Well ... I don't know if "callous" is maybe quite the right thing, so much as thoughtlessly careless -- she is very careless with people who care about her: the way she treats Mickey being the foremost example of that, but also with her mom, or leaving Jack on the space station, or with the boy from the museum -- who is, yes, a total git, but it was still very irresponsible to drop him on his own in the far future and wander off, let alone giving him a Tardis key. I know a lot of it is typical teenage flailing, and I do think there's ample evidence that Rose is a good person, but she's someone who seems to need a lot of maturing and isn't really getting there, IMHO.
I think most of my viewpoint on Rose being selfish and immature does have to do with the way she interacts with the people she cares about (Mickey, her mom, Jack, even the Doctor at times). She actually seems more "giving" with people she doesn't really know -- like the Dalek, or going after the little boy on the roof. She'll throw herself into danger to protect a stranger's life, but doesn't seem to extend the same mentality to looking after people that she loves. I can't really explain it to my own satisfaction, actually, unless it's just that she's very young and is still working on the transition from being the one who is looked after, to the one who looks after people.
She gives him a human connection; he has trouble relating to humans at all, trouble even explaining things in a way a normal person can understand (especially when he's been alone for a while, judging by what you see of him after he's been by himself; look at how wacked he is in the first ep!)
See, that's how I saw her at first, but now I'm not sure if she's influencing him so much as he's influencing her. In some ways, it's for the good -- she's getting a lot more concerned with the big picture, fate-of-the-universe type of things, and that's good, even if it's put her in a place where she can't relate so well to the people she used to be close to. But I think that she's also picking up on some of the Doctor's attitudes in a fairly negative way. Have you read the Discworld books? One scene in there that's really stuck with me is Carrot's "Personal is not the same thing as important", and the aftermath of that scene in which Vimes reflects that a good man who truly believes that is more dangerous than an evil man (or something along those lines). I kept thinking of that scene while watching the finale, because it seems like that is very much how the Doctor lives his life -- with one glaring exception, Rose herself -- and that she's picking that up from him, but at the same time losing sight of what makes her human.
This is fun. *g* And of course I don't mind you defending the character; it's always interesting to get my thought processes in order and, sometimes, to reassess my own attitudes if I just don't have the evidence to support them!
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I think most of my viewpoint on Rose being selfish and immature does have to do with the way she interacts with the people she cares about (Mickey, her mom, Jack, even the Doctor at times). She actually seems more "giving" with people she doesn't really know -- like the Dalek, or going after the little boy on the roof. She'll throw herself into danger to protect a stranger's life, but doesn't seem to extend the same mentality to looking after people that she loves. I can't really explain it to my own satisfaction, actually, unless it's just that she's very young and is still working on the transition from being the one who is looked after, to the one who looks after people.
She gives him a human connection; he has trouble relating to humans at all, trouble even explaining things in a way a normal person can understand (especially when he's been alone for a while, judging by what you see of him after he's been by himself; look at how wacked he is in the first ep!)
See, that's how I saw her at first, but now I'm not sure if she's influencing him so much as he's influencing her. In some ways, it's for the good -- she's getting a lot more concerned with the big picture, fate-of-the-universe type of things, and that's good, even if it's put her in a place where she can't relate so well to the people she used to be close to. But I think that she's also picking up on some of the Doctor's attitudes in a fairly negative way. Have you read the Discworld books? One scene in there that's really stuck with me is Carrot's "Personal is not the same thing as important", and the aftermath of that scene in which Vimes reflects that a good man who truly believes that is more dangerous than an evil man (or something along those lines). I kept thinking of that scene while watching the finale, because it seems like that is very much how the Doctor lives his life -- with one glaring exception, Rose herself -- and that she's picking that up from him, but at the same time losing sight of what makes her human.
This is fun. *g* And of course I don't mind you defending the character; it's always interesting to get my thought processes in order and, sometimes, to reassess my own attitudes if I just don't have the evidence to support them!