Vriska -was- very pushy with Tavros and disregarded his wishes on the matter, though. Oh, and, I think "Eridan wanted to kill all his friends because Feferi wouldn't go out with him" is oversimplifying at best.
Yeah definitely. She pressures Tavros severely and repeatedly, and mind-controls him at other points when it furthers her plans to do so. What she did in the Dream Bubbles after their merger was a serious violation of its own. She used mind-control to bully him into doing something he’d rather not have done right there, which is despicable. Vriska and Meenah are both abusive people capable of gross cruelty, who impulsively damage the lives of those around them. I just don’t think that they’re narcissists.
Regarding Eridan, when I was writing that I forgot that Eridan left Karkat alive, and I forgot to check the Core flash, so that does change things. You can talk to Karkat as Eridan, so he clearly knew KK was there, and I think why he left him alive is open to speculation. Was it because they were friends, was it because he didn’t attack him, was it because he forgot he was there? I don’t read it as making that big a difference because the idea of defecting was still that everybody other than him and Feferi would die. He did tell Kanaya to wait, so you can theorize that he wanted to get the egg too as part of his “ruling class” comment, then decided to destroy it once Feferi was dead, but I don’t. Neither Kanaya nor Karkat, who had both been his friends for sweeps and one of whom was the keeper of the Matriorb, were included in his offer and I think that’s intentional on his part. That suggests to me that he cared more about removing any possible “competition” for Feferi than he did his emotional attachments to others, or the non-romantic social-position-appeal he makes as a last ditch effort to convince Fef.
But you’re right that it’s more complicated that I presented it, since I forgot this bit. And I kinda feel like it’s not the first time I’ve forgotten this bit X| Plus I can be hyperbolic sometimes, and that likely played a role in choosing that wording too.
in my view of the characters, it seems to be thieves that are unrepentant narcissists, while princes tend to have mental health issues, or show an odd mix of arrogance and self-loathing/self-destruction
I personally disagree with this. That doesn’t make me right. This Post includes links to the stuff I’ve written about Princes in the past, and Here’s a recent post on Thieves, though it doesn’t deal with this specific question in great depth. These are fine distinctions I’m drawing, I’m certainly no expert on narcissism, and obviously other people aren’t wrong for thinking otherwise.
To compare, here are the Princes on Romance:
Dirk thought building a sexual-harassment bot for Jake to condition him into accepting his romantic advances was completely normal. He felt it was so normal he didn’t even realize that’s what he was doing. He thought bullying Jake into a corner, physically and emotionally, to get a kiss from him was morally acceptable. It took him months of being in the relationship which resulted from that, and likely continued to see lots of overbearing behavior from him, before he realized how fucked up it was.
Eridan thought trying to use Moirallegiance to manipulate Feferi into a Red relationship was perfectly fine. He thought trying to start a Black rom with Sollux for the same reason was fine. He thought trying to manipulate Kanaya into Auspisticism for the same reason was fine. He never questions the morality of any of this that we see(though hopefully that’ll change, and we’ve seen, through GT!Eridan, that he has the potential to change). He thought murdering all of his friends so that he and Feferi would literally be the only trolls in the universe and she’d HAVE to date him, was fine.
Kurloz displays zero compunctions against mind-controlling Meulin, even though she is clearly confused and disturbed by the experience.
And here are the Thieves on the same subject:
Vriska resisted compelling Tavros into kissing her, and into being in a relationship with her. She does use compulsion to pressure him into Cahoots, but she doesn’t force him into it, or use it on him after he’s agreed(that we’re shown). She tried(albeit in assbackwards, counter productive, and unsettling ways) to apologize to Aradia and Terezi, almost immediately and again sweeps later as The Game started up, for what she did, and even avoided Terezi(and maybe Aradia, there’s no sign she was bugging her, but absence of evidence blah blah) for sweeps out of shame and regret over it, even though Terezi made it clear she wanted to forgive her. Vriska refused to be forgiven because of how serious her feelings were on how terrible what she had done was.
