MS Paint Adventures V: THIS IS STUPID

[Draconi Redfir]

i wouldn't remove any hats if i were you then.

[Scowling Dragon]

Oh. Your serious? Im really not sure if your trolling me or not.

Because the way you wrote it was EXPERTLY satirical. Perfectly showing how the hardcore Vriska fan-base ignores truly how a horrible terrible mean person she is and focus of tiny things that they also do. I think somebody talked about this already:

"Vriska likes to roll dice. Just like me! I like that! But shes bad! But Im not bad. And since we both like to roll dice then that means she must not be not bad either cause Im not bad".

[Fawkes]

Funny how murder and mutilation color your opinion of a person.

[Scowling Dragon]

Funny how murder and mutilation color your opinion of a person.

Also torture and arrogance. That also tends to color opinions.

[AgentPaper]

The world isn't black and white. Granted, Vriska is pretty firmly on the black portion of things, but like everyone, she's not all bad. Just really bad. At any rate, doesn't stop her from being one of my favorite characters. I mean, I liked Doc Scratch and lots of people like Jack, despite both of them being much more evil than Vriska could ever hope to be.

[guttering flame]

Vriska seems to want to help the dude here. Wouldn't you do something drastic to stop someone from wanting to be dead?

[Draconi Redfir]

I dunno, maybe it's just because i've got a psychopathic serial killer of my own living in my head, but i generally don't look at the most prominent aspect of a person and immidiately assume it's the only one.Yeah its bad, not gunna deny that, but it's not the ONLY thing she's EVER done. she's still a person beyond all that, and she still did other things many would consider normal.


Assume for a seccond the whole thing with her lusus and tavros and aradia never showed up. How would you feel about her?

Me? I'd describe her as a nerdy but pretty cool girl with a large inflated ego. Not really someone you would get upset at is it?

[Scowling Dragon]

If she

A: Never tortured Tavros
B: Didn't cause Jack
C: Didn't plan to doom the meteor out of sheer arrogance
D: Didn't look up to her horrible ancestor
E: Didn't raid ships just for fun
F: Killed aradia

Then I guess I would think of her as a smug OK person. But thats not the point. She DID do those things, and all those are very in character. She IS the person that tortured tavros, raided ships, wanted to doom the meteor, caused jack.

You can't just look at the things you want, and say "Well that makes her great". You have to look at her altogether.

Let me say: I like Vriska, but as a character.

Vriska seems to want to help the dude here. Wouldn't you do something drastic to stop someone from wanting to be dead?

Except hes perfectly happy dead. Here he is safe from the reality that killed him.
She doesn't want to help him. She wants to entertain herself.

[guttering flame]

If she

A: Never tortured Tavros
B: Didn't cause Jack
C: Didn't plan to doom the meteor out of sheer arrogance
D: Didn't look up to her horrible ancestor
E: Didn't raid ships just for fun
F: Killed aradia

Then I guess I would think of her as a smug OK person. But thats not the point. She DID do those things, and all those are very in character. She IS the person that tortured tavros, raided ships, wanted to doom the meteor, caused jack.

You can't just look at the things you want, and say "Well that makes her great". You have to look at her altogether.

Let me say: I like Vriska, but as a character.

When did she raid ships? I thought that was her pirate ancestor.

Except hes perfectly happy dead. Here he is safe from the reality that killed him.
She doesn't want to help him. She wants to entertain herself.

Her motivation seems more to be about being someone who matters. She can't accept Tavros' apathy so she tries to make him see things her way. Nothing about entertainment in this particular case as far as I can see. That's classic Vriska. She's very egocentric. But Tavros' apathy is not healthy either. If Tavros went to a psychiatrist he would be given character altering drugs to make him care.

[Scowling Dragon]

When did she raid ships? I thought that was her pirate ancestor.

She did that with Eridian if Im not mistaken.

But Tavros' apathy is not healthy either. If Tavros went to a psychiatrist he would be given character altering drugs to make him care.

HES DEAD. I think he has the right to be apathetic after the same person that dragging him along made a shiskabab out of him!

Whether or not he was apathetic before changes that he is DEAD now.

[Arrghus]

I dunno, maybe it's just because i've got a psychopathic serial killer of my own living in my head, but i generally don't look at the most prominent aspect of a person and immidiately assume it's the only one.Yeah its bad, not gunna deny that, but it's not the ONLY thing she's EVER done. she's still a person beyond all that, and she still did other things many would consider normal.


Assume for a seccond the whole thing with her lusus and tavros and aradia never showed up. How would you feel about her?

Me? I'd describe her as a nerdy but pretty cool girl with a large inflated ego. Not really someone you would get upset at is it?

