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yandere-monoma · 7 months

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should i be insane and start the kill your masters commentary now

i am gonna be insane and start the kill your masters commentary now

hi this will contain spoilers for the killswitch au which imo is fine because i have no intentions of writing it in its entirety so HSJKFGFG

god. rose strider.

rosie rosie rosie rose strider UUUUUUGH.

fun fact i actually attempted to go off about all this weeks ago but tumblr deleted the fucking draft but now im drunk (or i was drunk when i started this at 1am and now its fuckin noon LMFAO) and trying again so LET'S GO!!!!

so. actually. my iteration of rose strider was first sparked after reading BGB by MermaidMayonaiise oh god bless tf out of them

like, guardianswaps is an ancient concept in the fandom so it's not like i've never considered her or any other strider kid before but GOD. this one line from BGB absolutely blasted through my soul:

You never knew her, but a Rose Strider would have been a killing machine. Considering the multiverse, she exists. Just not in any timeline that matters.

as i lovingly say in the comments of that fic, i literally copypasted that line to every hs friend i know. it drove me crazy

it'd still be a couple of weeks (months?) after reading that fic that i actually conceptualized her, though. rose strider was born via the homestuck renaissance chat which i will reference 6738459634563456 times in this commentary because killswitch would not exist without it. the renaissance chat went off with a million and one headcanons about a million and one different guardianswaps and my impulsive ass couldn't help but actualize them in some sort of written form, complete with ridiculous long ass plot and even a couple of sburb sessions that i'll never write cuz it'll take me years. like. the ideas were just so good.

ironically, our first official swap we discussed was actually john strider, who i hopefully will get to at least allude to in the next iteration of killswitch, along with dave lalonde (WHO I FUCKING LOVE AAAAA), jade egbert and rose harley... then we actually discussed jade before i finally revealed how insane i was about rose strider rose rose rose rose ROOOOOSE

from that first initial outline to the first chapter of kym, it took about two months of plotting and dragging through drafts which is CRAZY cuz it rly does feel like time has fucking flooown by. a lot of that time was also dedicated to the first installment of killswitch, which got interrupted because the third chapter of kyd got tragically deleted and i've never recovered and i only recently healed past the hurt enough to start to rewrite it. god. trauma.

anyway.

before i get to the first chapter, i wanted to talk about rose's initial concept as a strider and what it meant. as i've said 738596356 times already, nature vs nurture was how i approached every placement within the au. it was very important to me to blend every character with who they initially are in canon and who their guardian's influence turned them into. this made for an incredibly fun process that lent itself to a pretty easy formula characterization-wise.

for example, rose strider's excessively extreme experiences with self-harm are born of rose lalonde's early act 1 habit of engaging in empty suicide threats towards her mother. i took that tendency to act out and cranked that fucker up to 11 because there is nothing passive aggressive about how bro raised dave.

every killswitch character features this pairing blend approach to their writing. jake lalonde, for example, inherits roxy's hyperactive silly energy, though he lacks the grace, ease and confidence to carry it out without stumbling. however, rose is especially special because i wasn't just trying to blend rose and dave. because of rose's identity blurring motif, i had to build her up using elements of rose AND dave AND dirk AND, most importantly, bro. that made her, honestly, really fucking hard to write because i still wanted her to be recognizable enough, while still sounding like a carbon copy of bro, simultaneously perfect and flawed all at the same time. and, ngl, it's super interesting to me, the way she deviates from the formula and refuses to follow the easy pattern i followed for literally every other character in the au. it's just so fitting for her to fuck with the meta like that JSKFG

anyway LETS START READING

fucking with the commands was actually a last minute choice done right at the very final edit. so much of the narrative fuckery that happens in kym is very on the spot, lots of last minute decisions that start with the impulse of 'oh shit yknow what'd be cool' and end with a big ole internal ramble of what it could all ~represent~

in this case, i thought this was nifty, i've been using this same one fuckin glitch generator for YEARS at this point: but also, i think it was a fun way to allude to her classpect, even though it's never really discussed outright

yeah see this was actually supposed to be a description of her room but in the very last draft as i was cleaning it up i saw this section that i still had to write and went nope. JHSKFGSDFG which is hilarious to me because doing so literally transformed how i approached the rest of the piece. originally this chapter really was supposed to just be a pretty direct copypaste of act 1, but god. GOD i'm glad it isn't. i've had so much fun with this style and it's so amusing to me that i have laziness to thank for that JKGFG ah yes the creative process

facts about john harley and his first conversation with rose!!

