I finally ramble about shadows of rose charlie.
warning: this is kinda just me being insane doing whatever i want and interpreting things however i want. :^) i be rambling about what i like, what i don’t like, what i see as being part of charlie’s character (even though yes it’s technically miranda playing charlie), and what i don’t. all this is about 8 whole minutes of screen time too lol. anyways yay this is kind of disjointed but enjoy.
-> the fact that he’s in rose’s life at all and what this says about their relationship
01. starting out nice and easy, i like how expressive he is with his hands. he’s a tapper, he gestures, this is such a fun bit of flavor that i try to integrate into his character as much of possible. i don’t see any reason why miranda would do this except that it’s just something charlie does and she wants her illusion to be believable, so this is canon to me.
02. the gap moe aka the general awkwardness that he has compared to what we see in re8. now actually his awkwardness makes sense to me (or at least i made it make sense to me because I thought it was cute and interesting), and it’s why i gave him the lore of being in the military from ages 17 - 31. headcanon personality-wise, i think he mostly knows how to float with the military types but that kind of typical hyper-masculine attitude isn’t true to his real personality; and unfortunately he doesn’t know how to act outside of that because he never really learned (and ngl i just don’t think he’s got that social dog in him, he was always the weird kid growing up- TO ME) hence, he’s kind of awkward! but confidently so! in a way that’s not about any awkwardness with himself just when it comes to interacting with other people. there’s also the fact that this is 16 years later, it’s possible he’s mellowed out a little from his overeager attitude chasing down lycans in the village. i could also talk about him maybe trying to prove himself in re8 but that’s maybe too deep in my head so i’ll move on-
however in shadows of rose, i do think he should act a little more familiar with rose (more on this later) but i’ll wave it off under the pretext of miranda playing him like he has something very important to say so they’re skipping some of their regular familiarity.
03. the fact that he’s in rose’s life at all. i like this a lot and it gives me a lot to think about. it’s my belief that charlie would be involved in rose’s life in some way! i mean the entirety of re8 / the ethan situation left such an impact on him there’s no way he would be able to move on, act like normal, never think about it again. i honestly think this would be true for all of the hound wolf squad. there’s no way to put it nicely but hound wolf squad's mission in re8 is kind of just one massive fuckup? chris’ characterization feels odd in re8 in general, and capcom did not give us enough details on hws and the information they’re dealing with, so i’m not sure what intel they had and how that motivated their decisions but considering everything that happened- i feel that afterwards there would definitely be a level of guilt at play when it comes to rose considering they failed her father. and for me this definitely rings true for charlie.
also the fact that miranda chose him of all people to lure rose in, that’s got to mean something. i mean she could’ve chosen mia, chris, some other teenager rose might want to be friends with, but she chose charlie. maybe this was just because he’s in the right position job-wise to know about the megamycete and purifying crystal (i mean it probably was this for the writers)(but also that doesn’t work for me because it’s a weird twist on his personality and i’ll get into it later) but i also i feel like it could be more than that. one of the things i always notice during the bench scene is how causal rose seems to be with him. she also does seem to care about him (at least a little) with the “i see what chris puts you (and the rest of hws) through” comment. it’s a bit of a throw away comment and i know she’s a lonely girl, i know she is, but i still feel it’s a little special to have some sort of bond with a lowkey shutdown angsty teenager dealing with actually insane supernatural shit on the daily. especially when you’re an older adult and not a fellow teenager, and i love that.
lowkey it makes sense to me with him being a former dog handler too. if you can handle dogs well then a lot of those skills (patience, empathy, observation, high tolerance for things going wrong, not that i am calling rose a dog please-) would overlap to being good with kids, in an ideal world at least. shes also notably shocked at the reveal of their conversation being an illusion which says to me a lot about how much she trusted him. in general i think what little we see of his relationship with rose gives some nice hints to his personality and it’s why i chose to see him as good with kids. i also do love how quick he is to jump in when she calls herself a freak, which i mean she is a freak come on lol but he obviously doesn’t want her to feel that way which is sweet. forget that this is all miranda because i do believe charlie would do that, rose specifically reacts in a teenager way that makes me feel like he’s done it before too.
charlie is one of only military-type characters (and he’s mine now) that i also consider to be a good person. i think he would feel responsible for rose in a way, and would have wanted to check up on her after ethan’s death. i wish we knew more about the bsaa’s corruption (it’s crazy how that is like never explained or touched on again as far as i am aware) so i could say more about how that affects their relationship but i just don’t know. whatever the story is he’s obviously both complicit in her being kept by the bsaa while also trying to be someone in her corner on a personal level. interesting stuff.
