mercurialmalcontent:

semianonymity:

mercurialmalcontent:

I made a post Friday night-ish asking what I should talk about, and pentagon-sama asked for Rose Lalonde. I agree that every time is a good time to talk about Rose — even if it takes me a while.

So, Rose. I often feel like I like her for very different reasons much of the fandom likes her. I don’t see the elegant ice queen, the manipulative academic, the mad girl too dangerous to be trusted.

What I see is a girl who writes and talks in a very precise, academic manner, like a child who learned how to talk to and deal with people from books rather than other actual people. I see a girl who tries very hard to be mature beyond her years, because someone has to be the mature one in her house. I see a girl living in a house full of absurdities who wants to be silly, but who keeps it reigned in. I see a girl who has learned to be suspicious of everyone’s motivations and sincerity because she has grown up without a good model of what sincerity looks like.

I see the child of an alcoholic.

An alcoholic that loves her, yes, but an alcoholic nonetheless. An alcoholic who tries to buy her goodwill with gifts and inappropriate freedoms, an alcoholic whose behavior is so puzzling that Rose doubts the sincerity of everything her mother and everyone else does and says. An alcoholic whose behavior, even when read more kindly than Rose’s filter suggests, is too immature for a parent, is the behavior of someone who wanted a sister, a friend, and who was not prepared to raise a child.

I see a girl who doesn’t know how to express affection or emotions in a healthy way who nonetheless cares deeply about her friends, and her mother as well. I see a girl who is smart and brave and clever enough to know that if a game is unfair, then you try to take it apart to see how it works. I see a girl retreats into the safety of stiff, intellectual words when she’s upset.

I see a girl who took a terrible risk of trying to harness dangerous powers, and did not go mad, did not threaten her friends or even have thoughts of such, whose only aggression was at the creature that murdered her mother.

When I look at Rose I see a funny, sharp-witted girl who tries to be warm, who struggles to be kind, who is aching for sincerity, who wants to understand.

I fundamentally think you can’t write Rose Lalonde without writing about alcoholic families. Partially because I can’t help but see myself and my alcoholic mother. Let me tell you, there aren’t that many stories out there about extremely smart, loving, functional alcoholic mothers, who aren’t openly abusive but are nevertheless toxic. I know my mom did her best, and that she loves me more than anything else in the world, and that was not enough because she’s sick and she used to be a hell of a lot sicker.

So, yeah, I see myself, and I try to keep my over-identification with Rose out of my characterization. But even more than that? It’s all there. I was the too-smart kid who wasn’t socialized quite right, who managed better with adults than with my peers, and I was lonely and hurting and hiding it. Yeah, she’s the responsible one. She’s bad at open affection. Her relationship with her mom is incredibly complicated, love layered in between anger and disappointment. She mirrors my story, and the stories I’ve heard from a lot of other children of alcoholics.

A small child doesn’t want an extravagant tomb for her dead cat. It’s about the mother’s ego, at that point—extravagant displays that fail to provide what’s necessary. Rose needed comfort and support.

I think cherrybaum once described her as a survivor, and that’s the core of her personality to me. She has overcome incredible odds. And that starts with her home life. She did learn how to be the emotionally mature one, the adult in her home, in some ways—she had to be her own support because her mom was sunk deep into addiction, no matter how outwardly functional that addiction might seem to be. And I know how that can be a strength! I know. I have coping skills that serve me very, very well in awful situations. And that I have them is still a disservice to me. Rose has a deep-rooted independent strength that I see as the core of her character—someone who found friends, and opened up to them, even though they were online (and I absolutely think that’s a part of it, as another lonely teen who found fandom, which I continue to credit to my survival past age fifteen) and that means a lot. She’s got edges, but they’re not ice queen edges so much as the sorts of edges that come from the isolation and loneliness of her home. She can laugh and be goofy, but she’s not happy-go-lucky and carefree in everything, because her mom was insufficient, and that left Rose to pick up the pieces.

I think Rose’s mother loved her, and tried her best to show it. But, to quote: “Going to an alcoholic for love and affection is like going to the hardware store for bread.” Rose’s mom had no capacity to give some genuine, selfless maternal affection. And that matters—the love is important, but it’s not all that there is to parenting.

Rose is the child of an alcoholic. It’s who she is.

This is amazing commentary.

(Fistbump of solidarity. My mom also had a substance abuse problem when I was growing up.)