#im so sorry gc | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rosedhall · 1 year ago

Note

can you go on a rant about how much you love Rose and debunk every single argument made against her in excruciating detail? Please? 🥺🥺🥺

Ohhh yes yes I can do this, because I am very normal about Rose Hall (lying)! I think I've probably seen the entire range of arguments of people who don't like Rose. Which, I feel the need to clarify, you're welcome to not like a character. I know Rose has a slightly derisive personality, she can be biting or aloof towards the player, she's stubborn and defensive, purposefully ignorant at times (girl why do you have beef with that 10 y/o) - which is probably not everyone's thing.

But I usually do have gripes with people who lie, misconstrue, blame, invent reasons not to like her or to paint her as irrational or 'bad' (or god forbid, abusive, cough I see you dead discord) because it all basically boils down to thinly veiled, "fandom misogyny" if you know the ilk. Which is twice as bad as normal, because her situation involves a lot of abuse that she gets criticised for not preventing or leaving correctly. Random aside, I feel strongly that if Rose was a male character, she would be viewed much more favourably, people love cold but protective paternal figures, with a soft spot for their child - this doesn't seem to extend to mothers.

OK, my screed / semi structural rambling under the cut:

Hugo & his abuse.

I don't see a ton of criticism in regards to Rose and Hugo's relationship on her part, at least in comparison to situations revolving around Jimmy. I assume because it's probably a bit too close to obvious victim blaming to do that. But I did occasionally come across the sentiment that she should've left earlier or when he first began abusing her, a thought that I assume arises from people who don't know much about how abusive relationships develop or are maintained et cetera.

Initial point: Hugo is Rose's boss! They meet after he hires her to be an assistant, and so from the very beginning she is his subordinate. He's famous - he has his own television show! He has enough money to afford a hotel! He controls her income by virtue of being the one who pays her.

After their relationship develops, and she presumably moves into the hotel, he explicitly begins to control her money ("Do not buy anything without my permission, I will not allow you to ruin my life"), therefore limiting what she can do while increasing his control over her. When stuck in the same property as your abuser, who is also your only source of income because he's your boss, it's very hard to make an escape without a strong support network, which we don't know if Rose had.

Additionally, abuse is incremental, Rose herself notes that prior to them being married that he was not abusive, or at least considerably less so. Which suggests that Hugo, plus the spirit-demon-whatever possessing him, managed to be covert enough early into their relationship.. before she finally was legally entrapped. And once in, as written above, it's pretty difficult to get out.

Divorce laws in the 1970s were also fairly shit still, the '69 reform act didn't go into effect until '71 and even then that required a couple to be separated 5 years (if only one wants the divorce) before they were legally separated. Meaning Hugo would still have easy access to Jim or Rose regardless of if she physically left or filed for divorce before then. Hugo having dual income, working with kids, owning property, being famous and so forth would absolutely put him at a legal advantage. Plus he's not above physically or verbally intimidating Rose (implied through the 301 sighting) to keep her from acting, the abuse whittles you down.

Having Jimmy.

During discussion with Maya, Rose states that "there was only one thing I could give [Hugo]", which suggests a sense of obligation and little in the way of eagerness in regards to giving birth to Jimmy. This seems to suggest that she's having Hugo's baby because he (or whatever possessing him) wants that and it's safer to keep him happy, rather than because she's keen to do so.

Hence why she seemed to have hoped that a baby would 'fix' things, a sentiment that current day Rose is acutely aware was a daft idea "I thought", etc. Oh wow character with shifting perspective, scandal.

Being too slow in killing Hugo.

Rose killing Hugo only after 2 years of Jimmy's life also gets her some shit, which I don't think is honestly warranted because she ammended it relatively quickly. In the game she does actually blame herself, which I suppose is why people go 'yeah exactly' in response to her "I should've done it sooner. I let him abuse Jimmy for too long".

I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say that maybe it's normal and human for someone to be hesitant to commit a murder, especially murdering someone they once loved. Tim Follin does tend to write his characters as relatively grounded, at least in terms of their personalities, it's not as though murder is treated flippantly within the game, in fact the conceit of the story is based on the deaths of the hotel ghosts, who are granted a lot of weight or emotion. (Hugo will not be missed though).

Mayhaps, the murder was an act of desperation by an abuse victim, who had to do it as a last resort to prevent the death of her toddler. And less so a girlboss moment.

Not listening to Harvey or Bose.

I like this one (I'm being smarmy), because in order for it to make sense as a detrimental action on Rose's behalf, you have to completely disregard any or all mistakes that either Bose or Harvey make. Which .. idk. seems hypocritical, if you're holding everyone to these standards I reckon that the fellows are just as much at fault.

Bose and Harvey both believe that Jimmy is a very volatile, mentally ill boy which.. I mean they're not wrong, can't judge their perception. How do they go about remedying this, making their case? Bose gets off to a strong start until he falls victim to a horrific prank on Jimmy's part, upon which all procedure goes out the window (understandable on a character level, makes for better writing for a character to make a mistake funnily) and he chases Jimmy throughout his home without telling Rose nor Harvey (Rose knows in retrospect and laments wishing she could have stopped it and Harvey has no knowledge of it at all) with a 'prescription only medication' used to treat ALCOHOL WITHDRAWAL OR SEIZURES. This is just actual medical malpractice.

Then after Jimmy's successive accusations (one of which Rose sides with Bose on) he continues to behave impulsively and strangely (216), until he spite-hangs himself in the basement. Frankly, I don't blame Rose for taking what he says with a grain of salt, and not listening to the advice of a man who she believes molested her son.

