#I'm a white woman who grew up in a conservative household in the suburbs: I have an inner conspiracy theorist

[nehswritesstuffs]

How come in some DW circles it’s considered wrong to say that 12 and Clara were intentionally written and performed as a romantic relationship and that this just gets misinterpreted or unnoticed?

So, uh, I was cleaning out my drafts and found a couple of DW/Whouffaldi meta-asks I answered but never published for some reason??? idk why but this has been sitting buried at the bottom of the drafts for, like, over a year and a half, and I feel it's important to post, all things considered. The other one will come later, but that one's only, like, half-done, so it's with any luck. This is going to be long and long-winded, so brace yourselves. There's notations.

So, the thing about Twelve and Clara is that there are many directions from which they got a lot of flack where they should not have, especially in comparison to other Doctor/Companion pairs. Getting to talk with younger fans who were not in fandom at the time, or with generally newer fans who have entered the game late, it is really a puzzle to them, whether they ship it or not, how and why this deep division took place. My perspective is obviously from someone who ships it, but also saw some absolute bullshit go down.

More under cut:

We had, in no specific order:

People wanting Twelve to be mean to Clara bc they hate her (????) and wanted her to be abused until she left

PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS dunking on Capaldi's age as though it's a bad thing (it's not)

People being really grossed out because there is a noticeable age gap between Capaldi and Coleman. Lots of blowback was based on how overdone and predatory older man/younger woman can be, which, true, but overdone and predatory Whouffaldi is not and there was more than nuance missed with this one

The same people from the point directly above forgetting this is a space-fantasy and that the 2000yo alien is making eyes at a 28yo adult, not the 800yo alien making eyes at a 19yo child, BECAUSE ONE OF THESE IS GROSS AND FOR SOME REASON IT WASN'T THE LATTER

Again, when people were writing PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS, they refused to acknowledge that there was even a hint of anything despite the fact that they supposedly both had eyeballs and watched s8/9

Multiple people involved with the show, including Steven Moffat and Jenna Coleman, said there was a deep and intense love between Clara and Twelve. Peter Capaldi basically said as much, but he was much vaguer, which I imagine is mostly because he is very much blissfully married and the awkwardness that might come with that. I don't blame him for such, and although it should be a non-issue, some people use that as backing against the Whouffaldi ship, which is very rude of them.

There were actually really intense ship wars in fandom during s8/9...? Like the Twelve/River fans were fcking fierce when it came to declaring that theirs was the superior ship(1), and then you get the Doctor/Master fans(2) and that entirely separate debacle. I honestly don't know how the Whouffaldi fandom would have survived had it not been for the PCap fandom in general, who were on average much less concerned with ship wars and much more concentrated on quenching their thirst.

There's more, but that gives you a taste into what's gone on. The biggest problem from all of this was that the people who were writing the articles and making the complaints and starting the wars were altogether a very small minority of people who watched the show. However, this tiny group of people, thanks to the specific platforms given to them, were extremely loud. They were able to join forces with the Not-My-Doctors who had long-ceased watching the show(3) to make a larger chunk of "fandom" than they really were, able to artificially inflate the noise, as the NMDs just trusted everything the group of what was essentially hate-watchers said was fact.

Let me tell you: entertainment media is largely interpretative and that was not fact.

With such a loud counter-presence, the Whouffaldi fandom was really sort of loathe to give up easy, and as they reexamined and revisited and overanalyzed the content, we were able to come to our conclusions time and time again. This kind of pissed off the hate-watchers and the NMDs and they dug in their heels. They took a storyline that pushed the definitions of what love is and, when all they have to say is "meh, it's possible, but not my cup of tea", there is repeated denial and insistence on the father-daughter angle(4) as the only angle to the point of being destructive. There were reasons as to why the show was doing poorly in the ratings during the Capaldi years, and it had nothing to do with Whouffaldi, or Capaldi, or Coleman, or Mackie, or Moffat or any of the other "usual suspects'" in a singular form.(5) That instead lies with the Beebus, which has been jerking around the show since 2009(6), and seems to be not doing that again, but ONLY in regards to the "new" showrunner(7) who's getting the show after Chibs and not anything else that's been happening post-2010.