Meenah’s relationship with Aranea is entirely and enthusiastically consensual, as far as we see it. She feels no jealous over Aranea’s(possibly intervening?) relationships, and even celebrates them. She’s visibly upset and heartbroken over Aranea bailing on her. While her relationship with (Vriska) is certainly unbalanced by (Vriska)’s neediness(the way she changes herself), emotional state(her desire to experiment with being different than she has been), Meenah’s greater experience, and her obvious desire to replace Aranea, it isn’t abusive. It’s probably manipulative just by it’s imbalanced nature. It certainly wasn’t healthy, though they both genuinely cared for each other, but Meenah wasn’t just “using her”. Meenah enjoyed their relationship, it made her happy, but she felt she didn’t deserve it, and wanted to be out doing “important” stuff. She chose to abandon something that made her happy for the sake of her idea of who she was(which is sort of the converse of the choice (Vriska) made at the start of their relationship). The one thing I would say is that Meenah’s relationships tend to have noticeable power-imbalances in them. To me though, they don’t seem to go so far as to undermine the autonomy of the other party. I am open to arguments otherwise.
Princes on Violence:
Dirk is actually really good on this, and it’s one of the reasons I see him, for all his flaws and narcissism, as an example of a “Good” Prince. He doesn’t kill AR. He’s initially willing to use violence in his courtship of Jake, but he eventually realizes how fucked up this is. He eventually realizes how fucked up offing himself was, and how fucked up AR’s plotting to bring about that series of events was. He’s never violent, that I can remember at least and I’m pretty sure on this, with Jane or Roxy, and we never see him being personally violent with Jake, just violent by proxy. That isn’t good, but it shows he has to alienate the act from himself, and give himself plausible deniability(though his later self-abuse shows what a crock that is) to carry out violence against people important to him. That shows, deep down, that Dirk knows what he was doing was wrong. Bro didn’t need to do these things. Jake’s Brain!Ghost!Dirk suggests Dirk is pretty negative and overbearing in person(and his chat “advice” to Jane and Roxy about their personalities backs this up), but this isn’t the same and, again, Dirk, with time, realizes how messed up that was, too. Dirk has trouble recognizing people’s boundaries, this may be environmental(there’s a discussion about Dirk and Roxy’s overbearing behavior to be had there), but he knows they exist, he looks for them(see his convo with Dave), and when he realizes he’s crossed them he feels really, really shitty about it. I don’t think I’ve seen him apologize for it yet, though, but then again, neither do the Thieves.
Eridan hurts things as easy as he breaths. He does it out of spite, he does it to further plans, he does it because he’s bored. He has a right to hurt things, and so he does; whenever he feels like doing it. He uses violence to try and break up Sol/Fef, and to try to reduce Fef’s romantic options; in other words, he tries to use violence to control her romantically. He doesn’t exhibit much concern at all for the lives, comfort, or safety of his Friends.
Kurloz. He did something to hurt Mituna, his best friend, very badly, he deafened Meulin(though this may have been accidental), and he’s currently plotting to kill everyone he knows out of religious fervor. We haven’t really seen much of him, but this doesn’t strike me as someone with a very firm idea of where his desires end and the world begins.
And Thieves:
Vriska does kill Tavros, and that’s complicated by her past and present romantic feelings, but she doesn’t do it over the “slight” of being rejected, or for ego. She does it over frustration that he’d choose that time, when it can’t change anything that’s coming down the pipe, out of all the times she’s pushed him to, as she thought of it, “stand up for himself” and “be strong”, to fight back. She does it because, socially, she’d been raised to think she had every right to, because she viewed ease with violence as a test of her “Goodness” as a Troll, and because, contemplating a serious and dangerous fight, she felt she needed to prove she was “mature enough” and “ready” for it. Does that make it acceptable? Of course not, and she obviously doesn’t think so either, after the fact. (Vriska) sacrifices untold thousands of Ghosts as part of her plan to map the Outer Ring. She certainly feeds herself a line to justify what she did. Later she sees it for the stupid and self-aggrandizing stunt that it was, and starts actively trying to change as a person.