Arrogant little bitch. Yeah, she's got a softer interior, sort of, but there's a lot of abrasive exterior around it. Also, she's a control freak, not remotely as intelligent as she thinks, refuses help from others, and is just plain dangerous. Again, even if you ignore the whole 'wanton slaughter' thing, I really don't see how anyone could argue that Vriska's particularly nice, except in a 'bad girl' kind of way. Keep in mind that she managed to completely alienate her Moirail without ever hurting her in any way but unintentionally and emotionally.

With help, she might have worked through her problems, but she would almost certainly have ruined probably more than she could have made up for along the way, purely by accident. It's not entirely her fault, of course, she had a lot of upbringing making her what she was. That doesn't make her not what she was, though.

Maybe I'm biased. I love Vriska because she's so terrible, so that's bound to color my views.

[Draconi Redfir]

Yeah fair enough.

We do need to remember that this not human society though, Vriska's actions are probably entirely acceptable to a great majority of troll culture. As far as i can recall, there is little to no justice system outside for large things like high treason against the empire or repeated major attacks on large groups of people. From what i can tell, if your friend gets attacked and killed, you can't expect anyone to come and bring the person who did it to justice. If you want it done, you need to do it yourself, and if you cant? Then the person gets away Scott free and nobody will think less of them.


There are no arrests* in troll culture. Only cycles of revenge until equilibrium is reached.


* Not counting those for major things such as high treason and etc, which call for the Legislators like Terezi's ancestor.

[Scowling Dragon]

But biologically, the race remains the same. Murder is not natural in their minds, yet society forces it apon them and tries to convince them that it is.

[Devils_Advocate]

Some people on the MSPA forums have expressed excitement at the prospect of a Vriska/Tavros team-up. Which raises the question: Does a slave really qualify as a type of teammate?

I find myself a bit confused about Vriska's alleged repeated efforts to "strengthen" Tavros and continuing frustration at her lack of progress on this project. One could characterize him as unwilling to stand up to her... but at several points he's refused to do what she says. And Vriska never seems to respect this. So if she's not trying to make Tavros more assertive, then what is she trying to do?

Is she trying to make him more ambitious? And if so, why? Vriska seems to want to accomplish things, to be important, for no apparent purpose beyond self-glorification. While Tavros seems more inclined to be content with things the way they are. Which... hardly seems like a defect. Being satisfied with what you have isn't a problem. If anything, the one with the problem would seem to be Vriska.

... on the surface. And yet, in their recent conversation, it's Tavros who expresses appreciation for their recent unification in retrospect. Being Vriska apparently made him feel better, just as it made Vriska feel worse. Or so he says. And while that could just be optimism and pessimism talking, it also suggests that just maybe, it's actually Tavros who's more dissatisfied with his present state than Vriska is with hers.

Her ONE by choice murder is Tavros, who I honestly hate, but the dude made his choice in the end to come and attack her with the intent of killing her. What she does from there, not her fault, can't be expected to think clearly with a lance come at your face. Sure she could've flown away but it's a fight or flight reaction that was pure Angeraline. It had biological incentive to prevent her from running away thanks to Trolls lacking that flight response, and she would've had to deal with Tavros hunting her the entire time even if she did run away. Self defense is a perfectly viable excuse in this case

Vriska specifically said in her conversation with John that she didn't kill Tavros because he attacked her, but because she was fed up with him. It wasn't self-defense. She didn't need to kill him to defend herself and that wasn't her motivation.

sure she did some **** in the past to him, but that's what a black troll quadrant kinda means, Tavros was just so pathetic that he wouldn't try to return the favor till the end.

Pursuing a romantic relationship as aggressively as possible despite the other party's clear lack of interest is not admirable behavior.

There is no justification, there is no reasoning behind equating Vriska = Gamzee

They both killed other trolls because they felt like it and at least kind of thought that they were entitled to.

Vriska's evil as hell. Chaotic at best

I think that a lot of her problematic tendencies are more Lawful than Chaotic.

Vriska spent most of her life trying her best to live up to how she was taught trolls should be like. To become mature as defined by and as rewarded in the society that she was a part of. And though she may have faltered in her execution, that was not unreasonable of her to try to do. At the time.

Then she and her friends leave their civilization behind. And for the duration of the game, she adapts pretty well to this, and is able to cooperate with her co-players.

But after things unexpectedly go to hell, she sort of falls back on her old standards of behavior, even though it doesn't really make sense to do that anymore. She even talks about killing Tavros in terms of the hemospectrum, even though only two living trolls even seem to care about that! (Unlike Equius and Eridan, I doubt that Vriska really thought that her blood color made her superior in any objective sense. But she was very aware of the social position that it afforded her.)

