and it's hard to dance with a devil on your back

NAME: Iddy
AGE: 21
JOURNAL: banerry
AIM/PLURK/EMAIL: Ihdreniel @ Plurk / ZieglerFan719@gmail.com
CURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A

SERIES: Homestuck
NAME: Vriska Serket
RACE: Troll
AGE: 6 solar sweeps/roughly 13 human years; I understand that I will be unable to have this character engage in sexual acts within the game while they are underage
CANON POINT: Right after being recruited as a member of the Red Team
REFERENCES: MSPA Wiki
GENDER: Female for sex and gender
APPEARANCE:
Vriska is a troll, which means that she's humanoid-looking with a few major differences. Most notably, she has yellow-orange horns (like most trolls, she has two; one is shaped like a claw and the other is shaped like a stinger) and light gray skin. Troll teeth are also much more pointy and fang-like than human teeth, they all have black hair (Vriska's is fairly long and bushy, and usually looks as if she's never taken a brush to it in her life), and their fingernails and sclerae are yellow (though the latter is only true for kids; the sclerae become the color of their blood as they get older). Outside of these species-wide details, Vriska wears glasses, with a patch replacing the left frame. This is to cover up an empty socket, as her eye was blown out when a magic cue ball exploded in her face (... yes, really). Her left arm, which was severed in that same incident, has been replaced by a metal prosthetic.

The clothes she wears are fairly simple, and she tends to wear the same outfit pretty much all the time: jeans, a t-shirt emblazoned with her symbol, and a jacket with one of the sleeves ripped off. She doesn't take very good care of her clothes and doesn't seem to mind that they're kind of ratty-looking, so her school uniforms will probably end up much the same and need to be replaced a lot.

She also wears a ridiculous amount of blue makeup, as well as lipstick and occasionally fingernail polish.

PERSONALITY & HOUSE REQUESTS:
Vriska is screwed up. So, so screwed up. In fact, in a group of teenagers from a crapsack world that seems to thrive on fundamentally screwing kids up for life, she's one of the worst. Her Freudian excuse is pretty obvious: she was raised from a very young age to lead her fellow troll children to their deaths, so as to feed her custodian and avoid dying in some way herself. Even before that, she was reading a journal filled with murder and rape, and she believed that this was something she needed to emulate in order to be strong. She routinely hurts and kills those that she calls friends. And the society that she comes from tells her that this is all perfectly okay.

She comes up with an excuse for anything and everything, mostly in order to take blame off of herself. She relentlessly bullies Tavros (a sweet, shy boy who-- usually-- wouldn't hurt a fly), then later says that she was just trying to make him "strong" so that he wouldn't be executed for being useless. She users her powers to hurdle him off a cliff, then brushes it off as punishment for continued weakness. Killing one troll and blinding another? She was locked in a revenge cycle that they started, and not retaliating would have counted as losing. Helping to create the series' main antagonist? Fate said he was going to be created anyway, and she wanted to have a hand in it so that it would be all the more impressive when she defeated him. Knowingly sending a clueless human boy to his death? It was for his own good because she knew he would come back to life stronger than ever, and telling him he would die ahead of time would have just caused him needless fear. And so on, and so forth. There's nothing that she doesn't have a justification ready for, and none of them don't involve attempts to get her off the hook for any number of terrible misdeeds. The thing is, a lot of the time, she's not just bullshitting-- she truly believes these justifications, and doesn't understand why barely anyone wants anything to do with her. She generally figures that other people just don't get it, or that it has to do with all the "bad luck" she's had since she lost her eye and arm (bad luck is yet another thing that she blames a lot of her problems on). She tends to go back and forth between appearing to have high self-esteem and low self-esteem-- she has a strong tendency towards bravado that she definitely seems to believe to an extent, but she insults and beats herself up on occasion, too.

Basically, what Vriska wants most in the world is to be a gigantic Mary Sue. She wants it all: all the power, all the gaming levels, all the skill, all the relationships. She thinks she's much more cool, suave, and manipulative than she actually is, and she envies people who can use and trick others without the liberal use of mind control. She openly tries to shape her entire life around the experiences of her ancestor, who was a true Alternian troll in every sense of the word (that is, she was a rampant murderer with no regrets or misgivings). Really, though, she's just kidding herself-- she may be capable of horrible things, but we do see in canon that she can and does feel regret, such as when she feels terrible for killing Tavros later on in the series. This is something that actually causes her quite a bit of insecurity at times; she won't admit it easily, but she worries that she isn't a good enough troll largely because she doesn't cause enough destruction and mayhem. This is part of the reason that she goes so overboard at times (later, she acknowledges that she was "trying too hard"). It clashes quite a bit with her desire to be a strong perfect badass troll, and probably what causes her more internal conflict than anything else. Still, while Vriska might not be as hard and uncaring as she sometimes wants to be, she's definitely not an overall nice person, even deep down. She's capable of niceness (she tried to make amends with Aradia by collaborating with Equius to give her a robot body, for example, and she makes Tavros a rocket car to ride around in), but she's much more likely to show someone she cares by abusing or teasing them.