i suck at chumhandles and enlisted help from the renaissance chat for a lot of them. other handle options suggested to me at the time include: garrulousGallivant, groovyGallywag, galleyGaffer, giddyGelogenic (this was in second place to me i rly loved it sob)

(rose's handle was incredibly easy in comparison, largely because i hardly put any effort into it. i just wanted something suitably edgy and what could be edgier than naming yourself after genocide HJGKF)

his initial character premise:

the hardest part about starting the fic where i did is that there was just so much imagined backstory for rose and so little time to actually get to detail with it. the purpose of the first few pesterlogs with john and jade was to establish something that honestly i don't think got as much spotlight in the fic as i would have wanted: the fact that rose strider is a compulsive liar who actually tries her hardest to seem normal to her friends, both out of habitual manipulation and out of a subconscious urge to escape her life. it's an attempt to sprinkle her with the void traits that she clings to at the beginning of her arc (guess what her classpect is >:3) before embracing what she really is, but damn. if i could have, i would've written 100k of cute casual conversation with rose seeming like the sweetest most thoughtful friend in the world, only to reveal what she's really like

anyway! we get to see her make up a life for herself first through john, as she lies about going to school when ngl i don't think she's been since like. idk. the 3rd grade. GJKFLGS

this is always an interesting pesterlog to reread remembering how much i fucked with rose's dialogue jesus christ. i did NOT want her to sound like herself in the rougher drafts. she was honestly just a straight up blend of bro and dave, very casual, very ramble-y, however at the last second, i incorporated a touch of her usual more formal vibe/dialogue. again, because i was blending four different characters rather than two, it was difficult to find a balance i really liked. i definitely got there eventually but. hoo.

ro-stri originally used to copy the punctuation of anyone she spoke to. there are still aspects of this in the current draft, rose plays along and sprinkles more exclamation points in than usual to match john's hyperactiveness despite the fact that she feels like roadkill atm. however, in the end, i thought it was a little too subtle and wanted her to have a more uniform sound to her, rather than disappearing into anyone she encountered.

john harley thinks the funniest possible thing to joke about in the world is the fact that he's pretty much a feral kid who has never touched humanity and thus doesnt know the most basic things. he does this 9356354963 times a day. he loves playing dumb. in truth he's experienced a Lot through movies but sometimes he simply cant resist the urge to pretend he doesnt know what a fork is. jsdkfgsfg he was such a delight to write, jesus christ.

despite rose's attempt to fade into the background a little, all of her friends depend on her massively to fill a hole in their lives, which she ends up using to further manipulate and control the topics of their conversations. for john, he's just so incredibly hungry for what life in the real world is like. so rose fabricates a normal school life for him. and she's not even doing that for him. it's completely coincidental that they both just desire the same thing of each other and ngl i really adore and am fascinated by their dynamic. johnrose fuckin sneaks up on me i SWEAR.

rose calling herself a bishounen is the first hint of her weird gender fuckery. it is a hilarious hint that i'm so very proud of cuz it's so dumb HAHAHJKFS

john's flirtiness towards rose is inherited by (epilogue) jade's sexual promiscuity and slight pushiness towards the people she's attracted to. it also just seemed like so much fun lmfao it rly snuck up on me as i was writing and i couldn't help but go all in once i realized what was happening. like, john really does just find one bad joke (usually at someone's expense) that he really likes and does it over and over and over and OVER cuz so much of the joy for him is knowing that he's the only one fucking laughing and that everyone in the vicinity wants to throttle him. but they can't :P

someone tell me why :B emojis are so cute. the very first time i went >:B as john harley i went oh no because i fell so hard at that point HAHA

jade lalonde!!

