my ten cents about vriska serket’s “abilities” as a “manipulator”:
i think a lot of the reason people are flabbergasted to see the words “vriska isn’t manipulative” is because first of all, there is a big misunderstanding about the nuance of abuse and abusive situatuations and which harmful aspects of abuse (manipulation, gaslighting, battery, etc) are at play in which instances of abuse. abuse isn’t black and white and not all abuse has the same exact hallmarks – someone can be abusive without being manipulative.
the other big issue i’m seeing is that so much of the fandom has a really poor understanding of vriska’s character.
there are a lot of people in this fandom who believe that vriska is cruel for the sake of cruel, mean because she wants to be, and a master manipulator who destroys the lives of everyone around her and laughs at the wreckage.
in ACTUALITY… vriska is a mess. a lot of the things she does are stupid, impulsive things she later very vocally regrets. she doesn’t actually strive for complete chaos – sadly, she’s very often actually trying to help, but she has poor social skills, no friends who trust her, and a hair trigger temper that often sends her into tantrums. she’s extremely emotional and impulsive.
and it’s not to say vriska can’t be clever – she is a smart girl who sometimes actually does execute plans that work (it happened once!) and the whole situation with jade and prototyping bec (i can’t remember the details exactly) was certainly a time when vriska cleverly executed something she was attempting. it completely fucking failed and blew up in everyone’s faces! but she is clever enough to come up with elaborate schemes in a pinch. they just don’t usually… work, and in most situations she uses brute force or has a meltdown instead of doing anything actually clever
vriska isn’t ACTUALLY a one note villain. that’s why people like her. her motivations are far from one dimensional cartoon villain – in fact, sadly, her motivation for her shitty behavior is either “abused child with no outlet and poor social skills trying to cope” or “my poor temperament flared and now all my friends hate me even more and i have to fix it”
vriska wanting to be a hero is hilarious in the context of the comic, especially when hussie first introduced her and she was absolutely insufferably annoying and pointlessly cruel. but as hussie elaborated on her character she became much deeper and more complex – her wanting to be a hero isn’t just because she’s a glory hound. it’s also because her life circumstances made her a child soldier who could not afford to have friends and whose social skills were too poor for her to ask for help or reach out to others. vriska wants people to respect her for a lot of reasons, but one big one is that she’s an abuse survivor who was starved of positive attention her entire fucking life
of course she wants to be a hero because of mindfang and because she’s a glory hound and etc, but it also boils down to the fact that vriska is literally too. fucking weird to understand “being nice to people” = friends, and probably feels like she’s too far gone for “being nice” to get her anywhere, so she HAS to be the big damn hero. THEN she will have made up for all of her wrongdoings. THEN her friends will truly forgive her. THEN people will like and respect her genuinely instead of hating her and mocking her to her face.
When my godsister and I were kids, her parents got this wolf-shaped cookie jar that howled whenever the lid was opened to prevent her sneaking her hand in and stealing cookies.
I couldn’t wrap my head around why they got that cookie jar in the first place. Sneaking just wasn’t her style. It was my style - I’d wait for the perfect opportunity to strike, create a diversion, plot three excuses in case I got caught, and attempt to calculate the maximum number of cookies I could steal at one time without rousing suspicion and where I could store them safely until I was ready to eat them.
My godsister, on the other hand, was the sort to walk up to the cookie jar, shove her hand in, and stuff her face while staring at you defiantly, as if challenging you to stop her. What are you going to do? The cookies are already in her mouth. They’re hers now. She’s won.
I guess it’s no surprise that she became a pro kickboxer and Muay Thai champion.
Holy shit
how do you know the jar wasn’t meant to stop you instead of her?
‘Cause I never got caught.
Fight her and post it to tumblr it will be funny
You want to see me utterly pulverized? No way dude. I’ve been on the wrong end of her “affectionate” punches even before she learned to fight for real and it was not fun. I don’t want to find out how much she’s improved.
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
