Rose-related

[rozk]

Various people are criticizing Rose Tyler for saying, in Journey's End that the day she lost contact with the Doctor was 'the worst day of my life'..

I really do not think that anyone figures out 'the worst day of their life' in rational terms - the worst day of my life was not 9/11, or the day the US failed to ratify Kyoto, or the day Martin Luther King was assassinated, sorrowful as I was on all those occasions and bad as the effects on the world were. Nor was it the deaths of various friends, various occasions when doctors seriously screwed up my body or the day I failed to get a first-class honours degree.

It was probably the day that the woman I was in love with at the time rang me up at the behest of her other lover and said that she was severing all ties - even though there was a lot more of that story and I got to be very horrible to that other lover in due course. Or the day that a close friend came round and told me what a total shit I was - even though I knew at the time that this was bullshit, and years later we totally got past it.

The worst day of your life is the one you felt worst about at the time, and where the memory of that pain still hurts. AND THAT IS NOT ACCESSIBLE TO FRAKKING REASON OR THE PHILOSOPHIC CALCULUS OF JEREMY FRAKKING BENTHAM.

Sometimes, eg now, I despair of fandom.

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Fandom eh.

Though I must say, the response Joss Whedon received when Tara died is probably still the most inappropriate fandom reaction to date.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Agree entirely.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Fandom includes a lot of people whose minds seem to operate at times on these lines:

1) Everyone's personal decisions must be amenable to rational analysis.

2) I am a Logical, Sensible person and if I come to a considered conclusion on a matter, then it is the Last Word.

3) From (2), it follows that anyone who disagrees with my reasoning must be wrong, and from (1) this includes anything they say or do that I wouldn't have said or done myself.

Running conventions got a whole lot less stressful when I realised this.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

Oh, so true, every word of that. There's a specific case of that when it comes to outing of RL identities in fannish circles or excoriating people in hatememes or so forth: the people who declare, "Well, I wouldn't mind/find it rather funny/be rather flattered personally" and assume that says everything about why people reacting differently are Just Making A Big Fuss About Nothing.

well Yeah

[dmsherwood53.livejournal.com]

Rose was facing losing for the 2nd time in her life the man of her dreams the man who had pulled her out of Mundanity into a live like a god. Even if what she said was adolescent bullshit-I don't concedd it was- giving her a verbal spanking is bloody terrible. This is a girl in her twenties for christ sake facing somrthing that nobody can say she/he could handle with grace and pose .Cut her a little slack!!

Re: well Yeah

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

This isn't actually a girl in her twenties. It's a screenwriter writing lines for a character. It's important to remember that.

Re: well Yeah

[dmsherwood53.livejournal.com]

Sigh
If your handing out whippng for that is due one as much as me for I only continued her point in the same manner.
I'll let handle her own shit me I'll just say don't condesend to your betters i'll match my grip on reality against yours anyday. Empathizing with fictional characters ,which means taking them as tho they were real has a long history;yes ultimately its all smoke and mirors there is no Dr Who just a bunch of actors and sriptwriters. A pity but its true. My boundaries are quite firm thank you if I ever meet BILLY PIPER I'll be polite to a woman I don't know & who certainly don't know me but who has given me a great deal of pleasure; I'll certainly not gush about 'What is the TARDIS really like' etc. etc.
So in short go piss in your left ear and learn to read like a grown up.

[earth-prime.livejournal.com]

The conclusion of this series has left me seriously contemplating giving the Who mythos its proverbial records and sweater back, and finally answering the calls that the boxed set of Weeds DVDs has been making, patiently, this last year.

The conclusion of the Rose subplot was as unsatisfactory as the rest of it.(Not that I am paid to seed the internet with defenses of RTD... but we can now seriously talk in terms of plots, subplots and even - if we insist - *gag* arcs, and who's introduced that? Rusty).

But I felt more cheated on Rose's behalf than anything else... She didn't have all that much to do, in the end, and we don't know that 10.1 is all that different from 10. He's got more of a gob on him, and the Tommy Steel thing going on... that's all we know. So maybe she has got to start all over again.

Casting about trying to find something to captivate me, having waited all day nursing my foreboding and dread, I was struck by how Tantric Dr Who's getting. It's only ever been overtly alluded to in Planet of the Spiders.

Lamas and gurus don't just reincarnate, they also emanate (there are, at least, 3 Panchen Lamas... "worthy to be" Panchen Lama lives in ireland last I heard of him). The vociferous protectiveness of Rose as an idea on the part of some fans is like the devotion students develop towards female protector deities, investing their own feelings and thought processes in both the depiction and narrative about the Goddess. (And RTD turned Rose into one, overtly).

As the mythos extends maybe it is mirroring more aspects of Tantra and Tantric Buddhism especially, because both fit with the pattern that is dormant in our minds: that we don't want surrogate or real parent figures, or attractive love interests, to leave us.

Perhaps RTD and Billie Piper have achieved something very significant in creating a point of view character companion that young female fans strongly identify with, even when all they have to scrap over in the final denouement is something as thin as that ending was.

You are right, of course, about the nature of trauma and memory, but then most fans online seem quite young. Coping isn't the same thing as getting over something.

