laugh hard, run fast, be kind

“I do what I do because it’s right. Because it’s decent. And above all, it’s kind. It’s just that. Just kind. If I run away today, good people will die. If I stand and fight, some of them might live. Maybe not many and maybe not for long. Hey, you know, maybe there’s no point in any of this at all. But it’s the best I can do, so I’m going to do it. And I’ll stand here doing it till it kills me. Who I am is where I stand. And where I stand is where I fall.”

PETER CAPALDI AS THE TWELFTH DOCTOR (2014-2017)

the linguistic structure of "Heartshaven" and "Lungbarrow" implies the existence of Gallifrey's very own Liverpool

While Donna Noble will always be my favourite companion in NuWho, Clara will always be the most multi-faceted and complex (as of now). I think that a lot of divisiveness surrounding Clara stems from 5 common criticisms:

I think while I can understand the reasons leading up to these criticisms, I also think that it does help to look back throughout the Moffat and RTD era as it does help explain a lot of these points imo.

Actually, the character Clara most prominently echoes is Rose. Rose, like Clara, helped the Doctor through a time of extreme emotional vulnerability (for 9th, Time War trauma) and developed a relationship of co-dependency with him (as 10th) which never really went away even after Doomsday. Clara had the luxury of time however, and has undergone more events with the Doctor (Impossible Girl, Trenzalore, 50th Anniversary etc) but also how 12th was undergoing an extreme identity crisis of figuring out whether he’s a good man post-Trenzalore and saving Gallifrey. Clara was the one who facilitated his character growth through the turbulence of the arc in instances like Dark Water, Death In Heaven, Mummy on The Orient Express, Kill The Moon, Last Christmas etc and would naturally result in the Doctor developing an extremely unhealthy reliance on Clara as being his “carer,” his anchor to being The Doctor (refer to her whole “Be A Doctor” spiel in the 50th Anniversary). Series 9 already heavily implied the Doctor’s willingness to engage with destructive measures by choosing to separate Clara and The Doctor almost every episode (Magicians Apprentice/Witch’s Familiar) as the stakes rose and cumulated in Face The Raven.

RTD has also once said when paying tribute to Moffat:

Imo, while poorly phrased, I think does also hit another nail on the head to explain how Clara can be so compelling to someone like me but also extremely polarising. RTD is talking less about the companion being “weaker” or “submissive” but how Clara is the NuWho companion that wishes to obliterate the boundaries between the power dynamic of companion/doctor. Series 8 for instances plays on the recurring motif of, “Do as you are told” which the Doctor firstly uses to threaten Clara to keep her safe. However, Clara actively retaliates by parroting the phrase back in an attempt to attain parity. This escalates to the events of Dark Water where she attempts to maintain control of her circumstances by forcing the Doctor to be on equal ground with her. What is so fascinating is that Clara while changing and emulating more of the Doctor’s heroism, she equally begins to absorb his flaws which intensify throughout Series 8-9. Clara becomes more deceitful, egotistical, reckless and cunning as she begins to become more and more like him. The means she lies to Danny, her ability to think more and more like him.

However, what people (fans and haters) also ignore is how nuanced the circumstances are. While Clara’s flaws become more heightened, it is also a fact that she wants to be like the Doctor because of his kindness and heroism. Episodes like Robots of Sherwood, Last Christmas or even Rings of Akhten reveal a lot about how Clara reveres the Doctor as a mythic and heroic figure. Clara’s attitudes towards the children in Forest Of The Night, Name Of The Doctor and Into The Dalek reveal that in spite of her ego and selfishness, she is someone who desires to help people. Thus, her desire to become the Doctor becomes more explainable. What a lot of people can’t really accept is that she can be both egotistical, reckless and kind at once. Her actions in Face The Raven were driven out of the fact that it came from a place of ignorance and impulsiveness (not stupidity, the Doctor would do something similar, it’s just that Clara did not have all the clues) in what she believed would be what the Doctor would do and that she was confident she could match the trickery of the Doctor, and yet it was also driven by her compassion towards Rigsby and her while impulsive, sincere desire to save her friend.

Clara is punished because of this, she forgets that she’s far too human. The Doctor is less breakable. She pays for it and as Ashildr says in Hell Bent:

She died due to her physical fragility, her ego, her ignorance, her impulsiveness/recklessness and yet she also died because she was too brave, she died like the Doctor, who she loved (literally look at how her arms were outstretched as though she was mid-regeneration and how the black smoke parallels the orange glow of regeneration). However, this leads to the fourth main criticism I prior stated, so how does one answer that in relation to her character?

The answer is what Clara does and what the Doctor says towards the end of Hell Bent. Clara after being extracted and is with the Doctor in the TARDIS, spies on him because she is instantly suspicious of his erratic behaviour. Again, Clara shows how much she has become like him, she immediately picks up that he is hiding something because she has begun to think like him. Of course, the Doctor was planning on wiping Clara’s memories similar to what he did to Donna. But what does Clara do? She immediately reverse the polarity of the device that the Doctor was going to use on her and challenges the Doctors actions. Clara states:

Clara’s language indicates her assertiveness and also a kind of last hurrah in her game of parity. She is refusing to submit to the narrative of being reduced to merely a companion that the Doctor moves away from. But more importantly, the Doctor after pressing the device and is losing his memory, states:

I think on initial viewing when the show was airing, this wouldn’t make much sense but this really shows the crux of how Hell Bent completes Clara’s arc and the necessity of her resurrection. In Face The Raven, the Doctor tells Clara that she’s more breakable as she questions why she can’t be as reckless as him. However, now the Doctor is instead telling her what would later be repeated in Twice Upon A Time, his regeneration speech. In his eyes, Clara has succeeded in graduating from the Magicians Apprentice and into becoming the Magician herself. He’s instructing her how to properly be The Doctor. As I said, Clara was also motivated by her desire to be kind when she engaged in her reckless gambit but what is so wrong about the desire to be kind? And why should Clara be punished for it? Thus, while Clara MUST die, her final act of kindness at the end of her arc enables the Universe to allow for Clara’s final transformation into the Doctor.

Clara is still dead, it is an unchanged historical event. However, to challenge the status quo and allow for Clara’s ascension, Clara becomes a fairy tale herself. Her body is caught in a permanent form of stasis, signalling her departure from the limits of her physicality (subverting her physical fragility) but also as seen through her last words to the Doctor:

Clara has successfully become what she admired, a myth, a fable. She has become a symbol in a story, a story that would go on to have an infinite number of other stories. She has become the leaf she raises to the monster in the Rings of Akhten, she sails off into narrative ambiguity but also infinity. Clara is so polarising because she challenges the definition of what it means to be The Doctor on a pure metatextual level. It’s a logical progression from the introspection of the question from the Doctor himself in Series 8. To want to resist, I argue, is natural.

I could explore further about her adrenaline addiction in Mummy On The Orient Express or these traits I raised explored in Flatline which I may do another day, but I hope I have provided a new perspective on Clara Oswald.

The Giggle: Behind the Scenes | Doctor Who

on a scale from 0 to jodie whittaker how strong is your adhd

just a collection of stuff i found because my brain Relates

I'd love it, if you came with me