Vriska Serket, also known by her Trollian handle “arachnidsGrip”, is one of the trolls. Her handle relates to her in two main ways. One, “arachnids”, refers to her interest in and fascination for spiders. The “Grip” part of the handle most likely represents her power to have a grip on someone's mind, or control it. Her associated zodiac sign is Scorpio (♏) and her horns are shaped like a pincer and a stinger.
Vriska types in a cerulean blue font and her typing quirks revolve around the number eight in relation to arachnids (such as scorpions and spiders). The letter 'B' and sounds like 'eight' are replaced with the number 8 and some characters are repeated in sets of eight, usually vowels or punctuation marks. When she is flustered, she replaces vowels with an 8 and uses it in nearly every word she types, even in cases where the vowel doesn't match an "eight" sound. Her smilies also have eight pupils. In keeping with this theme, she was the eighth troll to be officially introduced. Scorpio is also the eighth sign of the Zodiac.
She ended up as a member of the Red Team after being evicted from the Blue Team by Aradia Megido.
Etymology
"Vriska" was suggested by Terin. "Serket" was suggested by Chin Music. Vriska is a shortening of "Vrishchika", the Hindi name for Scorpio, or could be related to "Vṛścika" the Sanskrit word for scorpion, but could also refer to Kalpavriksha, a wish-fulfilling tree below the fourth chakra according to Zentra Yoga. This tree is said to fulfil both positive and negative wishes, again corresponding with the duality of Vriska's personality.
Her surname is taken from "Serket", the Egyptian goddess of healing stings and bites, and also the personification of the scorpion. It means both "(she who) tightens the throat", a reference to paralysis caused by scorpion stings, and "(she who) causes the throat to breathe", meaning that Serket was one who could cure scorpion stings and the effects of other poisons such as snake bites. Serket was conflictingly associated with stings or bites and with the cures to such maladies, mirroring the duality of Vriska's personality - she alternates between seriously injuring other trolls and helping them, or at least attempting to do so.
Biography
Roleplaying
Vriska plays Flarp both out of enjoyment and to procure food for her Lusus, which feeds on young trolls. Her Flarp character is Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, “scourge of land dwellers and sea dwellers alike”. Mindfang has gained all the levels available to the Petticoat Seagrift class. All the levels. All of them. Mindfang, being a pirate with a hook for a hand, resembles Captain Hook, much as Tavros's character, Pupa Pan, resembles Peter Pan. The Fluorite Octet, named after a mineral resembling a d8 and the number eight, is also a play on the final words of Captain Hook in the original play of Peter Pan, which was "Floreat Etona," a Latin phrase from England where Captain Hook was schooled.
She had frequent pirate themed Flarping sessions with Eridan most likely inspired by their Ancestors' rivalry. On at least one occasion, Vriska and Terezi formed a Flarp team, 'Team Scourge', and faced off against Tavros and Aradia's 'Team Charge'. Vriska's actions in one particular Flarp session set off the cycle of revenge that leads to a number of catastrophic events for several trolls.
- Vriska, acting as Tavros's Clouder, uses her mind powers to make him jump off a cliff, leading to his paralysis from the waist down. Aradia and Terezi are distracted by Doc Scratch and unable to intervene.
- Seeking revenge for Tavros's injury, Aradia summons the ghosts of trolls whom Vriska fed to her Lusus to haunt her.
- To get back at her, Vriska uses her mind control powers to control Sollux, forcing him to ingest mind honey and cause his psychic eye beams to be let loose . He then is controlled to go to Aradia's hive and kill her.
- Terezi then takes matters into her own hands by informing Doc Scratch of Vriska's possession of one of his Magic Cue Balls. Infuriated, Doc Scratch blows up the Cue Ball, taking out Vriska's seven-pupiled eye and left arm as well as the tactical advantage she had with the Cue Ball.
- To get back at her, Vriska uses a Psychic Double Reach-Around
: she first mind controls Tavros, then uses his animal communion ability to control Terezi's Lusus, forcing it to tell Terezi to go outdoors and stare into the Alternian sun, blinding her. Since few trolls are able to withstand the sunlight, Vriska may have expected Terezi to wander blind and lost until she died of exposure or at the hands of terrifying monsters.
Ancestral Awakening
Vriska has another roleplay character not related to Flarp, a "spidersona." Nepeta however refuses to roleplay both with Mindfang and this other character, seeing as they both do terrible things. After the Rift, Vriska and Nepeta eventually agree not to roleplay at all.
Vriska reveals to John that her Flarp character is in fact named after her Ancestor, a very successful pirate and commander of a fleet of Gamblignants. Much of the loot she acquired came from treasure maps of her ancestor, including the Fluorite Octet.