[ocvictor.livejournal.com]

The worst day of your life is the one you felt worst about at the time, and where the memory of that pain still hurts. AND THAT IS NOT ACCESSIBLE TO FRAKKING REASON OR THE PHILOSOPHIC CALCULUS OF JEREMY FRAKKING BENTHAM.

Thank you (although I wonder what I'm doing spoiling myself here, as I'm at American speed.) But yes. Very much so.

I also get this in discussions with people on whether the Doctor and Rose are actually in love. While I'm actually a tad indifferent to the answer, I get perturbed when people say "But why would he fall in love with her instead of, say Sarah Jane." To which the only answer is, "Oh. Love works like that, does it?" Maddening.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

..Well, yeah. At least, there are certain personality traits and opinions and actions that ensure I wouldn't fall in love with someone, or that if I did I wouldn't get into a relationship with them. Rose's type of overwhelming neediness is one of them, as is the concept of a relationship with someone unequal to me on so many levels.

(And I speak as someone who quite likes Rose, and ships Nine/Rose, if not Ten/Rose.)

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely about the "worst day" point. It's no-one else's business if the worst day of one's life happens to involve some primary school kerfuffle about a broken centimetre ruler, say.

I also think given the truly appalling set-up at the end the likelihood is that the worst day of Rose's life is yet to come: being given as a duty "saving" a man with terminal heart disease, PTSD and the worst case of survivor guilt ever seen, who has also in one day lost his life's work and companion (well, they didn't clone the TARDIS that I noticed) and who, worst of all, appears as the identical shadow (though not and never the substance) of the man whom one thought one could love across all worlds and time - seems productive of mental tortures which make Davros and even the Master's best efforts look like Playschool.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*

I'm seriously afraid to start reading the reaction posts to this episode. I think some people are in this fandom for the sole purpose of nitpicking random things about Rose Tyler and then using them to spew immense hate-filled venom against her. :(

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I thought the actual show was just fine, really, I guess because I put my own interpretation on events. Though the Rose thing was dragged out, and honestly, is there anyone on Earth who wasn't over Rose a year or more ago?

But the discussion in Doctor Who Confidential about what the Doctor was thinking and why he acted the way he did; well, that felt wrong, even if it was the writer saying it.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Heh. This is why I don't watch the Confidentials any more - I can put my own spin on the episodes, but it always, always disagrees with what RTD apparently meant to do.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Also the ACTRESS knew it felt wrong (BP) wh8ch is to me quite telling.

I hated that bit - wish it had been cut.

OTOH it does open up Amazing Future Plot Possibilities. I've already mentioned Evil Ten.Five on my own Lj: also - KIDS!!!

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I think I'm one of the people this is aimed at, and I did not intend to dismiss your life.

I think I'm, as ever, annoyed less by Rose herself, as by this portrayal of someone who's been promoted not so much by the show itself as by certain fans and the creators in extra-canonical stuff as the Best Ever, who is raised above all others by her explicitly romantic love for the Doctor. And the overtones of selfish romantic love as supplanting all forms of feelings for others or responsibility to the world in general, which has just been disturbing me more and more in fannish responses to assorted canons since Whedon's work.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Actually, I agree with the view that there has been excessive adulation of Rose from some corners of fandom - my view is and always has been that the show is called Dr. Who. Not The Current Companion of Doctor Who and the two or three we wish were still around...

[pirates-daily.livejournal.com]

Personally, I have been much cheered by being reminded that the Doctor that Rose was left with is part Donna. That has allll kinds of possibilities.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Now that IS interesting..

re excessive adoration of Rose

[dmsherwood53.livejournal.com]

well its at least largely the scriptwriter fault. Rose was presented as something special something in a differant catogory to all the companions that have been. & Billy Piper gave a performance that IMHO suggested (& suggestion is all in Art)a person who was fit companion to a god -she lost it in the last series except for a few touches again IMHO but that's another can of worms.
I think the problem is in the very nature of series drama. There's always another episode to get out and the main characters can't REALLY change it wouldn't be Dr Who anymore (if we ever meet at a convention ask me why I think that the last series of SHELLEY the Hwel Bennett TV comedy was crap because of breaking that rule)
Also there's the irritating distractions of Real Life Billy Piper had a life and career and didn't give a jar of warm piss that the screenwriters had a lot they wanted to say thru Rose yet.
BUFFY came close to squaring that circle (imutabel caracters locked into screen logic) but that's another can of worms.

[aristophains.livejournal.com]

While I'm not active in any Doctor Who fandoms, and none of my opinions on Journey's End has been expressed fannishly or fanatically, I'll admit that I was unhappy with Rose's assessment of 'Doomsday' as the worst day of her life, considering what she went through on 'Father's Day'. Yet never having had a Father's Day myself, nor anything quite like a Doomsday, who am I to judge? Your entry is absolutely right, and I thank you for posting it.

I remain unimpressed at the apparent hagiolatry of '10rose', a Doctor-Companion relationship I never much enjoyed. Though if some future episodes further elucidate the Time War (which we now know is not unbreakably "time-locked"), and what it did to the Doctor, maybe the cynics among us will better appreciate how special a Companion Rose Tyler was (assuming she was his first post-Time War Companion).