Aranea Serket

Aranea Serket is one of the pre-scratch trolls. She wears red shoes, white pointed glasses, and a blue long-sleeved dress with a white Scorpio symbol. She has her hair at shoulder length and wears a necklace with the Signless' symbol, mirroring Mindfang's similar fascination HS with the figure. It appears that she is also older than the other troll players, having "lived" in the dream bubbles for so long that time has lost meaning to her. Though she works against Lord English, the actions she takes to achieve her goals steadily become highly morally questionable.When the suggestion box for Vriska's name was open, "Aranea" was one of the suggested names, given by Radiation. Aranea's name is derived from araneus, which is Latin for "spider" and is pronounced a-RAH-neh-a, "Araneae" serves as the name for the entire Order of spiders which separates them from other Arachnids. Derivatives of it are used for numerous taxonomic ranks from Suborder down to Genus. Aranea was also the name of one of Charlotte the spider's daughters at the end of Charlotte's Web.Within the A1 iteration of Sgrub, Aranea's role was the Sylph of Light. She is shown to have reached god tier, and has some kind of healing powers, to the extent that it's possible for her to restore Terezi's sight. Aranea spent three sweeps in a failed session, only to seek out Echidna for a way to reset the session, prompting Damara Megido to initiate the scratch. Aranea was then killed along with everyone else in the session by Meenah Peixes, in order to not be completely rewritten by the scratch, and entered the dream bubbles that Meenah's A2 descendant created.

She initially appears HS in a black void, waving and smiling at Jake after he blacked out. Jake later describes her as both “some sort of spidery vampire” and “the girl of my dreams”; the latter is based on his fondness of blue ladies and spider girls.Later, after initially greeting her posing as Vriska Serket, Aranea introduces herself HS by name to Terezi Pyrope, revealing that she is in fact Vriska's ancestor. But rather than merely having lived “thousands of solar sweeps” ago on Alternia, as Mindfang did, this version of her claims to have preceded Terezi's entire civilization by “8illions” – she lived in Universe A's pre-scratch timeline, and has been watching the post-scratch timeline from the afterlife “for quite a while.” Later, Aranea stops by Jake's dead dream self's house after he is knocked out. She explains to him the nature of her psychic powers, and how she has spent very little time studying B2 Earth, because the gods have given her little access to it. Aranea attempts to be considerate towards Jake, and, as she can get a vague sense of humans' feelings, knows he has a “flushed attraction” towards her. This causes Aranea to go back to the subject of her psychic abilities, and how the highbloods on Beforus were kind and just to the lower classes. They enter a dream bubble containing the Wayward Vagabond, Dave Strider, Rose Lalonde, Kanaya Maryam and Karkat Vantas aggressing (or being aggressed by) Meenah. Aranea is put out with Meenah's antics, and exasperatedly relates the story of the Ancestors, much more briefly than she would like. Jake, confused, assumes that Meenah is the Condesce, proceeding to attack her, and prompting Aranea to wake him up, reminiscent of Vriska. Dirk appears in the bubble and absconds with Roxy, but being a mere psychic construct is unable to physically leave the bubble with her; Aranea instead wakes him with her psychic abilities, allowing Dirk to bring HS the Nobles together HS and enter HS the Medium.

After Lord English begins destroying dream bubbles, Aranea has the idea to find the ghost of Calliope, who she suspects is the secret to defeating the Lord of Time. She relates this plan to Meenah, who has a plan to confront English with a militia. After skeptically wishing Meenah luck, Aranea sets up an exposition booth in Karkat's private dream bubble, paying anyone who will listen to her long winded explanations. She again crosses paths with Meenah, and performs her service thusly.Sometime later, Aranea joins forces with her dancestor and begins sailing aboard a pirate ship, further crewed by Tavros Nitram, Aradia Megido, a completely blind but completely alive Sollux Captor, and her friend Meenah. During their adventure, Vriska and Aranea strike up quite a companionship. Aranea believes their time together helped her open her eyes to certain capabilities she had been hiding from. Vriska concurs on this notion, noting that she is “THE 8EST”. Vriska convinces Aranea to help her mind control an army of ghosts to help attract English's attention, so that he can do more damage to the ring and fill in the rest of their maps. Aranea was not in favor of the idea at first, but Vriska made a strong case for her involvement. Later it's revealed that Vriska was being facetious about her admiration for Aranea and most likely used it to halt Aranea's constant storytelling.Aranea appears to be a nice and considerate person, interested in helping others around her. She however admits that she has a tendency to talk too much, and to bring conversations back around to herself. In this way she is very similar to Vriska, yet different because of her more gentle nature. Terezi even goes as far as to call her “4 N1C3 VR1SK4”. This mirrors the relation between Feferi and Meenah, as Meenah is quite rude and mean, while sharing Feferi's bubbly nature and tendency to get excited.

The Cancer necklace she wears suggests she is a follower of The Sufferer. This seems at odds with her being pre-scratch Mindfang, since the tale of the Sufferer did not happen in the pre-scratch universe of the trolls. However, it was revealed HS that she acquired this necklace after death and that she learned a lot about the history of the post-scratch universe after her death. Aranea also revealed HS that she considered herself more of a fan of the Sufferer than a worshipper. Note that Mindfang called the Sufferer's tale compelling HS , suggesting she was at least sympathetic to his teachings. It is also possible that she just wears it as a sign of appreciation for Kankri Vantas, though this latter possibility is unlikely, as the Sufferer and his sign only seem to annoy the Insufferable. Of course, that also might be her intention.Like her dancestor, Vriska, Aranea possesses the ability to exert influence or outright control over the minds of others. Due to her eons of experience and possibly her Beforan upbringing, her ability is both more powerful and extensive. She is shown being able to control vast multitudes of trolls and, through this control, use their abilities by proxy (as shown by her manipulation of various incarnations of Damara Megido whilst she was in an entirely different plane of reality). As shown on this page HS , her powers include waking people up (mirroring Vriska's ability to put people to sleep and wake them up). Note that she was waking up a dream bubble projection of Dirk, suggesting that she was actually putting the projection to sleep, waking Dirk up on Derse.

Interestingly enough, she also shares personality traits with Kanaya, including her tendency to ramble, her helpfulness, and her affection towards the Thief in her group's session though Aranea's feelings towards Meenah have not been shown to be flushed. This may be significant given her shared role with Kanaya as the Sylphs of their sessions. Aranea could also be Kanaya's genetic descendant, given the "twelve extra wigglers" Karkat created on the Trolls' meteor, the fact that after the human scratch, the first and second generations of ectobabies arrived in the opposite order, and Aranea having already implied HS that she is the genetic descendant of Terezi as well as Vriska.Although Aranea's personality at first seems to contrast against Vriska's, she later on shows motives very much like those of her dancestor: just as Vriska has made highly risky moves to involve herself in achieving a goal (e.g. involving herself in the creation of Bec Noir to make sure that the person who she planned to kill exists), Aranea revived herself with the Ring of Life to try and prevent our heroes from creating a universe in which Caliborn can reside and grow up to become Lord English, thus forcibly 'healing' the timeline. This ultimately led to the catastrophic events of GAME OVER. John later refers to her as “the other vriska”, which further emphasizes their similarities.