#Danny is not impressed with this man's self destruction spiral

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 129

Danny, now an adult, has just moved to the city of Gotham. Actually he’s been an adult for a while, but every once in a while he has to end his life, at least legally, lest someone get suspicious. Usually whenever Dan or Ellie does an oopsie and pulls a firebird with being reborn through their core. 

So legally, one Danyal Nightingale, has just moved to Gotham to open a bakery (Thank you for the wonderful recipes and bonding Clockwork) while taking care of his practically newborn son Jordan. Of course Elnath- Ellie- had to pull a core retreat too, which is just his luck. 

It wouldn’t be a problem, but he’s trying to not be so broody. A ghost- even a half-ghost- carrying another core though, has instincts turned up to like, eleven. Which again, wouldn’t be much of a problem if not for someone falling into his dumpster late at night bleeding. A vigilante, which he’s sworn to stay away from that life years ago. And it’s not a lethal wound…

But his instincts are screaming to not let the person bleed all around his nest, and he knows from experience that it would continue to bother him. Which is how he ends up with Batman on his couch to Dan’s glee if the ghost chirps are to go by. 

#dcxdp #dpxdc #prompts #potential spirit halloween #This is before Tim joined as robin but after Jason dies me thinks #Bruce is on a self destruction spiral and there was a lucky hit that managed to give him a concussion #He might cry a little when he first sees tiny baby Dan peeking at him from the crib #There's no proof of it though and he was out of it so it doesn't count #Danny is not impressed with this man's self destruction spiral #No you can't go back to wherever your base is you are sitting your ass down until your ribs are no longer bruised and youre not concussed #You can also just stay right there until breakfast is done you ancients damned idiot #Eventually Bruce will definitely realize the Nightingale family aren't human but for now he's stubbornly trying to leave #Normally when ghosts reform from cores they don't deage but that's not how it works for halfas who have living bodies #Hence them joking about it being like phoenixes or firebirds #does this count as mpreg??? #idk it's like 3am rn lol

[actual-bill-potts]

On the Nature of Whouffaldi

Last week, I wrote a meta about companions in Moffat vs Davies Who and how Moffat companions are defined mainly by their relationships. That meta was partly inspired by Clara: I find her a very difficult character to understand, but what I realized is that she comes into much clearer focus the more we see of her relationships with others. “The Time of the Doctor,” the first time we see her interacting with her family, is a good example of this. Her controlling tendencies and desire to maintain a certain image are instantly evident in the way she presents the Doctor as her boyfriend and obsesses over the turkey, insisting that everything be perfect.

A question that follows naturally from this realization is, of course, what is the nature of Clara’s relationship with the Doctor? Most of the other Doctor-companion relationships are clearly defined: Rose and Nine/Ten were a Romantic Couple (whether you think they were an actual item or just a bundle of sexually-charges longing), Martha had unrequited love for Ten, Donna and Ten were the Best Friends, and Eleven and the Ponds were a family. What was the Doctor’s relationship with Clara, then? Eleven and Clara seem pretty flirty, but then Twelve takes a hands-off approach. They’re friends, obviously, but it’s not the easy camaraderie of Donna and Ten; they push each at other. At times their relationship seems almost abusive, as he commands her and she goes to extreme lengths to control his actions, but they also have a lot of trust in and love for each other. What, then, are they defined by? The easy answer, of course, is that they are just the Doctor and Clara, and to attempt to define them further is to create too simplistic a model. There is a lot of truth to that in some ways, but it doesn’t satisfy me. So here’s what I came up with: the Doctor and Clara—particularly Twelve and Clara—are defined most of all by hero worship.

Let’s first take a look at Eleven and Clara to see how this plays out. Eleven certainly puts her on a pedestal: “My Clara,” he muses, “always brave, always funny, always exactly what I need.” He might treat her more like a mystery than a person, might be suspicious of her true intentions, but there is no question that he adores her.

Clara likes this, and likes him because of this. Everyone likes to be adored, and there’s an extra level of attraction for her because he provides her opportunities to be a hero. She also sees him as a hero, a wonderful man who drops from the sky. “Good guys do not have zombie creatures!” she scolds the Doctor in “Journey to the Center of the Tardis.” She views him as a storybook hero, and it is this belief that allows her to stop the destruction of Gallifrey; she cannot believe that the Doctor would look at 2.47 billion children and still press the big red button.

So far, they have a mutually-reinforcing cycle of hero-worship: he treats her with respect and gives her adventure, she acquits herself well, his admiration for her grows, she is motivated by that to do more and better, he is even more impressed, and so on. How does this relationship change when Eleven regenerates?

Well, Twelve is much more hands-off and self-contained than Eleven, so on its face Whouffaldi seems much different from Whouffle. Gone are the compliments, the kisses, the spins and giggles and flirty remarks of Eleven’s era. But beneath Twelve’s Grumpy Cat persona, there’s the same idealization of Clara. Look at his impressed “and you saw right through that” in “The Caretaker,” his “I had faith that you would always make the right choice” in “Kill the Moon.” His utter faith that Clara, when put to the test, wouldn’t really throw away the Tardis keys. He trusts her, he loves her (whether that’s platonic or romantic is yours to decide), but he does also idealize her. She is always right, always perfect, indestructible. He owes her his life twice over on Trenzalore. He may not call her that anymore, but to him she is still the Impossible Girl.