can you believe this is the first time i've ever written jade in my life jesus fucking christ

other chumhandle option: tipsyTurvey

rose's canon handle is a pun that fucking murders me every time i acknowledge it and i desperately wanted a cute pun for hers. i am bad at puns. i am so very bad at puns. telekineticTactoe is the first pun i've made in all my decades of living. i am so proud of her fucking handle jesus christ GHJFKGS

something that's fun but also agonizing about pesterlogs like these is, again, i don't really get the chance to explain things. so much show, so little tell, which works out great for the narrative but makes the part of my brain that built up so much of the world pout so much. so i never actually go into detail about the fact that the 'update' jade is working on is to a webcomic that she has picked up and abandoned 87593456 times. this is seen more in her later conversations but one of jade's whole shticks is that she has tens of thousands of hobbies and she can't commit to a single goddamn one. she is absolutely CRUSHED by how much she wants to have a perfectly successful career like her mom. everything she tries just isnt perfect enough and it frustrates her endlessly. she is so so very cute i love herrr

it is SO fun discussing the lalonde issue through someone who is earnest and honest about their feelings and who airs them out the second they feel them. it's so fun to interpret some of the issues rose perhaps had with her mother, while also just poking at issues i think would have just. always bothered jade because of the type of person she is. she is going to be an incredibly fun perspective to write through the rest of the au and i rly hope i can figure out a way to focus a fic on one of her iterations one day

jade having a having a habit of traumadumping and rambling was supposed to be a play on just how excessively wordy rose can be. idk how much that shows (people associate rambling way more with dave imo) but either way it was super fun to write

rose's manipulative streaks are more obvious here. jade is incredibly vulnerable and rose jumps at the opportunity to attempt to further isolate and pit her against her mother. she's doing that completely out of habit, too. she has no malicious plan behind it all, it passes the time and it keeps jade close and that's really all she wants. she can see the way jade suffers under the weight of her work and she makes up her own stressful worklife, just so that jade can relate to her more than she can relate to the others.

DAVE FUCKIN EGBERT LET'S GOOO

the first words uttered about dave eggy in the gc:

and what his character ultimately turned into:

there is so much to say about dave i love him i love him i love him let's gOoooOooOOo

first off, i wanna explain why he's an egbert rather than a lalonde, since swapping the strilondes is way more common:

dave lalonde would have taken up too much screentime which would not have worked for the fic/verse. he is. god. an INCREDIBLE and fascinating specimen that i need to specifically write 100k about and pairing him with someone like ro-stri would just be a disservice to either of their stories. they simply can not exist together in a way that i would find narratively satisfying because they both just take up too much SPACE. GOD!!!

dave egbert is just cuter LMAO.

i am a dirty dirty multishipper and making him an egbert means i get a version of johndave and a version of daverose all at the same time

(and this doesnt even also allude to the fact that john strider and dave lalonde are also a hugely amusing dynamic like i rly needed the homophobic af angy boy paired with the darling excitable lil femboy ok

but really, my approach to dave is this: as much fun as tragic backstories are, sometimes a really fascinating narrative can be watching someone getting actively traumatized in the present for the very first time. being a bystander to someone you love's suffering, the survivor's guilt of not being the abused one, the overwhelming stress of being someone's sole confidant, the way it feels to be crushed by codependency and forced to witness unrelenting suffering when you are so woefully unprepared to provide proper support. dave just being a normal boy in an incredibly toxic relationship with his first love is just. GOD. so fun to me. so so fun it's honestly one of my fave decisions coming into the fic

there's also something to said about the fact that dave finally gets to experience normalcy and familial love at the expense of his sister taking his role in the narrative. there is a point in the au where the killswitch characters (who i also refer to as the 'zeta' kids) are made aware of their canon counterparts and thinking about what dave eggy will think about dave strider is SO exciting to me