All in all, Whouffaldi as a romantic ship is either seen as a delusional sicko fantasy, or one of the most shat-on romantic ships in the entire show, and to mention one of those opinions in a crowd of the other opinion means that you might just get your ass verbally handed to you. Yeah, it's all fiction and doesn't matter, but the amount of shit that's gone down because of it has drawn distinct lines in the sand and idk if anyone is willing to cross it right now... I mean, especially now, given everything that's happened and this is now a nine-year-old ship that hasn't been represented/acknowledged on-screen for years, but... yeah.

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Auxiliary Notes

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(1): My personal stance is that Twelve/Clara is the better of the two in general, but that the Twelve/River we got should have been loads better, and I want to know who it was who was making the final calls for THoRS (Moff or someone higher), because I did want to see Twelve/River, bc those actors are just really good, but that episode felt too much like a Monkey's Paw prank to be legit. Best THoRS ending should have been Twelve leading River to their table at the restaurant and there's Eleven, and he gets to spend the twenty-four uninterrupted years with River, but eh what do I know.

(2): As someone with siblings, as well as acknowledging how much weird sibling energy the Doctor and the Master exude over the multiple versions I've seen, please don't come at me with excuses for what would essentially be an incest ship. Just no. I love you all, but some of you are disappointing me with your sins.

(3) It is very common for certain NMDs to have stopped watching at the end of 2009, or, alternatively, after the Ponds left the show. These are often people who have dangerous settings on their nostalgia filters and low amounts of media literacy. This brand of NMDs often are fans of Ten and/or Eleven, claiming they're their favorite "because he's so quirky", despite the fact they were... not... that... quirky... really. Many of them also hate Moffat's writing for [insert reasons here], despite the fact when you ask them to list their favorite episodes, Blink and Girl in the Fireplace are in their top five. They also have an extreme overlap with the fans that the show is attempting to court back with The Second Coming of Russell, despite the fact those fans really be out there wanting more Ten/Wose when that is the horse that even its creator acknowledges has been beaten to death.

(4) I worry for you if you thought that eye-sex Twelve and Clara kept having was how fathers and daughters are supposed to behave. Did you see any glances like that between Twelve and Bill? No? Well guess what: TWELVE WAS BILL'S SURROGATE DAD. THERE'S YOUR FATHER-DAUGHTER STUFF RIGHT THERE.

(5) Ratings, which have been a garbage system of proving a television show's worth since recording via VHS became widespread(1), were effected way more by the fact that there was often shoddy advertising (as though all the budget for the next few seasons went into the 2014 World Tour marketing blitz), weird changes made to the broadcast times at short notice, and the fact that iPlayer/VOD/recordings aren't counted alongside people who tuned in when it was airing. While it's true that consumer watching habits are changing, and that's fine, but the shift was much weaker back in 2014-2016 and that's only the UK ratings. Other countries that got a stable broadcast schedule or people who simply binged tend to have a greater outward acceptance of Twelve, despite the fact their population also will contain NMDs of varying levels.

(5.1) It actually can be argued that the garbage nonsense about ratings has only really been a thing whenever it is most convenient for the people running the television network, considering there are shows that in the past have done poorly and were allowed to continue, and shows that were doing very well with a loyal fanbase and axed for no reason whatsoever, other than some whim of a higher-up at the company. Compare the American shows M*A*S*H (which was actually a disaster in the ratings to start) and Green Acres (which despite not being a top-30 program had enough of a loyal viewership that it should of been saved during the Rural Purge of 1971, but wasn't).

(6) I have reason to believe that the channel that is in charge is just a giant NMD in of itself since Tennant (first) left the show, despite the fact it's their cash cow, based on how they've been making moves deliberately meant to be divisive and tear the show down, all the way back to casting Matt Smith. How effective they were with each move is debatable, but yeah... there's a lot of ways you can say that the channel itself is an NMD, to the point it becomes less of a coincidence and more of an aggressive pattern.

(7) It still both disappoints me and does not surprise me how things have been going lately and it's part of why I'm over in my corner being petty and ignoring what's going on in canon, bc they can't even let Gatwa have his time to shine without being overtaken by overdone and overrated.