kendrixtermina:

mycroftplayingoperation:

now that’s what I call love

She basically said she wishes she could have married him. 

And his reaction was, “Stupid me.”

And the “You’ll never look any different to me”. All this time she was a bit off-put because he barely seemed to register her looks… well, turns out he barely registers her looks. Because, you know, right in the Dalek Asylum, it was the Willpower, intelligence and humor he liked. …. context can put things into perspective…. So fucking romantic in an intelligent non-cheesy way. 

And the kiss… it was better than I expected, in the trailer, you didn’t see the hand gesture and the running off afterwards. It’s not just “She’s kissing him the way she did Eleven”, it’s beyond that. There’s almost some “kiss the bride” subtext here, or at least, “clicking back into perfect team mode”. 

The other things aren’t necessarily shippy, but certainly speak for the affection and care between the two. 

I seriously didn’t expected this. I shipped it, but I was trying to have reasonable expectations. I’d have been happy enouh with Clara making it out alive and them sort of reaffirming their importance (in a general sense) to each other. 

Thi episode, while being packed with plot/action, great meta-jokes, some likeable side-characters and creepy-ass monsters, did a great job at doing an intricate character study of Clara and what her real goals and priorities in life are, her lies and self-deceptions being peeled away along with the dream layers, the truth bleeding through from beneath, it was like walking deeper and deeper into her Psyche, and this meshed perfectly with monsters and horror films aesthetics and all that, it was just perfectly blended without one eclipsing or getting in the way of the other. 

But there’s also the take-home message, which is… not tacked-on for the sake of christmas, but actually the continution/ payoff from series eight. Clara comming to understand both the Doctor and herself better, she had to confront her own weirdness, pride and need for thrills, and come to accept it in both herself and the Doctor (and he learned to accept himself more, through Clara) even with all of their flaws. 

She got put through the mincer, she got people she cared about ripped away from her before she could be honest with them, because life is unpredictable, uncontrollable and random. In this episode, we see what she takes away from it. What she learned. What lesson she came away with. She finds it in the part of her subconcious she dressed up as Danny Pink, (someone she lost in a particularly random, cruel manner after having been unfair to him – althogh the figment didn’t act that much like him, at least not untill right before the end, when it got more… self-aware, but there were still hints of… what Clara wanted to hear), and it turns out to be “Take the time to show the people around you you value them (for ple at Christmas), because you never know if you’ll see them again” and that’s beautiful. I loved Clara Oswald before, but I love her even more for that conclusion. All this suffering, all these mistakes, and what she came away with is “show people you care about them.”

(This is something both Twelve and Clara were a bit… clumsy with; There are some things they didn’t understand about each other and the extent of their devotion untill the finale. Here, we see Twelve saying please, apologizing in his typical snarky way (“and a punch to the face, too”))

Last year, she wanted the revelation of her feelings to happen on her own terms, she wanted control, she didn’t expect that they might get separated, that he might get hurt, or that he might get the wrong idea and feel the need to clarify the situation himself, so when the “Dingdong, brilliant!” incident happened, she couldn’t be spontaneous and use that opportunity. But it’s not just the Doctor; She said she disliked having to deal with her family at Christmas, because to her it meant fakery, present a perfect love life, put up with her step-mother (Compare her idea that she had to go eternal widow over Danny out of guilt, and how this was resolved here, “Take your time to be sad, but afterwards, live“ ; I wouldn’t be surprised if Clara’s relationship with Linda improved after this experience. Maybe she felt that it would have been a betrayal to Ellie to like her "replacement” innstead of… her father just getting on with his life.)

What Clara does here is the exact opposite of last year; She uses this weird opportunity to spill it all, which is why she “stays a bit longer” and they both show each other their true feelings.

She didn’t want the picket fence life and the ideal guy, even though she felt she should want it; She can’t do an ideal guy justice because she isn’t ideal, she’s flawed and hungry for more. See how she makes him untypically adventure-happy bringing her gifts related to travel, how she gives her her at times dark situational humor (“Mince pie?”) that he previously found  insensitive/ let to food-in-mouth moments.  ”too clever to ever be normal”, that’s not like Danny at all (not because he’s stupid, but because of his “there are wonders here” philosophy) that how Clara, perhaps a little arrogantly, sees herself. what a compatible person would have to be. (Hint hint) 

Then, we see the vision of the fulfilled older Clara who did many things she wanted, accepted her regrets… even still juggled her job and her travelling! With no time machine available, she just did the teaching in the foreign countries.After Danny (whom she made unhappy for no good reason), she learned the lesson that… her lifestyle is her top priority, and that it wouldn’t be fair to drag anyone else into this. This is not her hung up and moping or giving up on happiness, these are her priorities and accepting the path she chose, that there’s no going back for her.  

He withdrew because he didn’t want to steal/ ruin her normal life. (Probably, he still felt guilty because of what happened to Amy, River and Rory… Especially after experiencng the Slow Path himself on Trenzalore) But then, he sees that Clara would have lived the life of an adventurer anyway,wether he was part of it or not, and he’s like, “heck, I should have come back! I abandoned her for nothing, I didn’t give her anything, I just missed the chance for us do do the adventuring that we would have done any way together“ 

If they’re going to walk the same path, they might as well do it together. And that’s what I liked about them from the beginning, that they’re alike in that way. To say they can be together without ruining each other is probably too much of a stetch, 

He could never give Rose all she wanted and that’s why he left her with the duplicate… and I don’t say that to bash Rose, I like her, I get that her peing a relatable normal girl and them dealing/overcoming with the hurdles and tragedies that poses is a large part of the appeal, it’s just a different aesthetic, they were more complements than birds of a feather. He knew Rory could give Amy much more of what she really needed, and with River, he always had the immense guilt of her Death and screwed-up childhood and the things he couldn’t tell her. And I get that this is part of the appeal, of the… tragedy. While Whouffle’s my favorite, I do like the others. 

I’m not saying that Whouffle is without tragedy, either, they’ve been, or even put each other through a lot of difficult shit and they will probably continue to clash and argue and have this heated, explosive, passionate, bordering-on-obsession relationship in the future. They won’t stop screwing up because they’ve been given one breather. 

I’m just pointing out the distinctive factor that… wether they can actually stay together for long or not, they each are what the other really wants, needs and deserves, for better or for worse. Not in a “Clara is better than everyone else” sort of way, but an “Clara is definitely a fit” sort of way.

…add to that that she was literally his birthday present, both with all the easter eggs of the show’s production in her life dates (her birthday, her mother’s death date, the ages skipped in her mother’s book..) and her being introduced in the year of the aniversary, but also, literally, in-universe, by the Master. She was part of the wrapping, really, a means to manipulate him/ lure him to 3W when the army was ready, but the Doctor is the sort of weird person to throw away the gift and keep the pretty wrapping paper XD