Yo, He's Literally A Teacher Through And Through 😭😭

[Image description Bender from Futurama in Robot Hell saying "I'm on Tumblr? But that means, Twitter's been killed --crap, I mean 'un-alived'" second panel is the Robot Devil, labeled "Tumblr" saying "It's alright, you can say that here."]

when shuri was crying That One Time and she said 'mommy' it fucking broke me btw. she may not be a child but she's still so YOUNG

not one single member of the cast is beating the possessed allegations

Happy Destiel Putin Election Day to all those that celebrate!!

Let us look fondly back on the collective bender we all went on two years ago today. 😌🏳️‍🌈🇷🇺

I hate this post with a passion like why??? What was the point??? Could you like not be so goddamn passive aggressive and maybe i don't know stop watching the show if it really bothers you so much. Like I'm not saying we can't criticize shows we like but this seems less like criticism and just straight up shiting on the show and it's music

Sorry of im beating a dead horse, but the mobile game Honkai Impact has these two songs, Befall and Nightglow. They're amazing songs, and theor composition kind of gives me a vibe of how RWBY's songs could be if their writing went beyond generic good vs evil and blatant loves ballad tied to the same guitar rift every time. If RWBY's music more resembled the heart in HI's, the soundtrack could be incredible.

Poor unfortunate soul

I have to think that not everyone in the magic community is fully aware of the prophecy of Albion, Arthur as the Once and Future King, etc., bc if they were, why tf they always trying to kill him??? I think the prophecy is so old and has been passed around so much it's like a game of telephone, so there's versions that are.......pretty far from the OG edition.

But Emrys, they know Emrys. They apparently have an ability to sense him, although that's hit or miss sometimes too. But not everyone knows about the other half of his coin, nor do they expect to ever see Arthur fucking Pendragon kicking it with a minor god of magic.

Imagine. You are a Druid. You live in Camelot. You have been caught by the knights. You are approached by none other than Arthur Pendragon. You fully expect to cross the veil.

And then.

He appears.

The man, the myth, the motherfucker himself.

Emrys.

Who walks right up to Arthur Fucking Pendragon. Calm as anything. Puts a hand on his arm. And tells him to let you go, you've done no harm.

And he does.

You have to leave Camelot, but you are allowed to live. And Emrys leaves with Arthur Pendragon.

You gotta imagine that these poor bastards are just left Shooketh™ like

got this in my notes for my Shuri x Namor post and 😐

im a queer person... im just some aroace agender being shipping Shuri x Namor for the toxic shit and power imbalance thing that's going on their shaky alliance/relationship

I'd still ship Shuri x Namor if they're lesbians / gays bcs im here for the bullshitery that will go down in their "relationship"

queer people are also capable of loving unhinged shit... queerness isn't just sunshine & rainbow

and im literally so offended bcs ive enjoyed dead dove do not eat lgbtqia+ fandom contents. i even participate in writing dead dove do not eat gay & lesbian fics

the only reason i prefer Shuri x Namor over Shuri x Riri is bcs i love angst and i like to subject my favs (Shuri, in this case) to unimaginable (that being the pain of loving the fckr who murdered her mother & annihilate her nation, in Shuri's case)

let this queer person love a toxic het ship in peace pls being a fandom police isn't very nice

if u don't like the content, u can just not look at it ya know... the block button and blacklist option exist for a reason

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:

1. Clara’s characterisation in 7B and how Moffat treats her mostly as a mystery box first and character second.

2. The length of Clara’s tenure and how some may have been fatigued due to the many times “she should have left.”

3. The emphasis on Clara’s flaws in Series 8 and how it kind of paints her as unlikable over her Series 7B depiction as at least kind.

4. Clara’s departure in Hell Bent as something that ruins her ending in Face The Raven.

5. The belief of Clara as the most important character in the Doctors life inherently devaluing other companions.

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:

“And nestling at the heart of the show is Doctor Who's very own problem category, the Companion, a title inherently subordinate to the Man. Until Clara comes along!”

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 for who she was and who she loved. She fell where she stood. It was sad. And it was beautiful.”

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:

“Tomorrow’s promised to no one, Doctor. But I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It’s mine.”

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:

“Run like hell because you always need to. Laugh at everything, because it’s always funny (…) Never be cruel and never be cowardly. And if you ever are, always make amends (…) Never eat pears. They’re too squishy. And they always make your chin wet. That one’s quite important. Write it down.”

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:

“You said memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs.”

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.