threadspinner | Heart Game Write-Up Part 2

SO THIS IS WHERE THE PLOT STUFF GOES. Also changes in Peridot/Aather/Romance/True Heart!

So there wasn't a big...plot. But there was one! Because as I explained in the last write-up, Rose's anger and fear have really been taking over her personality lately and I wanted a way to basically replicate how in canon, she gets this big jumpstart when she dies...and dies again. :x THAT'S A BIG THING. An important one! And I wanted grimdark to be gone forever so she doesn't fall back on it when upset, which is another reason why it was a pseudo boss battle and not like. Symbolic fixes.

Peridot
Accessed through the Space door or by flipping the levers in Rose’s house and Rose’s room.

Peridot’s cabin in Three’s realm greets you -- but it’s disordered in a way that it never was before. Instead of beds, eight chairs are placed in an orderly line. Against the far wall, two high-backed thrones sit on a pedestal -- and on the other side of the cabin, back in the kitchen area, there’s another chair. On all of these chairs sits small, knitted dolls....replicas of Peridot teammates past and present.

Some of the chairs are bolted to the ground -- the thrones in particular. Some of the dolls are also chained to the chairs that they’ve been assigned to; others look depressed or sad. A few of them have even fallen off the chairs. The vines from the antechamber are spilling in from the open back door, covering almost everything close to the chairs and throne. These are huge and malicious, sprouting black flowers that hiss as you pass.

There two doors you can go through: the front door and the creepy back door. Next to the stairs, there’s a peridot-green lever.

This was really the first place that Shit Started To Get Real. And also the way to fear and anger, because Rose really really likes to hide behind the front of I AM PERIDOT AND THEREFORE I CAN DO ANYTHING I'M FINE SERIOUSLY STOP ASKING when she's hiding her fear, hurt, and anger. See: what she did to Dave during their ~intense drama~.

The seating represented Rose's idea of the hierarchy of Peridot! So the thrones are obviously the rulers: Soubi and Lelouch were laying on the floor in front of one of the thrones, because she is currently in a sort of 'transition mode' regarding male hierarchy (as, in her mind, there is always a 'male' and a 'female' leader because Beato > everything). On the other throne was Beatrice, and her grip was iron -- if you had tried to remove you would have not been able to, but touching her gave you a cute memory about Rose apprenticing with her and also snowball fort tactics. 'u'

The chairs leading away from the throne were how far away from "the leadership role" that Rose senses everyone is. Order from closest to farthest away: Cass, Gil, Ven, Emiliatosk (they share a chair), Nick, Mirage, Briar. The last chair is empty. (If you touched the dolls you got memories or impressions -- if you want to know what they were/are just ask!) There was also a chair in the kitchen, which is where Rose was. This is because oftentimes Rose feels she is the 'observer' of the team -- never really a part of it, because there's no one she's as close to as the other people are (for example, Lelouch and Beato, or Ven and Emil, Briar and Mirage, etc etc). Rose's doll was also writing in the Peridot book, and had the Duckling blanket draped over the back of her chair. Both did different things if you looked at them!

The Peridot Book recorded Rose's spiral into hatred. It was definitely, if you hadn't figured it out by now, a very clear indicator of SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG. You know, if the tentacles and scary dark things everywhere weren't enough.

Today, we played a game. I wasn't there, but Ventus said it was bad -- it involved making decisions about hurting other teams.. . .

I think this is my fiftieth day here. I can't say that I don't like it, but a lot of parts of this place are a little unsettling. Sometimes I feel like my team doesn't really like me. I miss my friends from home, but only Dave is here. . .

As you continue to read, the story gets darker. More mentions of anger and violence are seen. There's almost no trace of the cute Rose from the beginning.

The Peridot Blanket was feelings of GUSHY HAPPY PERIDOT FEELINGS and wasn't on Rose's shoulders because she hasn't been feeling many of those lately. Tavros draped it around her shoulders so now she is like ubububu my teammmmmm!!

If anyone had decided to check the bathroom of the house (there was one, just not...described because it wasn't really symbolic just a house feature) the Peridot Slide would have been there and you could have slid down it...it didn't really have a function, just a cute thing because Homestuck.

Going through the back door took you Inside the Cue Ball, going through the front took you to Aather!

