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Ape Has Killed Ape posted:That's kind of horrible Vriska. Please stop. She kind of has a point though. There's really no other way around this. You saw how everybody turned Meenah down.
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Feb 26, 2013 08:13
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Supreme Admiral Piexes is being played for a Sap, methinks.
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Feb 26, 2013 08:15
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Bongo Bill posted:That's Jane. She's talking about Jane. Jane has a destiny that has been increasingly overtly foreshadowed for a while now, and I have no idea what it is. Pretty psyched to find out, though. (Also psyched for more John stabbing! It's coming, you'll see. It's been entirely too long since he died last!)
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Feb 26, 2013 08:16
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What Vriska and Aranea are doing may seem dickish at first, but will Paradox Space and the surviving characters really miss a legion of worthless Kankris, Cronuses, Eridans, Nepetas, Meulins and other one-dimensional characters? The answer is: no. All of the beta troll timelines seem to have happened to give Vriska and Meenah enough cannon fodder to find the treasure, so I say they should use what they've got. 
closeted republican fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 08:31
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So Math posted:I thought that the dead couldn't undergo character growth or change. This. This update seems to be showing that though. While all the alive kids and trolls have grown up and matured (or regressed) in various ways, got over their past grievances and made new friends during the last 3 years, these ghost trolls are pretty much exactly the same as they were when they died. Tavros is never going to not basically be Gollum now. Meenah only ever wants to stab people. Vriska still needs to be the center of attention, rushing off to put her great plan in to effect with little or no regard for others, which is what got her killed in the first place. Although Vriska was showing signs of change, she died, stunting her emotional growth at that stage. Areana likes to talk a lot, and will pretty much just do whatever the more influential characters tell her - She's not great at thinking for herself. I think these last few updates have really hammered home that death is pretty final in a lot of ways.
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Feb 26, 2013 09:14
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Bongo Bill posted:That's Jane. She's talking about Jane. I thought it was referring to Roxy at first, durr. 
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Feb 26, 2013 09:19
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VJeff posted:I thought it was referring to Roxy at first, durr. It MIGHT be referring to John, though. In a parallel universe, Poppop was the Heir to Crockercorp and he didn't meet his end at the pointy bit of a 2x3dent.
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Feb 26, 2013 09:35
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Look all jokes aside about worthless characters and one-dimensional throw-aways, this is pretty despicable and should probably warrant a stronger reaction from the characters than "oh those trolls and their shenanigans!" John was doing really good last intermission about not just passively absorbing hosed up poo poo without comment, this is kind of bleh. Not to mention it backtracks any imagined character growth from Vriska since she's just back to doing the same poo poo she did when she had a spidermom to feed. I mean if Vriska was feeding Lord English the "alpha timeline" versions of the main characters we'd be up in arms about how evil it was, the story internalizing how no one really cares about tertiary characters isn't really good for the story as a whole. Edit: I basically mean let's see someone start sacrificing characters we do care about already using the same logic on display here and getting the same round of polite nodding and see how well that goes over. Dolash fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 09:37
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god trolls are weird
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Feb 26, 2013 09:39
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Okay, I had previously been of the opinion that everyone who argued about Vriska undergoing some tragic character arc where she became a better person was crazy because she never actually did anything to show change besides whining about how she wasn't actually a bad person, once literally right before she went and murdered someone, and was basically the same horrible character from start to finish, but wow. She is literally stating that it is okay to mind-control people into accepting being erased from existence by a time-traveling demon god, and also actually doing that. That's, wow. If someone had told me that she'd be doing that before I would have told them it was too evil for her, but it's actually happening. Sollux had her nailed in that last update, she's terrible. Meenah thinking Feferi is awesome besides her instinctive urge to murder her is good though. Everyone admits that Feferi is adorable. There can be no questions here. Also this stuff. (Seriously though Feferi is adorable we need more of her.) Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 09:40
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who cares tho (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 26, 2013 10:25
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I almost felt bad for them at first but then I noticed that mind controled group included three Kankris and an Cronus and then suddenly I was OK with it.
MechanicalTomPetty fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 10:56
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Ahahaha It's loving Vriskatime all right. Luminous Obscurity fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 10:59
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Not only did death make Vriska worse, she's corrupting Aranea. A sad end, especially given she seems to be sailing towards chump death on a platter herself!