When she starts looking for things that she and her friends did wrong, she winds up concluding that they weren't sufficiently mature as trolls. That they weren't vicious, aggressive, and competitive enough; that if they'd been behaving properly, they would have been killing each other off. Her stated reasoning that more of them might have reached god tier that way seems like grasping for justification for her view of how trolls are supposed to be.

I think that a lot of Vriska's self-image may be wrapped up in her viciousness, making it hard for her to realize that it's not the virtue that she thinks it is. It's hard for her to let go of that because it's something she's good at -- or at least something she thinks she's good at.

Problem is people just think “ZOMG SHE KILLD PPL!” (which is totally normal in troll culture) and instantly slap a “Devil witch!” label on her.

I really think that you're overgeneralizing. I am pretty sure that there are plenty of readers who like Terezi but hate Vriska, even though both of them killed loads of people. Because there are difference between them.

For starters, Terezi seems to have killed a lot less indiscriminately. In addition, Vriska has a history of violently lashing out at her own friends. And then feeling bad about it afterwards, but still.

We do need to remember that this not human society though, Vriska's actions are probably entirely acceptable to a great majority of troll culture.

That doesn't make them not bad though, just like being acceptable in human culture doesn't make horrible things that normal humans do not bad. More understandable, sure.

[Shadow of the Sun]

I am not a Vriska fan. I think she's a good character, but I really don't like her.

It's not for the murdering- I'm a massive Gamzee fan, and he's a massive murderer, too.

For me, the main thing that makes me really dislike Vriska is her alienating arrogance. She consistently holds a massively high opinion of herself, even when it's been shown multiple times that she's nowhere near as good as she thinks she is- her situation with Terezi and Doc Scratch.

Vriska and Tavros as actually a massive match, to be honest. Both of them are incredibly insecure- Tavros deals with it by being a doormat, while Vriska deals with it by outwardly pushing herself to be as awesome as possible and in control and it just fails.

Vriska's character arc can actually be compared with Dave's- Dave is insecure because, frankly, his brother is better than him, and he has to deal with that, living up to his example. Vriska has a similar situation with Mindfang. But Dave comes to terms with the fact that he's not the awesome rapping ninja he thinks he is, and becomes his own person. Vriska doesn't, ignores it every time it's pointed out, and she's still making herself live in the image of Mindfang; she might not want too, as she said to John, but she still is.

[Draconi Redfir]

But biologically, the race remains the same. Murder is not natural in their minds, yet society forces it apon them and tries to convince them that it is.

They are biologically built for black romance, wich means violance in some form or annother IS programmed into them. Humans did not change biology after their scratch, so theres no reason to assume the trolls did either.

It may have been a less violent place without the lusi and possibly the caste system, but it's possible murder, or at least violence was still around and commanplace to the point of scocial acceptibility.


Edit: And as a side note, we aren't even talking about the pre-scratch trolls OR their biology. We are talking about post-scratch Alternia and it's culture. And in Alternian culture it's kill or be killed, mate or die, and if you can't survive the world is better off without you. In Troll culture, death is just something that happens, and it's cause is of no concern to anyone other then the victims friends. Violence breeds strength and weeds out the week. In Troll culture, Violence is good.

[Scowling Dragon]

That is interesting. I wonder how much has changed since the scratch....

Because Im not sure a peaceful mild civilization can exist based off of hate love. Or love hate?

Realy, I begin to think that the Trolls that went into the first session simply SUCKED. None of them even came close to confronting the black king, even if they had a civilization where death based off of strength is commonplace.

Did Doc just rile that up? Im not sure how that is done. If you already have a species with love hate, suffering and death is going to be pretty commonplace as being tough is going to be encouraged.

What makes it even mor likely that the first set of trolls just sucked was that even more important then kissmesistute is AUSPISTICE.

Now tell me? What society (Thats peaceful) has SO MUCH HATE going around that there is an actual biological requirement to prevent everybody killing each other?

The other society would be equally as hateful and vengeful as the new one. So I must come to the conclusion that either:

The Old trolls sucked
Or that Scratch changed their biology.

[Draconi Redfir]

Clubs and dimons relaitionships are not biological nor required, merely other forms of romance. Only those romances dealing with reproduction are biological.

[Scowling Dragon]

Im not sure about that either.

Even still, hate love in a peaceful society? Unlikely.

[lord pringle]

I love Vriska because she's so terrible.

My feelings exactly.

[Friv]

Im not sure about that either.

Even still, hate love in a peaceful society? Unlikely.

I could actually see it, for a certain definition of peaceful.

