introduction:
Rosemary (usually referred to as Rose) is a supporting character in the video games Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001) and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of The Patriots (2008), with a handful of mentions in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013). Her first appearance, in the Plant episode of Metal Gear Solid 2, was November 13th 2001. In a way I personally consider this date her unofficial birthday - though I guess it could apply to multiple characters in that game. Her main role in both games is to provide support + input via codec: in MGS2 she is a data analyst who handles saving the game and offers insight on the mission or on her personal affairs with the protagonist of the game, and in MGS4 she takes the role of a counselor and offers advice on how to manage the psyche gauge. In the PAL and Japanese releases of MGS2, if you select '1st Time' when starting a new game, a voiceover of Rose will walk you through the options and introduce the game before it begins. She is the girlfriend (and later wife) of Jack/Raiden, who is the father of her son, John.
In terms of the plot, Rose was born sometime in the early-to-mid 1980s, I personally put it at 1985. She worked at the Pentagon as a data analyst before being recruited by The Patriots (a secret organisation controlling the United States) as a spy. During her time undercover she worked as an analyst for the U.S. Army and was stationed in New York. She was tasked with aligning herself with the tastes of a U.S. soldier named Jack; to get into a romantic relationship with him and find out about his past - a past which was kept classified and off-record and was never divulged to others by him. She met Jack on the 30th of April 2007, a date that becomes important in the debut game, in front of Federal Hall. Jack had interrupted her while she was giving out incorrect film trivia (whether King Kong climbed the Chrysler Building or Empire State Building) to a group of tourists, causing the two to argue over who had the accurate recall. A week later, they met by surprise on the military base they both worked on, and that night went on their first date to the top of the Empire State Building. Over the course of the relationship, she began to develop genuine feelings for Jack and felt guilt over her assignment and acted role. She chose not to disclose certain things she learned about Jack to her employers and later confessed to being a spy on the two-year anniversary of their meeting, after learning of the truth about Raiden's childhood as a child soldier in the First Liberian Civil War. She also told him that she had fallen pregnant with his child. Due to the unplanned confession, she is suddenly taken off the calls and replaced with an AI that replicates her voice and appearance in order to dissuade Raiden. It's revealed that her nanomachines are linked to Jack's: if he fails his mission and dies, so does she. At the finale of the game, the two reunite in the streets of New York City and decide to continue their relationship, this time seeing each other for who they are instead of playing false characters.
As memories of his past and the Big Shell mission weigh on him, Raiden becomes more withdrawn and unstable, eventually leaving home for good; abandoning his duties, Rose, and his unborn son to wander the earth alone. In order to ensure the safety of their son, Rose conspires with Raiden's commanding officer. They stage a false marriage and pretend that Rose had miscarried Raiden's child in order to trick The Patriots into believing they were no longer viable leverage against Raiden. There's a vagueness in how this played out: in some translations it's implied she lied directly to Raiden; in the original it can be taken that Raiden heard it from an outside source. Without getting too into it, I find the version where he found out from somebody else after he left to be more accurate. Sometime during this period, Rose returns to school to study psychology and becomes qualified as a counsellor. She begins working to provide psychological support and stress-management techniques to combatants on the battlefield. At the end of the fourth game, she visits Raiden in the hospital and introduces him to his son, saying that what he heard about the miscarriage was a lie. There, they reconcile and decide to try again as a family. Raiden promises he will never leave her alone again.
Things after this are unclear as Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is somewhat debatably canon. However, it's suggested that she supported her family with her work as a psychologist during the recession where Raiden struggled to find employment as a cyborg. He later gets a contract with a private military company to send money back to his family. This money meant that Rose and John could move out of the country to live in New Zealand in their own house off-base. In the game's codec calls, Raiden speaks of Rose and his son entirely positively, as well as preaching the happiness marriage and family has given him to his codec team, implying they've worked everything out between them.
Unfortunately most of her canon character arc is centred around Raiden, and very little is known about her backstory or her as a person. In a way, this fits the theme of her shunning her own self in order to carry out her assignment playing a character Raiden was most likely to fall for, and perhaps there's a deeper meaning behind that (but I would put money on women just being written Like This throughout the series...), but it's still disappointing that there's so little given. I do have my own document of non-canon material, headcanons and short stories and such, but I likely won't share all of that here.
So what's my deal with her, why am i making this page?
