Rose, Rosefen and the Metaphorical Bitch-slap

[drakyndra]

Quick meta that I want to get off my back before diving into my Folio editing again.

Note: Though in a few bits this might sound slightly anti-Rose, it's more anti- fans of Sueish!Rose. She annoys me at times but I don't per se hate her - I just severely dislike the idealised version certain parts of fandom insist she truly is. It starts off a bit ranty, but then I get into the meta-type stuff.


If there is one thing I am really sick of amongst a lot of fandom, it's the fact that in certain parts of fandom, whenever Rose displays some of her less desirable personality traits, the jealousy or bitchiness or selfishness or whatever, the automatical response from a whole bunch of people will be "Oh, she's just 19, that's normal."

And on behalf of someone who was (until a week ago) 19 years old, I just have to say: No. Just no. If I had acted like Rose has on some occasions, like she was to Mickey or some of her more jealous moods, my friends would have bitch-slapped me into next week.

Hell, when I was fifteen, I did act rather like that (though less clinging to a boy, and more friend related), and you know what happened? I got hugely (metaphorically) bitch-slapped. Big mondo fight, and some of my friends didn't speak to me for weeks.

And so I moved on, grew up, grew out of it. Got over it. Because they aren't nice character traits, no matter how old you are. And so to those Rose apologists, could you please stop telling me it's mormal, it's natural, she's a 19 year old girl and is supposed to be like that - No, she isn't.

That said, I think what we are coming to this season, and in the build up for Rose's departure is that metaphorical bitchslap. She's being immature and petty, and you know what? She is starting to pay for it.

In fact, that's what we've been seeing - Rose's metaphorical bitch-slap. Starting with the mighty pwnage from Queen Victoria, and then from Sarah Jane showing her her place in the Doctor's life, Madame de Pompadour, Mickey and alt-Pete, and whatever else is going to go down.

It sounds terribly harsh, but life is like that - it's the hard lessons you remember. You don't learn from someone saying you should pay more attention from others, you learn when your best friend tells you that sorry, they have other people they'd rather spend time with. It's that metaphorical bitch-slap, that gets it through to you. Rose was told the Doctor was worth the monsters, here she is getting her metaphorical monsters. How she copes with it will shape the person she becomes.

(Yes, the Doctor is also paying for his actions, though on a less emotional, and more physical level. And a much grander scale - I am guessing that by the end of the season, he'll be saying sorry for a lot more than one person. Only a God sees and sorrows for every little sparrow that falls. How does a God cope when a hundred, a thousand fall?

And it all ties in with my theory about how this season is all about actions versus consequences. We are getting consequences, be they emotional, physical, from the micro to the macro. How it ends, though, is the big question. In every case.)

Rose is getting her lesson - you pay for the price for how you act. And hopefully, hopefully she will learn from this, she will grow and become a better and more well-balanced person. And just possibly, once she has leanrt this lesson, she might just choose to step out and do her own thing, whatever that may be.

So please, people, don't try and explain away these things. They are flaws, but they are still Rose. She's no saint, she's a person. At times a selfish, immature, jealous person - and at times someone who would fight to save the world, who has saved the world. Canon!Rose might annoy me, but nowhere near as much as Saintly!Perfect!Sue!Rose. Let her be flawed, and let her learn from it.

And for Christ's sake, stop using her to make other 19 year olds look bad. I'm sure there are some like her out there, but there are also an awful lot who aren't.

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

And just possibly, once she has leanrt this lesson, she might just choose to step out and do her own thing, whatever that may be.

Which would tie in with RTD's mission statement of who the Doctor is, that being with him makes people better. We saw that with Jack and Mickey and even Jackie.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Exactly. It works so perfectly. So what's with all the bloody "Rose becomes a Time Lord" and "Rose saves the universe" and "Rose has mystical Time babies" and "Rose merges with the TARDIS" stuff?

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

I think it's a divide between people who are reading better as more than human, whether that be Time babies, Time Lord Rose, merging with the TARDIS, and those who are interpreting it as becoming a better person without actually changing who she is. (I'm firmly in the latter camp, needless to say.)

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

And yet, a lot of these people are the same ones who would decry Mickey calling the Doctor a "thing" in the first episode.