Changes:
• Tavros put everyone back up on their chairs if they had fallen down (which was Gil, Ratatosk who was actually sitting on TOP of the chair, and Lelouch/Thistle). This means Rose no longer has slight feelings of abandonment or confusion when it comes to 'placing' them in the Peridot hierarchy -- and in the case of Ratatosk/Emil, she now sees them as two equals, instead of Emil as the primary personality with Ratatosk as kind of a cute extra...
• Tavros also moved Rose to the throne with the boys, but then Dave came along and put her right next to Beatrice! Soubi and Dave also convinced the Beato doll to let go of her grip completely (so she's still kind of stuck to the chair, but no longer CLINGING TO IT WITH AN IRON FIST). This means Rose now views herself as a sort of leader/matriarch of Peridot, and also as if she could potentially be...better than Beato one day!! Like that one day in the future she may be able to do a better job of leading than her Teacher '-'b Not necessarily in any malice just...putting Beato on less of a pedestal.
• Dirk put Smuppets (which represent in this heart relationships and romance!!!) in the thrones as well. Which means Rose now sees romance as a viable way to get people to follow her/act around Thistle, Lelouch, and Beato. Not to say that she'll act on it but she might?? If she thinks it would get her what she wanted?
• Dirk also broke the chains holding Briar and Nick to their chairs, meaning they can change chairs as they please. No one actually moved any other dolls though, so Rose's impressions of the status of Peridot stay largely the same.
• Every doll now has a smile, even if it was a frown before! Which means that Rose now thinks positively of all her teammates. However Dirk seam ripped open Briar's mouth to make it a smile, so she feels a little more violently (strongly) compelled to express her feelings towards him than anyone else.
• Ventus and Tavros both wrote positive letters that helped heal the effects of the darkness/anger in Rose's heart, and made her more positive when it comes to dealing with team feelings! Ven also petted the cue ball that his doll was holding, which basically means she feels better telling him things, basically upping his SOCIAL LINK which was already at like...a 7. So now it's like an 8!
• Star used her Witch of Heart powers to boost Rose's peridot feelings so if they weren't mushy ENOUGH they certainly are now!

Next...I will tackle plot things. :|b
Inside the Cue Ball
Accessed by going through the door in Peridot.

There’s no gravity; you’re swimming in a circular dome, surrounded by pieces of glass and broken Magic 8 Balls. The only light comes from a small door at the bottom of the dome, back towards Peridot’s cabin, and a door set high at the top, through which hundreds of angry black vines are emanating. They swirl through the weightless air, curling around different artifacts: a magic cue ball, a shining sword broken in half, and a birdcage, in which rests a small fiery sparrow.

There’s the sound of sobbing coming from somewhere, if you should choose to go looking for it.

This room, when Rose's heart is healed (as Rin saw!!), serves no purpose. In fact, it doesn't even exist! This is a room created solely by two very negative memories and a whole lot of anger. However, it did serve a purpose, and that purpose was to contain True Heart, who was being held captive by anger, and to make her suffer. The items floating around gave you memories, most of which would have made you SUPER ANGRY!! and prone to trying to kill True Heart -- which was something I was COMPLETELY PREPARED FOR and you wouldn't have been able to succeed at no matter how hard you tried! Had anyone actually touched her, Jade's gunshots would have ACTUALLY been fatal, and you would have ended up back in the entrance hall with a lot of angry NPCs and not been able to go back. Thankfully that was not the case.

Thankfully Tavros was there in the upstairs room, where you could take a nap and see True Heart, to call Jade and make it a completely seamless transition which I...hadn't planned but was ultimately WAY cooler than I thought it would be 'u'b

The magic cue ball is “How does a Seer see?”
The shining sword is “DID YOU KNOW WE’RE SUPPOSED TO GET MARRIED”
The birdcage is THREE’S ELEVATOR GAME
The pieces of glass and Magic 8 balls are there just to hurt you.

Effects:
• Soubi comforted True Heart while she was being strangled to death, and also received a piece of the Heart Key from her, so Rose feels like she can go to him with problems she may have. Anyone who received a Heart Key piece gets the same feelings!
• Dave tried to attack her but because he didn't hit her there's no lasting damage.
• Dave took the ROSE DID YOU KNOW WE'RE GOING TO GET MARRIED memory away so she no longer is terrified by the effects of grimdark! Or that it will ruin her friendships!
• Dirk and Star combined used their Heart powers to free Rose of the bonds of darkness that held her there. This means Rose no longer feels inhibited by her anger, the way she did in the past. Which is JUST AS PLANNED.

BASICALLY IT WAS JUST TO ALERT YOU TO WHAT LIES AHEAD WHICH WAS
The Throne Room

You’ve stumbled into a throne room -- but it’s dark, the only light coming from a lounging figure on the throne itself. The throne seems to be built of rubble and maybe even human remains...but it shifts and changes as you look at it. Sometimes it’s made out of the crying faces of teammates; other times it’s made out of iron and glass. The girl on the throne is very obviously Rose. . . but maybe it’s safer to say that it’s Rose after some serious problems. She’s thin and angular, sharp, with an aura that penetrates the entire room and instills fear and sends a chill down into your bones.

The Grimdark Rose looks at you, twirling a dangerous-looking needle between her fingers. On her leg is a thin, golden and peridot-colored chain that is attached to the ground pretty firmly. On her head rests a golden tiara, studded with some deep purple stone, as well as peridots.

