Clamy

Clamy is the femslsah ship between Amy Pond and Clara Oswald from the Doctor Who fandom.

Canon
In the first episode of the seventh series, titled "Asylum of the Daleks", Amy Pond, along with her husband Rory Williams and the Eleventh Doctor, met an echo version of Clara Oswald, named Oswin Oswald. Oswin used her hacking skills to navigate the trio through a planet of defective Daleks. Through the episode, Oswin openly flirted with both the Doctor and Rory, but also claiming that the first person she ever fancied was a girl named Nina. This raised the question of her sexuality, and hints that she is interested in women. There was almost no interaction between Amy and Oswin, probably because Amy was struggling with not being turned into a Dalek puppet the whole episode.

In "The Bells of Saint John", Clara is reading a book called "Summer Falls", that's written by Amelia Williams, Amy's actual name that she came to use after being separated from the Doctor for good.

In "The Time of the Doctor", right before his regeneration, the Eleventh Doctor hallucinates about Amy Pond. In this hallucination she walks to him, holds his cheek and whispers the words "Raggedy man, goodnight" to him. He says "Amelia!", hoping that he's still the newly regenerated version of himself and that no time has went on since he left the little girl waiting in the garden. However, Clara's immediate response is "Who's Amelia?", implying that she isn't sharing the Doctor's hallucination and that she has never heard the story of Amelia Pond. Though, in the book "A Companion's Companion", written by Clara Oswald and released by the BBC, Clara mentions Amy on a few pages, implying that the Doctor has at least tried to explain who Amy was to Clara.

Clara Oswald says that she loves Jane Austen, and has supposedly kissed her, making most people think that she is bisexual. Clara also held a strong bond with Ashildr, an immortal viking that Clara traveled with on the TARDIS for a time, though the two are not necessarily together. Amy works as a kiss-o-gram when we first meet her in "The Eleventh Hour", the job consisting of "going to parties and kissing people", not specifying a gender. Though both of them have primarily male partners over the course of the show, most characters in Doctor Who are considered very fluid with their sexuality, and are not given labels for this reason. Both characters are at some point interested in the Doctor, the Time Lord himself even states that gender and labels work differently to him, and that logic is applied to many of the worlds and timelines that Amy and Clara visit over their time with the Doctor.

While they are most commonly known as 'Clamy' or 'Pondswald', 'Impossible Waiting' is also a popular alternative, deriving from both of their in series 'titles' given to them by the Doctor and by the fandom, Clara Oswald the 'Impossible Girl' and Amy Pond being 'The Girl Who Waited'.

Fanon
Pondswald is a fairly unknown ship in the Doctor Who fandom. However, the few fans who ship it, are very intense shippers of the ship. Most shipping is done through AUs (alternate universes) in which Clara/Amy are the Doctor and the other is her companion. Alongside many other AUs borrowing worlds from other fandoms entirely, though they can just as easily be set in a universe much like our own. Coffee Shop AUs, College AUs, Highschool AUs, etc. are popular for removing the threat of aliens and science fiction monsters entirely, letting them live out normal lives. Yet, using the Doctor Who world, there are plenty of 'canon compliant' ways to have the two interact, thanks to the time-bending abilities of the Doctor and the TARDIS.

Despite never meeting, those who ship it have a pretty clear image of what their interactions would consist of thanks to their distinct personalities. Amy being headstrong and kindhearted, and Clara's determined outlook powered by her intelligence. Their physical appearances also come in handy for shipping dynamics, Amy being a tall, gorgeous, fiery redhead, and Clara being a short, cute, but overall willful individual. The height difference coming into play multiple times with first impressions and lasting judgments over each other. As well as Amy's profession as a 'Kiss-O-Gram' being used for meet-cutes, fun interactions, and of course angst, letting it generate jealousy or miscommunication.

Compared to the most popular femslash ship in the Doctor Who fandom, being the Thirteenth Doctor and her Companion Yasmin Khan (Thasmin), Clamy has just over 2% the amount of fics as Thasmin on Ao3 as of 27/02/22. The ship found it's height in popularity in the years 2013 through to 2017. We can assume that the slow dwindle in content and interest comes from both characters no longer appearing on the show. Some enthusiastic creators made edits, compiling footage of both characters separately, they can be found on YouTube under the ship name, but not even those got much foot traffic outside of the people who searched for them specifically. Due to its unpopularity and obscurity, discovering the Clamy ship can be difficult, and even most die-hard Doctor Who fans don't know of its existence.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Amelia/Clara tag on FanFiction.Net
 * Amelia/Clara tag on FanFiction.Net

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