:P

[mrv3000]

AHHH! Fic, I stab at thee!!

Rose? You are a confusing person at times. Especially during S1. With Mickey. Not with Mickey. Kinda likes the Doctor. "Available." Highly flirtatious with the Doctor. Back with Mickey but runs after the Doctor. Not with Mickey.

No wonder the Doctor was a mess about it all during S1. *cough*BoomTown*cough*

The Mickey string-along was I think one of Rose's bigger flaws, and one I have a really hard time getting my head into. I mean, I do completely get it from a meta-type standpoint, but trying to figure out the internal narrative for fic purposes that goes along with it? ACK.

Maybe I should just switch the POV to Nine, and he and I can both be confused.

ETA: This is all because of a few lines in a FLUFF fic. Yes, I am exactly that neurotic.

Comments

[joyfulfeather.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of a line from Harry Potter: "One person couldn't feel all that, they'd explode!" It would be a complicated headspace to try to write from, fluff-fic or no. Good luck!

[debs7.livejournal.com]

I think in the first season Rose was trying to keep her feet in both worlds - one foot still back on Earth with Mickey but the other foot in the TARDIS with the Doctor (and let's face it I think everyone would flirt with Jack).

It wasn't until the end of S1 where Rose made her choice and decided on putting all her eggs in the one Doctor shaped basket.

but yes, poor Doctor *pats him* I can see why he'd be all confused with the signals she was throwing around.

[kammgirl.livejournal.com]

And I always looked at it as a young girl who found this amazing new love, but was not ready to let go of something she had for so long. I saw Rose's guilt over how she treated Mickey and I found this particular flaw very human and natural for someone her age. I also used to want to kick Mickey in the pants many times. He was older then her and had been around somewhat. Sometimes I would roll my eyes and think grow a set.

[goldy-dollar.livejournal.com]

I think Rose fell in love with the Doctor on a subconscious level in S1, so that's why her feelings seemed a little bit all over the place at times. She's out on an adventure, she likes flirting, but "dating and dancing" all seems fairly innocuous to her. What is it that she says to Mickey in Aliens of London? "He's not my boyfriend, Mickey. He's much more important than that." Which really doesn't indicate that Rose has a particularly high regard for romantic love. I've always seen her as having a lot of *fun* in S1, with the Doctor sneaking in without her realizing it. But she still put him first. Before Mickey and Adam and even Jack. By S2, I think she was ready to embrace all that love, whether it be on that close friendship level or that deeper romantic level. Kind of like the Doctor himself, actually. :D

As for Mickey, I don't think she realized how much she was stringing him along or how much more involved in the relationship he was. But she never lied to him. It's not like she ever said she'd stop traveling with the Doctor one day and settle down with him.

I kind of touched on this a bit in the one and only Nine/Rose fic I wrote. :D Sometimes I express myself better in fic than I do in meta, so I'll just copy and paste those few lines. LOOK AWAY IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ FIC:

Sometimes while she’s sticking her tongue out at him and giggling she feels guilty. Mickey’s still back on earth, still waiting on her, and here she is, traveling through the universe with two other blokes.

But mostly she’s not thinking about Mickey. She can scarcely remember what it was like before. The world was this tiny little… thing, and there she was, stuck as a shop girl, going nowhere.

And then the Doctor came along. She doesn’t really know what to make of it; all these feelings that come from being around the Doctor. She wonders what he’d do if she pressed him—if she pushed him for more than just dancing.

Sometimes the wondering keeps her up at night.

Nineteen-year-old shop girl, she reminds herself. Nine-hundred-year-old alien whose planet is gone. It’s not like that between them. It’s stronger than that.

[andsheloves.livejournal.com]

YAIY! Neurosis!

[honorh.livejournal.com]

Let's not forget, too, that Mickey's not entirely innocent in the bust-up in "Boom Town", either. The Doctor *offered* him a place on the TARDIS in WWIII, but Mickey not only turned it down, he asked the Doctor to cover for him. He also chose to be at Rose's beck and call, or at least allowed it. And then he gets disgruntled when she tells him about all these amazing adventures she's having.

This isn't to minimize Rose's fault in all this, but really, they both had a choice in the matter. Mickey could've broken it off as well, but like Rose, he wanted it both ways. He wanted to keep Rose *and* his life on Earth; she wanted to keep Mickey *and* her life with the Doctor. Something had to give.

[sapote3.livejournal.com]

I mean, I always interpreted her thing with Mickey as pretty standard open relationship drama: she's all "We should be free to do what we like, and also there for each other", but Mickey's not happy with it and aware that if he tells her he might lose her once and for all, and meanwhile Rose is not aware that she's being one-sided about it and is actually claiming the right to not be monogamist for herself while she's still getting jealous over what he does (vis a vis Boom Town).

I've seen this kind of thing go down in real life - thank god not mine - and, yep, that's pretty much what it looks like. People wandering along going "la la la, I have evolved past jealousy, dur dur dur" and then whap with the angst stick.

[noblealice.livejournal.com]

I think this is where people get the 'Rose is immature' ideas. Because she has left Mickey, is 'available', yet when he mentions that he's going with Trisha Delaney*, she gets upset. I think that they believe that Rose only wants Mickey now that he's not only hers.

I think that it's still a shock for Rose to remember that life goes on while she travels. She left for a year and nothing really changed. Her mother and Mickey were still waiting for her. But now as she travels, the world is still moving without her. Jackie's got a new beau, Mickey's got a new girl. Slitheen are running for office. So her stable world is leaving her behind instead of waiting in stasis for her to return. She later accepts this and in the end would rather the adventures and the missing out on the 'long path' that changes while she's gone.

*Poor Trisha, you are the uber!Mickey, always second string to Rose and he TOTALLY would have cheated on her with Rose if they had got that hotel room.

[jedi_of_urth]

There have been a lot of good points raised about this already, so I'm probably just restating other points.

But I get the impression that Rose and Mickey had pretty much always been in each other's lives in one form or another and I think that made it hard for them to hammer out the details of where their relationship was at but easy to assume it would always be there. I think the psychic paper calling him her sort of boyfriend was about right, she didn't know where they stood but he kind of was still her boyfriend since they'd never exactly broken up.

Also, Mickey never really seems to be at the forefront of Rose's mind. Like in Aliens of London, she's been back for several hours by the time Mickey comes over, and it's not as if she'd gone over there, or apparently asked Jackie how Mickey was, otherwise she might have known the situation before he came in.

It's compounded by the fact that I think at least part of Rose did think it would be "just ten seconds" probably not exactly, but a short enough time that she wasn't stringing him along for months while she was off gallivanting around the universe. She didn't think about what would happen if they got it wrong by a year again, she wasn't exactly prone to making allowances for unexpected consequences. In Boom Town when she realized what was happening, she *was* keeping him on hold with no guarantees when or if she would come home much less what sort of relationship they might have if she did, she realized he deserved better