The ultimate attack of her Fluorite Octet is "Ancestral Awakening", which seems to greatly boost her fighting power and gives her an outfit similar to both her Ancestor and her roleplaying character.
Hivebent
Vriska is first seen in the bottom right corner of this page
, but she is not fully revealed until Hivebent. Her left arm is robotic and is created for her by Equius Zahhak after she loses her real arm as a result of an error in judgment. Because he made the arm, Equius can control it to at least some degree.
Vriska originally has vision eightfold - while one of her eyes is normal, her other has seven smaller pupils, (one in the center surrounded by six others) creating a total of eight. By focusing her vision eightfold, she can use what seems to be some sort of x-ray vision. She is seen using this power once (by channeling her powerful eyesight through her customized red lens, probably to further augment her enhanced vision), to look through her Magic Cue Ball, and loses both the lens and her left eye when it is destroyed by Doc Scratch. Vriska attempts to use Magic Eight Balls as a replacement, but their inaccuracy frustrates her enough that she often breaks them, to the point of addiction. She later regains her Vision Eightfold when she attains god tier status.
Vriska possesses mind control abilities, allowing her to take control of others. However, only impressionable or insecure characters may be affected by them. She has a difficult time controlling human minds by viewing them on her computer; it may be because they are a different species, or they're too far away. Vriska's mind control turns out to be crucial to the plot against the Black Queen put into motion by Karkat Vantas and the troll version of Jack Noir. The Red Team successfully dethrones and exiles the BQ, thus avoiding a costly battle with her. The Queen later becomes Snowman, Vriska's exile, and uses Vriska and Terezi to exile Jack.
She is also supposedly able to read minds, but has never successfully demonstrated this ability, aside from a brief reference to mind reading the Consorts of the Land of Sand and Zephyr. Aranea has demonstrated the ability to detect emotions, but Aranea lived 3 sweeps longer than Vriska did and may have figured out that skill over that time just as Porrim discovered how to control her natural rainbow drinker glow.
Tavros, Sollux (half of the time), and Karkat are the only trolls known to be vulnerable to her powers. The fauna of Alternia, however, are susceptible to her influence when she uses Tavros' psychic powers to control them as she did with Terezi's dragon. It seems some Incipisphere inhabitants (Prospitians, Dersites, and Consorts) are also vulnerable. Aradia (including pre-death), Terezi, and Equius are known to be immune. It seems humans are resistant to her powers: she is only able to psychically wake them up or put them to sleep, a power she has used on Jade, John, and Dave. This is almost certainly be due to differing biology, as she was able to control the Courtyard Droll despite being in a different universe and game session, and Tavros's powers were able to extend outside of his universe. However, it should certainly be taken into account that she appears to be able to control Hussie, an ability she uses to keep him from stalling the plot.
Vriska's Respiteblock is strewn with broken Magic Eight Balls, Flarp guides, dice, and papers resembling RPG character sheets. She displays on her wall a picture of her role playing character from Flarp, Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, who is simply herself. She frequently steps on d4's, claiming it's because of her bad luck, but it seems the real reason is that she refuses to clean them up.
Vriska is something of an apocalypse buff (which is something you can be on Alternia). She loves to make doomsday devices and is even sometimes asked to make them for others. One particular customer - Eridan - is an especially powerful and influential member of the Nautical Aristocracy for whom she promises such a device in exchange for his collusion in her Flarp campaigns. She also has a nearby pal, Equius, who is handy with technology and whom Vriska frequently taps for parts and favors. Her doomsday devices include the Catenative Doomsday Dice Cascader.
She wields the Fluorite Octet, an item taken from a ghost ship along with Eridan's rifle Ahab's Crosshairs.
Vriska as she reached god tier.
After Aradia entered her Soulbot and regained her emotions, she beat Vriska almost to death, who consequently woke up on Prospit where she is slapped by Terezi which marks the end of the cycle of revenge started by the team charge debacle.
Tavros having witnessed Vriska being beaten to a pulp was going to kiss her to bring her back to life, but Vriska had other plans. She took control of Tavros and made him write out messages to him from her with her own blood. She wanted him to bring her to her Quest Bed so she could die and wake up on Skaia as the fully realized Thief of Light. While he did take her there, Tavros was unable to bring himself to kill her and absconded, leaving Vriska to bleed to death and ascend to the god tiers. Judging by the torn arm of her jacket she is seen with when they are just about to receive The Ultimate Reward, it appears that she may have taken the clothes from her original corpse to wear them again.
