams; the latter is based on his fondness of blue ladies and spider girls.

FirstAranea

Aranea talking to Terezi

Later, after initially greeting her posing as Vriska Serket, Aranea introduces herselfHS by name to Terezi Pyrope, revealing that she is in fact Vriska's ancestor. But rather than merely having lived thousands of solar sweeps ago on Alternia, as Mindfang did, this version of her claims to have preceded Terezi's entire civilization by 8illions – she lived in Universe A's pre-scratch timeline, and has been watching the post-scratch timeline from the afterlife for quite a while.HS

Aranea god tier

Aranea as a fully realized Sylph of Light

Later, Aranea stops by Jake's dead dream self's house after he is knocked out. She explains to him the nature of her psychic powers, and how she has spent very little time studying B2 Earth, because the gods have given her little access to it. Aranea attempts to be considerate towards Jake, and, as she can get a vague sense of humans' feelings, knows he has a flushed attraction towards her. This causes Aranea to go back to the subject of her psychic abilities, and how the highbloods on Beforus were kind and just to the lower classes. They enter a dream bubble containing the Wayward Vagabond, Dave Strider, Rose Lalonde, Kanaya Maryam and Karkat Vantas aggressing (or being aggressed by) Meenah. Aranea is put out with Meenah's antics, and exasperatedly relates the story of the Ancestors, much more briefly than she would like. Jake, confused, assumes that Meenah is the Condesce, proceeding to attack her, and prompting Aranea to wake him up, reminiscent of Vriska. Dirk appears in the bubble and absconds with Roxy, but being a mere psychic construct is unable to physically leave the bubble with her; Aranea instead wakes him with her psychic abilities, allowing Dirk to bringHS the Nobles togetherHS and enterHS the Medium.

After Lord English begins destroying dream bubbles, Aranea has the idea to find the ghost of Calliope, who she suspects is the secret to defeating the Lord of Time. She relates this plan to Meenah, who has a plan to confront English with a militia. After skeptically wishing Meenah luck, Aranea sets up an exposition booth in Karkat's private dream bubble, paying anyone who will listen to her long winded explanations. She again crosses paths with Meenah, and performs her service thusly.

AraneaPsychic

Aranea's psychic powers

Sometime later, Aranea joins forces with her dancestor and begins sailing aboard a pirate ship, further crewed by Tavros Nitram, Aradia Megido, a completely blind but completely alive Sollux Captor, and her friend Meenah. During their adventure, Vriska and Aranea strike up quite a companionship. Aranea believes their time together helped her open her eyes to certain capabilities she had been hiding from. Vriska concurs on this notion, noting that she is THE 8EST. Vriska convinces Aranea to help her mind control an army of ghosts to help attract English's attention, so that he can do more damage to the ring and fill in the rest of their maps. Aranea was not in favor of the idea at first, but Vriska made a strong case for her involvement. Later it's revealed that Vriska was being facetious about her admiration for Aranea and most likely used it to halt Aranea's constant storytelling.

Resurrection and B2 Session[]

Aranea is later shown to be controlling Gamzee Makara, using him to steal the Ring of Life from John. She then has him go to sleep and give the ring to her, resurrecting her. She then pulls herself into the B2 session by waking him up. Upon entering, Meenah contacts her by Shellphone, and they discuss the fact that Aranea is not supposed to be there in the alpha timeline. Aranea reveals that she plans to take over the session, and make sure it never creates the universe English was born in. Although she admits this will create a doomed timeline, she claims that her powers as a Sylph of Light, refined over millions of sweeps, will be enough to turn the doomed timeline into the alpha one. She also begins requesting that she be called Mindfang, like her post-scratch self. After Jade Harley is KO'd by Jake's Hope Field, Aranea realizes that Jade would just become possessed again once she woke up. She then topples Jade's house upon Jade's body, who dies a Just death.

Later, she is confronted by Roxy, who wished to take the ring from her to revive Calliope. Aranea puts Roxy to sleep using her powers and is then confronted by Brain Ghost Dirk, who is angry because he thinks that she kissed Jake. Aranea is healed by the Ring of Life after Brain Ghost Dirk attacks her, but soon after, he proceeds to nearly rip the soul out of her body using his powers as the Prince of Heart. After Brain Ghost Dirk disappears due to Jake dying, she is attacked by Jane Crocker, whom Aranea puts to sleep. Afterwards, Jane begins choking Aranea while still asleep. This may be because of the Condesce's control or the tiaratop itself. She begins to levitate BG Dirk's katana, pointing it to herself and Jane. Then the Condesce comes, angry, and Aranea looks up in shock.