In my opinion, Vriska would fit into either Gryffindor or Slytherin far more than either of the others. I'll make my case for each!

Gryffindor: Vriska is incredibly impulsive, daring, and show-off-y, which are typically seen as some of the more negative Gryffindor traits. In fact, her downfall and eventual death happen when, in a desire to "be the hero", she ignores all warnings and recklessly tries to go off by herself and fight Jack Noir... causing Terezi to have to make the difficult decision to kill her in order to keep her from unwittingly leading him back to the rest of their group's hideout. As stated above, she often comes off as intensely arrogant (another negative Gryffindor trait), and she definitely doesn't always play by the rules-- she cheats, she lies, and she spends much of her free time acting as a pirate.

That covers the negative traits, but she does also exhibit plenty of the positive Gryffindor traits, too. It was undoubtedly impetuous of her to rush into her attempted solo Jack Noir battle, but despite this, she did have good intentions-- she wanted to save her friends, and also hoped that one good deed would be able to make up for all the bad things she'd done in the past, which in a way almost made her intentions noble. She admits to John that she was nervous of the upcoming fight, but was planning to go through with it anyway, even though she thought it was likely that she would die "a hero's death". While all of this takes place some time after the canon point I've chosen for her, it's not as if this part of her personality came out of nowhere, even though she does her best to bury it in favor of trying to be horrible and fearsome instead-- and we do sometimes see her trying to atone for her mistakes earlier in the canon, albeit on much smaller scales (coming up with the idea for Aradia's soulbot and making Tavros his rocket chair are the two most notable).

The matter of blood and blood purity is also a huge factor on Vriska's world, though in a slightly different way-- instead of "purebloods" and "non-purebloods", there's a sliding scale of a multitude of different blood colors where some are considered higher and more noble than others. While Vriska has a rather high blood color herself, she canonically doesn't care about the spectrum at all and only ever pretends she does to razz people who allow it to dictate their lives. Though obviously being a blood purist isn't a requirement for Slytherin, it's an important enough trait in the history of the house that I consider her lack of bigotry on this front to be worth mentioning as another small point in favor of Gryffindor.

Slytherin: Vriska has extremely high ambitions, particularly early on in canon. From a very young age she's obsessively tried to model her life as much as possible after her anscestor, who was not only ruthless and unforgiving, but incredibly notorious and accomplished as well. During her FLARPing days she collected as many treasures and valuables as possible, and in the Medium she stockpiled boondollars to the point that she had immense piles of them in her private rooms. Being "the best" is extremely important to her-- again, especially early on. Having grown up the way she did has made her quite resourceful and independent, and she often has a trick or scheme up her sleeve. I mentioned disrespect for rules as a Gryffindor trait of hers, but it's a Slytherin trait too-- the particular ways in which she flouts rules and laws (the aforementioned cheating, lying, and piracy) are all probably more Slytherin-esque than Gryffindore-esque.

While I can see her fitting into both, I think she's much better suited for Gryffindor, especially since a lot of her Slytherin traits are things that she eventually comes to start to move away from. Though I'd prefer her to be placed in Gryffindor, I'll definitely understand if you want to put her in Slytherin to balance things out. ACTUALLY UHHHH the more that I think about it the more that I'm thinking I kind of have my heart set on Gryffindor? Not only because I think she'd fit there best, but because I think it'd actually do a lot to positively influence her development (whereas Slytherin would be more likely to encourage her to just keep at the status quo-- while she has both positive and negative Gryffindor traits, she basically doesn't have any of the positive Slytherin traits, such as cautiousness)/it'd be interesting to play out her reaction to being in that house. I do recognize that I'm editing this nearly a week after posting my app, though, so if you've already decided to place her in Slytherin if she gets in, I'm not going to throw a fit or anything. ♥

COMMUTER DETAILS: Untapped.

POSITION: Student.

ABILITIES & POWERS:
Trolls in general are physically stronger and more durable than the average human, though the extent to which they are isn't really revealed. However, Vriska also has some extra psychic powers in canon. If someone has a weak or otherwise easily-controlled mind, Vriska can worm her way in and get them to do her bidding. (However, canon does show that this doesn't work on humans-- so far, she can only put them to sleep.) Apparently, she can also read minds, though this ability is never demonstrated and is really only mentioned in a couple of throwaway lines. Based on her mind-controlling powers, though, it's probably safe to say that it only works on weak-minded non-humans. At this point, these are all the innate powers that she has*. However! I understand that Legilimency-- the skill from Harry Potter canon that it would most likely correspond to-- is considered an extremely difficult thing to learn in the wizarding world, and so I'm perfectly willing to say that she has a natural aptitude for it, but no real power yet.