Post-Hivebent
Vriska contacts John Egbert from The Veil through Trollian. Initially, she attempts to psychically manipulate him through her computer. After her first attempt fails, she tries harder and manages to wake him from his sleep. Upon learning that Terezi has already assisted John, she sets out to “show her the meaning of helpfulness”. Vriska proceeds to offer quite a bit of assistance to him, reminding him to help Jade enter The Medium, explaining aspects of Sburb, and offering to send him maps of his Land, among other things. Nevertheless, her antagonistic tendencies show through in that she misleads John about her real name, first suggesting that of her Flarp character, Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, and later telling him that it's “a sekret”. Karkat implies that she flirts with John as a means to compete with Terezi.
It turns out that Vriska is the reason for a lot of major events in the kids' session. She was responsible for Jade's narcolepsy. She makes John fall asleep while he is about to prototype Jade's kernelsprite with a doll. She wanted to be responsible for the creation of Bec Noir, because she thinks that she is going to be the one to kill him. She also took control of the Courtyard Droll to lead the Draconian Dignitary to Rose's MEOW journal, and in the process kill a doomed timeline Dave, allowing Bec to be created in the first place.
Later on, at about an hour after Aradia reaches god tier, Vriska is seen engaging Tavros in a fight, as Tavros wanted to kill Vriska when she revealed she was paradox responsible for creating Bec Noir. She taunts him with his sawed-off legs and Tavros charges at Vriska, trying to kill her. Vriska then proceeds to take his weapon mid-charge, and stab him through the chest with his own lance, casting the body down into the abyss where Terezi later finds it. Though Vriska herself isn't actually seen, Terezi smells a trail of special stardust, belonging to the wings of a certain mischievous fairy. Terezi also notes that close to the stardust trail were trails of white light that smelled 'hopeful' to her. It is obvious to Terezi that Tavros' murder is connected to Vriska, but errs on the side of Legislacerator caution and conducts a full investigation nonetheless. Terezi later suspects Vriska of murdering Kanaya and Feferi as well, and sets off to confront her.
Some time after killing Tavros, Vriska contacts John and reveals that she actually felt pretty bad about killing him- even if it was perfectly justifiable in troll society. She also tells John about the trolls' version of Guardians: their Ancestors. Vriska's Ancestor is Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, whom Vriska named her Flarp character after. They share the same blood color and symbol, and even use the same weapon. When she was younger, Vriska used the Marquise's journal, which she found in a chest delivered to Alternia by meteorite, to find the ship where the Fluorite Octet was hidden.
She later on goes to confront Eridan, and as they are about to fight, Gamzee makes an appearance. Both Eridan and Vriska seem surprised to see him, and while they're preparing for a three-way showdown, Kanaya turns up. After kicking Gamzee over the cliff, the enraged rainbow drinker proceeds to punch Vriska in the face and saw Eridan in half. These events seem to have inspired flushed feelings in her.
After her confrontation with Eridan and Gamzee, she was shown on the rooftop, using her computer. There, after ascending some stairs, Terezi confronted her and accused her of the murders of all of the dead trolls and Gamzee. After hearing the story, Vriska attempted to tell Terezi the truth about the trolls' deaths, but the outcome of her outburst remains unknown, as though Terezi x3 facepalmed after hearing it, a glitch caused much of their conversation to be unintelligible. Finally, at some point, Terezi flipped her scratched coin, telling Vriska that if it landed on heads Vriska would “ST4Y”, but if it landed on the scratch she would “GO”. Terezi was intentionally misleading in her description - we were meant to believe that “GO”ing meant Vriska would go to Bec Noir, but really, “ST4Y” meant that she would live and “GO” meant she would die. Both of them were aware of this. After the coin flipped, it landed on scratch - because of Vriska's influence. Terezi prepared to stab Vriska through her turned back, but at first couldn't go through with it.
Vriska's "DEAD" tag.
However, Terezi, using her powers as Seer of Mind, saw the disastrous consequences of not killing Vriska when she had the chance - the erstwhile Thief of Light would have led Bec Noir directly to the hideout in the Medium, leading to the death of all non-god tier trolls. Terezi proceeds to stab Vriska in the back. Vriska then dies, but it is left unclear if killing Tavros and her influence in the creation of Bec Noir caused her to be given a "just" death, or if Slick breaking her clock forced her death. (It's possible that, in keeping with the many parallels with her Ancestor, Tavros' death at her hands was the factor leading to the ruling of her death as "just".) She dies, ironically just after she reveals her true feelings about fighting Jack Noir to John. It is unknown however, if she is struck with a "perma-death" or a "false-death" due to Slick's interference with the clock. It is also unknown if the clock had any actual bearing on whether or not Vriska would have substained a "Just" or "Heroic" death. If so, it is possible Crowbar's Crowbar negated any special properties it had, leaving a chance for Vriska to revive. On the flipside, it's also entirely possible that Crowbar's Crowbar negated any special properties in terms of letting her revive if the death is not heroic or just, thus, preventing any chance of her revival. It is worth noting, however, that as we see her die, we immediately after hear “tick” “tock”, which was said to “accompany the ultimate demise of the tyrant less an arm and an eye”. Whether this refers to her loss of both arm and eye prior to entering the game, or her regaining of both arm and eye as a god tier would prevent this, is unclear. In addition, this could also refer to Bec Noir, as he is pretty clearly missing both an arm and an eye.
