roselalonde:

roselalonde:

can you imagine reading the entire comic and coming away from it like, here is my cool rose lalonde meta! she had a good caring mom who was never neglectful and was just being a drama queen. the end

i really do love all lalondes and looking at homestuck’s most clear-cut discussion on addiction unsympathetically is really shallow regardless, but the effects growing up with someone who was a good person but a bad mom had on rose are consistently downplayed every time they’re brought up?

like, when she’s talking about how she always understood her mom was also a sister figure before she knew about ectobiology but that her maternal responsibilities were “displaced” rose blames herself for being too immature, she thinks it’s her fault for being a kid and wanting a mother figure at all, and that’s only reaffirmed! from there on out her relationship with her mom is used as a foil to dave’s abusive childhood. i think that could have been really well done if she was portrayed with…literally any sympathy when that came up? in dave and dirk’s convo she’s basically called ungrateful for having pent-up frustration towards her guardian when his was much worse, and again there’s nothing at all to refute that! i don’t think dave’s a bad person for having those feelings at all, or that mom didn’t care about her, or that bro absolutely was worse, but it still sort of stings that her internalized guilt / sense of responsibility for her emotionally neglectful upbringing is upheld as correct.

even when roxy came directly into play rose’s first instinct is to ask john to tell roxy she’s “sorry for being a shitty daughter,” because she still thinks that entire dynamic was her fault! and then when she and roxy meet they hug and hang out and it’s really sweet but that baggage is still never really worked out or acknowledged. that’s one of many loose threads in hs, ofc, but the way that it’s suggesting that rose’s resolution was just to be kind and open towards this new Second Chance with someone like her mom sort of makes it worse than the other instances where issues went untouched imo! i love rose and roxy and i want them to be close and sweet but the lack of baggage affirms that rose’s anger was dare i say Invalid, that it was her responsibility alone to Atone for having complicated feelings about her mom, and that it was correct for her to conclude that she was being overdramatic and constructing something out of a problem that didn’t exist. so that’s fun and cute