fandom is still like “amy pond and clara oswald aren’t normal people” and i’m sitting here like. sure, maybe their pasts aren’t as broad or relatable as being out of school without a job, but y’know what? people with abandonment issues exist. people with loved ones who mock and dismiss their experiences exist. people who want to travel but can’t for whatever reason exist. people without guardians or parents exist. people who get called crazy exist. there are kids out there with aunts who leave them alone at night and there are kids, teenagers and adults who feel like outcasts. there are people afraid to say “i love you” because the people they love and trust always leave
and okay maybe these don’t apply to everyone. that’s cool, i don’t relate to being a temp after all. but people who relate to these things exist. so however you feel, these characters are important to people and you don’t get to tell those people the’re wrong. because chances are they’ve been hearing that all their lives
clara oswald
[via clarabosswins]
Clara Oswald you gorgeous ruthless bastard,
This is one of my favourite Clara scenes for this exact reason. We see her being good so many times, almost unbelievably conscious of what’s the right thing to do. But this? This is Clara under pressure, and pressure always reveals the real Clara. Sometimes it’s that she’s scared, but sometimes, like this, it shows that she’s got the sort of dark ruthlessness inside of her that the Doctor shares.
She’s not perfect, she’s not even always nice, and that’s what I love about her.
Anonymous said: my problem is that the eleventh doctor only chose to ask amy and actual!clara to travel with him because of their mysteries. amy’s house was ‘too big with a crack in her wall’ and clara had echoes, they were the reasons he asked them aboard, he says so to amy in TPO and we know why he asked clara, that’s right there in the episodes. and i feel like the eleventh doctor wouldn’t ask ME, an ordinary girl to travel with him, it makes me feel like shit, that he wouldn’t be interested in me :(
I know this will appear profoundly odd to you, but Amy is actually the one companion who makes me feel like it could be me there. The Doctor took her with him because he realised, or had a suspicion, about what happened to her and her family – but there’s no need to see this in a literal manner of “you have to have a crack in your wall to make the Doctor travel with you”. A lot of Amy’s character and story works in metaphors and for me that’s one of those things.
Because, really, he saw someone who was strangely out of place. A big house, a small girl. Damaged even, a life being devoured, pieces being taken she didn’t know she was missing. Grieving losses she couldn’t remember. She can be brave, she can fall on her feet, but she’s still misunderstood, still afraid of being abandoned, still scared too trust. She’s the most intrinsically flawed of all the companions, because she can’t not be.
He didn’t “take the best”. He took the most lost.
And maybe that’s a little messed up, but that is way closer to me than all other companions combined.
I’m really sorry if it makes you feel sad that you can’t find yourself in this, but you really need to understand that what you should feel like is incredibly grateful that another companion can do that for you. And grant me Amy Pond.
(And grant others Clara Oswald, who actually is an ordinary girl and whose echo the Doctor offered to take travelling long before he realised her connection to the girl in the Dalek Asylum.)
I like Nine just fine, but he would never, ever have taken me as a companion. I’m not good in bad situations, I would’ve been a Julia, or a Penny, or at worst an Adam. I am not ‘the best’, and in truth I always rather deeply resented that only being ‘the best’ would win you travel and adventure and respect. (Because even then this wasn’t applied across the board: Martha does everything Rose did and then some, and for six episodes she’s still firmly told by the Doctor ‘nope, you’re just a passenger.’)
I was SO GLAD when that changed, I really was.
Things I can’t imagine
-Clara telling anyone, even as a joke, to ‘let the others die first’
-Amy looking after two teenagers (at least not without leading them straight into mischief and probably danger)
-River calling the TARDIS a ‘cow’ and mocking it
-Amy telling the Doctor ‘you embarrass me’
-River describing herself as having ‘a bubbly personality’
-Clara hitting the Doctor with a baseball bat and then trapping his necktie in a door
-River looking at a little girl crying and saying ‘So?’
-Amy announcing she did something ‘disgracefully’
-River asking Queen Neferiti for a high-five
-Clara being a kissogram
-Amy, having being told by the Doctor to remain where she is and not to argue, responding with a scared ‘I’m not’ and proceeding to obey him
-Clara continuing to kiss, and trying to undress, the Doctor or indeed any person after they’ve said no
–River barely being able to connect a computer to the Internet
Amy saying ‘the best thing is, he really needs you’ in reference to the Doctor.
River saying ‘blimey, I hated history.’
Clara teasing the Doctor about the mysterious woman who might be his wife in the future.
Clara picking locks and saying ‘how’s a girl suppose to resist?’
Clara punching the Doctor out and handcuffing him to a computer monitor.
River being mildly embarrassed to be seen in a kissogram outfit by the Doctor or even the flight crew of a cruise ship.
Amy telling the Doctor anything even remotely like what River told him in aGMGtW.
River saying ‘good guys don’t have zombie creatures. Rule one, basic storytelling.’
Clara using stupid as a form of endearment.
Amy refusing to travel with the Doctor straight off.
River trying to bake her mum’s souffle.
Amy trying to bake her mum’s souffle.
Clara lying to the Doctor about having broken her wrist.
Clara trying to ‘hide the damage’.
Amy slapping the Doctor.
River convincing the Doctor to not destroy Gallifrey (unless she had prior knowledge that he in fact didn’t).
Clara ignoring the Doctor and telling her mother to go where she would never see her again.
River giggling the same way Clara does when she’s excited.
Clara telling the Doctor to leave her to the mercy of a monster.
Things I can’t imagine
-Clara telling anyone, even as a joke, to ‘let the others die first’
-Amy looking after two teenagers (at least not without leading them straight into mischief and probably danger)
-River calling the TARDIS a ‘cow’ and mocking it
-Amy telling the Doctor ‘you embarrass me’
-River describing herself as having ‘a bubbly personality’
-Clara hitting the Doctor with a baseball bat and then trapping his necktie in a door
-River looking at a little girl crying and saying ‘So?’
-Amy announcing she did something ‘disgracefully’
-River asking Queen Neferiti for a high-five
-Clara being a kissogram
-Amy, having being told by the Doctor to remain where she is and not to argue, responding with a scared ‘I’m not’ and proceeding to obey him
-Clara continuing to kiss, and trying to undress, the Doctor or indeed any person after they’ve said no
–River barely being able to connect a computer to the Internet
