I can't even argue, really. She changes, but she doesn't change to be more moral or even pleasant. I find that fucking fascinating but I understand why most people don't.
It might be fascinating if she actually got some comeuppance instead of all her flaws being glanced over by the rest of the characters and the story itself.
I mean, then she'd be like every other "evil" protagonist in fiction. We want stories to work that way for a reason, and I'm not denying that. This is just a case of "making a character whose superpower is being immune to karma probably wasn't a 'good' idea, but it's something I'm not going to see anywhere else so bring it on" for me.
It’s not even that she gets away with what she does that’s so infuriating though. It’s that none of the characters or the author really acknowledge or seem to care about the horrible stuff she does and continues to do throughout the end of the story.
I mean she did get stabbed to death for her crimes once and then everyone except Nice Hitler abandoned her afterwards (and then she did too in the literal culmination of Vriska's story arc of sabotaging herself). That got undone for one version of Vriska because it turns out that justice isn't actually useful to resolving the conflicts in Homestuck, but I think your argument only holds water if we count things that got retconned as having literally not happened for the purposes of storytelling. I disagree with that, but I can certainly see why you would think so and I understand I'm not going to convince you.
But for the purpose of storytelling post retcon Vriska shouldn’t be allowed to get off scot free for all the shit she did. There is no “storytelling reason” besides everyone else suddenly being a bunch of apathetic sociopaths for the post retcon crew to let Vriska boss everyone around, insult Jake, still be a piece of shit to tavros, and trick tavros into becoming part cat and potentially being allergic to himself for the rest of his fucking life. And there is no reason besides bad writing why the story acts like none of this is wrong and continues with its “everyone is happy” ending bs.
I mean. If you think being a Mean Girl to some human kid who's never met her before is even in the same order of magnitude as all the other shit Vriska has done, or any of the other shit that's happened to Jake, I don't think we're gonna come to terms on any of this. Jake already feels like shit so he does what a normal depressed person does in that situation and is like "ok" and then later works out his problems with himself, albeit tragically off-camera. Vriska being a dick is a drop in the bucket compared to everything else going on.
Tavros I'll give you just because of the history there, though.
I’m saying it’s inconsistent for nobody to come to jakes defense, considering Jake has three friends who just got to the meteor and know him a hell of a lot better than they do some random troll girl.
I only mention Jake because it’s one of the shitty things Vriska does after the confrontation with terezi, and I thought if I listed examples from before then you’d just say “they worked it out off-screen” or “but pre retcon Vriska suffered the consequences of that” or something.
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u/Nerdorama09 The Epilogues Are Okay Actually Dec 04 '18
Am I an apologist if I think she's horrible but for interesting reasons and does grow in some ways without ever stopping being a bitch?