Homestuck.XYZ 2.0

ROSE: I wonder what cats would say if they could speak.
JASPERSPRITE: Do your homework.
ROSE: No.

"People don't have arcs"

Just give up, do not fight fate. It is pointless. You will not win. Submit.

I beg to differ

Jane, Act 6: I cannot wait to become a business oligarch
[Shenanigans ensue]
Jane, Epilogues: I have become a business oligarch

I am on Saxhyel’s wavelength here. Rose’s arc was amazing once, but now it was basically just shat upon.

Sahxyel wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 22, 2020 1:46 am

"People don't have arcs"

Probably the stupidest line in the entire comic. Yes, Hussie, people don't have character arcs. But they do have issues. They have to develop their self-awareness, they have to realize that they have unhealthy behaviors that must be corrected, and learn to cope with and move on past their trauma. This is what people mean by 'character arc', you fucking dimwit.

egg wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 22, 2020 10:03 am

Sahxyel wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 22, 2020 1:46 am

"People don't have arcs"

Probably the stupidest line in the entire comic. Yes, Hussie, people don't have character arcs. But they do have issues. They have to develop their self-awareness, they have to realize that they have unhealthy behaviors that must be corrected, and learn to cope with and move on past their trauma. This is what people mean by 'character arc', you fucking dimwit.

STANDING OVATION FOR EGG

She was too busy with her 3 year speedrun to try to improve as a person. That's her own fault, but it's not something I'd blame her for. I mean, the public education system (Skaia) is trying to kill her and she's expected to trust its judgment? I graduated in a continuation school instead of the high school I started out in because I didn't want to be challenged, so I'm pulling from my own experience using that analogy.

When Dave talks of not having arcs, he means that things don't magically work out just because you expect them to. Not everyone goes through childhood and comes out wiser than they were before. No clean happily ever after to wrap things up.

JASPERSPRITE: Im just a cat Rose but I think you shouldnt shit on your own character development.
ROSE: That sounds boring. I'm too much of a nihilist to bother with such minutae.
JASPERSPRITE: Rose I dont understand what you mean.
ROSE: I have passive suicidal ideation. I don't plan on living long enough for shit to start mattering.
SHIT: matters
ROSE: ah fuck

JASPROSESPRITE^2: I got tired of waiting for you to achieve your maximum potential so I'm you now.
ROSE: AHAHAHAHA THIS IS SO STUPID YOU STUPID CAT
JASPROSESPRITE^2: Mad because you're not in touch with your feelings, aren't you, Rosie-poo?

So Rose has to learn that her self actualization won’t just magically fall out of nowhere... but you’re implying that Jasproseprite^2 is superior because she stopped waiting for magic to fix her problems... when jasprose was herself magical asspull that fixed all of rose’s problems...

B3N, you’re not making sense to me with that post.

egg wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 22, 2020 10:03 am

Sahxyel wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 22, 2020 1:46 am

"People don't have arcs"

Probably the stupidest line in the entire comic. Yes, Hussie, people don't have character arcs. But they do have issues. They have to develop their self-awareness, they have to realize that they have unhealthy behaviors that must be corrected, and learn to cope with and move on past their trauma. This is what people mean by 'character arc', you fucking dimwit.

It obviously was more that ultimately we are supposd to consider the charactes in story a mixture of 'real people' and fictional people. They are implied to have traits outside of what the story commands of them and those traits can be expressed if allowed. They are however reliant on the character arcs as they are still fictional people.

One could argue the entirety of the things happening in the epilogues and Hs^2 are a result of them not completing their character arcs.

I didn't say she was superior. That Rose also didn't play the rain. Not sure where you got that idea. It's more like a resignation, the idea that Jaspers gave up on helping Rose and that he has to do everything himself, because no matter how much he loves Rose, his patience isn't infinite. He's Rose now. Bye.

Jaspers didn't fix any problems except his own.

More importanty, I have a bad imagination when it comes to hypotheticals. It's a big weakness of mine. What would it mean for Rose's development to be anything other than a trainwreck? Please help me.

TH4NK YOU B3N wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 22, 2020 9:08 pm

What would it mean for Rose's development to be anything other than a trainwreck? Please help me.

For starters, she’d become someone who can stand on her own two damn feet and won’t constantly try to self destruct or get lost in her own madness and vices. Maybe she could, I don’t know, OVERCOME her challenges to become a self actualized young woman whose powers and abilities support both herself and her loved ones rathher than drain them? Maybe, Rose can have a happy fucking ending, because she clawed with tooth and nail in every act before number 6 to reach beyond the shit hand she was dealt and create a reality where that can happen.

But no. She doesn’t address or overcome or defeat anything. She dies, her reality bends into a pretzel so she can be resurrected as a sprite in another timeline, she’s turned into a manic pixie and then another version of her who apparently did fuckall for three years gets mocked by her manic pixie self. Who the fuck is this woman and what has she done with Act 1-5 Rose Lalonde.

calamityCons wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 22, 2020 9:16 pm

For starters, she’d become someone

Yes, ok, but how? That's the ideal outcome, but how would you reach that? That isn't the part that I have trouble imagining, and I don't know why you thought that's what I meant.