Meenah hurts people, but she isn’t unaware of their feeling regarding it, and she isn’t shameless about it. Nor is it ever personal. And she doesn’t really seem to be much for verbally abusing and humiliating people either, at least not that we see. Every time in canon that she’s presented with verbal abuse(Cronos and Mituna, Vriska and (Vriska)) she gets really pissed off about it and defends the person being picked on. Why this is, is up for speculation. It is obvious from what Meenah says to (Vriska) about Aranea’s Gambit, however, that Meenah does feel regret over a lot of the things she’s done, and that she consciously chooses to avoid dealing with it, even as it eats at her, which she also consciously chooses to ignore and hide from through constant action. Then there’s her attitude towards Mituna, and how she tries to recast what HIC did to the Helmsman as being protective. It’s a really fucked up and twisted morality that Meenah has, and a big part of it is built on not thinking very deeply about things because she can’t really square these contradictions, but cruelty for cruelty’s sake is something she finds repulsive. She won’t abide it, and when faced with a version of herself doing it, she tries to explain it away(lamely, for obvious reasons). It doesn’t make it any better that she thought, as Vriska did again and again when abusing Tavros, that she was legitimately “helping” the people she harmed, but it does mean she wasn’t doing it to aggrandize herself, or out of spite, or envy, or to tear people down for the sake of building herself up. She has a clear idea of where she ends and other people begin, and she respects their boundaries until they get in the way of her plans. She chooses to cross them to accomplish her goals, not out of ego.
Princes on being Thwarted:
Initially(The smutoff with Caliborn, the Dirkbot, his relationship with AR), Dirk responds by doubling down and making “winning” about his pride, which is bad. That Jake felt so oppressed in their relationship suggests a similar response there, which is bad. In Game Over he kills himself without even looking for his friends and makes what happened to them about him and his “failure”(an event that had nothing to do with him, and which he couldn’t possibly have prevented), which is bad. Sympathetic, totally, but still not good. However, in lesser situations in the (John)Canon, he responds to being thwarted by recognizing how he’s messed up, why he failed, how this related to his flaws, and trying to become better. Again: yay Dirk. Dirk is aware of his problems, he’s aware of how he tends to make everything about him and ride roughshod over others, and he’s working on them.
Eridan tried to kill all of his friends because Feferi wouldn’t go out with him. When she fought back over his assault on Sollux, he killed her too, then blew up the Matriorb, this shot Kanaya. Then he went hunting for the rest of his Friends to kill them anyway. When things didn’t go his way with Feferi before the game, he tried to bully Kanaya into pressuring Feferi to give him another chance. To put it mildly, Eridan doesn’t respond well to being denied. But, again, there’s Dream-Bubble!GT!Eridan, right there beside Fef, trying to help alternate versions of his Friends. Eridan is capable of the self-awareness we see in Dirk, I think, we just never see him achieve it. I don’t think it’s surprising at all that most Eri fic I’ve seen has been about him managing to do that.
I can’t think of anything we’ve seen that would point to how Kurloz takes disappointment. There is that bit of the Vriskagram flash with Gamzee talking to him, and I think that’s it. He seemed upset, but not abusive or violent. Then again, Gamzee is, literally, part of his god, so that may play a role. Anyway, it’s too thin and speculative to say anything, I think.
And Thieves:
Vriska berates Tavros for not giving her the Life Ring ages ago, and she curses him, Sollux, Nepeta, and Feferi for leaving. But she doesn’t then turn on and berate others to build herself back up, nor does she insult and belittle John when he refuses to give her the Life Ring. You can read the stuff she says after as manipulative, and it probably in part was, but I think she was also being sincere about how important John is to her. When Vriska thinks highly of someone, she’ll always think highly of them. Look at her relationship with Terezi. When Vriska cares for someone, stymieing her is not going to lessen that, or change how she treats them(this “loyalty” has it’s fucked up side too though; look at her consistent abuse of Tavros). In fact standing up to her, as we see with Kanaya and John clocking her, often increases her opinion of others.
Is there anything on this with Meenah? You could probably classify her relationship with (Vriska) as an example, but I think that’s muddy water. Taking that route anyway, you could say it’s a mixed bag; she seeks solace in others when defeated, but she isn’t above choosing uneven relationships where she clearly has the upperhand emotionally and in experience to do that.
Like I’ve said before, I think Princes are the ones who have to struggle with narcissism, and Thieves have to learn to be honest with themselves, slowdown, and actually translate their interest in others into positive action, rather than suppressing it because it’s inconvenient to their instrumental way of looking at the world, or difficult to square with their morality. Thieves are definitely egotists, and you could definitely have an narcissistic Thief, but judging from canon I think narcissism is central to Prince stories in a way it isn’t for the Thieves.