After Death
She was seen briefly meeting John from Davesprite's timeline (the one killed by Terezi telling him to skip straight to the final Gate) in his dream bubble. It is later revealed that she dated the alternate John for some time, but the relationship failed and they broke up, remaining friends until the alternate John was double killed by Lord English. She was later seen once more wandering through a desert filled with innumerable gorgeous stallions, whereupon she came across one Andrew Hussie, who proceeded to propose marriage to Vriska; unfortunately for him, she reacted with shock and disgust.
Gamzee preserved her body until arriving in the post-Scratch Kids' session, where he prototyped Vriska's and Tavros' remains with Jane's sprite resulting in the birth of Tavrisprite. However, this fusion is short-lived, as Tavrisprite soon destroys itself because of how the two sides are impossible to reconcile. After Tavrisprite's self-destruction, Vriska's dead self appeared with Tavros in a dream bubble set in the Land of Sand and Zephyr. She begins to complain about the temporary fusion however Tavros thinks they were both over reacting and both agree there were some upsides to the fusion. Vriska apologizes for killing Tavros and expresses dissatisfaction with being dead and the fact she is being harassed by some orange guy. Being sick of it she convinces Tavros to help fuck things up with her.
Vriska on a ship with a few other characters searching for the ancient weapon.
After hearing legends about an ancient weapon hidden somewhere in the Furthest Ring supposedly capable of killing Lord English, she and Tavros decide to find it. Unfortunately, because the Ring is an infinite void with no fixed points in space, all maps of it are totally black and feature no reference points. This problem is solved when English begins to fracture reality by destroying dream bubbles, causing the cracks to appear on the maps and allowing Vriska and Tavros to continue their hunt. In order to reduce the amount of time spent searching, she plans to get other ghosts to pretend that they are searching for Calliope; English would then attack their dream bubbles, which would allow Vriska to direct his rampage so that she can more easily find the weapon.
At some point after their search begins, John arrives in their dream bubble and meets her in person for the first time. They discuss her death (as John was not aware that she was dead prior to this meeting) and the various plans being enacted to stop English. The conversation is abruptly ended when Meenah interrupts them to criticize Vriska's idea and throw her trident at John. Enraged, Vriska challenges Meenah to a duel, with both agreeing that whoever wins will get to use all available troll ghosts for their own anti-English plan. Vriska won the duel, and began her treasure hunting plan. She began traveling the furthest ring on a ship along with Tavros, Meenah, Aranea, Aradia, and Sollux. She used the army of doomed troll copies as bait for Lord English to destroy more dream bubbles, and eventually discovered using the maps that the treasure was actually near the start of her journey.
They then meet up with John, who mentions having the Ring of Life, which Vriska assumed John would give to her. However, John is hesitant to do so, as Vriska's new plan leads him to believe she is dangerous. After finding the treasure, Aranea steals the ring and comes back to life, in an attempt to replace the alpha timeline of the B2 session and avert English's existence. Neither Vriska nor Meenah approve of the plan. She and Vriska then discuss how they're going to put forth their plan without Aranea, and Vriska reveals that Aranea was controlling most of the ghosts, and without the army they don't see how it'll be possible. Vriska also confesses she thinks she was trying to kill Lord English for the wrong reasons, and the two of them decide to ditch the plan altogether. Later, the two begin to pursue a relationship, leading up to a kiss that is shown to upset Andrew Hussie.
Despite John's retcons creating a new timeline in which Vriska is alive, the pre-retcon version of Vriska still exists. She and Meenah met the post-retcon version of Vriska at some point during the meteor journey, shown in the Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5 opening flash. This version of Vriska, referred to as (Vriska) by the dialoglogs from this point forward, continues her relationship with Meenah, until Meenah ends the relationship when they cross paths with the alive Vriska yet again. This drives (Vriska) to tears. She later walks around a path of memories with Terezi until she reunites the version of Terezi who died in the aftermath of GAME OVER. They embrace and hold hands as they watch the cracks in paradox space get worse and worse.
New Timeline
John saving Vriska.
In the new, retconned alpha timeline, John zaps to the meteor and follows Terezi's second last and most important instruction listed on her scarf, and punches Vriska so that Terezi cannot kill her. After John leaves, Vriska wakes up in confusion. Because of John saving Vriska, she traveled with the others on the meteor on the three-year trip to the B2 session. Vriska's actions on the timeline are numerous: her simply being alive avoided a lot of guilt and depression that Terezi underwent pre-retcon, which also prevented Terezi from entering a kismesissitude with Gamzee and ultimately allowing Aranea heal her eyes, and Vriska also put her foot down to curb Rose's drinking problem. At some point she met the pre-retcon version of herself, who she doesn't seem to like very much.
