Sortinghat App: Under Construction

[grimdarklight]

Player Information
Name: Bug
Timezone: GMT
Players Contact/AIM/MSN/YAHOO: Faereyjar
Email Address: asakura.miyun at gmail dot com
Former/Other Characters in the RP: hasnowings
How did you hear about us?: Derp

Character Information
Name: Rose Lalonde
Canon Origin/Series: Homestuck
School Year: 3
Gender: Female
Age: 13
Out of school living location: Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Blood status: Pureblood

Personality: Rose Lalonde, the Flighty Broad: She spurns this title, but she knows just as well as you do (albeit secretly) that it's fitting. Or does she?

Sarcastic and cynical with an occasionally intimidating know-it-all attitude, Rose Lalonde is the quintessential classy smartass and, at times, anti-heroine. On the surface, she may seem like an elegant, intelligent girl with a cynical outlook and a very wry (albeit sometimes oblique) sense of humour, but in truth she has a softhearted side and cares deeply about her friends - perhaps too much. She seems hard to get close to considering her often reticent nature, but she is encouraging and tolerant of her friends' very odd quirks and seems to genuinely (even if she would mask it as facetiously) enjoy the conversations she has with them. She is quiet and somewhat oddly introverted, but she knows her friends well and can at times 'lay it on thick' when attempting to get them to do something she wants, and while her big words and perfect syntax distance her from the others, she very much appreciates them as her friends. As John put it, "you like to make it out like you're playing it cool and don't care much about the people in your life, but i know deep down you really do. hell, not even that deep down. it's like, um, like your subconscious is having a wet t-shirt contest, and you being all aloof is this totally soggy shirt doing no good at all at hiding nothin'." She certainly tries to keep herself relatively emotionally guarded, preferring not to talk about her feelings and often covering up certain insecurities with her snarky intellect - at times she even withholds her private thoughts and personal objects from the readers themselves.

Even with her family, she acts stoic and reserved: her relationship with her mother is problematic, to say the least, and shows the more immature side of her cynical sense of self. Locked in a battle of "Cruel Irony" with Mom Lalonde, she tends to publicly (or at least, on the internet) "despise" her, seeming to believe that any familial shows of affection are as insincere as she makes her own affections out to be. This couldn't be further from the truth. While their actions towards each other seem at first to be intrinsically passive-agressive (on both their parts, considering her mother's extravagant gifts), Rose loves her mother innately, both as a mother and a sister. Looking at her mother with child's eyes, she had that faith in her that makes you think your parents are invincible. Naturally, it comes as a shock when she is brutally murdered by Jack Noir. In her later conversation with Jade, Rose opens up a little and mentions that she never needed the ectobiological truth about their relationship to understand her feelings about her mother (her maturity shines through here in her analysis even of her own childish whims) though she refused to admit any of it until her mom was gone.

Despite this self-awareness, she isn't free from losing sight of herself. As evidenced by her gameFAQs log detailing the start of the game and how she progressed with John as his server player, she has a straightforwards instinct towards gathering information, exploring, and gaining a full grasp of how things work: playing the "right" way. However, this desire to understand and control pushes her to limits that she believes she can handle, but start to become increasingly worrying as the game progresses. While her friends are important to her and are a large part of her motivation for the havoc she wreaks in her quest for knowledge, she is capable of drifting away from them when other things (like winning) take precedence. Using the information she learns from the dubious source of the "Noble Circle of Horrorterrors" the creatures occupying the furthest ring that command dark powers, she attempts to salvage the session because through her own sense of justice they have come too far to fail. Against her sprite's (somewhat adorable) advice, she focuses on a quest different from what was prescribed to her by the game and decides to forge her own way under the guidance of the Gods. This results in a slightly disturbing change in her personality: while she remains her usual sarcastic, cynical self, she communicates with her friends less and less, taking on a burden that is neither necessary nor asked for. Doc Scratch summarizes this nicely: "What would you say if I said a reserved girl enamored by what dwelt in shadow was selected by the horrorterrors for service, and did their bidding at every step while convinced of her own autonomy?" In other words, Rose Lalonde is subject very much to hubris - she has pride and this can blind her to her present. However, this flighty and irresponsible act doesn't mean that she is completely unaware of her own flaws - nor is she above admitting it when she is wrong and apologizing for her mistakes; in fact, it might be argued that she is more capable of self-introspection than most; she is seen to exercise this ability often (though often she refuses to acknowledge this, and others are not adverse to pointing this out) and she is often genuine with her friends in her own quiet and stubborn way. Sometimes, in her usual mode of being, this makes her more restrained in he expression of emotion and feeling she communicates, but it does not mean her sincerity should at all be questioned: the road to hell was, after all, paved with good intentions.