Harvey. Harvey is Harvey idk if anyone actually needs me to make a bullet point list of all the actions he does that are stupid. But shorthand, he wrecks all of Jimmy's belongings, he locks him in a basement presumably without food for the night, then blames him for a fire that isn't actually confirmed to be Jim's fault (bc if you ask Rose you get some variation in response, since all the ghosts are different people with different perspectives, and she believes the fire was caused by faulty wiring - which it absolutely could have been because I doubt that the spirit possessing Jimmy would WANT to kill its host as a teenager before the opportunity to be passed down even arose). And Harvey wraps this stunt up nicely by chasing Jim with a loaded handgun.

Yeah man, I can see why she didn't listen to him, he's a berk - violent and aggressive. She absolutely should have seen some of what Jim did in retaliation as bad, but she has blind spots for a reason and Harvey doesn't help himself. She trusted Harvey to parent Jimmy and he became erratic and dangerous, as a victim of spousal abuse, who witnessed prior child abuse I can't blame Rose for having more distrust of the adult man with a gun than her previously abused son.

Additionally! The whole thing is futile! Jimmy's problem isn't his mental illness, it's that he's possessed! Neither Harvey nor Bose ever so much as consider this avenue and Rose only works it out after they're both dead - nothing she (or they) could have done in this era would have fixed the problem. Listening to the psychiatrist would not have helped the fact that Jimmy has a demon inside of him, in fact letting this man continually get his way in poorly planned medical malpractice would probably have exacerbated the issue. Speaking of..

Reporting Bose.

Boo, hiss, going to the appropriate authorities this time? Not killing instead? How dare you, monstrous woman! I also feel that people often gloss over the fact that Rose was the one to contact Bose in the first place, she's not ignorant to Jimmy's mental problems, as she's sometimes presented to be.

Anyway, I don't entirely understand what people expected of Rose here, her son was claiming to have been physically assaulted, then sexually assaulted after she chose to believe Bose the first time. She literally sided with Bose initially, after Jim claimed Boee beat him. She listened to him, she chose his narrative over her son's. Then Bose went rogue and did the weird shit in 216 alone.. with Jimmy, instead of asking absolutely anyone to sit in with him. I like Bose, he has a nice demeanour and seems gormlessly authentic, but sometimes he behaves in incredibly suspicious ways, that man does himself no favours.

Her son, after she trusted Bose over him, comes back after being with Bose alone, claiming to have been molested. Of course she reports it to the authorities, what did you want her to do? Ignore her child when he cried rape? If your child, who's psychiatrist had already committed medical malpractice, been accused of assault and acted thoroughly bizarre, claimed they were being sexually assaulted would you just ignore them? Obviously not, it's daft! (If she had, and Jimmy was a genuine victim, she absolutely would've got shit for NOT believing him, it's lose-lose for her.)

She went to the correct authorities to let them do their job, it is not on her to investigate all aspects of the claim personally, it's the police's.

Harvey hadn't found the scrapbook at this point and it's implied..if you actually ask Rose about these things, that she doesn't even remember being shown it, just that Harvey claimed Jimmy had made a scrapbook.

All Harvey does in way of convincing Rose (that we explicitly see) is call her son a liar, says he lies about everything, before demeaning and stropping after her - Harvey, if you pay attention to the actions he actually does rather than the retrospective stuff he tells Maya, is a stubborn, reactive git, god love him. Even Bose, who has similar thoughts on Jimmy - though much milder, is aware that Harvey has anger issues and straight up calls much of his behaviour following his own death wrong. ("Violence doesn't solve anything", he's a real philosopher).

Believing Jimmy when he said killing Harvey was self defence.

Keeping this one short because it's obvious. Harvey was an adult man, who had been spiralling for a while, armed with a loaded gun, chasing a teenage boy around the hotel. Most people, including the police in the story, would assume the child armed with a letter opener was not the aggressor in the situation.

Regardless of Harvey's comment on just threatening Jimmy to scare him out of the hotel, he evidently hadn't informed anyone of this genius play of his, including Rose.. who believed he went mad. For obvious reasons. He was being mental. Even he admits he was seeing red and not thinking right.

Not getting Jimmy mental help as an adult.

Jimmy is an adult, he can advocate and get mental health help for himself, frankly. He's possessed so lord knows how effective it would have been but you get my drift. I don't know, of the top of my head, how GPs worked in the 90s and 00s, but I'm going to assume they have similar rules to now - wherein if you're over 16, you're responsible for your own appointments and medical care.

Also... perhaps there's understandable reasons for the two people, who's last psychiatrist committed medical malpractice and (according to Jimmy himself) molestation, to have some reservations about employing another.

Additional!

Rosemary Dolores Hall nee Jones is a fictional character, her mistakes or missteps are necessary to her being interesting to learn about and talk to, because if she had metatextual vision strong enough to evade any actions that seemed right to her but were actually detrimental she would not be interesting and the story wouldn't have progressed. It's unfair and pretty telling that, for most of her detractors, Bose, Harvey and Jimmy are all allowed to make similar mistakes and they're treated as intriguing character beats (they are!) but Rose does it and gets shit for the fact.

Conclusion - GB I hate fandom. I love you Rose. explodes, night

#this is 2k words so i can't flesh out the loving rose attribute as much im very sorry i hope the entire blog suffices #txt #asks #rose #rant #hey next time someone send me an adon question that's phrased like it came out of a gc se or alevel literature paper #in at dead of night how does tim follin convey the themes of tragedy through use of the ghosts and their interactions with jimmy.#how is individual perspective established between characters. you understand my drift #hey im never having the argument again now here's my masterpost #addendum shes not an enabler either she aims to get him help with bose. let's harvey parent the way he wants. stops jim and recognises when #he deteriorates as an adult. so on

23 notes · View notes