Recall that Rose’s Abuela was a devil hunter around the time of Sparda’s disappearance, and she possesses an extensive knowledge of Sparda and his descendants that most humans lack.
Also recall that Rose’s father broke family tradition and did not become a devil hunter, despite having been trained by Abuela, because he was absolutely pathetic at it he wanted to study History instead.
This led to a fun little situation where Rose’s father was physically incapable of protecting his family in the event of a demon attack, which was much higher now that Mundus was back in power. Which means that Rose’s father had to come up with more…creative ways to keep his family safe from demons.
In other words: EVERY single herb, trinket, and superstition believed to repel demons was present in Rose’s house somehow.
Instead of Yankee Candles, they burn sage in their living room. They have Nazar trinkets all over the house even though they’re not Turkish. Every weekend, Rose and her siblings would sprinkle salt around the perimeter of their house while Rose’s father did yard work. Whenever they grew out of their old shoes, Rose’s father would bust out holes in their bedroom walls and hide them inside. Rose’s father even tried nailing a phallus above their front door once before Rose’s mother demanded he took it down.
Rose was never really sold on the superstitions, but she always did them anyway just to give her father peace-of-mind. Even as an adult, she still carries a Nazar on her keyring and keeps incense in her apartment. And after she meets V, she tries to avoid using salt shakers around him and covers up her keychain with duct tape, just in case.
Rose’s Back(and Forward) Story Pre-Life Rewritten Rose was trained by Abuela in various weapons up until the age of 10; Rose’s favorite wa
This document explains Rose’s backstory as well as key events of her future development in post-Life Rewritten. Think of it as like her (somewhat) abbreviated life story in bullet-point format.
There’s also some optional supplementary material about the rest of her family if you want to read more.
One of my favorite V x Rose daydreams features one where they're at a formal party, Rose wearing a stylish purple pantsuit and V wearing formal goth attire, and during a particularly boring slow song Rose suddenly drags him out and starts smoking the dance floor. I'm talking pulling some Dancing With the Stars-level choreography straight out of her ass, with Rose obviously taking the lead while V just sorta blindly follows.
The entire crowd clears the dance floor and starts cheering them on, calming V's nerves a bit, and they keep going until the very end of the song, where Rose does this dramatic dip that's obviously meant for a man to do to a woman but she doesn't give two shits about the gender binary, and because V also doesn't give two shits he's just grinning like a lovestruck goofball lol. And of course, the crowd roars in applause, and Rose's impromptu dance becomes the highlight of the entire night.
I just love the concept of these two being the ultimate queer power couple and I WILL gush about it as I so feel lol
I know I tend to subconsciously base a lot of Rose's personality on myself (the whole asexuality thing definitely has a lot to do with that), but this is actually something that Rose and I do NOT have a in common. While I personally do believe in ghosts, Rose probably does not. She does think that there is probably some sort of afterlife — she's not 100% certain about it, but she's not ruling it out either — but she definitely doesn't think that spirits hang around after they die and haunt places. Consequently, this also means that she hasn't witnessed any ghostly experiences; if she *had* experienced some supernatural phenomenon that could only be explained by ghosts, she likely would've come to a much different conclusion.
Yes. Oh god yes. Most certainly yes.
One of the lesser-known facts about Rose is that she can't cook. Like, at all. The closest thing to a recipe that she can make is grilled cheese — and even then, it's questionable. Once she moves out of her family's house and gets a job in Red Grave, she almost solely relies on takeout food for sustenance. How she manages to stay skinny is anyone's guess — Rose is personally betting on how she hyperfocuses on her research and forgets to eat. (Aaaand we're back to the self-projection. Lmao)
Rose wishes that she could find that "perfect balance" in her life — a way to make both her father and Abuela proud, while simultaneously doing what makes her happiest, without having to worry about exhausting herself from burning the candle at both ends. We can already see how far she's willing to go to make this a reality — once she moves to Red Grave, Rose literally tries to pursue both of her passions in order to please both her father and Abuela. But while she genuinely enjoys both demonological research and devil hunting, she knows that doing both at once isn't sustainable, and that it won't be long before she suffers from burnout.
