I'd consider that analysis to be pretty spot on, not sure which one I count as, probably the second.
Vriska is complicated for a lot of reasons. One one hand, she's always a huge 8itch, 100% of the time. However, she's not always wrong about being a bitch (I still contend that Tavros's trying to kill her over "facilitating Jack's creation" is one of Tavros's weakest moments in the entire comic and entirely justifiable self-defence for Vriska. How dumb do you have to be to not figure out that THE DEMON IS ALREADY HERE?), and when she IS wrong, she sometimes seems to try and make up for it. So then the question becomes if it's sincere or not: for instance, yeah, she killed Aradia... but she also payed for the Aradiabot out of pocket. Then Aradia killed her. Like, did Aradia just not KNOW? Was it the Bl00 Bl00d in the 'bot that made Aradia way too violent to care? Would she have ever cared? Hard to say, but it stands out to me that it seems like nobody even remembers she was the one behind it. It was only mentioned for like two pages. She may or may not have also been behind Tavros's legs, I don't believe the motive behind that was ever established: it wouldn't exactly be something Equius would do from the bottom of his heart or somesuch.
So, then the question becomes... why did she want the Aradiabot constructed? To torture Aradia's soul with Equius's Equius-ness? That seems unlikely, as well as rather petty, even for her. She already got her revenge. So, then, why? Did she legitimately want to make amends? If so, she's suddenly a significantly less awful person, because she's showing that she regrets those decisions, at least to a small degree, perhaps even a large degree as she's paying for the 'bot herself.
Then we get to the thing that really made me adore Vriska: her interactions with John. Obviously I'm a big Con Heir shipper, but having her interact with someone in a way that she was markedly out to help them, especially when that someone is, well, John. Near the end of Act 5, when they've actually grown rather close, and Vriska tells him- and the reader- that she does regret all the things she's done, even though she doesn't think she should, because her culture tells her that she's in the right. She suddenly becomes a character who highlights the extremes of troll culture, an ever-important part of Homestuck's nature/nurture themes. Then we hear that she wants to change, and because she promises it to John, we have no reason not to believe it. She even makes plans to go on a d8! It's adorable.
Then she dies.
From there it's like she's a different person. In the Dream Bubbles she's alright- the character that became (Vriska) (who is not Vriska in any meaningful way beyond the name) maintains "who she is" to a degree, climaxing in the "8y 8eing me" monologue, which a lot of people are divided on. I loved it, but that sorta figures. Still, throughout the dream bubbles she remains very... pragmatic. She's more interested in results than morals, and we have reason to believe that it's the only sane approach to dealing with Lord English: sure enough, it DOES get results, as they reach the Weapon with very few mishaps.
Then Vriska suddenly decides "Y'know what? All those ghosts who's un-lives I sacrificed to get here? Eh, fuck those people, I just want to roll around in the dream-grass with my dead gillfrond until I die. I don't really want to take initiative and do things, besides my gillfrond."
This is why I don't like (Vriska). It's not Vriska. Not anymore. Vriska, as an antihero/villain/whatever you want to call her, DID things. She took initiative. Then (Vriska) shows up and kills her character, and we're supposed to sympathyze with her? Not only is she less interesting, I personally consider her morally worse than Vriska: she facilitated the slaughter of an uncountable number of dream ghosts, then decided "eh, fuck those guys." Vriska only killed a few hundred/thousand people in comparison, and those were largely to keep herself a live.
Then the RetJohn happens and I was super hyped because Vriska was finall going to get a chance to fufill her promise to John! She wasn't going to be dead, she was gonna be alive! And have just seen John after making those promises! And know that he saved her life! She's finally gonna put Troll Culture behind herself!
And then she forgot. Again. Same as Ghost Vriska but without the Dream Bubbles to facilitate an excuse. This only serves to make her further bitchyness even more disappointing and alienating: not only does it almost seem out of character in that you'd really expect SOME change after all those big promises she made (which have never been referred to again), but it seems like she's being set up for a fall. Vriska, brought back just to be killed again. Even though I'm currently more divided than ever about if she's a good character, I don't want to see THAT happen.
So yeah sorry for the classic EnigmaRant-quiem rant, but yea. Vriska. She's cool. Also a 8itch. Sometimes she's more cool than she is a 8itch, sometimes its like the author has entirely forgotten that she had a massive dump of character development right before her death and that huge upswing in her character which dramatically increased her likability will never even be referenced.
For fucks sake guys can we at least get a MENTION of that conversation? It was sort of a big deal.