clara oswald is a lying liar who lies

arcadian-time-lady:

actualgothicheroine:

clarafiers:

actualgothicheroine:

arcadian-time-lady:

Clara: “Do you love it?”

Doctor: “Love what?”

Clara: “I know it’s scary and difficult, but do you love being the man making the impossible choice?”

Doctor: “Why would I?”

Clara: “Because it’s what you do: all day, every day.”

Doctor: “It’s my life.”

Clara: “Doesn’t have to be. Is it like…”

Doctor: “Like what?”

Clara: “…an addiction?”

Doctor: “Well, you can’t really tell if something is an addiction until you try to give it up.”

Clara: “And you never have.”

Doctor: “Let me know how it goes.”

Let’s be clear on something—Clara is not addicted to the Doctor, nor to traveling.

There is an old adage in writing, of show not tell. It basically means that you never give away the emotions or feelings of your characters straight out, rather you hide the clues and meaning in the text. The fact that Clara mentions this idea here, and then the Doctor explicitly turns it around on her, is meant to be a signal to us that she is not addicted to the TARDIS life.

But then, of course, why does she immediately have a turn around a few moments later when it is time for her to say her final goodbye to the Doctor? The answer is in the earlier conversation she had with the Doctor:

“This, this is why I am leaving you. Because you lied. You lied to me again, and now you’ve made me lie. You’ve made me your…accomplice.”

Clara’s time with the Doctor has made her into one thing: a good liar. But the problem is that she is not just lying to other people, like Danny and the Doctor, but also to herself. She suggests addiction because it is a simpler and neater explanation than the real reason she can’t leave the Doctor: she is in love with him; a man who (she thinks) does not love her back.

The Doctor’s words to Clara in Deep Breath are still causing massive ramifications, even now. Clara has been fighting against her feelings ever since the Doctor informed her he was not her boyfriend. She never wanted to choose between the Doctor and Danny, never even wanted them to come into contact with each other, because in order for her to choose, she would have to be honest with herself first. And Clara is definitely not ready to do that.

“Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose.”

It is no coincidence that when Clara announces her choice at the end of the episode, her decision to stay on the TARDIS, she lies to the Doctor about Danny’s culpability in her earlier choice. Clara has gotten very good at lying, so much so that she has now once again pushed the two men in her life back into safe little slots. This way, she never has to confront what she feels if she gives neither of them up.

The sad truth is, that until Clara is honest, the battle she has raging within her will never really end.

It kind of makes you wonder if what she wants, more than anything, is for the Doctor to tell her that it is time to surrender.

You’re relieved soldier.

Oh my god thank you so much for this meta, I was too tired to fully grasp this nuance and it was getting on my nerves that I couldn’t quite pick this apart right.

I like this post quite a bit, until the very end. I’m not entirely sure what that’s meant to suggest. That she wants the Doctor to tell her to stop/send her away? Or to surrender to how she feels/be honest?

I interpreted it as meaning that perhaps Clara needs the Doctor to be the one to open up. Clara has let herself be vulnerable a lot for the Doctor and each time it took a toll on her, and she’s generally prone to hiding away and keeping up a front. Maybe he needs to be the one to say hey, it’s okay, I care about you too and you’re safe if you let yourself love me. Which, at this point, would be monumentally difficult for either of them to even think about saying right now.

I also found that comparison to Clara’s avoidance as a sort of soldier-like vigilance interesting, like she’s refusing to back down and surrender to what she’s actually feeling because she’s on the attack, afraid and distrustful of what’s to come.

Surrender is definitely an appropriate metaphor in this instance for both of them, because they’re both just absolutely refusing to back down and let go of the lies and be vulnerable.

OP here, what I was trying to suggest is that Clara has been at war with her own feelings since Deep Breath, and ironically not because of the Doctor’s regeneration.

In TNOTD and TTOTD, Clara is confronted by the idea that other women were involved with the Doctor, and yet she doesn’t separate herself from him emotionally until after Deep Breath. Why? I think that up until the Doctor gave her the “I’m not your boyfriend” speech, Clara thought what was going on between them was mutual. No matter his history with River and his maybe involvement with Tasha, Clara still thought that at the end of the day it was the two of them.

Then, the Doctor says his thing and says “I never said it was your mistake.” What the Doctor means is, of course: “I’m in love with you, but my last face allowed you the deception that I am human and that we can have a normal relationship. Your reaction to my regeneration makes me see that I need to put space between us, for the sake of my heart.”

What Clara hears is: “My last face was a flirt, and it was unfair of him to lead you on. He made a huge mistake in his behavior towards you, and now I am fixing it by letting you know that I don’t have the feelings for you that my last face allowed you to believe I did.”

Ever since then, Clara has been fighting against her feelings, and until what happened in Deep Breath is addressed, she will never be able to stop. She wants the Doctor to return her emotions, to tell her that it is safe to surrender to them once more, that they are mutual.

Which is why she equates traveling with the Doctor as an addiction, because she believes that she is putting herself through voluntary pain just to be near him, la douleur exquise, if you will.

Clara wants to stop fighting, to lay down arms, but she can’t because she is so busy trying to protect her heart. Until there is honesty between her and the Doctor, until they both say the thing they have been hiding from, the war within her will continue.