On the lighter end of the scale, Rose's enjoyments and hobbies are sophisticated, classy and seemingly delicate, but with a touch of the eldritch horror to them. She enjoys fairly normal activities such as surfing the internet, reading, knitting, playing the violin and appears to secretly be building up a lucrative portfolio creative writing. At one point, she had a cat she loved very much by the name of Jaspers, and despite her flippancy and complete denial of the possibility, evidence persists that he was one of the reasons why she was so keen to start playing Sburb, as it was hinted to her that the game was one way to bring him back from the dead. However she also has an affection for all things zoologically dubious - most notably squids and other tentacled creatures, as well as wizards (which her mum "feigns" interest in), dark magic, and dabbling in amateur psychology - much to the chagrin of her friends.

Rose then is a proud character that weaves together the stoic and the sensitive, the delicate and the disastrous. She brings destructive chaos through her quest for order and believes that by breaking the rules and coming at the game from an unconventional standpoint, she may be able to save her friends from predicted suffering and doom. She is at times rude, sarcastic and clever, capable of exploding Kanaya's horseshitometer, and yet also kind, understanding, and dangerous enough to earn her affection or at least pique her interest. She is indeed a flighty broad: wild, irresponsible, reckless and unpredictable, but caring, determined and very, very elegant.

Canon Background: Homestuck is ridiculously complicated. Let's try make it as brief as possible.

Rose is introduced second in Homestuck as tentacleTherapist, John's pesterchum friend. She functions as his server player, who wreaks havoc in his room/house while attempting to figure out the mechanics of the apocalyptic game they have at her bequest started to play. At the time she connects to him, she herself has her own problems - the power in her house goes off and her wireless internet signal appears to be very weak. This leaves John in occasional predicaments, as he only has four hours in which to get himself (with Rose's help) into a space known as the 'medium' before his house is hit by a gigantic meteor. Simultaneously, Rose's house is in the midst of a gigantic forest fire threatening to engulf her. In Rose's quest for internet signal and power source, she finds herself in her garden mausoleum dedicated to her dead cat Jaspers, who was stuffed and embalmed by her mother in her attempt to understand her. She later prototypes him with the kernelsprite, a construct of the game designed to give you information in a cryptic way. This mausoleum is also the entrance to her mother's workplace, Skaia laboratories - revealable through the push of a button. As the fire spreads towards the mausoleum, Rose escapes into the laboratories (her mother reveals the secret doorway) and finds a source of power/internet for her laptop. She also picks up several other items, including a scarf and a four-eyed kitten that follows her around. After leaving the labs through a transportalizer, she ends up back in her mother's room and manages to enter the medium with Dave's help as her server player.

Upon entering the medium, she finds herself in the land of Light and Rain with Jaspersprite, who has also been fused with a doll of an eldritch princess. As they have now entered the realm of the game, Jaspersprite can talk and give her help and information - though mostly in the form of meowing and confusing things he himself doesn't really understand because he is just a cat and he loved her very much. She describes him as a lolcat, and he manages to be ridiculously endearing while attempting to convey information. At one point, an offshoot timeline is created in which both John and Jade have died and Rose and Dave are left alone to level up and try to make the most of a bad situation. Here, as Dave travels back to change the past and route it to a more stable future, Rose's alternate selves disappear and merge with the present, giving her a more complete picture of how sburb works. As she progresses through the game, she starts to change - listening to scraps of advice from the Trolls and from the Circle of Horrorterrors, she comes to understand that the session they are playing in is barren and therefore doomed. Embracing the power of these eldritch gods, she decides to stop playing by the rules and goes on a quest to break the game in her own way. This is the stage at which she begins to lose touch with her friends and becomes distinctly sinister, coercing the helpful native creatures of the planets into becoming her magical consorts and destroying things in an attempt to make something out of nothing.

It is, however, revealed that this is simply playing into the Gods' hands and in her talk with the omnipotent Doc Scratch, she begins to question their motives. This results in her asking a magic cue ball for the true nature of the Circle of Horrorterrors. The answer it gives appears to have turned Rose "grimdark", causing her to speak in the "broodfester" tongues and seek revenge for her mother's death. Upon finding her mother's body along with John's dad and leading John to their whereabouts (where he got stabbed), she is currently engaged in battle with Bec Noir, the outcome of which is hinted not to be in her favour.

Background (AU!Canon; HP):
dog Rose was born in the US to single mother and pure-blooded witch Ms. Lalonde. Soon afterwards, when her daughter was still very young, she moved the small family back to her ancestral home of the United Kingdom to set herself up at an apothecary specializing in developmental magical products in the small town of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Rose had no real desire to know about her father; her mother never told her and she never asked, sensing early on that it wasn't strictly necessary to their relationship. The truth of the matter was that in the US, Ms. Lalonde had become involved with muggleborn wizard Bro Strider, and their altercation resulted in the birth of twins, the children that would come to be known as Rose Lalonde and Dave Strider. Soon after they were born, she left Dave to her one-night-stand and bundled Rose off with her to her new life in England. As fate would have it, Rose's twin brother ended up once again in the same place as her friend and/or acquaintance. While she has absolutely no knowledge of this little piece of family history in the slightest, the coincidence is likely not unwelcome and she may even have an inkling or odd feeling about their relationship as time progresses. It's not really a matter of importance to her, however. She likes to keep her personal life rather quiet and likely won't be digging to deep into her family history to uncover things that aren't strictly necessary to her purposes.

Her childhood was relatively normal for a wizarding girl. She grew up around magic and was aware of her developing magical abilities; her mother allowed her to read and practice in her own time, facilitating the compilation of a veritable library in her room composed mainly of magical texts and creative fiction, myth and magical zoology. She learned to play the violin, knit, and spent her time secretly writing elaborate stories about future wizarding adventures. Her growing interest in the dark arts was pointed, but not enough to worry anyone unduly - these forays were to some only natural to a girl of an intellectual disposition. Ms. Lalonde was an unconventional sort of parent; at times showering her daughter with gifts and actively getting involved in Rose's interests - but at other times seeming distant and aloof. She took to drink often, occasionally offering Rose alcohol in a show of terrible parenting, and her absorption in her work taught Rose well about what it meant to be independent, though the cynicism this mixture invoked in her daughter caused her sincere actions to be doubted. As her business developed and money started to roll in, her increasingly rich gifts escalated to the point that Rose started to become suspicious of her motives. Soon, she developed a deeply passive-agressive complex towards her mother and engaged in wars of cruel irony, culminating in the creation of an elaborate mausoleum after the death of a much loved pet cat named Jaspers who passed away under mysterious circumstances.

Rose received the letter of invitation to Hogwarts as expected on her 11th birthday (her mother threw her a gigantic congratulatory party - possibly including alcohol and a specially delivered large moving cake in the shape of an eldritch princess riding a pony), and enrolled without significant incident. Rose prefers to stay in school during holidays (whenever she can, to avoid her Mother's cruel irony), and while her mother takes an active stance in attempting to track her progress, Rose prefers not to ask for any favours, reply to any letters (except facetiously, at times), or encourage any of such farcical familial fancies. To others, she may seem stubborn, but for her it's much easier not to exspend the effort, and Hogwarts' generous library offers a curious amount of entertainment on quiet days. She has harbored a secret wish to delve into the knowledge contained within the restricted section for some time, but has not yet found any way of getting into it without the books screaming bloody murder. She's not stupid, and she doesn't want to get caught or jeopardize her place in the school she's come to love - but it's a goal nevertheless.

