I've been at the very least fond of Rose ever since I played MGS2 several years back; I find her fascinating and gorgeous, and hearing her voice always makes me smile. Even though she doesn't have the most swoon-worthy things to say in that game, I still found myself saving often in my playthroughs so I could find out what she had to add.

I completed Metal Gear Solid 4 in late 2023, a few months after the first rendition of this page, and loved utilising the codec to hear her throughout. There, I find she has a much more passionate and kindhearted personality, a presentation that is so much more authentically her, 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. I found that her being one of the permanent codec contacts was what encouraged me through the game. The events surrounding her still aren't great, of course, but I can still appreciate her in those calls.

It wouldn't be a webpage about her if I didn't mention this, so: the negative reception from the fandom, even nowadays, really surprised me. I don't mean to white-knight her but I think, objectively, she has a pretty normal reaction to a lot of the things concerning her conversations with Raiden. I see a lot of the hatred of her character as 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 imperfect fictional women regardless. I wish others could come around to see her in the same way I do without writing it off as apologism or stupidity. I find her an incredible character and I think I understand and appreciate her very deeply, that passion for her being waved away by an admission of hatred or a 'do you know what day it is tomorrow' joke became extremely irritating very fast.

Raiden, her husband, is a character I consider an important aspect of myself: I see myself as him and I have noemata for his life. This is obviously a huge driving force 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. 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 (this can be a negative experience when it comes to criticism, however). I ascribe to the sort of sincerity seen more often in waifuism. I dislike using the term waifu and prefer just 'wife' but I suppose that's what she is for me.

We've been together since approx. March 2022, I usually bump that date up to April 2022 so I can celebrate the same anniversary date as our 'main' one (I do consider the 30th of April 2007 our actual anniversary date). In April 2023 I embraced the it 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 I really do see her that way.

She means a lot to me, more than any other character, maybe even person, 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, she is 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. 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. I have someone to love, someone to live for, and I really value this.

There isn't many ways to publicly show my enthusiasm 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 others seeing me expressing these feelings, but hopefully this page can share just a small slice of what I personally feel for her, as well as provide a detailed introduction for people who aren't familiar with her. Perhaps I can get just a few people who follow the herd in making her the most evil MGS character to ever exist to analyse their feelings deeper.

"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. 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 not interested in real people, others have real relationships alongside characters. I have always dated characters with my whole heart 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.