Things I have noticed

[drakyndra]

Internet Servers should not be allowed to drop out with no notice whatsoever, and remain offline for several hours. It's just not fair. Especially when one needs access to Netbank so they can, you know, pay the damned rent.

Still, fa11ing_away had time for some televisual entertainment. Watched Chicago (She hadn't seen it before, shock, horror), and I mourned my ankle, and the fact I couldn't dance along with it. Curse you, good musicals, and your stupid great music, and stupid choreography I want to learn, and stupid fun acting parts and stupid entertainment value. Stupid decade of dance training having programmed me to want to join in this stuff.

And we also finished off watching Doomsday (For the first time for fa11ing_away) Which was... interesting. I find the ending terribly sad, and very tragic, and yet it still doesn't make me cry.

Though I did notice something that no-one else seems to have picked up on - or if they have, no-one has said much about it.


It's tiny, but important, but when Rose and the Doctor are pushing the levers in place to open the Void, the reason that Rose's slips out later, and she has to do her heroic thing which ends up trapping her in Pete's World? Is because she doesn't lock it into place.

(On my recording, it's from about 34:14. We get "Online" from the PA voice-over, and when watching the Doctor and Rose rushing off from their levers, Rose seems to cut it a bit short. Then, of course, Rose's sparks and slips out of place when the Doctor's doesn't, and it's only after she pushes it back up again we get "Locked" added to the end of the voice-over, which, since the VO is for both levers, means the Doctors was already locked in place)

I don't know if she's being sloppy and careless, or rushing, or if she doesn't notice, but the lever isn't locked into position, and it's because of Rose. Has anyone discussed the implications of this? For all the talk about how it was luck or fate or whatever that trapped Rose elsewhere (and yes, Pete is the one who saves her from the Void but traps her in his world), it's effectively her actions that mean she is taken from the Doctor, to death or Alt-Universe.

It's pretty obvious cause and effect, really: Rose pushes lever online, but doesn't lock it in place. Void sucks in the Daleks and Cybes. One bumps the lever, and it dislodges from online position. Rose moves over to lever, pushing it online and locking it now. Rose has to cling to the lever to prevent being sucked in. Rose can't grip tightly enough, and is sucked in. Pete catches her, and takes her to the AU.

If Rose had locked the lever in place to start with, it never would have dislodged (the Doctor's didn't, which is why I was paying so much attention to this scene, actually, to work out why one dislodged and the other didn't). She never would have had to move to push it up. She never would have been sucked in at all. The Void vs AU question would never have occurred. She would have stayed with the Doctor.

It's a tiny thing, but for those considering the emo!broken!Rose we get at the end? She caused her own destruction.

A tiny moment, but one with huge significance. And it pretty much blew me away when I noticed it. Was Rose careless? Was she not paying attention? Was she rushing, not being thorough? It may have been accidental, but it was her mistake that trapped her in the AU.

And this...well, it throws a whole lot of the ending in a slightly different light, for me at least. Rose can't blame cruel fate or luck or whatever for her circumstances, it was something she did. And it certainly ties in with some discussions I've been having lately about how growing up involves making mistakes and learning from them.

(To quote my own meta, as shameless as that is, "Well, the thing about growing up is, it too hurts. We learn from our pains, from our mistakes, from the things we lose and how we lose them.")

It also makes my "actions and consequences" theory of the series work better than I had hoped.

But... I can't have been the only person to notice this, can I? And if it has been discussed elsewhere, can I have links to it?

Comments

[koshiroryuu.livejournal.com]

I'd noticed, but I'm not really a big Rose fan, and it didn't say anything about the character that I didn't already know, so I hadn't really mentioned it.

Personally, I think that Rose is the type who will still try to blame other people or even the universe at large when it is, essentially, her own fault. I mean, years in the future, she might be able to accept her own part in her fate, but I don't see that happening yet.

Although, to be fair, AU!Pete had no way of knowing that she was falling in at that particular moment, so he had to have been coming for her, anyway. Since I'm assuming that Jackie probably badgered him into it (because you know she did) that would mean that he and Jackie are directly responsible for Rose being alive and well in LumicWorld rather than being sucked into the void, so it is their fault that she's there, in that respect. Otherwise she would've been dead, and that would've been entirely her own fault.

And right now, right this second, there's someone out there writing really bad angst!fic about how she'd rather be dead. Isn't the world a wonderful place? Yes.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

I'm completely with you on Jackie having talked Pete into it, because we know it's true, but still, if Rose had locked the lever, she wouldn't have needed catching.

And right now, right this second, there's someone out there writing really bad angst!fic about how she'd rather be dead.

True, unfortunately.