God, people are people no matter what they are, and if they really think that, they've just gone and missed pretty much the entire point of the Doctor's speeches about humanity, of the entire freaking series!

*weeps for humanity*

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

I think it'd be kind of tragic if she became something else. It already kind of messed up that she's lost her grounding.

[xwingace]

Ugh yeah. I've been dipping in the speculation threads (for season 2...) over on televisionwithoutpity, and there's lots of people actually *hoping* for Rose to turn out to be a Time Lady now. WTF? That's a nice concept for fanfic (though even there overdone) but they can't be serious of wanting it on the show, surely? What would be the point?

XWA

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

What always blows my mind is the belief that flaws in a character are bad. Flaws are what MAKE a character. Flaws are what make them interesting, hello internal conflict. I want Rose to be a bit bitchy and selfish and irrational. I want her character to make sense, to work as a whole, but with these flaws jutting out and bumping against her external issues and.. yeah.

I never understood why unlikeable decisions or less than perfect motives made for unlikeable character. If a character does something that doesn't make sense given what we know of them...then I've got a problem. Or if they're constantly acting out of proportion to their stimulus (or with weak, pasted in, fake feeling stimulus) ... yeah. But Rose's character's growth (or lack there of) over this season has felt... real. And I think things like the Hubris in the beginning of impossible planet with the (omg I'm starting to hate the leads they're so smug)... I don't quite get why people are so nonplussed for this. It's hubris that's been their calling card all season, and they're so used to blithely, carelessly running into danger that they were rather selfconsciously meta about it.

Err... yeah. Anyway, yay bratty imperfect Rose.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Bratty Rose has been annoying me a bit, but once I put the meta hat on, and think about it - and distance myself from the fanbrattage Sueification of her, I find it makes a lot more sense. (Also, I was slightly biased for a bit because she was mean to Mickey, who I *heart*, but I am starting to recover from that now)

And it sort of makes sense for her character - after her dad died, for all Jackie's many boyfriends, she was the centre of her mother's world. And then she had poor little Mickey, clinging to her because he had no-one else. And then Nine, who was so incredibly needy, to an almost unhealthy amount. She's used to being wanted, to being the focus of it all. And suddenly... she's not. And that's got to burn. But she has to learn to cope with it - nobody's the centre of the universe forever.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Also, I was slightly biased for a bit because she was mean to Mickey, who I *heart*, but I am starting to recover from that now

Oh, me too - mostly because I identified so much with Mickey this year (and was rather pleased when, watching Rise with a friend on two separate occasions, they both said at one point "oh god, he's a male you.")

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

Also, you put together "girl hungry for male attention due to her lack father/father figure" and "man-hungry, mother who probably tried to be Rose's sister more than mother" as a role model... and "father dead and therefore idealized" and a boyfriend who worships her. . . . not equipped to handle being the center of the universe to someone who really comprehends the universe...and then throwing it in her face that she too will someday be a memory of his....

Yeah. I think she's doing pretty well, considering.

[days-of-yore.livejournal.com]

Because I'm actually frantically revising Biology, this is what I would have said, bulletised. Obviously it would have been beautifully and eloquently phrased and punctuated to sublime levels of glory.
- Metaphorical bitch-slap is a lovely phrase. And very true.
- Keisha's initial opinion of Rose in Feast of The Drowned is interesting, how she's changed for the worse through being with the Doctor although Mickey's all 'It's still Rose and I love her!', bless him.
- "Only a God sees and sorrows for every little sparrow that falls. How does a God cope when a hundred, a thousand fall?" Yay, great minds. 'cept you put it much prettier. *applauds*
- Damn, I actually had nothing useful to say.

Also, thought this might interest you, although how relevant it is/it's meaning/why it's interesting I cannot analyse as am brain-dead right now. A magazine article quotes Rose talking about how tough space travel is really, and then says:
A reaction, perhaps, against the characters' overconfidence earlier in the series?.
"That," insists Russell, "has been exaggerated. One stray comment from me, in the Radio Times, about how much of a laugh the Doctor and Rose have in Tooth and Claw, seems to have developed into an elaborate theory about hubris. Lizo from Newsround quizzed me about it yesterday, and I was astonished that fan-thinking had built up such a complex arc... which doesn't exist!"

