Shipper Manifesto: Clara Oswald/the Doctor
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/The Doctor (mostly focusing on the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor)
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Spoilers: Nothing that hasn't already aired on television, but Series 6-9 of Doctor Who.
Blurb: They met because of a woman. This woman helped Clara Oswald get tech help from, of all people, the Doctor (in what he believed was his eleventh incarnation, and that's a longer, separate story). After they met, Clara and the Doctor fought against the Great Intelligence and won. Then the Doctor invited Clara to be his companion. Clara accepted; she'd always wanted to travel ever since she was a little girl.
They traveled together for a while until the Great Intelligence returned, threatening to delete the Doctor from history. To save his life, Clara jumped into his time stream. Jumping into the Doctor's time stream caused Clara to project herself through time and space, creating various echo versions of herself. The Doctor didn't meet or recall all the echo versions of Clara in the universe, but he did meet a couple of Clara's echoes earlier on his travels--first with Amy Pond and Rory Williams, then alone after he lost the two to Weeping Angels.
There were more travels. That was until the Doctor landed on the planet Trenzalore, where he believed he was fated to die. But Clara never gave up on him. The Time Lords were using cracks in the universe to attempt to return to their home universe. Clara convinced them to save the Doctor's life. In response, the Time Lords granted the Doctor a new set of regenerations, enough to fight off the Daleks swarming the town the Doctor was protecting on Trenzalore, Christmas.
The Doctor regenerated, this time into an older-appearing man. Clara took the regeneration hard, but with help from some of the Doctor's friends as well as the Doctor's previous incarnation, Clara was able to accept this new incarnation.
Clara, who was formerly a nanny, became a teacher at Coal Hill School. She started dating a fellow teacher, Danny Pink. But Danny's pleas and a later argument with the Doctor over killing a creature in an egg (which happens to be Earth's moon) weren't enough to derail her determination to see time and space.
Then Danny died, getting killed in a car accident. He was revived by Missy (the latest, and currently the only female, incarnation of the Master) as a Cyberman. Danny ended up stopping her plans to take over Earth with an army of Cybermen. The Doctor left Clara on Earth, convinced she wanted to stay after a chance arose to revive Danny from the dead. Danny chose to pass up on the opportunity to live again, and Clara was alone--but not for long. After she survived being attacked by a dream crab, Clara was given another opportunity to travel time and space with the Doctor. She decided to take it.
Traveling with the Doctor made Clara braver, bolder--more Doctor-like. The Doctor was just as reckless, doing anything and everything to save others and to protect Clara at all costs, even as the Time Lords disapproved.
The Time Lords made a deal with one of the Doctor's friends, a woman who called herself "Me," to trap the Doctor in his confession dial. (How she became known as Me is also a long story.) Trapping the Doctor also resulted in the accidental death of Clara, a death that would enrage the Doctor and drive him to pull Clara out of her time stream. It was after all of these events that the Doctor, with the help of Clara and Me, realized Missy was the woman who advised Clara to get tech help from the Doctor. Missy set Clara and the Doctor up to wreck havoc around the galaxy--an event prophesied as the coming of "the Hybrid." The only way to stop the prophecy was for one of them to erase their memory of the other. Clara was quick and clever enough to prevent the Doctor taking her memories of him away from her.
I like their story because Clara and the Doctor encouraged each other to be better versions of themselves. In traveling with the Doctor, Clara learned to relax a bit and not be so controlling, in addition to learning about how the Doctor worked. And the Doctor would've probably given up several times while traveling with Clara if she wasn't around to goad him to do the right thing. They may not be traveling together any more in canon, but as Clara travels with Me in their TARDIS (stuck in the form of a diner), the Doctor will always remember that once he knew a Clara, and Clara encouraged him to run...and be a Doctor.
Special Rec: 17/26
Rec #1: Ghost Girl
Author: nancybrown
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Eleventh Doctor
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): General Audiences
Word Count/WIP?: 455/no
Why This Must Be Read: I still feel the idea of Clara and her splinters (or echoes; canon sources use both terms) wasn't explored fully during Clara's run as companion on Doctor Who. (There was a comic that eventually revealed Clara's splinters didn't all die saving the Doctor, but that comic was printed in four issues of Doctor Who Magazine and never was alluded to in the show.) This fic captures the sadness Clara and her splinters feel as she tries to get the Doctor's attention before the splinters die to save the Doctor's life.
Special Rec: 18/26
Rec #2: Amortentia
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Eleventh Doctor
Author: ohmysmaug
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): General Audiences
Word Count/WIP?: 354
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: Short but charming piece on how the Doctor learns to identify Clara by smell.
Special Rec: 19/26
Rec #3: all i need is a bitter song
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Eleventh Doctor
Author: honeynoir
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): PG | slight psychic/physical h/c
Word Count/WIP?: 7500/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: Set after "The Rings of Akhaten," Clara helps the Doctor after he has trouble after losing some of his memories.
Special Rec: 20/26
Rec #4: Title: Around the Block
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Eleventh Doctor
Author: ms_prue
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): All ages
Word Count/WIP?: 1030/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: Short fic where Eleven tries to convince Clara to step inside the "snog box," the TARDIS.
Special Rec: 21/26
Rec #5: Pollen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Eleventh Doctor
Author: nostalgia
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): Adult/sexual content
Word Count/WIP?: 1089/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: Eleven's infected with sex pollen. Clara has to save him. A well executed attempt at a classic nonfiction trope.
This fic should not be confused with the author's other fic called "Pollen" with the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble.
Special Rec: 22/26
Rec #6: With-holding
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor
Author: thesilverarrow
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): Mature/contains sexual content
Word Count/WIP?: 5845/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: A different take on the sex pollen trope with a different Doctor! Here, the Doctor is drugged after spending time on an oceanic planet, and Clara must help the Doctor with the urges that come after he's drugged.
Special Rec: 23/26
Rec #7: It's the Thought That Counts
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor
Author: Liadt
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): General Audiences
Word Count/WIP?: 1257/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: The Doctor gets gifts to show how much he appreciates Clara. They're not good gifts, however. Short and funny fic that shows the awkwardness in their relationship.
Special Rec: 24/26
Rec #8: No Light
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor
Author: paynesgrey
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): Teen
Word Count/WIP?: 1803/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: This fic shows the relationship between the Doctor and Clara under strain as they navigate through darkness.
Special Rec: 25/26
Rec #9: Density
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor
Author: paynesgrey
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): Adult/sexual content and infidelity (between Clara and her Series 8 boyfriend, Danny Pink)
Word Count/WIP?: 6786/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: I'm fond of this fic because it shows how much Clara has fallen in love for the Doctor, to the point where she feels he's the only man who can satisfy her needs.
Special Rec: 26/26
Rec #10: gordian knot
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor
Author: freloux
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): Explicit/sexual content
Word Count/WIP?: 2011/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: Clara takes matters into her own hands after a long period of being seperated from the Doctor. I'm entranced by this fic. I never grow tired of reading it, even though it's not a long fic.
Pairing: Clara Oswald/The Doctor (mostly focusing on the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor)
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Spoilers: Nothing that hasn't already aired on television, but Series 6-9 of Doctor Who.
Blurb: They met because of a woman. This woman helped Clara Oswald get tech help from, of all people, the Doctor (in what he believed was his eleventh incarnation, and that's a longer, separate story). After they met, Clara and the Doctor fought against the Great Intelligence and won. Then the Doctor invited Clara to be his companion. Clara accepted; she'd always wanted to travel ever since she was a little girl.
They traveled together for a while until the Great Intelligence returned, threatening to delete the Doctor from history. To save his life, Clara jumped into his time stream. Jumping into the Doctor's time stream caused Clara to project herself through time and space, creating various echo versions of herself. The Doctor didn't meet or recall all the echo versions of Clara in the universe, but he did meet a couple of Clara's echoes earlier on his travels--first with Amy Pond and Rory Williams, then alone after he lost the two to Weeping Angels.
There were more travels. That was until the Doctor landed on the planet Trenzalore, where he believed he was fated to die. But Clara never gave up on him. The Time Lords were using cracks in the universe to attempt to return to their home universe. Clara convinced them to save the Doctor's life. In response, the Time Lords granted the Doctor a new set of regenerations, enough to fight off the Daleks swarming the town the Doctor was protecting on Trenzalore, Christmas.
The Doctor regenerated, this time into an older-appearing man. Clara took the regeneration hard, but with help from some of the Doctor's friends as well as the Doctor's previous incarnation, Clara was able to accept this new incarnation.
Clara, who was formerly a nanny, became a teacher at Coal Hill School. She started dating a fellow teacher, Danny Pink. But Danny's pleas and a later argument with the Doctor over killing a creature in an egg (which happens to be Earth's moon) weren't enough to derail her determination to see time and space.
Then Danny died, getting killed in a car accident. He was revived by Missy (the latest, and currently the only female, incarnation of the Master) as a Cyberman. Danny ended up stopping her plans to take over Earth with an army of Cybermen. The Doctor left Clara on Earth, convinced she wanted to stay after a chance arose to revive Danny from the dead. Danny chose to pass up on the opportunity to live again, and Clara was alone--but not for long. After she survived being attacked by a dream crab, Clara was given another opportunity to travel time and space with the Doctor. She decided to take it.
Traveling with the Doctor made Clara braver, bolder--more Doctor-like. The Doctor was just as reckless, doing anything and everything to save others and to protect Clara at all costs, even as the Time Lords disapproved.
The Time Lords made a deal with one of the Doctor's friends, a woman who called herself "Me," to trap the Doctor in his confession dial. (How she became known as Me is also a long story.) Trapping the Doctor also resulted in the accidental death of Clara, a death that would enrage the Doctor and drive him to pull Clara out of her time stream. It was after all of these events that the Doctor, with the help of Clara and Me, realized Missy was the woman who advised Clara to get tech help from the Doctor. Missy set Clara and the Doctor up to wreck havoc around the galaxy--an event prophesied as the coming of "the Hybrid." The only way to stop the prophecy was for one of them to erase their memory of the other. Clara was quick and clever enough to prevent the Doctor taking her memories of him away from her.
I like their story because Clara and the Doctor encouraged each other to be better versions of themselves. In traveling with the Doctor, Clara learned to relax a bit and not be so controlling, in addition to learning about how the Doctor worked. And the Doctor would've probably given up several times while traveling with Clara if she wasn't around to goad him to do the right thing. They may not be traveling together any more in canon, but as Clara travels with Me in their TARDIS (stuck in the form of a diner), the Doctor will always remember that once he knew a Clara, and Clara encouraged him to run...and be a Doctor.
Special Rec: 17/26
Rec #1: Ghost Girl
Author: nancybrown
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Eleventh Doctor
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): General Audiences
Word Count/WIP?: 455/no
Why This Must Be Read: I still feel the idea of Clara and her splinters (or echoes; canon sources use both terms) wasn't explored fully during Clara's run as companion on Doctor Who. (There was a comic that eventually revealed Clara's splinters didn't all die saving the Doctor, but that comic was printed in four issues of Doctor Who Magazine and never was alluded to in the show.) This fic captures the sadness Clara and her splinters feel as she tries to get the Doctor's attention before the splinters die to save the Doctor's life.
Special Rec: 18/26
Rec #2: Amortentia
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Eleventh Doctor
Author: ohmysmaug
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): General Audiences
Word Count/WIP?: 354
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: Short but charming piece on how the Doctor learns to identify Clara by smell.
Special Rec: 19/26
Rec #3: all i need is a bitter song
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Eleventh Doctor
Author: honeynoir
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): PG | slight psychic/physical h/c
Word Count/WIP?: 7500/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: Set after "The Rings of Akhaten," Clara helps the Doctor after he has trouble after losing some of his memories.
Special Rec: 20/26
Rec #4: Title: Around the Block
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Eleventh Doctor
Author: ms_prue
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): All ages
Word Count/WIP?: 1030/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: Short fic where Eleven tries to convince Clara to step inside the "snog box," the TARDIS.
Special Rec: 21/26
Rec #5: Pollen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Eleventh Doctor
Author: nostalgia
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): Adult/sexual content
Word Count/WIP?: 1089/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: Eleven's infected with sex pollen. Clara has to save him. A well executed attempt at a classic nonfiction trope.
This fic should not be confused with the author's other fic called "Pollen" with the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble.
Special Rec: 22/26
Rec #6: With-holding
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor
Author: thesilverarrow
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): Mature/contains sexual content
Word Count/WIP?: 5845/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: A different take on the sex pollen trope with a different Doctor! Here, the Doctor is drugged after spending time on an oceanic planet, and Clara must help the Doctor with the urges that come after he's drugged.
Special Rec: 23/26
Rec #7: It's the Thought That Counts
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor
Author: Liadt
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): General Audiences
Word Count/WIP?: 1257/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: The Doctor gets gifts to show how much he appreciates Clara. They're not good gifts, however. Short and funny fic that shows the awkwardness in their relationship.
Special Rec: 24/26
Rec #8: No Light
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor
Author: paynesgrey
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): Teen
Word Count/WIP?: 1803/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: This fic shows the relationship between the Doctor and Clara under strain as they navigate through darkness.
Special Rec: 25/26
Rec #9: Density
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor
Author: paynesgrey
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): Adult/sexual content and infidelity (between Clara and her Series 8 boyfriend, Danny Pink)
Word Count/WIP?: 6786/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: I'm fond of this fic because it shows how much Clara has fallen in love for the Doctor, to the point where she feels he's the only man who can satisfy her needs.
Special Rec: 26/26
Rec #10: gordian knot
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor
Author: freloux
Link: here
Rating/Warning(s): Explicit/sexual content
Word Count/WIP?: 2011/no
Recced on LiveJournal By: merryghoul
Why This Must Be Read: Clara takes matters into her own hands after a long period of being seperated from the Doctor. I'm entranced by this fic. I never grow tired of reading it, even though it's not a long fic.