Rose often does well in classes, though at times when distracted by extraneous things she may fail to apply herself properly and her grades may slip. Her favorite subjects are defense against the dark arts (If you can't learn them, learn to defeat them), charms and care of magical creatures, though she is looking forward to encountering more dubious beasts than the ones covered in the first few years of class - particularly the giant squid in Hogwarts' lake. During the summer, she often sits near enough to observe it (but not near enough to be snatched up, or whatever odd things the squid has a propensity for doing). She has recently acquired a small black kitten named Vodka Mutini named after her mother's favorite drink. It has two eye-shaped spots above its own eyes and can appear quite unsettling at first, though it is a very affectionate little kitten.

days

Note: if anyone apping Mom or any of the other muns of characters mentioned would like to dispute this side of the history or come to other arrangements, I'm happy to switch things around!

How would your character fit in to each House?

Gryffindor: Perhaps there is an argument for Rose in Gryffindor. She is most definitely brave: it would take bravery to make the leap of faith she does in order to get into the medium. It would take bravery to delve into the mechanics of an already ridiculously dangerous game and leave the rules to the side in order to pursue what she thinks is the more constructive path. It would also take bravery to entrust herself to the abilities of her friends and doom herself into either oblivion or eternity alone in a hostile environment. She is also very loyal to these friends and shows a lot of nerve when standing up for them and facing danger on their behalf. Her belief in them is solid, and while she does have a habit of keeping to herself, she formulates her plans with ease and takes on large burdens of almost heroic magnitude despite no one truly asking for her commitment nor her sacrifice. The only problem with this loyalty is that it is self-destructive - taking on such burdens at times causes her to drift away from the people she seeks to protect and she can then fail to realise how worried they are when they see her slipping into darkness. Literally.

Hufflepuff: Rose doesn't seem like much of a Hufflepuff, but she does share some of their qualities. Rose certainly works hard and knows that success doesn't come to those who wait, but the effort she puts in doesn't seem that congruous with what she achieves. After all, she's a smart girl and knows how to get what she wants with minimal effort. Her sense of tolerance may seem low on the surface and she certainly makes a point to debunk peoples unfunny senses of humour, but in truth she doesn't mind her friends' quirks that much and sticks by them loyally through thick and thin. However, playing fair is never what Rose is prepared to do: she's done with playing by rules, because playing by rules doesn't always lead to success. If there's a possibility that she can get ahead by taking a risky or illegal way out, she won't hesitate to grasp it. Magic is real, whatever "magic" is, and if no one else has embraced it the way she has, it's their loss.

Ravenclaw: Rose shows a good deal of potential in Ravenclaw: bright, creative, and often very wryly witty, her vocabulary is extensive for that of a thirteen year old girl. She gives no quarter in conversations with her friends and takes advantage of her intelligence to be playfully sarcastic and occasionally scathing - though only in an endearing way, of course, because she doesn't look down on them and would never hesitate to use her smarts for their sake. She enjoys reading books and spends much of her time studying either psychology or the zoologically dubious, as well as an assortment of odd and occasionally dark magics. She has a canon interest in all these things, and can be said to be the most conventionally bookish of the four human children. She is stubborn and driven in collecting knowledge to an almost dangerous point, but even in normal situations she enjoys recording her thoughts and ruminations down in journals. She keeps these (along with a portfolio of self-written fiction about wizards) as a carefully guarded secret - though they are nevertheless stories she has put a great deal of time and effort into for creativity's sake. She also happens to keep a file on each of her friends psychological states of mind - which can be very infuriating for them when she starts to act as their long-distance unsolicited therapist.