In addition, after arriving in the new session, she traveled back in time 5 months, just like Gamzee did in the old timeline, to prototype Tavros's body as Jane's sprite (instead of both his and Vriska's to create the short-lived Tavrisprite). Later she prototyped Dirk's kernel with Equius and Lil Hal, just as Gamzee did in the original alpha timeline. After the post-scratch kids all went god tier, she led the meteor crew in a heist to free Jake and Roxy from the prison on Derse. Jake was freed from prison, but Roxy was accidentally killed by Jane. Vriska was the mysterious interloper Jane told Jade and Calliope about when recounting these events, and she put Jade and Jane (both corrupted by The Condesce) to sleep, preventing both of them from causing more harm for the time being. She also says that she gathered information from Dersites on the threats in the session, those being the Condesce and the three versions of Jack Noir.
Vriska is later seen with everyone else on the victory platform. She participates in some of the conversations that take place there, and then she explains to everyone the threats of the Condesce, B1 and B2 Jack Noir, and Spades Slick. She allows everyone to decide who will take on who (except for reserving some people, such as Karkat and Kanaya, for specific roles). After that, she uses Roxy's Crockercorp Appearifier Rifle to bring Dirk immediately to the victory platform with everyone else, and then she hops through a fenestrated wall to the Furthest Ring by taking the power supply with her and breaking its connection, saying that she will go kill Lord English, but not before also declaring that her ghost (this appears to refer to her alternate self from the timeline where Terezi killed her) is being a "“FUCKING LOSER!!!!!!!!”"
Vriska meets her alternate self in the Furthest Ring.
In the Furthest Ring, she runs into her alternate self and Meenah once again, and immediately berates her alternate self, who wonders how her other self can be so horribly rude. Both Vriskas believe their alternate self to be from the timeline in which they fought Jack Noir. She leaves with Meenah and discusses plans for how to kill Lord English with her, until they run into pre-retcon Tavros, who amassed a massive army of ghosts without any mind powers.
Personality and Traits
Vriska is, more often than not, a huge bitch. She gets easily bored, makes shady deals with people, does horrible things to her “8oring” friends, and then slams herself because nobody likes her or - even worse - hates her enough.
Much like her lusus, a massive spider, Vriska often manipulates others, even going as far as paralyzing Tavros, blinding Terezi, and killing Aradia.
Vriska believes that bad things constantly happen to her because she has terrible luck. Kanaya and Doc Scratch suggest that her own behavior is more likely the cause - for example, she constantly steps on d4's only because she leaves them all over the floor instead of tidying up. She also seems to hold some degree of distaste towards her own blood color, mockingly referring to it as “envia8le cerulean swill” - just another thing for her to blame her problems on. On other occasions, though, Vriska holds herself in high regard - she often brags about her exploits in Flarp, or just about herself in general.
While she sees herself as a great manipulator, it seems that she is often manipulated herself, as clearly evidenced in Doc Scratch's final conversation with her. Although she would loathe to admit it, she envies Terezi a great deal because of Terezi's ability to manipulate people without the use of psychic abilities. This could be a possible motivator for Vriska, as she attempts to trick, deceive and backstab nearly every other troll - perhaps as a way to prove herself in Terezi's view or even in her own. When another troll calls her out on using mind powers, she either denies it to the point of absurdity or throws a tantrum.
She was responsible for putting John to sleep before he could prototype one of the Distinguished Houseguests (which was coincidentally a blue doll missing an eye and an arm, similar to herself and Jack). Because of this, she believes herself to be responsible for Jack Noir's fourth prototyping, and thus his attack on the trolls' session, and claims to have intentionally done so as she wants to be the one to kill him. She tries to justify herself by claiming that it had to happen to prevent a doomed timeline. Although since avoiding this event was one of the few possible between-universe travel paradoxes, instead of just a time paradox, it is unclear whether it would have caused a doomed timeline, or something else entirely. According to Karkat and Aradia though, paradox space forces these events to be unavoidable.
Despite all her negative traits, she does have a softer, more benevolent side. She was genuinely upset when her plan to reconcile with Aradia failed, and she also has admitted to John that she felt bad about killing Tavros and that even though her methods were more than questionable she did genuinely try to help him get stronger. She also mentions to John that one of the reasons she wants to fight Jack Noir is to protect her friends.
