It’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep so
LET ME TELL YOU MY FEELINGS ABOUT ROSE/KANAYA
Okay first off: a confession. I find Rose/Kanaya the way it’s written in most fic super super boring. Cute! But dull. And so for ages I was all, eh, not my pairing, to each their own, I’ll be over here shipping Condesce/Psiioniic and Dave/Terezi. Conflict! Friction! COMPLICATED CONTRADICTORY FEEEEEELINGS. These are the things I am into when I ship!
But recently I had a ~revelation~ which was basically: holy shit they are all set up to be the most conflict-heavy pairing of them all, and suddenly I am super super interested.
Hear me out! The core mechanic of the game sessions in every universe is a conflict between black and white, as on a chessboard. This colourcoding in the first instance is heavily skewed to suggest the traditional fantastical battle of light vs dark and good vs evil. Skaia is all things good: light and creation and visions of the future and gold pajamas, hooray. On the other end of the scale you have Derse, the Horrorterrors, and Jack Noir (originally a Dersite, do not forget.) Boo.
Of course all this gets turned around in the course of the story - in a not hugely unexpected way, I think. It’s not a new idea to go, HEY GUESS WHAT, THOSE ARE JUST NAMES FOR SIDES. The developing story of the Exiles shows us that the carapaces on both sides are basically getting a really raw deal. And as we get more information about the Horrorterror/Squiddle thing (mostly through Rose, Jade and Feferi) we come to a new understanding of the role played by ‘darkness’ in the game. The Horrorterrors are ultimately the ones calling on the kids for protection against something that’s killing them. (I totes cannot be bothered to find the relevant chat, it’s a Rose-Dave one.) It’s obvious now that the threat they face is Lord English - please note, he has a pegleg like Skipper Plumbthroat, the bad guy in the Squiddles cartoon.
WHAT HAS THIS TO DO WITH ROSE AND KANAYA. wait, wait, I’m getting to it.
So! We have a new set of colourcoded associations to play with now: on the one hand, darkness and Horrorterrors - and on the other, light and Lord English. Don’t forget that Lord English is summoned at the creation of the Green Sun: that dude is all about light. (The Green Sun is like the ultimate evil lightbulb.) We’ve gone from being on the side of light, to light and dark being names for sides, to being, cosmically speaking, on the side of darkness.
AND NOW I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT KANAYA.
Kanaya is heavily, heavily associated with light. She’s the only diurnal troll: she enjoys light and colour and open air: she’s a Prospit dreamer: in that one conversation with Rose she expresses serious reservations about anyone who’d turn away from Skaia’s light: and after her rainbow drinker transformation she glows in the goddamn dark. This isn’t subtle, folks. But what I find interesting is that her association with light goes along with her association with Doc Scratch, who has been manipulating Kanaya from childhood to enjoy the light. If you bear Doc Scratch’s influence in mind the troll story in Act 5 part 2 looks suddenly very suspicious. As far as I can tell the main point of murderstuck was Kanaya’s transformation into a rainbow drinker. (I find myself wondering if Doc Scratch didn’t suggest abandoning hope to Eridan. It strikes me as something he would do.)
This means Kanaya in the post-scratch world remains Doc Scratch’s creation and an agent of the forces of light. Given that the trolls and the original kids are now mostly on team Horrorterror (though who knows what Jade and John are up to right now?) - guys, Hussie’s set us up. I think she’s a sleeper agent. Calling it now: Kanaya is Scratch’s ace in the hole and she’s going to find herself in the position of an antagonist in the near future.
AND NOW I COME TO ROSE. If Kanaya is an agent of light, Rose is an agent of darkness. Rose literally went grimdark - which involved doing whatever the opposite of glowing in the dark is (shadowing in the light?), speaking in Horrorterror language, and becoming invisible to outside viewers. Rose stands in the shadows and can’t be seen: she’s the Seer of Light and thus outside its influence. She belongs to darkness.
So here we have Rose and Kanaya, about to meet for the first time, and they are suddenly on opposite sides of the cosmic conflict that defines them both. If Rose’s behaviour before was grimdark, Kanaya’s behaviour right now is the exact inverse. She’s gone grimlight.
Hence why this is suddenly the most interesting ship! I want to read stories about their similarities and their frustration with each other and their enjoyment of each other’s company and the fact that ultimately they are enemies. I want all the goddamn kismesis fic in the world, because these two are fated to be each other’s greyscale inversions. I want the stories where they fight, and where they can’t possibly understand, and where they both accuse the other one of being brainwashed. I want Kanaya to beat Rose up for her own good. I want Rose to keep Kanaya imprisoned in the Furthest Ring because she is too dangerous to be allowed loose. This could be the most terrible, the most painful, and the most fascinating relationship.
THOSE ARE MY FEELINGS ABOUT ROSE AND KANAYA. DISCUSS. (oh god it’s four in the morning, why can’t I sleep.)