rose lalonde, squatting like a gargoyle on top of the kitchen island, dual wielding spatulas and wearing over twelve thousand dollars worth of custom tailored children’s clothing: Mother, what were the circumstances of my birth? Were you left by a particularly wealthy husband who happened to not know of my existence and would earnestly take full custody if he knew he had a daughter, or am I merely a fry of fornication that you keep around out of spite?
mom lalonde, perched on top of the refrigerator and eating leftover sweet and sour chicken with only a carving knife, maroon lipstick smudged across the blade: ur adopted
homestuck au where everything is the same except all the beta kids were raised as siblings by johns dad because jade didnt deserve to be alone, rose didnt deserve to be ignored and dave didnt deserve to get his ass beat on a regular basis. bro is in jail
they get in the game and find out theyre actually two sets of legitimate siblings and instead of being like “why were these two people were not related two raised as our siblings” (because dad is clearly john’s bio father) john and jade are just like. “awwww WE wanna be related to dave and rose too. this isnt fair”
they meet the alpha kids and rose turns to the derse kids and is like “im rose. i think im your daughter? this is my brother dave, my brother john, and my sister jade. what are your names” and dirk actually literally has a fucking stroke
john and jade have lived together their ENTIRE lives as siblings even though theyre technically second cousins? but dave and rose came later. john and dave had been internet friends and one year when theyre in like fifth grade dave comes to visit and when dad sees all these fuckin bruises all over him hes like “what the FUCK” and when dave goes “oh yeah bro and i were fighting. hes training me for something i guess its no big deal rly. the swords are p badass” dad is like JOHN….JADE……SLEEPING BAGS ARE DOWNSTAIRS and later when daves supposed to go back home john and jade go with him and dads like “im taking your kid because youre incompetent and a monster” and bros like “fair.” and then they call the police on him
roses mom and johns dad were dating for a while like two years later and they were all INTIMATELY aware of the fact that she had no idea whatsoever about how to take care of a kid. one day she was like “hey can you babysit rosey for a few hours i gotta do something” and dad went “yeah” and then mom like. never picked up rose. she just kind of skipped town. so dads here with his two Actual children plus johns internet friend whos brother beat him up and this goth eleven-year-old with a negligent mom and hes just. “guess i need a bigger car”
oh also john and jade are on the meteor during the game. thats a thing. the trolls are all like “???????moirails?????” but thats just kind of how the kids have always acted with each other and they see zero reason to stop now. theyd always been super close for siblings (rose thinks its because theyre all roughly the same age) but for some reason they never grew apart like some kids do and just. stayed really close. they love each other dammit
john and jade legitimately do forget that they arent really related to dave and rose btw. like they straight up are like “remember when this thing happened when we were five” and dave is like “i didnt live with you until i was like 9 dude” and john and jade are like “what really”
also like. since jade was raised around people (including john) theyre both EXTREMELY touchy and even though theyd NEVER say it out loud dave and rose are extremely hungry for like. healthy physical contact that didnt involve fighting ESPECIALLY dave so they have movie nights and shit and they all fall asleep in one big pile??? jade’s got her arms around rose who’s holding hands with john whose legs are tangled up with dave who’s got his face in jade’s hair and despite the logistical speed bumps its literally the most comfortable any of them have ever been as some dumb movie plays on the television and they dream
john’s a prep jade’s a jock dave’s a nerd and rose’s a goth. they all go to public school and have no friends aside from each other for almost two years because since the strilondes dont look like theyre related to the harleyberts people assume that john/rose and jade/ dave are couples and therefore Do Not Interact
one day jades like “blah blah blah my brother dave” and whoever shes talking to is like…..”dave strider? i thought he was your boyfriend” and jade says without skipping a beat “his name is dave egbert and no offense but i would actually rather die”
dave and rose have simultaneous identity crises in sixth grade. “oh jesus oh fuck were not legitimate harleybert siblings what if john and jade dont think were valid” so they sneak out one night to the 24-hour drugstore, pool their allowances to buy enough black hair dye to make rapunzel a goth, and spend two hours together silently destroying their hair as they soak it in cheap dye long enough to literally make it black almost permanently. john gets up to get a glass of water at 2 am and opens the bathroom door to see dave wearing a shower cap and rose frantically scrubbing off the dye stains on the sink and walks right back out again. jade wakes up the next morning and sees two dark-haired people she doesnt recognize asleep next to her and almost has a fucking heart attack
honestly as homestucks, we did Rose Lalonde dirty by never reading her as the Gamer Girl she was. playing a game on launch day despite overwhelming evidence that it’s a Bad Idea? writing a game walkthrough and publishing it to the multiverse? pushing the limits of the game in almost every way?
if rose were 13 in the year of our lord 2018, you cannot look me in the eyes and tell me she would not be a game youtuber.
ya but from how she fucked the game she clearly doesent just do letsplays or walkthroughs she would mainly be known for the “fuck the game up” style videos like monster factory or the half an a press
Sburb – Null Session Speedrun
24 hours (with scratch)
Green Sun+Jack Noir Glitch
100% Kernel Sprites
All Players God Tiers
She’s the game breaking queen.
Also tell me this doesn’t sound like the opening of a Monster Factory video
john gets home from school and jade and rose and dave are all IMMEDIATELY messaging him and hes like “what do you guys normally do when im gone??” and theyre all like “wait for you to get back”
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
“Contrary to all appearances, Rose Lalonde does not, in fact, have her shit together. Her shit is rarely even all on the same continent. Rose Lalonde’s shit is, if anything, like the Chaos Emeralds. You gather it, it powers your doomsday device or saves the world, and then they shoot off somewhere into the void. Elusive cryptids like Mothman and Bigfoot have nothing on Rose Lalonde’s shit.”
Jake probably: Well comparatively speaking rose seems to have her metaphorical marbles organized.
John, thinking of Grimdark mode: well…
Jade, recalling Rose blowing up her second gate:
Dave, having spent three years watching Rose descending into drunken stupor: yikes
legend says that if you gather together all of rose lalonde’s shit in one place, it can summon the great dragon shenron to grant one wish
Dave probably: i wish my family would stop being so fucking extra
just moving along like everyone else 