After killing Tavros, Vriska admits to John that she feels terrible about it. According to troll culture, she had every right to kill him, and claims she can't tell the other trolls how she feels out of fear of seeming weak. She seems to have always felt bad about ending up as screwed up as she did as a result of troll culture, and laments how much better humans have it. However, this is more remorse towards herself, rather than guilt for any of her other atrocities, most likely because she despises her own existence as a troll, to the point of saying troll society was better off dead. She also willingly admits that there is a good chance she will die if she fights Jack Noir, but considers Jack being stopped far higher priority than her own life.
She seems to have lost some of her faith in having all the luck, but decides she has to go after Jack regardless, seeing her fight will have to mean something, and relying on luck, instead of inner strength and bravery, would be meaningless.
Vriska cares for her friends more than she usually admits, stating to John that protecting them was her real reason for planning on killing Jack, not just glory. She was known here to get angry at Jack for killing Karkat and Terezi after seeing their corpses in a doomed timeline.
She got an anchor tattoo on her left shoulder at the prodding of Meenah.
Relationships
A lovestruck Vriska.
Vriska burns bridges with practically every other troll, in particular through Flarp as mentioned above. After John enlightened Vriska regarding the joys of Con Air, she immediately developed a crush on Nicolas Cage. She keeps a marble bust and several of his film posters behind locked doors.
Tavros Nitram
Vriska claims to hate Tavros for no particular reason she can describe. Acting as his server player in Sgrub, she intentionally builds his hive up with stairs instead of ramps, demanding he find a way up without use of his wheel chair and apologize for being crippled. When he refuses, she shakes him in his wheel chair. Karkat theorizes that she has caliginous feelings for him, but it'd never work out because of Tavros' inability to actually hate people and Vriska's generalized hate towards everything. Indeed, Vriska alternately tries to antagonize and seduce Tavros and fails miserably at both. They eventually seem to come to an understanding of sorts, as Vriska contacts him from the near future and is unusually polite to him. However, their feelings seemed to have regressed when Tavros fails to kill her on her Quest bed while she's dying, and abandons her to a slow and painful death from blood loss. Things only seem to worsen during post-hivebent until finally Tavros attacks Vriska and is killed by her. However it has been seen that the two of them have started up an unconfirmed matespritship after their deaths, Tavros even intending to propose to her. He eventually leaves her, though, due to constant conflicts and still feeling bullied by her, and he flips her off as he flies away from the treasure hunt.
Terezi Pyrope
Karkat refers to Vriska and Terezi as the "Scourge Sisters," likely referring to their team in Flarp which may have extended to their everyday lives. In the same conversation, Karkat states that Vriska has always been jealous of Terezi for her ability to manipulate others without “RESORTING TO CHEEP MIND TRICKS”. Vriska sees her former team mate Terezi as her rival, but also tries to stay friends with her. She was shocked when Terezi actually killed her, because she thought she would not be able to go through with it. Despite giving her a cold shoulder ever since the Flarp incident Terezi actually cared for Vriska quite a bit. She feels some regret about killing Vriska, even though she knows it was the right thing to do in order to protect her other friends from death. In fact Vriska's death at her hands is one of the reasons she seems to spiral out of control during the trip on the meteor. Vriska does care for Terezi, semming horrified and furious when Jack Noir returns to her with the bodies of her and Karkat in the alternate timeline.
In the new timeline created by John's retcons where John saved Vriska before Terezi could kill her, Vriska seems to have spent most of her time with Terezi during the three-year meteor journey. This update confirms that they are now moirails.
John Egbert
Vriska is John's patron troll throughout the events of Act 5 Act 2, and the two have a somewhat complicated relationship. Vriska sees Terezi as a rival, and tries to get John to compete with Dave, who is guided by Terezi. This seems to have partially worked, as future Dave implies that future John has become extremely powerful. Vriska's attachment to John may have something to do with his similarities to Tavros, as he and John share similar rungs on their echeladders (such as "Boy Skylark") and mythological roles (with John as the Heir and Tavros as the Page of Breath respectively). Vriska later calls John 'pupa', a nickname she often uses for Tavros. She also says John looks totally hot when he wears Vriska's custom clothes for him. After Tavros' death, and after she tricked John into dying to achieve god tier status. Vriska admits to John that he is special to her, and holds his view of her in higher respect than any of the other trolls, resulting in the 'second most heartfelt feelings-off in paradox space'. It is unclear how deep her feelings for John really are, though she has apparently waxed red for him, asking him on a date and unwittingly expressing jealousy at his imminent kissing of Rose. She also dated an alternate self of John for a while, but things didn't work out. She still considers Alpha John a friend and seems deeply hurt when he considers that bringing her back to life might be a bad idea due to her perceived dangerous nature.
Aradia Megido
Vriska after being beaten by Aradia.