despite the popular fanon interpretation of hws and rose, i don’t know if he’s a really a surrogate uncle for her? unc for sure, but i doubt he had any real role raising her and i’m not sure where that idea comes from (same for chris tbh). i feel like he might have babysat her sometimes (assuming he has a good relationship with mia, which i do like the idea of) which i guess is kind of uncle-y? but it really depends on his relationship with mia to me. him being a confidant does make sense but i also feel like it’s not that deep (maybe it can be, but I mean, come on). he knows about the “mean girls hassling” rose but otherwise their conversation isn’t that personal imo. of course this is actually miranda, so who knows what she knows about what he knows (lol) and also we have to consider what the actual point of the scene was (which is not to dig into charlie and rose’s relationship, obviously).
i like to think that their dynamic will get pretty complicated once she’s an adult and “legally” allowed to make her own decisions. now, would the bsaa allow her to do so? hold her still? probably not and i don’t know. while i don’t personally think charlie would love rose being kept and watched forever, he’s also a follower of the big chris and at the end of the day that’s very intentional for me so who knows. could be an interesting thread to explore in the future.
04. the beanie and glasses are cute on him and i like them.
-> the gap moe + the role switch up
-> why did he never fix his posture
01. i know what i just said about liking his surprising awkwardness in the first part, but i also feel like his personality in shadows of rose is a little too much of a deviation from what we see in re8 (okay, it’s kind of a lot). this ties into my next point about the weird role switch up he does.
01.5. in re8, even though we don’t know much about the hound wolf squad we can kinda see what each of their roles and character archetypes are. i am not talking about the hints we get from their gear either, just personality. we see that lobo and canine are the overeager “let’s have some fun” and “heh, i can take ‘em” frontline assault-types. mostly just concerned with getting into the action. tundra is the one who is the most outwardly caring, the always prepared, more obviously support type. umber eyes is the experienced, wise, almost disappointed father-like figure, and night howl is the token nerd. (these are all over simplified but you get the point.)
so tell me why in shadows of rose… charlie is all of a sudden acting like the nerd when he’s supposed to be the overeager overconfident assault? and while i’m sure he knows some scientific things about the mold, i imagine most of that would just be him repeating things that howl has told him.
it doesn’t really make sense to me but i also doubt there was much thought put into it besides the writers needed him to fulfill that type of role to push the story along (but then why chose him instead of howl? I don’t freaking know). i mean since it’s technically an illusion from miranda it doesn’t even have to make sense ...i guess. while i did try to integrate this more smart nerdy aspect into his character for a while, in the end i gave up. he’s just a little stupid to me and the purifying crystal plot doesn’t really make a lot of sense anyway (for obvious reasons). my follow up interpretation for why rose doesn’t react to his sudden strange nerdy behavior (besides telling him he sounds crazy once) is that she would think it was strange, but would choose to ignore it because he’s offering her the thing she so badly wants (a chance to be normal).
so while i like some level of confident awkwardness, a lot of what we see in sor just feels too different from his re8 self. to make myself feel better i’ll interpret it as miranda overdoing it to make sure charlie comes across as harmless to soothe any of rose’s doubts, and charlie’s real personality being more of a confident but somewhat awkward type where if he’s doing something wrong in a social situation he probably just doesn’t realize it. wow, i wonder what they could say about his character- cough, autism at least in my personal headcanon- cough, autism cough- you know it’s not that weird for high-level military guys to have something going on like- cough. cough.
02. the outfit below his head sucks. put the flannel back on boy. it does seem in character for him to be a sloppy dresser (see: his gear- like organize your damn cables dude) but that doesn’t mean i like it.
03. why didn’t he fix his posture. he had 16 years.
04. the fact that all of this is not even about charlie, technically. the fact that all this is about miranda pretending to be charlie makes interpreting his actions really complicated. of course we have to interpret some things as being a true part of his character and personality otherwise the way rose reacts to him doesn’t make sense, but i do wish that was not the case. i also wish i had more hws content because i want more than these crumbs please. on one hand though- the fact that shadows of rose is all miranda posing as charlie does mean i have a lot of freedom to pick and chose what’s “him” and what’s “miranda” but on the other hand it sucks and i still feel like they didn’t do a good job keeping his character consistent enough between the base game and dlc to be believable. (because i don’t think it would be hard to do so and why is he a nerd fr).
anyways i’m done now. i hope this made any sense lol. if you actually read this I love you, we will have a spring wedding.