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Feb 26, 2013 11:28
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My question is how is Aradia, who knows like all of these people who are being brutally sacrificed personally, going along with this? I mean, when you're spending time in the Outer Ring, you're a Time player and you're immortal, you can basically do a theoretically infinite amount of hanging out, and she's spent a theoretically infinite amount of time bonding with these billions of nepetas and all these chumps. And yet she's ok with Vriska's mind control and
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Feb 26, 2013 11:34
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I'm assuming she knows something that we and Vriska don't know. Probably something to do with the nature of double-death? Also causality is still a thing that is a thing, perhaps she knows what's going to happen has to happen.
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Feb 26, 2013 11:38
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obviously it's because trolls are r-selectors
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Feb 26, 2013 11:38
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CuddlyZombie posted:Wow Aranea, not cool. I thought you were different. Considering who she was as Vriska's ancestor, I'm not surprised in the least. The Friendly Not-self-aware Nerd act had everyone fooled, but she's still a lot like Vriska with better publicity. JT Jag posted:My question is how is Aradia, who knows like all of these people who are being brutally sacrificed personally, going along with this? This I think may be the big issue people should keep in mind before immediately dismissing Vriska's plan as that of Giga Troll Hitler. Considering how Aradia had that long poignant talk with the dead beta Dave who was then promptly one of English's first victims, unless Aradia is secretly There's obviously still an afterlife of some sort past the dream bubbles which involves non-player characters and they seem to be able to be pulled from it intact years after the fact, as in the case of Jaspers/Nanna/etc. Presumably this is where players who double die end up. Or rather, more that the dream bubbles are more of a projection that just lets the dead characters potentially interact with living characters. Or interact with the eldricht horrors, potentially. (Of whom we still don't entirely know the motives of, even when they made the bubbles.) Adding this with all the evidence that the dreambubble afterlife is already pretty awful and lame, this twist may actually be less about how expendable certain characters are, and more about how once you've already died for real, "expendable" doesn't really have any real meaning left to it because the dead aren't actually losing anything.
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Feb 26, 2013 12:14
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Tollymain posted:I'm assuming she knows something that we and Vriska don't know. Probably something to do with the nature of double-death? Also causality is still a thing that is a thing, perhaps she knows what's going to happen has to happen. Maybe like Aranea, Vriska talked her round to her way of thinking. I mean, this isn't the intrinsically evil act that some of you guy are making it out to be, Vriska is right that they were going to die anyway and that if so they might as well be useful. Lord English is going to kill pretty much everybody and this is one of the few ways to stop him available. The stakes really are big enough to justify this action imo.
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Feb 26, 2013 12:15
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Dolash posted:John was doing really good last intermission about not just passively absorbing hosed up poo poo without comment, this is kind of bleh. Not to mention it backtracks any imagined character growth from Vriska since she's just back to doing the same poo poo she did when she had a spidermom to feed. Ugh, I was kind of on the fence about this one but reading it like this just bums me the gently caress out, especially the John part. Also, Tavros has somehow become more of a loser. I dunno how that was even possible, but, here we are. MJeff fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 12:45
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Nephthys posted:Maybe like Aranea, Vriska talked her round to her way of thinking. I mean, this isn't the intrinsically evil act that some of you guy are making it out to be, Vriska is right that they were going to die anyway and that if so they might as well be useful. Lord English is going to kill pretty much everybody and this is one of the few ways to stop him available. The stakes really are big enough to justify this action imo. IMO, it comes down to whether she saw some "purpose" when witnessing Doc Scratch's creation like Gamzee did after seeing the Miracles video.
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Feb 26, 2013 13:29
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Barring more evidence, I'm falling on the 'Too far, Vriska, too far!' side of things. I don't care how lovely and surplus this army is, at least show a little remorse, Serket!
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Feb 26, 2013 13:43
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Bobulus posted:Barring more evidence, I'm falling on the 'Too far, Vriska, too far!' side of things. I don't care how lovely and surplus this army is, at least show a little remorse, Serket! But it's Vriska and she's living(sortof) her dream(bubbles). She's counting on some dump rear end luck to lead her into some sort of not-victory.
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Feb 26, 2013 14:55
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Eh whatever they're already dead.
