The best part of the episode was your review, you made me laugh and I agree with everything, especially regarding Danny/Clara, I just couldn’t buy it.

ircnfuturist:

I tried harder than Moffat did selling us Pinkwald

Am I just totally in denial about things? I honestly can’t tell because

• I hated Clara in season 7 like you wouldn’t believe. I disliked her more than Rose which for me means A LOT. She was my least favourite companion and I wanted her to make like a tree so bad.
• I never saw anything between Clara/11 at all. Not the tiniest bit. I was genuinely surprised when they revealed they were canonically into each other because I literally did not see it.
• One episode in season 8? Clara is my favourite companion, 12 is my Doctor the second he steps out of the TARDIS, and I feel for those idiots and their relationship so much I’m an actual mess when they’re in pain.
• The entire season develops the characters overtly based on each other’s influence to the point where they literally quote each other after they realised the error of their ways before.
• I mean an effort was made, no matter if you ship Whouffaldi or not, you can’t deny that canonically, they changed and matured each other.
• Literally the entire season builds on their interactions and relationship so much that Clara has become an equal to the Doctor rather than a companion— that can never be an accident, this was deliberate.
• Compare episode 1 Clara to Clara now. She’s changed so much, and who did she change into? The Doctor, or rather a Clara-version of the Doctor. Same goes for him. Compare the Doctor then to the Doctor now. He practically absorbed Clara’s lessons and humanity where she took on his logical detachment. Entirely healthy? Maybe not, but the point is, they changed each other.

And then we have Pinkwald and it’s just. Am I supposed to be buying it? I almost don’t think so. Here’s why:

• Their first meeting is hella cute okay and I could honestly believe they could work out there but then their first date is just soooo bad like 0/10 would not recommend to my worst enemy because that would be too cruel.
• They also had really nice moments during that date, which again, hella cute, but they ended it with a fight and then stuff happens, namely
• Clara changes Danny’s timeline and obviously experiences horrible guilt at maybe pushing him towards the military which apparently makes her give him another shot? (Is that healthy?)
• After Danny storms out on their horrible awful date she meets this supposed ancestor of theirs which makes her believe she’s supposed to end up with Danny in the end.
• She runs back to Danny and starts a relationship despite the horrible awful date right after having seen that and how is that not fishy? The date still went awful. Nothing’s changed. Except now Clara knows (or thinks she knows) that this is how it’s supposed to be and yeah, that fits perfectly with her controlfreak persona.
• Literally all of their relationship is Clara lying and Danny just taking it like he’s some kind of lie collector that runs on lies. Lies lies lies.
• Seriously all this is is GUILT, ASSUMPTIONS, LIES.
• They make no steps forwards together. None. Their relationship now is basically the same it was right after Listen except maybe Clara is ready to come clean about the lies, but as a couple, they did not evolve. They did not change and influence each other. They live alongside each other. Ever hear the phrase “grew apart”? They’re not growing apart. They’re not growing at all, not together. They’re growing parallel to each other in different lives and how exactly am I supposed to be rooting for them?

So yeah, this is either the most horrible example of a terribly written relationship I’m supposed to be cheering for ever, or it’s a brilliantly staged case of “You’re not supposed to be rooting for them.”

Danny/Clara might just be a smokescreen meant to distract us, and that’s what I choose to believe in because I literally don’t see a single reason why I should care about them as a couple and while I would buy that the writers (*cough* Moffat *cough*) totally just fucked that up seriously any other time, it’s hard to believe that when they’ve written such a realistic development of a relationship literally right alongside the supposed ship I should be going for.