Slytherin: When it comes down to it, Rose would be a very good fit in Slytherin. While her focus is certainly intellectual on one level, she is also extremely stubborn and highly ambitious: a dangerous combination. Rules are made to be broken, and she has no qualms in pursuing paths that are both perilous and morally dubious if she believes them to be right and within her grasp. In the original canon, she harnesses questionable powers and is manipulated by Gods with shady motives in the belief that through their power she would be capable of controlling the fates of herself and her friends. By formulating a cunning (albeit reckless) plan to blow up the
, she believes she has the potential to negate the foes her friends have unwittingly created and will eventually have to face. While her intentions are fundamentally good and she appears to be essentially loyal to those she respects and enjoys the company of, woe to those who are not her friends: because if anyone foolishly gets in the way of her goals and is unable to justify themselves (innocently or not), she will most likely be ruthless in eliminating the obstacle. With her already slightly standoffish attitude, she is capable of allowing herself to fall away from those friends if she believed that what she was doing was necessary to the completion of her ultimate goal. She does not flinch from destroying whole communities of harmless creatures with the power of the eldritch gods, and while she does not take a front seat in leadership (she is happy to pass this role to John, going so far as to explain to him why he is suited for the role), she states clearly that "coercion has not been a problem" when forcibly recruiting aforementioned harmless creatures to do her bidding. She is more than just a little forthcoming in taking matters into her own hands when she feels it is necessary. The only other thing that distinguishes her from those in Slytherin is her lack of regard towards blood status. While she was raised in a pure-blooded wizarding community, she has failed to inherit any prejudices based on parental lineage - it's simply not logical. If she has any disdain for anyone, it would be towards those who do not earn her respect or get in her way - and she maturely realises that this has nothing at all to do with who gave birth to them.

Sample Journal Entry:
Greetings, fellow students. I would apologize for my absence but I doubt you'll be convinced by the dubious sincerity of that statement, and I wouldn't want to presume you had any interest in my whereabouts. I'm not that big-headed. I assume nothing of importance has happened while I was being my usual solitary self? After all, no one sought my location with any dramatic news to impart - not that I hold it against any of you. After all, I was rather preoccupied.

So you see, it's all really quite simple: the books in the library are there to be read and I intended to read them. I was minding my own business in the library when I got wind that some of the more dubious tomes had found their way off their shelves in the restricted section. I volunteered to help return them to their rightful places. Unfortunately, the librarian wasn't particularly cooperative and while I managed to sneak a short peek, it seems I'll have to find other means of endearing myself to her - not that I happen to have any ulterior motives. Not at all.

In case it wasn't obvious, I'm joking. I have a deeply vested interest in seeking only legitimate means of gathering information while I'm here at Hogwarts. Patience is a virtue after all - I wouldn't want to worry anyone unduly with conceivable dark designs. Danger is only any good when it's calculated, so they say.

Sample Interaction Post in Third Person: Rose twirled her wand idly between her fingers as she flipped through the pages of the book she was reading. "Defensive Magical Theory," it was called - how thoroughly mind-consumingly boring! It was a pity she had to leave so many of her personal grimoires at home; books on the more intricate, performative sides of dark magic were unlikely to be treated well as side reading here at Hogwarts, even if they were only for academic purposes. After all, who would believe a thirteen year old girl was interested in such complex sorcery? She'd heard it before: "Oh, no darling - you don't want to read Dreadful Denizens of the Deep - Fifi la Folle's new work is over on the left shelf, wouldn't you be more interested in those...?"

She sighed. Perhaps she would get the chance later on, if she excelled enough in her studies to make it to the more advanced classes of Defense against the Dark Arts - but no matter, there was still time. Digging one of her several journals out of her bag she flipped through them for the one that contained her more creative exploits (it wouldn't do to risk broadcasting her fantastical imaginings to the whole school, not at all). Skimming through her creative fiction, she wondered if it was worth it to continue the story she was currently in the middle of writing. It was rare that she got the chance... after all, at Hogwarts one was rarely alone. Today was a lucky day, her roommates wouldn't be coming back any time soon, having gone off to Hogsmeade for the weekend. Despite the fact that her mother had signed the form, it was her own choice not to take the opportunity. She disliked very much owing her mother anything, and while it might be nice to stretch her legs outside the grounds of Hogwarts, there was plenty for her to occupy herself with even in the confines of her own dorm room.

Setting the journal down on her desk, she unscrewed her bottle of lavender ink and pondered over the next few plot developments. Perhaps an apocalyptic game was necessary to break the humdrum of her protagonist's normal life, or dreams of a planet with a small moon set in a vast ocean of lonely tentacled gods of dubious morality, or perhaps she ought to develop the side story of a beautiful witch who had fallen into the grimdark trance of the fabled woegothics.

As she set her quill to paper, she was content: the possibilities were endless, and the tale had only just begun.

l..lmao there are exactly 413 words in that last sample.
For the sake of it, have a shippy angstfluff Kanaya/Rose AU sample set at SH here as well: [derp]