A Geek's Journey Into Brain Cancer, Part 3: Face The Raven

Clara was not my favorite Dr Who companion, and I've got company on that one.  She was too manic pixie for me, and somehow too American in her acting style, to be my favorite.

But she knocked me out with one line in the episode Face The Raven. (S9 ep10) Clara gets marked for death because, basically, she makes a bad gamble.  The Doctor tries to save Clara when he finds out what happened, but she stops him.  It was her bet to make, after all.  She ends up stepping into the street to face the Shade, and swoops her arms and head back while thrusting her chest out in a kind of half-arabesque as she says, "I accept this."

It's a New Age idea to "take reponsponsibility for everything that happens to you" becuase you karmically brought it on yourself somehow.  As a surivor of sexual assault this idea makes me want to brandish a crowbar on the whole world, becuase blaming the vicitim doesn't only happen in rape culture.  It's a defensive aversion method so rife in dysfunctional health culture that people feel free to be assholes to smokers who get lung cancer.

BUT there's a lovely grace in acceptance.

ANd if you're a huge egomaniac like me, you easily find the Chosen One mythology at work in the idea that you are marked by the Shade and Must Face The Raven.  Not Chosen like Buffy.  More like the Inca Mummy Girl in the episode of that name, who is chosen as a sacrifice to the gods and will never have a boyfriend, never live her life out.

That's a thing I always keep in mind, that young people get this.  People who haven't had careers and a chance to Make Their Mark or find The One They Love.  People give you that pittying look when they hear glioblastoma, but imagine being at the beginning of your life with this.

NO, I did NOT choose to keep an evil replicating fungus in my head to feast on my brain. 

But I can accept am privleged that I got to have a good life before accepting this.