If your dislike of someone actually makes you want to keep them around, you're less likely to go around murdering people. There'll be lots of rivalries, and little fights will crop up all the time, but they'll never take that extra push into warfare, because your culture equates violence with foreplay. You could end up with a culture where murder is the same as rape, and where armies and nations just never really get going because most people don't want to end the black flirtations that make up their bar fights and cage matches.

[Scowling Dragon]

That is a possibility.

But remember: Blackrom Romance is ONLY for the purest hate (HATE not light ribbing). War is equally if not more likely to be fought.

[Arrghus]

That is a possibility.

But remember: Blackrom Romance is ONLY for the purest hate (HATE not light ribbing). War is equally if not more likely to be fought.

Blackrom is not human hate. It is similar to human hate, yes, but the two are distinct. One of the primary differences is that kismeses don't actually want to kill each other, as indicated here.

Spoiler

Show

CCG: I AM NOT HITTING ON YOU IDIOT, THIS IS HONEST TO GOD PLATONIC ENMITY
CCG: LIKE IN THE "I REALLY DO WANT YOU TO DIE" KIND OF WAY.

Also, kismesissitude is something pretty personal. Wars tend to be instigated over hatred of entire nations. This indicates that when troll soldiers go to war, it is not over blackrom. Troll leaders might make war for that reason, though, and under sufficiently medieval circumstances might even avoid much personal danger. Was that what you meant? Because that's kind of a good point, even if trolls are sufficiently advanced that it's a bit unlikely to go that way.

That being said, A1 does seem to have been a pretty piss-poor excuse for a team, yes.

[Scowling Dragon]

Yes yes. They don't want to kill each other yet it borders the line, like any relationship based on hate (Troll or otherwise).

I meant that wars would not be avoided due to Blackrom and in fact more likely.

We as a race try to avoid hatred as even though it can direct pain, its a painful killing experience that knocks years off our lives, causes many psychological and physical problems. And even then our race has plenty of wars.

Now Blackrom troll romance is essentially the same thing except does not lead to death but to reproduction.

Meaning that hate is involved (I think Karkat outright says this in his first conversation with John)

Now imagin a race where hatred (That still leads to suffering) is encouraged boilogicaly. Now we have a race of pretty pissed off people running about. That is much more likely to incite wars out of everybody suffering.

[guttering flame]

Yes yes. They don't want to kill each other yet it borders the line, like any relationship based on hate (Troll or otherwise).

I meant that wars would not be avoided due to Blackrom and in fact more likely.

We as a race try to avoid hatred as even though it can direct pain, its a painful killing experience that knocks years off our lives, causes many psychological and physical problems. And even then our race has plenty of wars.

Now Blackrom troll romance is essentially the same thing except does not lead to death but to reproduction.

Meaning that hate is involved (I think Karkat outright says this in his first conversation with John)

Now imagin a race where hatred (That still leads to suffering) is encouraged boilogicaly. Now we have a race of pretty pissed off people running about. That is much more likely to incite wars out of everybody suffering.

Remember that unlike human relationships, in troll romance there are more than two parties involved. That means that Stronger Party Attacks Weaker Party scenarios are much less common. The complex web of alliances and enmities would prevent such things from happening.

[Scowling Dragon]

Attacks shmaks. Hate still hurts

I lived in hate of everything and myself for years, never attacking anybody. It led to so many Physical and Psychological problems in my body.

[AgentPaper]

Attacks shmaks. Hate still hurts

I lived in hate of everything and myself for years, never attacking anybody. It led to so many Physical and Psychological problems in my body.

It seems easy to assume that Trolls don't suffer these ill effects. They also seem much quicker to forgive than humans when they need to, given how everyone treats Vriska and Gamzee.

[Scowling Dragon]

Then that has the opposite effect where hatred is not discouraged and everybody goes around hating each other.

The treatment in comic can be relegated to the comic not lingering on deaths.

A 1 year old girl seeing her mother dead would break down in tears for hours.

Dave is fine after like 15 minutes (and never brings it up again).

[Arrghus]

Right. So let's assume for the sake of argument that blackrom, as a single factor, does not encourage peacefulness.

I still think that, given that all the other factors (aaaaaaall of them) are not overwhelmingly against it, peace could work.

I guess we'll have to wait and see, though.

[Scowling Dragon]

Nope. I know what happens in the future so I must be correct.

Now beg for me to impart my wisdom mortals!

Vriska will fuse with Hussie in a sprite and then marry Tavros in the Pre-scratch universe!

edit:

Goddamit Dirk. Now you remind me of Eli- Roth .

And yes Dirk: Just because your from the future (Im not sure when the flood came) doesn't make you any less annoying for being an overpowered ass. Your modesty makes it only more annoying.