Class-wise, she'd probably do well with spells because of the mental fortitude that they require, and so she'd excel in things like Transfiguration, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and so on. Classes that are more based in book-learning or following precise directions (Herbology, Potions, History of Magic, etc.) are ones that she wouldn't be that great in. None of the characters are seen attending anything like school in canon so I can't really use that as a baseline, but based on her personality, Vriska would probably be the type to usually consider sitting and studying for hours on end to be a waste of time, and would have no qualms about doing things like skipping "boring" classes or blowing off "pointless" homework assignments. Overall, I think she'd be a pretty bad student, even in the classes that she was naturally good at.

(I should probably also note that she canonically loves high-stakes dangerous games, and so Quidditch would be right up her alley. Wanting to be allowed to try out for her house's team might be a good motivator for her to get her butt in gear schoolwork-wise.)

*If you're familiar with the canon, you might notice that I left one of her abilities off-- namely, her Vision Eightfold (an eight-pupiled eye that she could use as x-ray vision). This is because, due to her canonpoint, she's lost it and hasn't yet gained it back. This also means that she doesn't have her godtier powers.

WAND:
Wood: Hawthorn.

"[Hawthorn] makes a strange, contradictory wand, as full of paradoxes as the tree that gave it birth, whose leaves and blossoms heal, and yet whose cut branches smell of death".

"Hawthorn wands may be particularly suited to healing magic, but they are also adept at curses, and it has been generally observed that the hawthorn wand seems most at home with a conflicted nature, or with a witch or wizard passing through a period of turmoil."

Vriska alternately helps and harms the people around her throughout her canon storyline, and though she tries to hide it, there's a lot of inner conflict within her. In a way you could say that her entire life has been a period of turmoil (this is true of many of the trolls), but the canon point I chose for her-- when she's just about to enter the Medium and leave her world for good-- is when the upheaval really starts.

Core: Dragon heartstring.

"As a rule, dragon heartstrings produce wands with the most power, and which are capable of the most flamboyant spells."

Vriska's kind of a flamboyant person herself, honestly. She's loud and brash, and she runs around playing pirates and pretending to be her legendary ancestor. A wand that was good at showy and attention-getting spells would suit her well.

Length: 13 1/2 inches.

"In my experience, longer wands... tend to be drawn to bigger personalities, and those of a more spacious and dramatic style of magic. Neater wands favour more elegant and refined spell-casting."

"Dramatic" is an excellent word to describe Vriska (and one that is used more than once in canon). "Neat" and "elegant" are emphatically not. Therefore, she gets a longer wand.

Strength: Inflexible. Vriska is undoubtedly stubborn, but not to such a degree that she resists any change whatsoever. Inflexibility, but not to such a degree that it becomes completely unyielding, fits her.

MISC.: Being a Homestuck character, Vriska makes liberal use of one of those o8noxious quirks that every8ody h8s!!!!!!!! for both typed and hand-written text. If I'm accepted, I'll use voice/video for all posts, and will only use text with characters of players who have told me that they don't mind it.

FIRST PERSON:
I just want to make this one veeeeeeeery important thing clear: I should not be in detention again! Even outside of the fact that I didn't even do anything wrong this time, that prefect clearly has it in for me! Did you know this was the third time she'd grabbed me in the hallway and accused me of doing something? She can never pin shit on me; she just has a pitiful grudge. Laaaaaaaame.

And speaking of lame! Why can't we go into the Forbidden Forest again? It sounds like that's where all the interesting stuff happens, so are you just trying to bore us to death or what? And don't say you want to keep us safe; I can keep myself safe, and if I were stupid enough to get myself killed-- which I wouldn't be!-- it'd be my own damn fault.

Man. I don't need a stalker prefect and I don't need a nanny. Why is that so hard for you assholes to understand?

THIRD PERSON:
Though there were a lot of things at Hogwarts that Vriska moaned and complained about, she honestly didn't really mind it that much. In fact, there was quite a lot that she kind of liked. Losing most of the use of her powers was a drag, but she planned to make up for that by being the best magic-user in the entire damn school (and screw anyone who told her that that was really unrealistic; they could just fuck off). There were a lot of people to troll and mess around with, and most of them weren't even her species, which she guessed was kind of interesting. And then, of course, there was the sporting game that involved flying through the air and trying to hit other players with big metal balls. So cool.

Unfortunately, most of the stuff that she especially liked seemed to be out of bounds. But was it her fault that they'd made such stupid rules? No! If people running a school were going to say, "Here are some secret passages, and some hidden rooms, and also a forest so terrifying and forbidden that we called it the Forbidden Forest", shouldn't they expect kids like Vriska Serket to try to sneak out of their dorms at night to go exploring (especially if they'd already tried during the day, and found the building too overrun with goody-goodies to actually get anything done)? It was really their own fault. If they'd wanted everybody to stay put, they should have built the place in the middle of an empty desert or something.

Not that Vriska would have suggest that, of course. She could just keep trying to sneak out; she was fine with it.

After all, she'd only been caught six times.