Aaaaaaa I’m sorry I missed this Ask for ages, but yeah I completely agree!
Kanaya links Rose’s behavior when drunk to a lot of concepts related to Void, too:
So on and so forth. Void and soporifics are pretty strongly intertwined!
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.)
I don’t think this hostility is at all merited, but sure, let’s go.
Mom Lalonde is canonically emotionally neglectful, yes. Glad you agree. In another universe, Dirk was obviously a violent child abuser. I don’t think I’ve ever indicated otherwise. I despise Bro Strider and I am glad he’s dead so Dave can move on as a person. The idea you have that I’m somehow erasing Bro’s crimes is absurd.
My point is that Dirk gets burdened with Bro’s crimes (it used to be quite common to pass around the book 3 quote about Bro being abusive as proof that Dirk abused Jake) but if anything, Mom has had the opposite treatment.
Thankfully I think this is dying off, but you still see a lot of art where Mom is trying her best to connect with Rose and Rose just refuses to give her the time of day! Stuff where Mom is genuine and sweet instead of sort of passive aggressive (and yes, Mom is passive aggressive, and yes, Roxy is hella passive aggressive at her worst moments). Where the war between them was all in Rose’s head and Mom never intended any of it.
Views on that are varied, but I don’t think it’s misogynist or abuse apologist to express that I wish Mom’s neglect and abuse got the same attention from fandom instead of being waved off because Roxy is usually a kind and generous person. Dirk is usually a bit overbearing, but he fiercely loves his friends and outright gives his life to save them in a gambit he’s not even sure will work. Yet people don’t decide that Bro was a saint who just wanted to help Dave and loved him – and as well they shouldn’t! That’d be fucking horrifying!
But there’s a bit of benevolent misogyny at work in refusal to admit that a female character might have also been fucked up, instead treating her alcoholism and emotional neglect as “she did her best” and deciding that her daughter made up the passive-aggression all on her own and just didn’t understand. How isn’t that angle worrying to you?
My point isn’t “Bro is blameless” or even “Dirk could never do what Bro did.” Dirk could. His capability for shittiness makes his struggle to be good all the more meaningful. In the end, Dirk isn’t Bro, and that’s what counts. But shouldn’t we also hold this true for Roxy? Roxy overcomes her addiction and puts her passive aggressive tendencies and need for others to vindicate her by letting her help aside. Roxy grows as a person. That’s good. That’s wonderful. Erasing that Mom was an addict who was definitely at least a little paggro (the bronzed vacuum? the pillow? even if you think everything else was sincere, that stuff is over the top) erases how meaningful it is that Roxy overcame those struggles.
Every time one of these hot takes gets sent they somehow get worse.
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “Intent doesn’t nullify abuse” because I’m sure you’re one of the chucklefucks always spewing it about Dirkjake without actually looking at the story you’re talking about, so let me fill you in on my personal background cause that’s where we are I guess:
My mom was a little bit like Bro. I got smacked around a few times when things got really intense.
But mostly, she was like Mom–and she wasn’t an alcoholic. She was codependent. I was regularly in a position where I had to try to understand my Mom as an equal, because her behavior simply didn’t make sense. It was arbitrary and childish and sometimes petty, and though I knew she loved me it made trying to understand how things with her worked kind of a nightmare.
And yes, she loved me but no, she didn’t ALWAYS act in my best interest or in a way that was unfailingly kind and fair to me, because…she’s a human being, and those generally aren’t that perfect. My mom was routinely passive aggressive and I actively stressed out not knowing how she would act any given day she came home.
I’m lucky enough that once I left her house, we were able to repair our relationship. I love my mom dearly! But there’s still plenty of incoherent, bizarre shit she did to me that left lasting anger and that she wouldn’t even understand if I tried to bring it up, and that’s pretty much always going to be part of how I understand my childhood experiences with her.
My point is, there’s a reason I relate to Rose the most out of any of the Beta kids growing up.
My dad, on the other hand, is pretty much like Grandpa–neglectful. He loves me a lot and tries to help me out and give me advice, but there’s a lot about me and my life he’ll outright ignore and pretend doesn’t exist. Like…my LGBT identity, for example.
He does this because it’s easier for him or it makes him less sad about life or he’s busy or whatever–I still love him and he still loves me, but it also still hurts, and it means that we do not communicate and he was not aware of my needs. And that is still damaging, even if it’s not an actively cruel force. There is an absence in my life where my Dad should be.
Just like there was an absence in Jade’s caretaking even before Grandpa died, and in Jade’s case that absence existed because...Grandpa is a Jake who fully indulges his self-serving fantasies to ignore painful emotional realities.
And in case you’re going to ask for receipts on the Guardians, keep in mind Mom offers Rose booze in her strife animation and Grandpa allows his kids to play with loaded guns while he goes on pretend dates with dolls. Neither of these are healthy or well-adjusted people, and they don’t lend themselves to healthy or well-adjusted parents.
There’s one healthy parent in Homestuck: Dad. You can love your kids with all the force in the world and still hurt them. Does that mean they are irredeemably evil and that Jake and Roxy should be judged according to what they’re capable of? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. That’s the point.
Mom and Grandpa also accomplish great acts, like Bro does in saving Dave from a Meteor or having showdowns with Jack. I would argue Mom and Grandpa perform better ones because Bro is, in all things, the worst. I just don’t think it makes sense to apply that to Dirk any more than it makes sense to apply it to Roxy and Jake.
Sure wish whoever these people are would talk about this stuff and consider that we may be reading the canon fundamentally differently and in good faith instead of vaguing about and sniping people I consider friends on anon. Not making an excellent rhetorical case for yourself here, anon.
Flying through Storytelling 