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Feb 26, 2013 15:00
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Roland Jones posted:Meenah thinking Feferi is awesome besides her instinctive urge to murder her is good though. Everyone admits that Feferi is adorable. There can be no questions here. I can basically agree with this. And also, wow, Vriska is still kind of an rear end in a top hat, huh. I guess some things never change? But then again, it's also sort of necessary assholery? I mean, they WOULD have just sat on their rear end and gotten lasered if they had been allowed to. Vriska still owns, is what my ultimate point here is. Although Aranea getting in touch with her Creepy Rape-Pirate side is disconcerting.
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Feb 26, 2013 15:28
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Regy Rusty posted:Eh whatever they're already dead. And now they're being mind-controlled so that their souls can be sacrificed against their will, which doesn't sound very good. "They're going to die anyway" or "It's necessary" is some creepy ends justify the means stuff. As for "who cares" the worst part of this whole thing is Hussie's saying "don't care about this". Sollux and Tavros are sort of passive-aggresively against it, but they're also presented as whiny losers. Aradia and Aranea both put a stamp of approval on the situation while being presented as reasonable characters, and John's ultimate reaction is it's just some weird alien nonsense. I'd like to think that Hussie's trying to point out the flaws in all their characters before addressing them somehow, but the way he filled the mind-control frame with lots of unpopular trolls to lessen the blow tells me he's not - if he'd wanted us to care, he'd have put the popular trolls and maybe the occasional human in there. Vriska's done some terrible stuff in the past, but it was always presented as being seen as terrible by everyone else and that Vriska was struggling to overcome herself. For a while it looked like she might've accomplished that, but the fact that we're back in a full-swing Vriskatime pretty much proves she hasn't. John overlooking her murderous past was interesting when it seemed like it was helping Vriska change her ways, now it's just creepy and uncomfortable. If you think Vriska is at all an interesting character then I don't know how this can't be seen as a massive step back for her narratively. Hopefully this scene is going somewhere. Dolash fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 15:49
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Things Vriska can do and still be defended as a hero:
Routinely invade the minds of others for fun and profit Cripple someone for not playing a game properly Kill his best friend for taking vengeance on his behalf Orchestrate the above by forcing the girl's boyfriend to take drugs Arrange for her own best friend to be blinded, by taking control of the crippled boy and her friend's mom Hit on the crippled dude and chew him out publicly when he's confused and scared by this Force him to write messages in her own blood screaming for him to kill her (this one was pretty messed up yo) Arrange for the death of a boy she's been flirting with, while telling him he'll just be going to sleep Arrange for the creation of the omnipotent monster threatening two universes (she didn't have a choice technically, but she wasn't exactly sad about it, and if she had a choice she probably would have done it anyway) Kill the crippled boy (but feel kind of bad so that's okay right?) Find him in the afterlife and mind-control him into agreeing to a dangerous quest Mind-control thousands of ghosts, many her friends, into being a slave-army for said quest -New! But it's okay because she was nice to John and had a tough childhood
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Feb 26, 2013 15:52
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Is anybody actually considering Vriska a straight up hero, though? I mean, she's pretty cool, and there's a fair bit of depth to her character, but most people realize that she's still loving bonkers bananas + Super Evil, Mostly. Maybe an anti-hero at best.
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Feb 26, 2013 15:56
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Dorroile posted:Is anybody actually considering Vriska a straight up hero, though? I mean, she's pretty cool, and there's a fair bit of depth to her character, but most people realize that she's still loving bonkers bananas + Super Evil, Mostly. Maybe an anti-hero at best. It's the fact that any development she was having toward hero gets shut down by this, plus everyone's weird passive acceptance of it that's the real problem. We've already had John tolerating the weirdness of troll murder-customs when he first spoke to Vriska, only now her self-doubt is gone and everyone's affirming that this is okay. Hell this is kind of ruining John too, since his previous acceptance of Vriska's bad deeds was mostly based on just hearing about them and being willing to give her a chance to express herself. Now it turns out John's just the sort of guy who's okay with mind-control soul-erasure. Would the other kids be too? I'm actually kind of worried that the answer is yes.