At this point in time, I don't know if there will ever be a solution to Rose's dilemma — if she will ever be able to choose one passion over the other and solidify her career path, or find a way to balance them in a sustainable way — because I have only recently begun to find that solution in my own life. It will likely be a long time before I have Rose's entire character arc solidified in my mind...and if/when the Life Rewritten series becomes a reality, it will be a long time before Rose figures it out, either.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly when I created Rose, since I came up with the ideas for Life Rewritten so quickly (like, literally within the span of 3 days quickly). My earliest mention of her is in this post, but even then, I clearly already had a mental image of her in my head, so I can't tell you exactly what inspired me to make her, or what the first thing I decided about her was.
...But I can tell you about her character design!
This is definitely going to sound random, but most of Rose's physical appearance is actually based on Cat Valentine from Victorious! I honestly can not tell you why lol, but that's the honest truth. This is where her maroon hair came from (her natural hair color is brown, like Ariana Grande's, but she regularly dyes it), as well as her hispanic ethnicity (I originally thought Ariana Grande was hispanic before I learned that she was Italian). The rest was mostly personal preferences – I just think double buns are really neat, and of course I wanted her to be ace just like me.
One of the first things I decided about Rose's character design was that I wanted her to be as blatantly ace-coded as possible. This is because I didn't want anyone arguing about the validity of her identity just because she was dating V. Unfortunately, I've run into this problem in other fandoms before (*cough* SHE RA *cough*), where a very obviously ace-coded character starts dating someone, and suddenly people are saying they can't be ace anymore because they're in love – which is stupid, because asexuals can still be romantically attracted to people. To combat this, I deliberately made Rose's clothes the asexual flag colors, gave her an ace ring, and later added an ace of spades to her belt. So now, if anyone tries to start that "Rose can't be ace because she's dating V" argument, I can snap right back with "she's literally a walking pride flag, the fuck do you mean she isn't ace??"
Rose's biggest change is going from a scientist who only indirectly helps the DMC crew through her research, to someone who's sort of cross-haired between using her love of learning to conduct research (to please her father) and using her love of archery to hunt demons (to please Abuela). Rose, similar to myself, is a Libra, and therefore she is always trying to seek compromise and make everyone happy; it felt much more befitting, therefore, for Rose to try and juggle these two passions to appease her feuding father/Abuela, rather than choosing the career path that actually gives her the most satisfaction. This internal conflict, as well as her coming to terms with it, would become a pivotal part of her character development in future installments.
Rose is most like herself when she is around people her age — i.e., Nico, Nero, and V — and Abuela, whom she is the closest to out of all of her family members.
When she is around her younger siblings, she tends to put on a more serious facade, likely as a subconscious way of making herself look more responsible to her parents. One thing to note about Rose is that, although she is technically the oldest sibling, I tend to write her more like a middle child due to me relating her to my own experiences growing up, so she really doesn't have those mature/ responsible/parent-like traits typically exhibited by the oldest sibling. She compensates by using this mask — although it really isn't fooling anyone in the long run.
Rose censors herself the most around her father, mainly because she has never personally come out to him and therefore feels the need to hide her identity from him. Continuing the family legacy has always been a really big deal in Rose's family, due to the importance of maintaining the Montoya Clan lineage, and even though Rose's father had severed all ties with the Montoya family name, this general mentality was bound to have stuck with him. Because of this, Rose is absolutely terrified of telling her dad about her asexuality, and that she will consequently never have children. One of her biggest fears is that her father would kick her out of the house for breaking the family legacy, just like Abuela had done to him.
Rose also hides her asexuality from Abuela, but this is moreso because she is worried Abuela won't understand what the word "asexuality" means rather than any sort of negative reaction. Because Rose's father broke the Montoya Clan lineage by refusing to become a devil hunter, Abuela has already had several decades to come to terms with the fact that their family legacy is over, so this news wouldn't be nearly as earth-shattering to her as it would be for her father. But on the other hand, Abuela literally reads erotic magazines in her free time, so uh...yeah. Rose is going to put off that conversation for as long as she can.