She shakes Jane off her back and attempts to kill her by throwing Brain Ghost Dirk's katana using her powers. Jake blocks the attack and dies a Heroic death. She then throws Jake's body at Jane, impaling her with the exposed end of the sword, resulting in a Just death. The Condesce unleashes a psionic blast over LOFAF's surface, destroying most of Jade's house and killing Kanaya in the process, which Aranea barely manages to dodge.

GAME OVER planets colliding

what the fuck happened here?

Enraged, Aranea heaves the Land of Light and Rain toward the Land of Frost and Frogs, destroying the Battleship Condescension. When the Condesce dodges out of the way, she then launches the Land of Crypts and Helium towards her, but the Condesce intercepts the attack with the Land of Heat and Clockwork. Terezi attempts to attack Aranea from behind, but is quickly noticed and psychically forced to stab herself. The Condesce grabs a distracted Aranea by the throat and removes the Ring of Life from her before snapping her neck; thrown into a nearby wall of fire, Aranea is delivered an unequivocally Just death.

Retconned timeline[]

The whole sequence of events depicted in GAME OVER is prevented from happening when John retcons the entire timeline. Unlike almost every other character, however, it is not clear what became of her in this new version of reality. Meenah never saw or heard from herHS after her resurrection and second death, and she is the only Beforan troll not to appear in the Vriskagram flash documenting the new timeline's meteor journey.

Personality and traits[]

Aranea appears to be a nice and considerate person, interested in helping others around her. She however admits that she has a tendency to talk too much, and to bring conversations back around to herself. In this way she is very similar to Vriska, yet different because of her more gentle nature. Terezi even goes as far as to call her 4 N1C3 VR1SK4. This mirrors the relation between Feferi and Meenah, as Meenah is quite rude and mean, while sharing Feferi's bubbly nature and tendency to get excited.

The Cancer necklace she wears suggests she is a follower of The Sufferer. This seems at odds with her being pre-scratch Mindfang, since the tale of the Sufferer did not happen in the pre-scratch universe of the trolls. However, it was revealedHS that she acquired this necklace after death and that she learned a lot about the history of the post-scratch universe after her death. Aranea also revealedHS that she considered herself more of a fan of the Sufferer than a worshipper. Note that Mindfang called the Sufferer's tale compellingHS, suggesting she was at least sympathetic to his teachings. It is also possible that she just wears it as a sign of appreciation for Kankri Vantas, though this latter possibility is unlikely, as the Sufferer and his sign only seem to annoy the Insufferable. Of course, that also might be her intention.

Like her dancestor, Vriska, Aranea possesses the ability to exert influence or outright control over the minds of others. Due to her eons of experience and possibly her Beforan upbringing, her ability is both more powerful and extensive. She is shown being able to control vast multitudes of trolls and, through this control, use their abilities by proxy (as shown by her manipulation of various incarnations of Damara Megido whilst she was in an entirely different plane of reality). As shown on this pageHS, her powers include waking people up (mirroring Vriska's ability to put people to sleep and wake them up). Note that she was waking up a dream bubble projection of Dirk, suggesting that she was actually putting the projection to sleep, waking Dirk up on Derse.

Interestingly enough, she also shares personality traits with Kanaya, including her tendency to ramble, her helpfulness, and her affection towards the Thief in her group's session though Aranea's feelings towards Meenah have not been shown to be flushed. This may be significant given her shared role with Kanaya as the Sylphs of their sessions. Aranea could also be Kanaya's genetic descendant, given the "twelve extra wigglers" Karkat created on the Trolls' meteor, the fact that after the human scratch, the first and second generations of ectobabies arrived in the opposite order, and Aranea having already impliedHS that she is the genetic descendant of Terezi as well as Vriska.

Although Aranea's personality at first seems to contrast against Vriska's, she later on shows motives very much like those of her dancestor: just as Vriska has made highly risky moves to involve herself in achieving a goal (e.g. involving herself in the creation of Bec Noir to make sure that the person who she planned to kill exists), Aranea revived herself with the Ring of Life to try and prevent our heroes from creating a universe in which Caliborn can reside and grow up to become Lord English, thus forcibly 'healing' the timeline. This ultimately led to the catastrophic events of GAME OVER. John later refers to her as the other vriska, which further emphasizes their similarities.

Relationships[]

Aranea says she was not particularly popular among her group of players, referring to Meenah as the only one she would have called a true friend.