*dashes back to notes on enzymes*

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

I'm editing a Creative Writing Folio, and it is somewhat of a relief to get away from a girl recovering from rape right now. Hence, verbosity.

I'll have to reread Feast of the Drowned. I think it, most of those three books, would be most effected by the insight gained from looking back from a few more episodes.

I've read that Russell quote before, and it directly contradicts some things said on Confidential. So I think someone's playing tricky. He did it relating to the kiss last year, did he not?

[days-of-yore.livejournal.com]

Good luck with Folio! And I don't blame you for verbosity...

Last few episodes is why I'm rereading FotD, is interesting... massive exams over in 2 weeks then will be able to analyse it. I like it best out of the Tens, I think.

Ooh, did he? I was merely a telly!Who fan then, had not discovered its internets. Slippery devil! And as for Confidential, I live in a hole (otherwise known as a valley) and cannot get digital, don't have Sky, computer won't let me download so am basically deprived of Confidentially goodness. Which is a cause of much frustration.

Oh bollocks, I'm here again. LJ wants me to fail.

[days-of-yore.livejournal.com]

On a completely unrelated note, don't know if you knew/already heard it: http://days-of-yore.livejournal.com/38200.html

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

My problem with Rose at the moment is that I don't see her as if she's 9, she acts like she's 12. There is no learning from recent events, she's just closing her eyes, tunes out the consequences and tries to have fun. I'm sure this has nothing to do with her age, it's her personal fault.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

That's sort of the point, dear - she is acting immature, and she isn't getting the point. Yet. She isn't going to learn until she really does get that hard lesson, and I think it's going to be more of a long line of smaller things than one big event, and she's right in the middle of it now.

And the age thing was what triggered this whole essay.

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but my problem is that she doesn't learn at all. there have bee plenty of deaths, horrible events, near death situations and she still doesn't get it.

[yattara.livejournal.com]

Word. I so agree with this.

What bugs me about Rose is that she doesn't seem to learn from anything that happens. Hello, you've got a fully functioning human brain, now use it!

And I second that part of the problem I have with her is how she treated Mickey. Mickey is love.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

She isn't learning - yet. But as I commented earlier, when she does learn, I'm pretty certain that's going to be the beginning of the end of for her.

To truly see the cost of her actions - she's got to keep making other people pay for what she does, or she can take it into her own hands. And I have the distinct feeling that taking it into her own hands will mean having to step away from the Doctor.

Mickey is indeed awesome. (Mickey haters? Fools, the lot of them!)

[--kali--.livejournal.com]

And you have the fact that we have a lot of 30-something men writing Who that's never oging to help a characterisation. (Although if this is going the way I think it's going they're going to pull it off big-stylee. Which is good)

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a point too. TV characters are never quite the smae as real people.

[--kali--.livejournal.com]

They need more female writers on Who. Just cos we're girls doesn't mean we can't do aliens or big explosions or twisty skience.

[melata-fic.livejournal.com]

It is not normal nineteen-year-old behaviour. And she is not perfect.

I like the idea of Rose getting smacked down, realising what it all means, then leaving. And the Doctor realises that uber-giggly is not the way to go for next time.

(At this point? It's the inconsistencies that annoy me, more than the character.)

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

That does seem to be the way things are going.

[wendymr.livejournal.com]

They are flaws, but they are still Rose. She's no saint, she's a person. At times a selfish, immature, jealous person - and at times someone who would fight to save the world, who has saved the world. Canon!Rose might annoy me, but nowhere near as much as Saintly!Perfect!Sue!Rose. Let her be flawed, and let her learn from it.

Yes. Absolutely, positively yes. I like Rose. I ship Rose/Doctor. But that's exactly how she is - and that's, IMO, how characters in fiction should be, because that's how people are in real life: imperfect, flawed. And you're right: sooner or later she has to face up to that, and that's what's coming.

You've just summed Rose up in one very short para, for me :)

And >lj user="melata_fic">:
At this point? It's the inconsistencies that annoy me, more than the character.

Ditto. Because, every time it seems as if Rose is becoming better-adjusted, or returning to the more proactive, courageous companion she was last year, she becomes uber-clingy, selfish, pathetic Rose again. Flaws are good, but be consistent about how they're written, please!