The documentary is a good hour or so along. We’ve already covered the inception of the comic and the fandom’s early days. I am sitting on a red leather armchair, holding a half-full glass of wine and looking thoughtfully at a pipe. I appear already mildly tipsy.
When I start to take a sip of the wine I just make a face and spit it back out into a potted plant, which makes you wonder whether I’m actually tipsy or if this is just my natural demeanor.
“Bad vintage,” I say. “Bouquet. Palate. Where were we? Oh, right. So, all of that, that’s why whenever I make a lyricstuck for a new fandom–hm?”
A muffled voice off-screen gently questions whether it’s still a lyricstuck if it’s not a Homestuck fandom product. I scoff gently. Take another sip of wine and immediately abort the activity in the same manner as before.
“Well, there’s a lot of debate about that. I personally think the term transcends fandom–we made it, after all! We built this medium!”
A montage of classic lyricstucks scrolls across the screen, each longer than the last.
“Oh, we weren’t the first to put pictures with music, but we were the first to stretch your Tumblr dash to inconceivable lengths in the pursuit of that combination! Back in the days when Read Mores were a sin, even on 76 panels of murderstuck set to My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark (Light Em Up) by Fall Out Boy.”
I pause and sigh. “Of all the options, I had to pick the one with a title almost as long as the song.”
Another pause. The background music swells gently. I turn to sit sideways in the armchair, but there isn’t room for my feet so I stop and turn back to the front, spilling the rest of my wine on myself in the process. I don’t appear to notice.
“But…you know, for all the weird shit you could say about lyricstucks or the fandom as a whole, no one could make crazy big art projects like we could.” I stare wistfully into the distance, shaking my head a little.
I’ve commented on this before and I know exactly why it is, but it’s still kind of hilarious that out of all the things that Vriska did (murders and mind control and lying and betrayal and hubris and really stupid decisions and general assholery and narrative hijacking), what bothers me the most are the things she did to Tavros – except for killing him, which is the one part she actually felt bad about but also the… cleanest thing she ever did to him.
The absolute healthiest that Vriska’s feelings towards Tavros got in canon was “angry, so I’ll kill him. *kills him* haha I win”.
its been years so i might be misremembering but wasn’t it also in self defence, like she was about to get lanced for murders she (for once) didn’t do
He was trying to kill her, but that was part of the reason she was angry, I think, rather than something she considered a credible threat.
…Also I think it wasn’t because of the murders, I think Tavros was first of those – I think he was nominally trying to kill her because she admitted she’d helped engineer the creation of Bec Noir?
that was it, exactly, and Tavros was not remotely a threat to her at the time (her being god tier and him being barely able to walk down a flight of stairs)
She was annoyed that of all times he had to pick that moment to grow a spine, when it was the least useful to anyone.
eeeh, see, the thing is it wasn’t useful because her deeds were done, but it was the right thing to do as far as he was concerned.
she actually set out to cause the horrible situation they were stuck in, and not only proudly confessed to it, but also stated her intent to go face Bec Noir alone (which as we know would only result in a total party kill). At that point it wasn’t about him or what he could do, or whether it would solve their current problem; she had to be stopped because she had to be stopped, and she would only stop once dead (as far as he was aware).
vriska was pissed because he didn’t take a stand on her terms, or didn’t choose to develop a spine and fight the enemies she picked for him to fight, on her terms. She didn’t contrive this scenario for him to show his “courage”; she didn’t control the situation at all. Simply, when she was about something else, he decided to fight her, and it wasn’t for her or about her. It was for himself.
that’s why she killed him. and that’s why she was unhappy and confused about it afterwards.
I can’t even be mad at her about any of the Bec Noir stuff, it’s just so. Completely divorced from reality.
–Although it is VERY interesting to me that she gives the same “I encouraged it to happen, but it would have happened anyway, so no fault attaches to me” excuse that Doc Scratch gave to her.
