Vriska Serket

Vriska Serket, also known by her Trollian handle arachnidsGrip, is one of the Trolls. Her associated zodiac sign is Scorpio (♏). Vriska types in a dark blue font. Her typing quirks revolve around the number eight in relation to arachnids. The letter 'B' and the sound 'ate' are replaced with the number 8, and some characters are repeated in sets of eight, usually vowel sounds. When she is flustered, her use of the number 8 gets increasingly frequent in almost every word she types. Her smilies also have eight eyes. She is a member of the Red Team.

Her name is taken from 'Serket'-- more popularly 'Selket'-- the Egyptian goddess personifying the scorpion. Serket's deity was associated with healing and protection, and may foreshadow Vriska's future function, assuming her character in the story is not flat. Vriska is a shortening of "Vrishchika", the Hindi name for Scorpio, but could also refer to Kalpa Vriska, a wish-fulfilling tree below the fourth chakra according to Zentra Yoga. This tree is said to fulfill both positive and negative wishes, corresponding with Vriska's mind-control ability.

In the Incipisphere, her planet is Land of Maps and Treasure.

Biography
Vriska was first seen in the bottom right corner of HS 3615 (this page), but was not fully shown until Hivebent. Her left arm is robotic and was created for her by Equius Zahhak, because she lost her real arm as a result of an error in judgment. Because he made the arm, Equius seems to be able to HS 004123 (control it) to at least some degree. She originally had Vision Eightfold focusable through a special seven-lensed eyepiece, but lost both the lens and the eye in the incident that claimed her arm. The accident, in her case at least, is revealed to be her Magic Cue Ball exploding. One of her horns is seen to resemble a claw, possibly inspiring the second half of her Trollian handle: arachnidsGrip.

When we see her room, we find it strewn with broken Magic Eight balls, Flarp guides, a picture of herself as a pirate, what look like character sheets. She continues to play Flarp in spite of the accident in order to feed her Lusus a steady supply of other young trolls. She lost her vision eightfold as well as her Magic Cue Ball, which combined allowed her to know the future, and uses the eight balls as a replacement. She winds up breaking them due to their inaccuracy, accruing a great deal of bad luck in the process, or so she believes. She has grown addicted to breaking them. We also find out that she 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, HS 4106 (whom she promised) she would build a device for in exchange for his collusion in her Flarp campaigns. She also mentions having a nearby pal who is handy with technology and can frequently be tapped for parts and favors; said pal is later shown to be Equius Zahhak. Her doomsday devices look like something we have seen before.

Vriska pesters Tavros over Trollian in relation to the teams set up for the Sburb session. She seems to take pleasure in tormenting him, mocking him and his condition and ridiculing his team. She also seems to have a particular distaste for what she refers to as "meddlers", indicating she may have a grand scheme in place. It has also been established that she was directly responsible for Tavros Nitram being paralyzed from the waist down, using a hypnotic power to make Tavros' body jump off of a cliff. According to Terezi, she was part of a "conspiracy" that had foreknowledge of what Sburb is. This is later HS 4044 (expanded upon) by Vriska herself, who considers herself and Aradia Megido to be the chief orchestrators of the whole conspiracy.

She also knows a strange white text-using person who spoke with her on HS 4102 (this page). The conversation does not appear to be conducted with Pesterchum or Trollian since there is no record and he does not have a chumhandle. She describes him as "a guy who's never wrong." The person turned out to be Doc Scratch.

The reason that Vriska was destined to be on the Red Team is later revealed to be the plot against the Black Queen put into motion by Karkat Vantas and Spades Slick. Apparently, Vriska's potent mind-reading and hypnotic suggestion powers were an integral part of the elaborate ploy to force the Queen to resign, thus avoiding a costly battle with 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. Mindfang, being a pirate with a hook for a hand, resembles Captain Hook, while Tavros's character resembles Peter Pan.

On at least one occasion, Vriska and Terezi formed a Flarp team, 'Team Scourge', and faced off against Tavros and Aradia's 'Team Charge'. It was during one of these sessions that Vriska, as Tavros's Clouder, used her mind powers to throw him off the cliff, leading to his paralysis. It is unknown whether Vriska was responsible for Terezi's blindness.

Karkat refers to Vriska and Terezi as the "Scourge Sisters", implying that they either formed a formidable pair during the roleplaying session, (which is unlikely since Karkat didn't even participate in the FLARP event), or he could have been referencing a prior friendship between them, which could qualify as sisterhood, (since no trolls actually know their siblings). 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".

The floor of Vriska's room is covered in multi-sided dice, a consequence of her hobby. Because of her bad luck (or maybe just because she's a huge slob) she frequently steps on d4s.

