Grimdark is a thing that kind of bothers me.
Rose's system crash was carefully prepared, but we never got any specifics about its effects or mechanics, except for some ominous quotes by Doc Scratch. It felt metaphoric for Rose's main character problems- an overbearing sense of responsibility, coupled with an superiority complex, resulting in her chaperoning her friends and bossing them around without sharing more than the most crucial information. But then, the grimdark state was resolved without any character development, which itself might be symbolic, yet doesn't justify this whole ordeal. I know the author didn't want to [spoiler] the Horror-Terrors, but come on. How much is there left he can still do with them?
Which leads to a related problem. Information gathering and processing is crucial for SBURB, which is cool.
The kids of course have the trolls, which sometimes basically burst in and scream:"!!SPOILER!! VOLDEMORT IS ERIDAN'S MAN-LUSUS!!", which is cool too, even if I had preferred if they had had some agenda's on their own, agendas more complex than: "MAH HUMAN HAS TO BE DA STRÖNGEST HUMAN" and "I CHUCKLEVOODUDED YOUR HEAD LOL U SUK".
Anyway, cool so far. But Rose is the main gatherer of information. Information from 4 sources:
- Her doomed beta-self's dream memories
We never saw, or will see, any of this. (Except that Beta-Rose was a drunk.)
- SBURB's NPCs and artifacts
We saw some turtles and a slab.
- Pesterlogs(mainly Kanaya and Mr Vanilla Milkshake)
We saw the important ones, but Kanaya is notoriously clueless and Scratch had to appear as an extremely dubious and unreliable source.
We saw exactly nothing. We heard about as much, and again, why is keeping the Babby-Cthulhus secretive and mysterious so important?
So, yeah. We know that these are things that happened. What do we know from all the info Rose gathered?
Very little.
You may say that we know everything
important Rose knew with
certainty. That we just skipped the 413 useless books in this one turtle library and a complex and an illusively symbolic Dreamscape provided by 612 tentacled forefathers... yet this would mean Rose did act smarter than she was. A lot. Like, she is actually a completely loose cannon which hit the right target because a random earthquake pushed it over and a simultaneous lightning storm ignited the powder.
I don't believe that. After all, she had Seer powers and a Magic Cue-Ball to verify and filter information.
So, either Rose is pathologically paranoid about sharing knowledge, even if needed to ensure her own survival, or Hussie did simply fuck up the pacing and focusing of the story. For a main character. Over three to five acts.
I kinda hoped getting to a more positive conclusioon when I started writing.