Vriska behaves in a similar manner towards Aradia as she does to Tavros. She is angry that she can't make amends by relaying Equius' Aradiabot gift to her and absolutely pissed at the fact that Aradia holds no ill will towards her and is not even the slightest bit perturbed by her bad behavior - that is, until Aradia receives her robot body with prosthetic emotions, goes to the Land of Maps and Treasure, and kills Vriska. This is what allowed Vriska to reach the god tiers in the first place.
Karkat Vantas
The relationship between Vriska and Karkat is one of the oddest among the trolls. While Karkat's initial reactions were to hate her because of her being a vile backstabber, their relationship changed over time. As the two most outspoken trolls among the twelve, the self proclaimed leader and the self proclaimed best fighter, they often talk on equal terms about winning the game, mostly squabbling with each other while enjoying it. Vriska often takes pleasure flirting with Karkat while Karkat continuously insults her much to her joy, and Karkat continuously tries to get a rise out of her while giving her relationship advice and criticisms, causing Vriska to act bored and say “stop watching movies for girls”, cementing her tomboy personality. Since they both have traits similar to John, it's natural that they drive each other up the wall.
Nepeta Leijon
Her relationship with Nepeta is like an attempt and fail of friendship. Vriska enjoys roleplaying with Nepeta, yet since Vriska scares her, she refuses to roleplay with her when she does 'mean things' during roleplay, which makes Vriska unusually sad, possibly because Terezi also does relatively mean or morbid things while roleplaying with Nepeta, yet she still likes it. Nepeta also seems horrified at the thought of Karkat and Vriska becoming matesprits, due to her flushed-crush on Karkat.
Kanaya Maryam
She does appear to hold a degree of affection for Kanaya, one of the few trolls that'll give her the time of day. Vriska regards her as both a “meddley meddler meddlefriend” and a “lousy st8pid godd8mn supportive fri8nd”. Kanaya is or was Vriska's moirail, although Kanaya seems to desire something a bit redder and is visually shaken when Vriska attempts to seduce Tavros. In the Veil, she notes that Kanaya had been acting aloof towards her, and expresses a desire to mend their friendship, complaining about how she misses the others fussing over her; however, she is still totally ignorant as to why Kanaya is acting that way towards her. She believes that Kanaya had a crush on Tavros, and helped amputate his legs as vengeance for him "going for" Vriska. It would seem that after Kanaya's return as a rainbow drinker and her subsequent ass-kicking of the 3x Showdown Combo, her redder feelings for Vriska are finally requited
Equius Zahhak
Vriska's behavior seems to be very similar to that of her neighbor Equius. Both have addictions to breaking a specific thing: Vriska's breaks "Black Oracles" (Magic Eight Balls) and Equius destroys bows, which he attempts to use but ends up breaking as a result of his freakish strength. They both comment that the addiction borders on being fetishistic and that addictions are a powerful thing. Not only that, they collaborate on a gift for Aradia, the Soulbot, which they claim to intend to deliver jointly. Both plan on backstabbing each other eventually and presenting the gift as their own. Interestingly, and unlike many of the other trolls, Equius doesn't hold any particular grudge against Vriska and seems to consider her deceptive, violent demeanor to be socially appropriate, even encouraging her to harass their lower-caste friends. Also, oddly enough, he does not appear harbor any ill feelings towards Vriska's murder of his love interest, Aradia, possibly meaning that he is glad that Aradia was killed since it gave him the opportunity to resurrect her with a more noble blood color. In short, both Vriska and Equius are high-falutin' bluebloods who have sometimes-abusive, generally creepy relationships with the lower castes (or in Vriska's case, more generally just someone she seems to look down on regardless of blood color).
Eridan Ampora
Further complicating matters is Vriska's status as Eridan's former kismesis. Unlike Terezi, who (sometimes) had to be tricked into murdering other trolls through deception, Eridan wholeheartedly supported Vriska's reign of terror. Eridan benefited from this arrangement, of course, as he could slaughter the lusus of defeated trolls in order to feed them to Feferi's lusus. Eridan seems to take his kismesissitude with Vriska rather seriously and is anxious about his performance in the role. Conversely, Vriska's feelings on the matter are largely unknown, though it is likely that any feelings she had/has for Eridan are overshadowed by her feelings for Tavros. After the trolls fled into the Veil Vriska tells Eridan that she no longer has any interest in a black relationship with him.
Other Trolls
She has almost no relationship whatsoever with Sollux, having used him to kill Aradia. Sollux wants nothing to do with her, and Vriska just greets him with childish taunts. Similarly, she has almost no relationship with Gamzee, although she found it a little cute that Gamzee was scared of her and honest about it. Her relationship with Feferi seems to be one of a loose kinship. They tease each other, and Vriska is actually impressed by her cleverness every so often. It is possible that she calls Feferi awesome because of her upbeat personality despite the fact she had a similar, but less unfortunate, fate of feeding her lusus.
Jake English
Vriska treats Jake similarly to show she treats Tavros. She is rude towards him, often insulting him and comparing him to Tavros. It is of note that Tavros and Jake are both Pages in Sburb. After she successfully gets him to prototype God Cat into Tavros and create Gcatavrosprite, she claims him to be “a lot smarter than people give [him] credit for”, though this is most likely due to him going along with her ideas.
Lusus/Kernelsprite
Vriska's lusus is a gigantic spider, the second largest lusus of the trolls. The lusus subsists on a diet of young trolls and is always hungry. Vriska uses her Flarp sessions to procure more food for her Lusus. This grim obligation provides a possible explanation for many of Vriska's negative personality traits.
This spider's anatomy is distinctly different from the anatomy of Earth spiders, as it appears to have a head, thorax, and abdomen. In the body of an Earth spider, the head and thorax are merged into one body segment, the cephalothorax, in contrast with Earth insects' three-segmented bodies.
She was getting to the age where she would realize she would have to feed her lusus.
Vriska seems to suggest that she dislikes her lusus, probably because it requires so much sustenance, which could imply that her basic reason for manipulating so many people is merely to keep up with her lusus's eternal hunger. Were she to not feed her lusus, she would die of starvation, and without a lusus, she would be culled. Later on, she admits to John that this is all true. She also mentions that she and her Lususprite avoided each other throughout most of the game.
Following the failed activation of Vriska's doomsday device, her lusus is unfortunately crushed by rockfall, forcing Vriska to euthanize her with the Guillotine De La Marquise, a dice technique selected at random out of a potential 16,777,216, which is eight to the eighth power.
Trivia
While trivia sections are fine, it might be a good idea to merge some of this material into relevant sections of the main text, because this trivia section is bloated.
In particular: The trivia should be devided; one part concerning about allusions in her god tier; etc.
- Her role as a Thief may be an ironic reference to the Eighth Commandment, which is 'Thou shalt not steal'.
- Her action of blinding Terezi fits with her role as a Thief of Light.
- Along with Rose, Vriska is one of two characters who challenged Jack Noir. Both were Heroes of Light.
- According to Chinese culture, wearing red shoes is said to bring good luck. This may tie with Vriska's love for red footwear and her role as the Thief of Light.
- In addition to this, 8 is a lucky number in Chinese culture, relating to prosperity and wealth, fitting in with Vriska's high fortune.
- The pattern on Vriska's god tier wings mirror her eyes, with one having one large dot and the other having seven smaller ones.
- Vriska's eightfold eye is shaped like an asterisk, which is located on the 8 key of a keyboard. Also, "asterisk" contains 8 letters.
- Vriska inherited the Thief class from Meenah Peixes and her Light aspect from her dancestor Aranea. While their post-scratch selves had no significant interaction with each other, Aranea Serket is Meenah's closest friend and vice-versa. Meenah also may have unresolved feelings for Aranea, due to the fact that she is often dropping flirty comments to her. As for the post-scratch Serket and Peixes, Feferi is one of the few trolls that Vriska considers cool, as stated in Alterniabound.
- Some of Vriska's theme songs have names based off of the Crysanthemum flower, which is the representative flower for Scorpio, her zodiac sign.
- The Crysanthemum flower is also the national flower of Japan, which is also known as the Land of the Rising Sun, tying in with her Light aspect.
- Interestingly, both Tavros and John, whom Vriska seems to have had flushed feelings for, were Heroes of Breath. One possible reason for this is that oxygen (relating to Breath) is the 8th element, with 8 protons, 8 neutrons, and 8 electrons.
- Oxygen, when liquid, is blue like Vriska's blood.
- Vriska having blue blood is probably also an allusion to spiders and scorpions, which have blue blood.
- She happens to be in the 8th class of the Hemospectrum.
- Vriska is depicted on "XVI:The Tower" as well on the "King of Swords"(with the rest of the red team) card in the Homestuck tarot deck. She is featured on the "Eight of Swords" card as well. She is also on the "Five of Wands" card with most of the pre-act six cast.
- Her appearance on the Tower, a card that can be interpreted as a moment in which everything changes, references the multiple diverging timelines caused by her mortality.
- Vriska's exile, Snowman, uses a lance - the same weapon Tavros Nitram uses. Inversely, Hearts Boxcars, Tavros' exile, uses dice.
- As featured and introduced here, Vriska has an Instagram account.
- It is interesting to note, her lip piercings in the alternate timeline are often called 'spider bite' piercings.
- Her ringtone is Killed By BR8K Spider!!!!!!!!, the same song used in the Ministrife.