Personality
Vriska is basically a huge bitch. HS 4094 (Bluh bluh.)Her most salient traits are a reasonless hate towards pretty much everyone else, a talent for making the worst friends imaginable and driving everyone else away, and endless self-flagellation.

Vriska believes that bad things constantly happen to her because she has terrible luck, while GA and Doc Scratch suggest that her own behavior is the more likely cause (i.e. constantly stepping on d4s because she leaves them all over the floor instead of tidying up). She also seems to hold some degree of distaste towards her blood color, mockingly referring to it as "enviable cerulean swill"

Vriska also holds herself in high regard - when she talks about her exploits in FLARP, or about herself, she is very much like Dave Strider, as they both consider themselves the most awesome beings in existence. This is evidenced in Vriska's case when she talks about her FLARP persona, as well as her 'irons in the fire', (schemes).

While she sees herself as a great manipulator, it also seems that she is also manipulated a lot, which is made clear when Doc Scratch HS 4102 (has a goodbye conversation) with Vriska. And while she would hate to admit it, she also respects Terezi a great deal because of her ability to manipulate people. This could be a possible motivator for Vriska, as she is seen attempting to trick, deceive and backstab nearly every troll - perhaps as a way to prove herself to Terezi.

It is possible that Vriska's especially sociopathic/murdery personality could come from the fact that instead of sleeping in soothing sopor slime, Vriska sleeps on a pile of broken 8-balls and does therefore not have the dark and violent thoughts of her race soothed every night.

Vriska is, dispite her mind powers and everything, also a TERRIBLE liar. For example she once told Equius information she got from his mind while abjuring that she would read it. Some of those lies are simply bad, others are already so obvious that they might be sarcasm.

It can also be speculated from the comment made HS 4102 (here) that Vriska dislikes her lusus, possibly because it requires so much sustenance, which could in turn imply that her only reason for manipulating so many people is to keep up with her lusus' eternal hunger.

Relationships
Vriska has burned bridges with practically every other troll. She crippled Tavros and mind-controlled Sollux into killing Aradia, and Terezi took it on her case to avenge them with an exploding cue-ball to her face. She does appear to hold a degree of affection for Kanaya, who she regards as both a "meddley meddler meddlefriend" and a "lousy st8pid godd8mn supportive fri8nd."

Vriska hates Tavros for no particular reason she can describe - possibly envy of his collectedness. She even goes so far as to purposely build his hive up with stairs instead of ramps, making him crawl up to the first gate, demand he apologize for being crippled in spite of it being her fault, and shaking his wheelchair when he refused to. Karkat theorizes that it could be the troll equivalent of a romantic relationship but it'd never work out, because of Tavros' inability to actually hate people and Vriska's generalized hate towards everything. Strangely, despite Karkat insulting her constantly whenever they chat, Vriska doesn't seem to hate him nearly as much as she hates Tavros. Whether this means that she likes Karkat more than Tavros or less depends on how accurate Karkat's romance-related comments were. She has recently been shown kissing poor Tavros after leading him into her hive, resulting in him flipping the fuck out. Whether this is happening or is pure mind-control is still unknown and we very well may wish for the latter please.

It also seems that Vriska and Equius are very similar in terms of their behaviour - they both have addictions to breaking a specific thing, (in Vriska's case "Black Oracles", and in Equius' case 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 both are working on a gift for Aradia, which they are cooperating with each other to deliver, even though they both plan on backstabbing each other eventually, and present the gift as their own. It is interesting to note that Equius doesn't seem to hold any particular grudge against Vriska, unlike many of the other trolls, and seems to consider her deceptive, violent demeanor to be socially acceptable, even encouraging her to harass their lower-caste friends. Also, oddly enough, he does not appear to hold the fact that Vriska killed his love-interest Aradia against her, possibly meaning that he is glad that Aradia was killed since it gave him the opportunity to resurrect her in a noble caste.

Ironically, she seems to have considered Aradia a friend despite the fact that she killed her, stating that she perhaps never learned what it meant to be a proper friend. She also mentioned to Doc Scratch that the Flarp sessions were simply meant to be fun for all of them and that she feels that he manipulated her into killing and hurting her buddies. She also seems to feel guilty about killing Aradia, stating that presenting the robot to her personally would have been her way of making amends. Her guilt is apparently so heavy that she becomes visibly angry and frustrated by the fact that Aradia is not even the slightest bit perturbed by her bad behavior and holds no ill will towards her.

Lusus/Kernelsprite
Vriska's Lusus is a gigantic spider, and the largest Lusus seen so far. 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.

Following the failed activation of Vriska's doomsday device, her lusus is un fortunately HS 4134 (crushed by rockfall), prompting Vriska to euthanize her.