reading about how doc scratch was important to the plot really helped me understand what he was doing better. I was confused and didn't really follow the plot when i read it and doc scratch felt odd to me. now i understand his significance and will probably re-read it sometime this year and keep that in mind and pay closer attention to the actual plot.
My friend my buddy my pal my amigo my home slice I have written about this before over HERE but for the sake of brevity I will make at least one thing super clear:
EVERYTHING IS DOC SCRATCH’S FAULT
His own birth? his fault.
The entire kerfuffle and dismemberment, paralysis, death, and disability that was the FLARP bullshit? Vriska, Tavros, Terezi, Sollux, and Aradia all tangling together into a horrible pile of mistrust, rage, and incapacitating each other? Doc Scratch’s fault.
I am fucking serious. The only reason that chain of events occured at all was because Doc Scratch manipulated Vriska. Groomed the worst qualities she already had out to the forefront, made her torture Tavros and paralyze him. Got Terezi and Aradia involved. Had Aradia murdered. Blew off Vriska’s arm and eye. Blinded Terezi. Everything that happened only went in motion because of Doc Scratch’s intervention.
Rose only went Grimdark because she was insulted, threatened, taunted, and manipulated by Doc Scratch into gazing into the crystal ball to see what the horrorterrors are like, causing her madness, and, by his own design, piquing John’s interest, leading him to his death, and then leading Rose to her own.
Karkat is the only reason the trolls on the meteor were able to have any hope of surviving together. Doc Scratch threw a wrench into it all by terrifying him into inaction. Making him too scared to intervene, forcing him to hide, jump at every tiny little sound, incapacitate him not by making him angry or making him sad, but by scaring the shit out of him until he was useless.
Stealing Damara from the meteors to be his agent of chaos and death on Alternia. Orchestrating the events of the other ancestors of troll culture. Giving mindfang’s journal to Vriska. You know, that horrible little book written by the Priate who Wouldn’t Shut the Fuck Up? That source of ALL of Vriska’s terrible attitude, her obsessive desire to imitate the worst possible role model for her entire life up until her original death in Act 5?
Hell, Vriska’s Death in Act 5 was orchestrated by Doc Scratch too. He told the story of how he made sure that Vriska would set herself on the path to utter doom, killing Terezi, Karkat, all of the other trolls, leaving only Vriska and her delusions of grandeur to fight Bec Noir and cause havoc the likes of which could only be avoided by Vriska’s death. Forcing Terezi’s hand, making her kill her sister because he deliberately made it so it had to be done.
He tricked Rose and Dave into creating the Green Sun. He used the traumatic events of Make Her Pay and the spaghetti timelines created by Aradia to facilitate his own birth. He wasted everybody’s time when he highjacked the story himself and forced the narrative to be told at his own whims until Hussie was forced to intervene and “shut him up.”
Not to even mention the whole thing, where he did the exact same fucking thing to Spades Slick, throwing him off the cliff of despair with cement shoes, pushing him to seek death? Separating him from the only person he has left, the person he hates the most? Forcing him to kill the woman who is literally the universe he lives in because there is literally no other reason for Slick to continue after what Doc Scratch did??? Which cREATES THE GREEN SUN WHICH IS THE SOURCE OF HIS UNFATHOMABLE POWER ASLDKJHFGADKSGH
Seriously. The only terrible thing in the story that he ISN’T responsible for is the creation of Bec Noir. That’s all on Vriska, that’s her responsibility, her fault, and her own fucked up ideas at play. But. God. Everything else?
Doc Scratch is a brilliant, disgusting, deliciously evil and absolutely captivating main villain, subtly orchestrating, unifying, and bringing together all of the horrible things that happened in the story up until Cascade, all leading up to him releasing his secret weapon and summoning Lord English.
Nothing the protagonists did managed to stop him. Not even the intervention of the story’s own AUTHOR was able to stop Doc Scratch from summoning Lord English, creating the Green Sun, making everything fall into Doc Scratch’s lap.
A villain that pits the heroes against one on another not through mind control or physical force, but through goading, taunting, manipulating the characters individually? A villain that doesn’t get his own hands dirty, but turns the heroes THEMSELVES into their own villains. Oh my god. So good.