Also, I'm pretty sure eschewing responsibility to go on a road trip with Dirk is entirely what Acts 1-5 Rose would do. That's a problem and not a good thing.

B3N, if what you meant to ask was “how would someone write Rose Lalonde to be more satisfying” then i would answer that question. What you asked was “How would Rose’s development improve if she wasn’t a trainwreck?” Which is the question that I was answering.

I want her to finish overcoming her problems. I want her to reach a satisfying conclusion to the horrible trials she had to face. I want it to mean something cathartically, and I am not in the wrong for wanting it. I feel like i am being deliberately misunderstood by you.

No, I said a vague question about trainwrecks, one I should've been clearer about. I just figured that, for some reason, we'd agree on what's important, where the meaning lies. I thought meaning was found in the journey, not the destination. Do you think otherwise? The destination lacks catharsis if there is no logical step from the beginning to the end.

The journey itself is more important than the destination.
The struggle is what builds character and teaches us about ourselves and about life.

So, what I want to know is how you think that, considering how she cares more about beating the game than exploring its world, how she could possibly have ended up any differently? What interference would that take? I don't mean a retcon, by the way. I want to know what obstacle would force her to overcome her own bullshit.

I'm not sure Rose rebelling against destiny needs to be considered the problem. If anything it's because she stopped doing that that she never got a fulfilling arc. Skaia isn't the only path to self-actualization, there's probably infinite 'journeys', but I'm pretty sure we all agree standing still isn't one. I would also argue that one could see Rose growing up, getting married, getting involved in troll culture and raising a child is a sort of final period at the end of an arc, but because the journey isn't there it's not cathartic or satisfying to see for most readers.

Rose stops questioning the world she exists in seemingly to cut down on something that the story no longer needed, but in hindsight was still vital to the Homestuck experience. Aranea was not a good replacement, because she was just there to feed exposition to the reader without any of the clear intentions Rose showed (that of bucking the system she had no reason to trust).

If she rebelled against destiny because the destined outcome was bad, that would make sense. But she rebels because she's not up for the challenge. Compare that to the trolls, who kill their denizens for asking for the impossible. She finds her problems insurmountable, so she starts drinking.

It's in Act 5 Act 2 when she seeks out the guidance of Doc Scratch, who outright admits to being evil, rather than coming up with her own solution.

"Shouldn't I be the one asking you the questions?"

Asking God to tell you what to do is pretty much the opposite of rebelling against destiny.

You could compare Rose getting soft with (Vriska) getting soft. Sure, they're both more open to love, but at the cost of sacrificing their ambitions. At least (Vriska) has the excuse of being literally dead. Rose is just Like That.

That seems like a pretty bad take, honestly. The reason Rose consorts with Doc Scratch is because she prefers devil-like figures. She feels like, in their pursuit of evil, they're more trustworthy than the ineffable quasi-narrative forces Skaia represents. She's a Faustian kind of person. In no way does this mean she's not up to the challenge of solving her own problems or the larger existential problems everyone is having to deal with. She doesn't deal with them because of contrivances outside of her scope: The writer didn't want her to.

I might make a more log winded analysis post about Rose Lalonde with Receipts and the works, to try and explain why Rose was more or less always the seeker of forbidden knowledge and a proactive force in the story in her relentless quest for justice and fairness. She knows things are shit and she wants to make them better. Or at least she used to.

Listened to a recent pgenpodcast that featured an interesting take. That Rose was kind of the secondary villain of her session or at least antagonist.

She honestly displayed a lot of traits we are kinda seeing with ultimate dirk. Sense of superiority over her friends because of her knowledge base, fucking with how things are supposed to work and dissecting the session. True she was playing her part for the story and timeline but it shows her intent non the lays. There may be timelines that her pursuits either became more and more extreme.

And if we think in terms of perspective a villain in paradox space would be someone who breaking apart the Machine in order to figure out how it works in-spite of possible consequences. Though ultimately she did play a part of creating the green sun too, though the green sun seemed to serve an overall major function of their reality. Just so happened a menace like that took it for his own.
After all that she seems to simmer down and gets distracted from the knowledge seeking. In one timeline cause booze and addiction, another Kanaya and just dicking around. Or perhaps its because she god tiered and got filled with light that suppressed her void infection/gift.
Or maybe it was the voidy stuff having more influence? Either way Kanaya seems to be good at calming Rose's more maniacal tendencies cause the supervillainous sorceress mindset she gained had settled from there.

If wanting to kick Skaia's ass for forcing her and her friends to destroy the world and dealing them specifically a really terrible destiny where they have endless nonsense constantly boomeranging back to them and can never escape their traumatic losses of their parents or the unfathomably large scale consequences of their actions, then fuck it. Let her be evil. I am rooting for the empire.

The WHOLE POINT of her whole evil sorceress schtick was that she was going in the right direction but destroying herself in the process. I would really like it if she could break the shackles she was born into as well as find her own absolution and self-worth. She's not fucking evil for doing that.