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Feb 26, 2013 16:07
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I wonder, if things work out and Vriska actually finds the Ultimate Weapon and beats Lord English, would people still see this as totally unjustifiable? Because yeah this is a completely terrible thing to be doing, but isn't Lord English enough of a threat that defeating him is worth this? The various ghosts would never manage to do anything together. They would never agree on anything, they would fight petty fights, they would be useless. They'd probably already be dead if not for Vriska. As Aranea said, in a perfect reality, no one would have to get hurt. But the stakes are way too high for the Serkets not to take such drastic measures. Also remember that the army of ghosts is ahead of them. Meaning that Vriska's ship is actually closer to Lord English than they are. It doesn't seem like she's suicide-charging them at LE as I think some might be thinking.
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Feb 26, 2013 16:10
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To be fair they probably would have double died anyway.
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Feb 26, 2013 16:39
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senseinobu posted:To be fair they probably would have double died anyway. I think it's not so much the die now/die later dichotomy, rather than the lack of choice. The fact that they're doing it to alternate timeline doomed copies seems to exculpate them in their minds. Doomed timelines are, much like Vriska, causality's chew toy.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:07
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Dolash posted:It's the fact that any development she was having toward hero gets shut down by this, plus everyone's weird passive acceptance of it that's the real problem. We've already had John tolerating the weirdness of troll murder-customs when he first spoke to Vriska, only now her self-doubt is gone and everyone's affirming that this is okay. It fits with John's issues of avoiding questions because he might not like the answers and also with his desire to see the best in people. I think right now he's doing what a lot of the people in this thread are doing. Trying to rationalize it. Also, try to keep in mind that we haven't seen this entire conversation yet. We don't really know what's coming next. Luminous Obscurity fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 17:08
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Freudian posted:Things Vriska can do and still be defended as a hero: 
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Feb 26, 2013 17:10
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It's pretty clear that this is not a justifiable thing to do, imo. Vriska doesn't even think of these ghosts as real people (even though they're obviously every bit as individual as the ghosts of alpha timeline selves) and as such is willing to murder them by the bucketload because a) the ends justify the means and b) they're not really people anyway. It's totally monstrous and "well, but maybe the ends do justify the means!" is not a solid argument for it being okay. Interesting side-notes: Vriska DATED a beta version of John for a while, but she doesn't think of beta selves as 'real'. Is that bad blood from a past relationship, or just inconsistent writing? Second, given some stuff we saw in Openbound, there's every possibility that the beta timeline versions of the alpha trolls are the ones who actually fulfilled their potential and got over their issues - it's reiterated several times that they were 'meant' to be heroes but were purposely diverted from their destiny by causal predestination and Kurloz/Damara's sabotage. The ones who actually got their act together would naturally be the doomed ones in offshoot timelines, much like the god tier Eridan/Feferi/Tavros et al we've seen in other dreamscapes. So Vriska isn't necessarily just murdering a billion rear end in a top hat Cronuses or whatever, she's probably murdering nine hundred ninety-nine million rear end in a top hat Cronuses and like one Cronus who never listened to Kurloz' advice and is actually an okay guy.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:11
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The interesting thing to me is that Upstanding Citizen Aranea is more or less OK with all of this too.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:13
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Android Blues posted:Interesting side-notes: Vriska DATED a beta version of John for a while, but she doesn't think of beta selves as 'real'. Is that bad blood from a past relationship, or just inconsistent writing? Neither of those. That John was real because Vriska wanted him to be. Everyone else isn't real because Vriska doesn't want them to be.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:14
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^^^ p much that ^^^Android Blues posted:Interesting side-notes: Vriska DATED a beta version of John for a while, but she doesn't think of beta selves as 'real'. Is that bad blood from a past relationship, or just inconsistent writing? Just because a character acts inconsistently doesn't mean the writing is bad. People are inconsistent as gently caress.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:14
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Nate RFB posted:The interesting thing to me is that Upstanding Citizen Aranea is more or less OK with all of this too. Well, Aranea, in another life, was Mindfang - who was a serious monster easily on this scale. It seems like the lure of extenuating circumstances ("it's okay to mind-control all these people because it's the only way to win!") and the presence of the inimitable Vriska Serket have led her down a road she always had something of a predilection to. Much as many of the other Alpha Trolls were assholes who'd grow up to be heroes in different circumstances, Aranea was a good person who maybe only needed a little push to become someone awful.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:16
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I love it. I love it all.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:24
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