Jake English[]

Jake is at first attracted to Aranea, likely because she is blue, but is extremely upset when she tries to kiss him, flailing and pushing her until she lets go of him. Aranea respects that boundary but then activates his hope powers without his consent. She uses Jake as a tool in her plan and seems to hold little personal feelings towards him.

Meenah Peixes[]

Despite their drastically differing personalities, Meenah and Aranea were best friends throughout the time of their session and afterwards. This is because they both were not particularly popular members of their team. Their friendship ended when Aranea revived herself in an attempt to prevent the kids' session from creating a universe in which Lord English can reside: shortly after reviving herself, she talked to Meenah who disapproved of her plan.

Porrim Maryam[]

In the first part of Openbound, Aranea confesses to Meenah that she and Porrim have shared a redrom relationship. She waves it off as a red fling, and the subject is visibly upsetting to her, and states that it lasted about half a sweep.

Terezi Pyrope[]

Prior to the events of GAME OVER, Terezi and Aranea share a complicated relationship, not totally unlike Terezi's relationship with Vriska. When the two first meet, Terezi says she thinks she and her would have been good friends, being drawn to her similarities with Vriska, and her genial nature. As a sign of good will, Aranea offers to heal Terezi's eyesight with her Sylph of Light abilities, however Terezi declines the offer, seeing her blindness as an important part of her identity and her experiences.

They remain on good terms up until Terezi, lost in a spiral of self-hatred due to her Faygo abuse, her decaying relationships with Dave and Karkat and abusive relationship with Gamzee, decides to take Aranea's offer to heal her sight. This, however only make's Terezi's spiraling even worse, having lost something she saw as important to her self-image, and her dealing with a sensory overload with the return of her eyesight. Their relationship takes a turn towards the antagonistic when Terezi realizes that Aranea's plans to take over the B2 session and, seeing the damage she's causing, attempts to kill the elder Serket. Terezi fails however, and is mortally wounded in her attempt. Terezi later becomes instrumental in repairing the ruined session through aiding and directing John's retcon shenanigans.

Given Aranea's plans to take over the B2 session and her ability to control Gamzee, it is possible that Aranea intentionally used Gamzee as a way to pacify an insecure Terezi, as her Seer of Mind abilities may have stood in the way in Aranea's hostile takeover. However this is not confirmed, so it remains mere speculation

Vriska Serket[]

Vriska initially had a very positive relationship towards her dancestor, largely due to their shared admiration for Aranea's post-scratch counterpart, Mindfang. The two shared a very sisterly bond and started being influenced by the other's behavior, with Vriska taking a greater interest in storytelling and Aranea becoming more daring and confident. However, their relationship was far from perfect, as Aranea grew frustrated with the teasing she received from Vriska and Meenah, and was thoroughly fed up with being long dead and irrelevant. Once Aranea learned of the Ring of Life, and its mysterious ability to restore life to the dead, she begun hatching a plan to take over the B2 session, use her advanced powers as a Sylph of Light (with help from Jake English's Page of Hope abilities) to turn the altered session into the Alpha session, and prevent Caliborn from ever existing. This plan failed spectacularly and Aranea died to never be seen again. Vriska and Meenah were left despondent after Aranea's betrayal and eventually lose interest in their plans to kill Lord English, largely due to the loss of their most powerful psychic.

