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[frostshotgg]

Vriska can't actually affect many people with her powers. Make Her Pay needed the double reacharound because basically the only troll Vriska can affect is Tavros. Beyond that, it's basically only humans from what I remember.

[Darvi]

She can affect Karkat and Sollux (half the time).

[Rolan7]

Vriska can't actually affect many people with her powers. Make Her Pay needed the double reacharound because basically the only troll Vriska can affect is Tavros. Beyond that, it's basically only humans from what I remember.

She controlled countless NPC trolls to death, but NPC trolls hardly count.  I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out even Tavros killed a few, maybe during extreme LARPing.  Since Feferi, Eridan, and Vriska collectively killed a ton and were dismissive about it.  Vriska even explained how it was totally different when you knew the victim (though she was talking about killing Tavros, who she had crushed on and tried to train for sweeps, so that wasn't really honest).

[Sergarr]

Oh man, I just realized what happened in a few updates after the previous hiatus.

I think the Caliborn's Masterpiece is going to wreck some serious shit.

[Graknorke]

AFAIK, the powers require either line-of-sight or within a certain range (thus the necessity of the psychic double reacharound in Make Her Pay).

Aranea managed to control the dead Megidos in the bubbles though, and they're in a differet universe. The psychic double reacharound was because Terezi is of too high blood (and maybe other factors who knows) to be controlled, so she needed to get to dragon lusus through Tavros.

[Bauglir]

Most likely she was fixated on dealing with LE, not being in a position to need to deal with Jade specifically. My best guess is it just didn't occur to her. We're still dealing with a bunch of teenagers, here. "Why didn't she just do X, that'd solve all their problems" isn't exactly a sound argument in any type of fiction.

[Liber celi]

Most likely she was fixated on dealing with LE, not being in a position to need to deal with Jade specifically. My best guess is it just didn't occur to her. We're still dealing with a bunch of teenagers, here. "Why didn't she just do X, that'd solve all their problems" isn't exactly a sound argument in any type of fiction.

Eh, I wouldn't generalise like that. I agree it is rarely a constructive argument, because the out-of-story answer is usually "The author didn't want to tell that story and neglected to include a solid excuse". It can be a legit flaw though, I think.

Yes, people make sub-optimal choices all the time. They don't think things through or are underinformed or act impulsively or are stuck in their ways or have thousands of other reasons. Characters, invariably trying hard to be people, will make bad choices too.
But characters, like people, have goals and problems, and they try to achieve the former and solve the latter. If they don't, or if they severly underperform, I'd like some solid reasoning for that. A Present-day Audience^{that's my nickname for myself} has many arbitrary demands towards a story, one being the character's actions being understandable and consistent.

But of course my arguments are vain and probably invalid because I'm hanging on to a certain fallacy: I want to see Homestuck as a huge Rube-Goldberg-Machine of Checkovian fireworks, clunky vidya game mechanics, arcane information, and time-travel, kind of a puzzle, but on fire & crack cocaine. Not so much as a nihilistic piece about the uselessness of teenagers, with some slice of life lmaos and  centering on the coming of age of Awesome McSerket. The Machine has to face questions the like of "WHY DIDN'T THEY CAPTCHALOGUE THE SPACE SHIP"; the Farce, absolutely not.
Entirely my fault, really. Let's talk about shipping instead. What is shipping "high" today? Is Dave/dave still going strong? What about Dave/dave/dave? Is Dirkjake still very sad and tragic?

[Putnam]

Dirkjake was never really a thing that was going to work out and Dave/John is still going strong somehow. Also, John/Bro??

[XXXXYYYY]

Entirely my fault, really. Let's talk about shipping instead. What is shipping "high" today? Is Dave/dave still going strong? What about Dave/dave/dave? Is Dirkjake still very sad and tragic?

Do you want me to run the shipalyzer again? I can if you want. I could even plot the ship number changes over time in a nice graph, if you wish.

[Rolan7]

I'm still waiting for us to metaship ships with each other again.  That was fun and not retarded at all.  (half that statement is true)

If we're actually going to discuss ships, is Tavros/Vriska a thing that might happen?  Or have we seen that played out with Vriska crushing on nonreciprocative Tavros then Tavros crushing on dismissive Vriska?  It *could* be building up to them both growing the hell up and forming a relationship not built on abuse.  Realistically though, I don't think it's worth the remaining time in the narrative.  Tavros already had his crowning moment of actual self-respect and ditching Vriska.  I don't think he's going to play much role in the coming events.

[Liber celi]

Do you want me to run the shipalyzer again? I can if you want. I could even plot the ship number changes over time in a nice graph, if you wish.

Oh, I'd hate to bother you; the shipalyzer is an amazing device, and I liked looking at the impressive shipping charts, but I did so in the way a six-year-old generally uses a tattered deck of Top Trumps: by pointing at very high numbers and giggling inanely.

Also, John/Bro??

Maybe those legions of writers all have a fetish for weird uncle figures? The bad kind of weird uncle figures?
Better not to stare into the abyss for too long.

[XXXXYYYY]

I'm still waiting for us to metaship ships with each other again.  That was fun and not retarded at all.  (half that statement is true)

If we're actually going to discuss ships, is Tavros/Vriska a thing that might happen?  Or have we seen that played out with Vriska crushing on nonreciprocative Tavros then Tavros crushing on dismissive Vriska?  It *could* be building up to them both growing the hell up and forming a relationship not built on abuse.  Realistically though, I don't think it's worth the remaining time in the narrative.  Tavros already had his crowning moment of actual self-respect and ditching Vriska.  I don't think he's going to play much role in the coming events.

I'm honestly not sure at this point. I mean, we had the dreambubble introspective stuff, but that's been retconned out, so yeah, it's probably just gonna be the same old Vriska/Tavros shit because this Vriska never got the chance to have those bombs dropped on her. I'm sad at all the lost character development, and unless the DB Vriska has the memory leaking thing that the doomed dreamrose did, I don't see much happening there.

Edit:

Do you want me to run the shipalyzer again? I can if you want. I could even plot the ship number changes over time in a nice graph, if you wish.

Oh, I'd hate to bother you; the shipalyzer is an amazing device, and I liked looking at the impressive shipping charts, but I did so in the way a six-year-old generally uses a tattered deck of Top Trumps: by pointing at very high numbers and giggling inanely.

It really is no bother. I'm pretty sure that everyone used it the same way (I sure as hell did), and it gives me something to tinker with and refine, which I enjoy. Plus, it gives me more projects to work on, and an incentive to do them, which is always good.

[Darvi]

More important question

WHO'S HAD GOING TO HAVE BEEN JANE'S SPRITE?!?

[Putnam]

More important question

WHO'S HAD GOING TO HAVE BEEN JANE'S SPRITE?!?

Better yet, Gamzee seems out of the picture in general. Who's going to have been all the sprites?

[Bauglir]

-snip-

I think you misunderstood. Why would one of Vriska's goals automatically be "Put Jade to sleep at this particular moment"? What that Vriska wants would that particularly accomplish? Fucking with the Condesce? I don't think that was ever a particularly big deal to her. It might have solved a lot of unforeseen problems in GAME OVER but that's not exactly inconsistent (it's not like she saw Aranea's scheme coming in the first place).

Now that Vriska's not dead, her goals are presumably different.

I'm not saying, "Never question anything, just soak up the shipping fumes and giggle into oblivion", I'm just cautioning you against projecting your sense of the narrative onto the characters.