#twelve too. i mean my original subconscious perception of what Doctor Who Is Like will always be about twelve. tbh. but still

[jokerlennon]

seven definitely corresponds to this sort of ideal doctor characterisation in my head which is awesome but really weird uncle who also kills people

[spoofymcgee]

alright i've watched death in heaven and i've entirely revised my take on clara's character to the point where i think the 6k character study of her i finished last night is just. totally inaccurate and wrong.

my original perception of her was based on the fact that the narrative and the doctor's perspective both try very hard to make her a good character. she's the doctor's companion, which means she has to be good and kind and nice.

except that she isn't.

clara oswald is special. and she knows it. she's different from everyone else–there's something exceptional, something remarkable about her–why else would she get to travel the universe with the doctor? she isn't like everyone else, and she likes knowing that. it makes her feel powerful and better and bigger and in control.

she wants to have everything normal people have and more, to prove that she can live a regular life and run out in the middle of the day to save a planet, and this is what keeps proving to her that she's important.

she's the impossible girl–there's something different about her, and as long as that is true she's worth something.

which is not to say that she's bad: she's a little callous and sometimes cruel, she isn't very compassionate or sympathetic, but on the whole she has a basic set of morals.

and it's fine, for a while, i think.

but she fits everything into very specific boxes, including people, and knows where they go and of not how to control them than at least how to work around them.

and then the doctor changes, and she's not there to see it, and he regenerates, and she is there for that.

and he doesn't act like she's learned to expect, she can't rely on him, he doesn't treat her like she's special anymore, he's more critical, more honest, and she gets afraid.

she can't predict him anymore, and she's also afraid that he's getting too close to really seeing her, or maybe just stopping to pretend that he hasn't already. and somewhere, maybe subconsciously, she wants him to think that she's good and kind, wants to keep believing that she is, and she's just as afraid as he is that she isn't a good person.

and that's the crux of the problem with the doctor and clara's dynamic–they're too similar. that's why, in hell bent, the doctor doesn't need clara to figure out what's going on–he never has.

the doctor needed clara because he needed someone to believe he was good when he didn't. even if she couldn't convince him, he needed someone there to see him as good. twelve spends a lot of time thinking about whether or not he is good, whether or not he can be trusted, what kind of man he is and wants to be.

eleven spent the last three hundred years of his life defending a planet of innocent people who he got involved with his war. he watched them fight and die and tried to save them and knew that, in some very real ways, it was his fault.

as eleven, the doctor got big. the doctor got important. the doctor became a legend and a god and a figurehead and a nightmare and he doesn't know which one of those things cancel the others out.

so he needs someone there who just sees him as the doctor, plain and simple.

to clara, the doctor isn't important because he's a good man, or he does good things, or because she cares about him as a person. he's important because he proves that she's different from everyone else, that she's special–he's her path to the stars, to singularity.

oh, i don't think she knows that. i think she wants to believe–and does, maybe–that she loves him, that he's her friend, the one person she'll never leave behind. that's what she's supposed to feel. but the second something happens that isn't supposed to, the second her life diverges from the narrative she wants it to have, her first course of action is to try and force the doctor to do what she wants by threatening his life and freedom.

and that's good enough for twelve. if he's a tool to her then he's not a god, and she's controlling enough that if he spins too far out from good she'll pull him back so she doesn't lose him, and doesn't lose the sway she has over him.

my proof for this in clara's character is the way danny's story ends.

she didn't object to the fact that he died. in the end, she more or less killed him. for a girl whose first plan when the only person she loves dies is to threaten to kill herself and her best friend in a volcano, she gives up very easily.

if this was a story about how much she's unwilling to let danny go–which it seems to be–then she shouldn't care what he wants. she should be trying to make him stay, or at least convincing him, she should be crying, she should be screaming and trying to stop the doctor from flipping the switch.

but instead she offers to do it. she stands there quietly and demurely holding him while everything wraps up.

clara was more upset by the fact that he died in a boring, ordinary way than the fact that he died, because ordinary, normal death didn't fit into the story of danny-the-hero, danny-the-soldier, danny-who-saved-the-world. she is not ordinary and so she is owed a star-crossed love story by the universe and star-crossed lovers are not separated by car accidents.

but if he dies a hero, if he sacrifices himself to save her and everyone on earth, if he's special, then she gets to keep being special by association, gets to be the woman he loved so much he resisted cyberman brainwashing for, the woman he saved the world for.

for clara, traveling with the doctor while maintaining her normal life is a litmus test of how special she is, and because she is special she is owed the life she thinks she should have by the universe. danny is part of what she is owed, and part of the reason she is owed it.

for the doctor, clara is the only person he has to rely on to see him as a man and measure whether or not he is still good, still doing the right thing, still staying within the lines.

neither of them are ever going to give each other up, and they both believe so strongly that if they express any genuine attachment and strong desire to keep travelling together then they'll scare the other off. so they won't even admit how attached they are to each other, and they won't walk away even though they keep pretending they will, because they need each other like air.

the second the doctor loses clara or clara loses the doctor, the illusion collapses, and they're going to have to see who they really are inside.

and. god. that's so fascinating to me.