Following the retcon, it appears that Vriska never met her dancestor, or at the very least, never formed any significant bond with her.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • Her exposition booth is a reference to Lucy's psychiatry booth from the comic Peanuts, but "Doctor" is exchanged for "Sylph", referencing her title as a Sylph of Light. Also, instead of charging nickels she is offering to pay listeners in boonbucks. The panel is also drawn in the generic Peanuts style in its first appearance.
  • Her title, as the Sylph of Light, is part of a progression. Whereas the pre-scratch titles are Witch of Time, Maid of Space, Sylph of Light, and Thief of Life, the post-scratch titles are Maid of Time, Sylph of Space, Thief of Light, and Witch of Life.
  • Of all the Heroes of the A, B and Cherub sessions, Aranea is the only character never to have been directly playable, either through reader commands or directly in a Flash game.
  • Aradia, while alive, statedHS that Vriska is unable to control her, despite attempting to do so. By contrast, Aranea mind-controls several instances of DamaraHS, at considerable distance, without apparent difficulty.
Homestuck Characters
Pre-scratch
Kids
Heir of Breath Breath Aspect Seer of Light Light Aspect Knight of Time Time Aspect Witch of Space Space Aspect
JohnLogo John Egbert RoseLogo Rose Lalonde DaveLogoSlashed Dave Strider JadeLogo Jade Harley
ectoBiologist [EB]
ghostyTrickster [GT]
tentacleTherapist [TT] turntechGodhead [TG] gardenGnostic [GG]
Post-scratch
Kids
Maid of Life Life Aspect Rogue of Void Void Aspect Prince of Heart Heart Aspect Page of Hope Hope Aspect
JaneLogo Jane Crocker RoxyLogo Roxy Lalonde DirkLogo Dirk Strider JakeLogo Jake English
gutsyGumshoe [GG] tipsyGnostalgic [TG] timaeusTestified [TT] golgothasTerror [GT]
Post-scratch
Trolls
Maid of Time Time Aspect Page of Breath Breath Aspect Mage of Doom Doom Aspect Knight of Blood Blood Aspect
Aries Aradia Megido Taurus Tavros Nitram Gemini Sollux Captor Cancer Karkat Vantas
apocalypseArisen [AA] adiosToreador [AT] twinArmageddons [TA] carcinoGeneticist [CG]
Rogue of Heart Heart Aspect Sylph of Space Space Aspect Seer of Mind Mind Aspect Thief of Light Light Aspect
Leo Nepeta Leijon Virgo Kanaya Maryam Libra Terezi Pyrope Scorpio Vriska Serket
arsenicCatnip [AC] grimAuxiliatrix [GA] gallowsCalibrator [GC] arachnidsGrip [AG]
Heir of Void Void Aspect Bard of Rage Rage Aspect Prince of Hope Hope Aspect Witch of Life Life Aspect
Sagittarius Equius Zahhak Capricorn Gamzee Makara Aquarius Eridan Ampora Pisces Feferi Peixes
centaursTesticle [CT] terminallyCapricious [TC] caligulasAquarium [CA] cuttlefishCuller [CC]
Pre-scratch
Trolls
Witch of Time Time Aspect Rogue of Breath Breath Aspect Heir of Doom Doom Aspect Seer of Blood Blood Aspect
Aries Damara Megido Taurus Rufioh Nitram Gemini Mituna Captor Kankri Vantas
Mage of Heart Heart Aspect Maid of Space Space Aspect Knight of Mind Mind Aspect Sylph of Light Light Aspect
Leo Meulin Leijon Virgo Porrim Maryam Libra Latula Pyrope Scorpio Aranea Serket
Page of Void Void Aspect Prince of Rage Rage Aspect Bard of Hope Hope Aspect Thief of Life Life Aspect
Sagittarius Horuss Zahhak Capricorn Kurloz Makara Aquarius Cronus Ampora Pisces Meenah Peixes
Cherubs
Muse of Space Space Aspect Lord of Time Time Aspect
Calliope symbol Calliope (Alt) Caliborn symbol Caliborn
uranianUmbra [UU] undyingUmbrage [uu]
Guardians
Dad Roxy Lalonde
(pre-scratch)
Dirk Strider
(pre-scratch)
Becquerel
God Cat Rose Lalonde
(post-scratch)
Dave Strider
(post-scratch)
Brobot
Supporting
Characters
Jane Egbert Jaspers Lil Cal Jake Harley
John Crocker Mutie Lil Hal Jade English
Sprites
Nannasprite Jaspersprite Calsprite
Davesprite
Jadesprite
Tavrisprite
Gcatavrosprite
Fefetasprite
Jasprosesprite^2
Arquiusprite Erisolsprite
Davepetasprite^2
Carapacians /
Exiles
Wayward Vagabond Peregrine Mendicant Aimless Renegade Windswept Questant Writ Keeper
Agents
Jack Noir (B2) (Dead Session) Draconian Dignitary (B2) Hegemonic Brute Courtyard Droll
Midnight Crew
Spades Slick Diamonds Droog Hearts Boxcars Clubs Deuce
The Felt
Lord English Doc Scratch Snowman
Denizens
Typheus Cetus Hephaestus Echidna
Hemera Nix Yaldabaoth Abraxas
Consorts
Salamanders Turtles Crocodiles Iguanas
Underlings
Imps Ogres Basilisks Liches Giclopses
Other Black QueenBlack KingSkaian armiesGenesis FrogLususAncestors (The Condesce)HorrorterrorsBetty CrockerColonel SassacreCaseyGuy FieriInsane Clown PosseMaplehoofRambunctious CrowHalleySerenityMSPA ReaderMs. PaintAndrew HussieSawtoothSquarewaveHis Honorable TyrannyCalliope and Caliborn's parentsAngelsFantrolls
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