Introduction

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Act 5 Act 1, Part 4 of 7

Pages 2238-2322 (MSPA: 4138-4222)

I usually think “ew” at kissy scenes, but this one’s hilarity given its context is so much of a redeeming factor that I’ll use it as a title picture. Also, it’s a very infamous scene.

This picture doesn’t correspond with the very beginning of the post.
But Doc Scratch standing here character introduction-style fits pretty well for starting one of these posts.
EDIT: Now I have another panel as a title picture but I’ll still stick with having this as the first non-title one.

This post opens with another flashback. First, Aradia and Terezi discuss what happened to Tavros, and how they’re all done with gaming and putting up with Vriska. Terezi advises Aradia not to do anything in retaliation because it’ll end badly, but her voices urge her otherwise. She summons ghosts to haunt Vriska, who proceeds to talk to Doc Scratch. It’s amusing how easily Scratch gets her to do stuff. He outright tells her, “Aren’t you going to kill her?” Scratch reveals more about himself: how he oversees events and nudges them in the right direction, and how he’s almost omniscient but has gaps in his knowledge existing by design. Vriska does what she is asked and kills Aradia in the most fucked up way imaginable: mind-controlling her boyfriend into eating some mind honey and blasting her to death (though the scene cuts before her death is shown). I’ve seen some people argue that Vriska probably didn’t mean it when she referred to Sollux as Aradia’s boyfriend, but I doubt it. I think it’s more likely that Hussie decided to make Aradia’s own boyfriend be the one controlled into killing her, in order to make the scene sting extra hard, twofold (wink wink). Twofold because it’s Sollux—a guy who beats himself up about a lot of stuff—who killed her against his will.