by lackadaisicallexicon

The Alpha kids differ from the Betas in a few subtle ways: they’re older, more inclined to emotional entanglements, and relatively lonely. It’s a fact that the Alpha’s group is often a few moments away from breaking apart, usually due to relationship troubles with Jake. But Roxy stands out, a Void leader for a void session, and proves, even to herself, that she is a hero.

Roxy’s embrace of the Void aspect is noted by Calliope, an expert on the Alpha session, and it’s clear that her analysis, in view of Roxy’s actions and personality, is spot-on. Roxy’s alcoholism, of course, represents a clear and present obsession with Void; it’s a soporific drug that is often known to cause apparent memory loss in the user, puts people to sleep, and makes them lose their ability to accurately judge situations. But many of her other actions hint at her Void status: she compulsively defers to the will of others, even her dead mother, whose absence she says caused her drinking problem. Her drinking habit, often seen as one of Roxy’s defining characteristics, is not even something she produced on her own.

She had a crush on Jake English, much like everyone else in the Alpha session (arguably including Jake), but rather than pursue him to the exclusion of her friends, she allows them free run, and backs down even when Jane isn’t pursuing Jake but doesn’t want her to, making herself a “nothing”, a non-player in the contest for his affections.

Roxy has been for the Alphas what they always needed: the sole empty space in a four-way contest of wills, someone who gives where everyone else is eager to take. The unique identity she forms, too, is a result of her Void traits. As a teen alcoholic, Roxy is very aware of her problem, but she takes a passive stance in her attempts to maintain it; she acts so carefree and bubbly when drunk that her friends actually feel bad for telling her not to drink, as if she can’t be happy if she isn’t drinking.

But Void, due in part to its dual nature as a power that is and transcends nothingness, has two purposes, not one. Void serves as the medium which readily accepts invasion, but it is also a force of nullification, and Roxy’s actions are as nullifying as they are receiving. She breaks down interpersonal conflicts between her friends, begins to erode Calliope’s poor self-image with ceaseless and honest positivity, and she destroys the starvation experienced by the carapacians around her house by stealing pumpkins, fittingly out of thin air.

In other news, Santa’s probably a Rogue of Void, pulling presents out of thin air for all the world’s children.

Why I love Roxy’s character so much is difficult to sum up in a short essay, but I think at Roxy’s center there is a void, but one that doesn’t need filling. I mentioned nullification and reception earlier as evidence of her embrace of Void, but she does not just project those effects. She internalizes them. It’s that space inside her, that Void-born instinct to nullify the damaging, that gave her the will to quit drinking, and it’s the growth she earned by means of it that made her lament briefly falling off the wagon after exposure to the Trickster artifact.

But her ascent to godhood marks a final, crucial absence in Roxy Lalonde: the absence of pretension. Unlike god tier players like Vriska, who overestimated her importance due to the unbelievably potent nature of her powers, Roxy’s approach to god tier, despite being informed that her powers were extremely potent by Calliope, is that of steady learning and gradual development. She takes the Egbert Approach, and judging by her actions now, I think she’s finally ready to step out of her place as the hidden leader of the Alpha session and claim her place in the light of relevance once again.