Vriska Serket

Vriska Serket, also known by her Trollian handle arachnidsGrip, is one of the Trolls. Her associated zodiac sign is Scorpio (♏) and her horns are shaped like a claw and a stinger.

Vriska types in a dark blue font and her typing quirks revolve around the number eight in relation to arachnids. The letter 'B' and sounds like 'ate' 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 uses the number 8 in nearly every word she types, even in cases where the vowel doesn't quite match an "ate" sound. Her smilies also have eight eyes.

Her surname is taken from 'Serket', the Egyptian goddess personifying the scorpion. Serket was conflictingly associated with stings or bites and with the cures to such maladies, mirroring the duality of Vriska Serket's personality - she alternates between seriously injuring other trolls and helping them, or at least attempting to do so. Vriska is a shortening of "Vrishchika", the Hindi name for Scorpio, but could also refer to Kalpavriksha, a wish-fulfilling tree below the fourth chakra according to Zentra Yoga. This tree is said to fulfill both positive and negative wishes, again corresponding with the duality of Vriska Serket's personality.

She ended up as a member of the Red Team.

Hivebent
Vriska is first seen in the bottom right corner of HS 3615 (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 HS 4123 (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, to look through her Magic Cue Ball, and loses both the lens and her left eye when it is destroyed by. 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.

Vriska possesses mind control abilities, allowing her to take control of others. However, she can only force her bidding upon those with weaker minds, limiting the scope of her ability to only a few others. 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, who later becomes Spades Slick. The Red Team successfully dethrones and exiles the BQ, thus avoiding a costly battle with her. The Queen later becomes, 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.

Tavros, Sollux (half of the time), and Karkat are the only trolls known to be vulnerable to her powers. 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 also immune to her powers, with one exception: she is able to psychically wake them up or put them to sleep at any time, a power she has used on Jade, John, and Dave.

Vriska's Respiteblock is strewn with broken Magic Eight Balls, Flarp guides, four-sided 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" is an especially powerful and influential member of the Nautical Aristocracy for whom she HS 4106 (promises) such a device in exchange for his collusion in her Flarp campaigns. She also has a nearby pal, Equius Zahhak, 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 Ampora's rifle Ahab's Crosshairs.

After Aradia beat Vriska almost to death, she woke up on Prospit. Tavros found her body and was going to kiss her to bring her back to life, but Vriska had other plans. She took control of Tavros and made him choke himself. She then wrote out messages to him from her with her own blood. She wants him to bring her to her quest bed so she can die and wake up on Skaia as the fully realized Thief of Light. However, Tavros was unable to bring himself to kill her and absconds, leaving Vriska to bleed to death.

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 mean 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 status, Vriska is seen engaging Tavros in a fight, as Tavros wanted to kill Vriska when she revealed she was paradox responcible for creating Bec Noir. She taunts him with his sawed-off legs and Tavros charges at Vriksa, 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, though she reconsiders when she realizes her theory makes no goddamn sense at all.

Some time after murdering 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. Vriska used the Marquise's journal, 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 HS 5444 (flushed feelings) in her.

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 while 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.

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 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, sending him to Aradia's hive and forcing him to ingest Mind Honey. This results in the release of Sollux's psychic eye beams, devastating Aradia's hive and killing her and her Lusus.
 * Terezi then takes matters into her own hands by informing of Vriska's possession of one of his Magic Cue Balls. Infuriated,  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 them, Vriska uses a HS 4478 (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.
 * Aradia, now in the robot body provided to her by Equius, encounters Vriska in the Land of Maps and Treasure. Using her own psychic abilities, Aradia, likely in retribution for her own death, HS 004478 (proceeds to attack Vriska).
 * After the fight, Vriska's Dream Self wakes up on Prospit, where Terezi's Dream Self slaps her.

Vriska's original self dies on LOMAT in her quest bed (taken there by Tavros) and is replaced by her God Tier Dream Self. Judging by the torn arm of her jacket in this time period, it appears that she merely took the clothes off of her original corpse to wear them again.

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 cheap mind tricks".

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.

Personality
Vriska is, more often than not, a huge bitch. She gets easily bored, makes shady deals with people, does horrible things to her "boring" friends, and then slams herself because nobody likes her or - even worse - hates her enough, despite her being possibly the most dangerous troll of the group. At no point does it occur to her that she might be going about things wrong.

Much like her Lusus, a massive spider, Vriska often HS 4074 (manipulates others), even going as far as HS 4077 (paralyzing) Tavros and HS 4273 (trapping him in her web) for her to HS 4280 (feast) upon.

Vriska believes that bad things constantly happen to her because she has terrible luck. Kanaya Maryam and 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 "enviable 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 's HS 4102 (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 of 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 her murder of 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 existance 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 then 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.

Relationships
Vriska burns bridges with practically every other troll, in particular through Flarp as mentioned above. She does appear to hold a degree of affection for Kanaya Maryam, 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." In the Veil, she notes that Kanaya had been acting aloof towards her, and expresses a desire to mend their friendship; however, she is still totally ignorant of 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. Kanaya is Vriska's moirail, although Kanaya seems to desire something a bit redder. It would seem that after Kanaya's return as a rainbow drinker and her subsequent ass-kicking of the 3x Showdown Combo, her feelings for Vriska are HS 5445 (finally requited).

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 apologize for being crippled and find a way up without use of his wheel chair. 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 HS 5200 (this) happens.

Vriska behaves in a similar manner towards Aradia. 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 HS 4478 (kills Vriska). Alternatively, this is what allowed Vriska to reach the god tiers in the first place.

Vriska's behavior seems to be very similar to that of Equius Zahhak. 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 acceptable, even HS 4122 (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).

Further complicating matters is Vriska's status as Eridan Ampora'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 Peixes's lusus. Eridan seems to take his kismessitude 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. However, it is worth noting that the last of the animations accompanying the author's explanation of Troll Romance, seen HS 4303 (here), seems to show unsuccessful relationships between Vriska/Tavros, Vriska/Kanaya and Eridan/Feferi breaking apart to be replaced by a relationship between Vriska and Eridan with Kanaya serving as Auspistice.

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.

She 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. However, she apparently later threatens to kill John in the past, indicating that it didn't quite go the way she was expecting it to. 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 HS 004884 ('pupa'), a nickname she often uses for Tavros. She also says John looks totally hot when he wears Vriska's custom clothes for him.

However, Vriska's feelings towards John changed drastically after Tavros' death, and after she tricked John into dying to achieve god tier. 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.

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... this actually explains a lot.

This spider's anatomy is distinctly different from the anatomy of Earth spiders, as it HS 4108 (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.

Vriska HS 4104 (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. Later on, she admits to John that this is all true.

Following the failed activation of Vriska's doomsday device, her lusus is un fortunately HS 4134 (crushed by rockfall), forcing Vriska to euthanize her with the Guillotine De La Marquise, a dice technique selected at random out of a potential 16777216.