Clara, meanwhile, still sees him as a storybook hero. We see this in “Robots of Sherwood” (“When did you start believing in impossible heroes?” “Don’t you know?”), in “Listen” (“if you’re very wise and very strong…”) and most notably in “Dark Water,” where she completely believes that the Doctor can bring Danny back.

Their hero-worship cycle, then, is mainly intact in series 8. It’s a little darker, a little more ruthless, a little harsher as Clara abandons her perky heroine persona in favor of her true self—someone just as devious and dangerous as the Doctor. She, like Twelve, has become a character stripped down to the essentials. But they still believe in each other, hiccups like “Kill the Moon” aside.

I mentioned “Dark Water” earlier as an example of Clara’s faith in the Doctor. But that episode, and the ones following, are the turning point of Whouffaldi. Clara still believes in the Doctor and sees him as a great hero. After all, he did bring Danny back, sort of. And now Danny’s gone, so in series 9 she has no one besides the Doctor. She becomes increasingly dependent on the Doctor’s affirmation and has more of a need to be the Doctor, as she perceives the role, as she becomes detached from Earth.

But Twelve no longer sees Clara as his impossible, indestructible hero. He still loves her, still respects her, still trusts her—but his idealized version of her has been shattered by “Dark Water,” because she doesn’t make the right choice when confronted by seven keys and a volcano. Destroyed by grief, she betrays—or thinks she betrays—the Doctor in the worst possible way. Twelve still adores her, but now that image of her leaping into his timestream has been balanced by her throwing his keys into the fire. It’s not a coincidence that she’s wearing nearly the same outfit in “Dark Water” as she wears in “The Name of the Doctor.” In one, she becomes the ultimate hero for the Doctor; in the other, she becomes a villain, in action if not in his eyes.

This blow to her image is followed in rapid order by “Last Christmas,” in which the Doctor thinks he has come back for Clara too late and believes her dying. Her human frailty has been thrust in his face too many times to ignore, and so he starts to treat her more as a typical companion—someone, though capable in their own right, who needs to be protected—and less as a fellow soldier. Thus, just as Clara becomes very dependent on his approval, he stops approving her Doctor-ish actions.

The contrast is clear between series 8 and 9. Look at Twelve leaving Clara on her own with the clockwork droids in “Deep Breath” vs his “Please, please save Clara” in “The Magician’s Apprentice”; Twelve instructing Clara to shoot his sonic screwdriver toward the Skovox Blitzer in “The Caretaker” vs his promise to save Clara in “Before the Flood”; his faith in Clara to do the right thing in “Kill the Moon” vs his desperation to get her back in “The Girl Who Died”; and again, interestingly, his willingness to take her to “hell” in “Dark Water” vs his insistence on Me’s guarantee of Clara’s safety in “Face the Raven”. He still loves her, still trusts her, is still deeply grateful for everything she’s done for him—but he’s no longer willing to thrust her into danger and trust that she’ll land on her feet, for the simple reason that realistically, eventually she won’t land on her feet. He wants to keep her safe.

Ironically, though, this new solicitousness for Clara’s safety leads to a twisted version of the hero worship cycle they have in series 7 and 8. He is worried for her safety, and so responds with disapproval to her increasing recklessness, trying to get her to stop doing what he, until recently, has been encouraging. This only drives Clara to throw herself more and more into the role of the Doctor, trying to prove that she is just as good a hero as he is, trying to show that she doesn’t care that she’s not invulnerable. The more reckless she is, the more concerned Twelve becomes, which leads Clara to keep on trying to prove herself, and so it continues, spiraling Clara downward until she finally crashes into reality in “Face the Raven”.

The interesting thing about that cycle is that they’re at complete cross-purposes; his priority has become her safety, but she still expects it to be all about the danger and the thrill. She has decided that being the Doctor is worth her life, if it has to come to that; the Doctor doesn’t believe that anything is worth as much as her life, and responds to her actions accordingly. And of course, this leads to him being driven nearly mad himself as he fights to get Clara back and fulfill his duty of care, until finally, in a beautiful reversal of “Dark Water,” she makes him see that being a hero—that being the Doctor—is worth it to her and he lets her make that choice. So Clara, with all her faith in stories, receives her fairytale ending instead of the cold, realistic one she would have had if the Doctor hadn’t returned to his initial faith in her and given her back the decisions about her safety.

(It’s important to note, by the way, that it is not in fact misogyny for the Doctor to be concerned for her safety. What he says in FtR is true; he is less breakable than her, and she takes risks that he can only take because he’s a genius with twenty-four lives.)

The Doctor and Clara, though initially difficult to define, thus have a relationship that reveals new facets when viewed through their hero-worship of each other. It is the Doctor’s loss of that complete faith in Clara that drives her to suicidal recklessness, and it is his regaining of that which allows her to travel the stars and fully become the Doctor—Clara Who. This is, of course, but one interpretation of a relationship that in some ways is beyond words, but that is, perhaps, the true charm of Whouffaldi: there are many readings of it, and every one of them is true.

#dw meta #dw scribblings #whouffaldi #whouffle #clara oswald #clara who #twelve #eleven #brotp: keep a tight hold on it clara #bow ties are queue