anyway, again: this was a hard pesterlog to incorporate. i needed a quick summary of their dynamic and a quick summary of both of their characterizations: dave egbert being dryer, quieter, more withdrawn and blunt with his words, rose strider being abrasive and quick to anger and almost sadistically playful in the way she immediately seeks to tease and degrade her boyfriend. i also needed to show this without making rose the most unlikeable character this side of homestuck HGJKFGGS. fun fact, so much of how they talk to each other and exist in general is based on the fact that i think both of them just, like. fuckin LIVE on 4chan. rose is a 4chan troll while dave is just, like, a lurker. and i do wish i could have showed that more and showed even more of both the cruller kinds of dialogue rose can dish out and the more weird/fond/playful parts of their dynamic, because to me rose is the type to just constantly drop slurs and insult people and speak in a way that's designed to shock and horrify people and dave was her punching bag as much as he's her stuffed animal, and he's just so in love with all the ways she overwhelms him. he has so much fun trying to just desperately keep up with her and it all just creates this intense atmosphere that he's absolutely addicted to.

like, it's tragic that her talking like this never shows up in the fic itself but alas. alas, alack...

anyway

HOW CAN I FORGET HOW FUNNY DAVE'S HANDLE IS TO ME dave making his whole personality around himself being a npc is so funny to me ok godhjskfg

There is no excusing what must have occurred the previous evening, but there’s no point trying to contend with what happened.

considering 'what happened yesterday' is a big huge plot point in chapter 2 i'll leave it to the chapter 2 discussion but just know that this is one of my fave part's of rose's characterization that i ALSO mourn its lack of focus in the fic. i think it's present enough but UGH i wish i got to write it so much MOOOORE, DAMN!

🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

there were so many versions of this line and this introduction in general HJGKFGS happy with what i settled with

this section was hard because, again, had to quickly establish all the things i wish i could have spent time just slowly building up. i do enjoy how the final product looks, though. one of my favorite styles to utilize is a very compact, slightly minimalistic type of prose that leans

lil cal as a corrupting force is one of my fave hs things in the world it drives me insane to think about, so it was incredibly fun deciding that this was one of the biggest and most important differences between dave and rose is that dave fucking hates lil cal but ro-stri is not scared of puppets :D she loves them :D

When you sleep, if you sleep, your gaze never breaks from his, and you spend your nightmares drowning,

rose having an eternal staring contest with dream cal amuses the hell out of me especially thinking about dave going to derse just to watch in horror. it's also another aspect of that internal soul flaying she keeps forcing herself through, trying to create a perfect ouroboros between herself and what bro has been turned into. trying to fuckin speedrun through her own corruption

gurgles blood.

this next section about all the ways rose attempts to cope with her trauma was so nervewracking to publish. a lot of parts of this fic was but jesus christ. was really worried i'd get flack for a few of the ideas that got tossed out there, but i couldn't remove them even despite that anxiety. there is such a specific vibe to the 00's that i really wanted to incorporate into the fic... just, how it felt to be an absolutely insane teenager, always overwhelmed, constantly abused, and gifted with unadulterated unsupervised internet access to do terrible AWFUL things to. i wanted to depict it because it's what i relate to, what i've experienced, what i've seen and heard from others.

it's also just generally rly important to me to sprinkle darkweb references into as many of my strider fics as fucking possible cuz i know those boys LIVE on it LMFAOHJGKFG

In reality, you have no hobbies your brother hasn’t given you.

short but important: the fact that rose just does not get the opportunity to start creating her own personality like dave does was very important for me to highlight, though it's also not necessarily true. since the narration is filtered through rose's perspective, and rose is the one that is so adamant (especially at this part of the story) that she is a perfect clone of her brother, she skips past the experiences she has where she's strayed from bro's influence.

the end of this chapter was a very fun escalation that i'm very satisfied with. ahh, my killing machine 🥰❣️ how i adore you... now that i think about it, i forgot that originally i really did just want to make a quick oneshot summarizing all of my thoughts on her. as i was writing, the ideas got bigger and bigger, the hcs spiraled more and then my friends in the chat [shakes fist] dropped a huge BOMB of a plotline right into my lap that forced me to extend it way past its original plan but ughsjfgdfg i'm so glad that they did because this is a story that i'm so incredibly proud of godddjksfg

AND THAT'S CHAPTER ONE, STAY TUNED FOR MORE

#fic: kill your masters #director's commentary #meta #rose strider #verse: killswitch

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