I've been at the very least fond of her ever since I played MGS2; I find her fascinating and beautiful, and hearing her voice always makes me smile. Even though she doesn't have the most swoon-worthy things to say in that game given the situation, I still found myself saving often in my playthroughs so I could find out what she had to add. The negative reception from the fandom, even nowadays, really surprised me. I don't mean to white-knight her or whatever but I think, objectively, she has a pretty normal reaction to a lot of the things concerning her conversations with Raiden. I think a lot of the hatred of her character is split between people finding Raiden annoying so finding her even more annoying by proxy, people who are fans of Raiden villainising her beyond belief so they can 'save him', or just people who hate all morally-grey fictional women regardless. I wish people could come around to see her in the same way I do without writing it off as apologism or stupidity. I find her a very interesting character and I really feel like I understand her very deeply, that passion for her being waved away by am admission of hatred or a 'do you know what day it is tomorrow' joke is extremely irritating.
I've been playing Metal Gear Solid 4 recently, and have been utilising the codec to hear her voice throughout. There, she has a much more passionate and kindhearted personality, unfettered by the more tumultuous atmosphere of the plot of her previous appearance, that I fall for a little more every time. Her rambles about psychological and therapy concepts, the way she moves, the way her voice sounds, even the different clothes she wears (did you know that depending on the day on the system clock, she wears a different sweater in her calls?) really get to me in a way. The events surrounding her still aren't great, of course, but I can still appreciate her in those calls.
Raiden, her husband, is a character I consider somewhere inbetween a fictotype and a synpath for me: I see myself as strongly connected to him and I have noemata for his life*. This is likely a big driving factor behind my feelings for Rose, though not the only one. The best way to explain what I have with her these days is that I'm self-shipping with her in a devoted and monogamous way: my 'self-insert' is either Raiden, Vergil (my fictotype) or just me. Raiden serves as a very convenient stand-in for me in creations such as writing and art, as well as a way to project my current relationship with Rose onto the real one that occurred in canon. I also ascribe to the sort of devotion and seriousness seen more often in waifuism. I dislike using the term waifu and prefer 'fictional love' or just 'wife' but I suppose that's what she is for me.
We've been together since approx. March 2022, but I usually bump that date up to April 2022 so I can celebrate the same anniversary date as our 'main' one (outside of discussing the relationship in terms of fictosexuality, I do consider the 30th of April 2007 our actual anniversary date). In April 2023 I embraced the relationship fully when I accepted I didn't want or need to chase after fruitless romantic relationships with real people I didn't experience attraction to. A chase that made me push down my feelings for fictional characters as something casual, a stepping stone to something real, and ignored what I really wanted my love life to hold. Nowadays, I refer to her as my wife or my girlfriend in equal measure and with sincerity.
She means a lot to me, more than any other character in the world. And as cheesy as this is, I think she's changed me for the better. She's become a muse of sorts for a lot of creative work: I got into writing fiction again because of her, as well as her being the reason I am finally taking developing my skills regarding drawing humans seriously. She can calm me down when I'm agitated or feeling low - either through my imagination, through holding my charm of her, or through recordings of her in the games. I fall asleep most peacefully when I'm imagining her close by. I've made a lot of progress on myself and my mental health under the goal of doing it for her, or with her. I've been coming out of my shell on the fictosexual and waifuist subreddits to talk more casually about her to others rather than treating it as a shameful secret. As of editing this, I actually added her name to my flair on those subreddits, something I thought I'd never gather the courage to do. I have someone to love, someone to live for, and I really appreciate that. I do try to step back, to not let it consume me, and to have a healthy dose of realising it's fictional, but what I feel is still real.
There isn't many ways to publicly show my adoration without feeling uncomfortable or too embarrassed, and honestly even after working on this page for several months I still want to curl up in shame at the thought of my friends seeing me expressing these feelings, but hopefully this page can share just a small slice of what I feel for her, as well as provide a detailed introduction for people who aren't all too familiar with her.
* Not sure how many people are gonna look at this page without knowledge of fictionfolk so: I see myself as Raiden in the form of some profound connection to him on multiple levels. I don't identify as him but I don't not identify as him either. Noemata can be more simply explained in my case with the word memory, but I don't see these as from an actual past life - at most it's a figurative past life.
"Dating a character?"
More common than you might think, and if you hang around Neocities a lot I'm sure you've seen this before, but I'll add a section anyway. There are multiple communities celebrating attraction to characters - waifuists, fictosexuals, and selfshippers to name a few. Some are attracted to their fictional love in a form close to a real-life relationship, others see it as a fun creative exercise or a way to cope with loneliness. Some are aroace towards real people, others have real relationships alongside characters. I have always dated characters with a degree of sincerity and I had my beginnings in the waifuist community. I disagree with a lot of waifuist beliefs but the full devotion waifuist relationships tend to have is something I echo in my own. In my case, it functions the same as any other relationship, just without the physical aspect. This distance can be upsetting, a reason why purely fictional relationships aren't a good fit for some people, but I love her enough that I'll happily shoulder that burden.
Videos:
This is my own playlist not specifically for this page, so one or two of these aren't entirely relevant.
Artwork + Merch:
Concept Art:
My Art:
Merch:
