I just wanted to say that I really, really appreciate your "Get To Know Clara" project! As someone who is very much like Clara, all the hate and misunderstanding toward her is so frustrating! It's nice to see some love for her. Thanks again! :)
And it really is frustrating! That's exactly what I said to someone who messaged me about this yesterday after I went in the tag and was just totally deflated by the "Clara is nothing but a flirty girl in a short skirt" comments. I'm less frustrated today and coming back to a bunch of messages like these is always nice to remind me of why I stick around fandoms.
It's especially frustrating, like you said, because many of us love characters like Clara, identify with them personally, and relate to them while another part of the fandom is insisting they aren't relatable and writing them off.
No one can tell someone else what they can or cannot relate to. That's far too personal and unless you've lived all these people's lives, you just cannot decide that for anyone else, much less everyone in a fandom.
While I don't personally gravitate to her as much as some do simply because I can see myself in her, Clara is also the character most like me on Doctor Who. I see a very realistic person in Clara.
The thing for me is that I personally relate to characters on more abstract ideas than on actual "this person's life is like mine" which makes the Doctor Who fandom more frustrating with it's insistence on what characters need to be like in order to be normal and relatable because I find myself most drawn to the characters who aren't like everyone else exactly because they aren't "normal" because that's what I find interesting, that's what I needed to see when I was younger more than normal, and that's what draws me in to a character.
The fandom can be a huge mess sometimes, but there are a lot of great people in it who really love these characters and really see them for who they are.
Big Doctor Who group hug for the unappreciated characters and all their fans!
There are a lot of us out there!