There is no exit other than the one you just came from. There are no windows -- just vines and darkness, and the cold girl with a dangerous smile.

Would you mind doing me a favor?

Clearly, Rose’s anger is in charge right now! You can either do her a favor, fight her, or run away. There are no other options in this room. Touching the vines with your hands will cause you to feel irreversibly angry, and also like destroying other parts of the heart.

If the chain had been cut and Rose hadn't been killed, she would have gone Grimdark outside of the game for awhile. But since she was killed, that effect was negated and the power completely gone.

This Rose is calculating, dangerous and above all, completely insane. There is no goodwill here. She wants to kill you if you’ve angered her, wants to wrong you if you’ve wronged her. This is the Rose that does not forget and does not remember why she chose to become angry in the first place. Killing you here will mean that all four NPCs must rescue you, and they’ll strongly warn you not to go back after you end up in the antechamber. Unless you've unlocked Davesprite and learned about your title, in which case you end up going GOD TIER with haxx0rs powers, like Mirage did, and because a super buff master.

This is...the end boss! She was supposed to be hard but also pretty easy at the same time, because I was fully prepared to work with both ideas (however, as you can see, ICly Rose really wanted to be the non-grimdark, sweet Rose that she was sort of at the beginning of Aather much more than she wanted to be the scary one). What happened in here, after the battle, basically means that Rose can no longer feel anger as harshly, and anger is less likely to stay with her. Rin restored the Throne Room to its original look (which was...golden and glittering and somewhere very nice to keep all your negative feelings), as well as gave Anger an outlet: she can now both look into the Upstairs Bedroom -- which is where her secrets are kept -- and also walk out onto the beach in Aather, which means she feels more inclined to share her problems and anger-inducing things with people from the realm. If Rin hadn't done that, Rose wouldn't have been able to get angry at all. Now she can, she just can't hold on to it, or turn it into a weapon.

The individual actions in here weren't as important as much as getting rid of the boss was. Mirage's dere level is already at max so she can't really feel much MORE in awe of him. :')
Effects after the fact...

Dirk gave roses to Anger, which means that she feels compelled to seek him out when she has things to say that are angry and also equates that basically with "if i am angry i can go to him and we can have weird flirty conversations and I will feel better about myself."
Along the same vein, Dave kissed Anger, which means "if I am angry I can go to Dave and we can make out and this will make me feel better". Good job Dave. She also thinks of their relationship as more of a hero/heroine role than she did before, though only slightly.
And Rin gave Anger the Firebird feather from Aather's beach, which was one of two Personae "healing agents" that could help any part of the heart. So Anger is no longer quite as irrational, nor does it have the desire to completely overtake any other part of the heart.

AND NOW Rose is ready for her Cascade memory (which she actually just took yay!!! go rose!) and will no longer have that awful, angry influence on her life which should lead to a more positive outlook. And some fucked up issues with relationships 'u'

Aather/Romance
You could get to both places by going through the door -- Team Feelings were in the Hall of Doors and romance was in Sterling (lol I wonder why). Not much changed in the way of Team Feelings, though Tavros did encourage Rose to think more positively about making it up to Estelle about the poison game.

Romance on the other hand...
Ventus sewed up Dave's doll in the romance room -- if you touched him, you got the awful incest-revealing "I know how to tear your heart into little pieces" memory. But now he's sewn up and very nice looking, so Rose feels better about their relationship! Tavros cleaned up the shitty swords laying about everywhere, which means Rose no longer feels compelled to use her words as swords when trying to deal out a jealous beating. Ventus also got rid of the anger and jealousy vines, so she's no longer capable of being jealous or angry about her relationships (currently).

Also there were totally lesbians that included Kanaya, Rin, Sayaka, Estelle, Beatrice, Nunnally, Lambda! Not necessarily like a OOH ROSE HAS A CRUSH but this is more the chair of ladies in aather rose finds aesthetically pleasing.......

True Heart
No one was ever meant to get to true heart. 'u'

AND NONE OF YOU DID SO MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? True heart was the small hole in the ground of the observatory. The hole was actually a keyhole which, if you had collected all of the parts of the Heart Key, would have unlocked a sliding door that would allow you to go down some stairs into Rose's fluffy, friendly, loving true heart room.

There was only one way to get the Heart Keys, and that was to ASK FOR THEM haha! You had to ask John, Rose (True Heart only), Dave, and Jade for their keys. Everyone would have given them up willingly, and the symbolism was there (the picture on the fridge, there were fours hidden in a lot of things, Intelligence would also tell you if you asked in the Library), but it was intentionally vague. Because Rose Lalonde hides a lot of things right up front about herself, things you wouldn't guess! And then tries to confuse you by being smart, being secretive, being kind of dodgy and shifty and angry. But if you really do know her, you know that her friends, above all, mean everything to her.

OKAY THAT'S IT I did it! If you have questions about anything, feel free to ask again! 'u'