#WHY IS THERE A MYSTERIOUS HAND ON BELLAMY IN THIS SCENE | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

facelessfrey · 4 years

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So...Wednesdays at 8 are just torture now. Cool. I realize I could stop watching the 100 at this point but I’m a glutton for punishment. And I have to see just how mad it makes me as it tries to justify Bellamy’s death...and wow did it deliver.

Before I get to that, let’s review the end of this episode with Gabriel’s death:

So Gabriel got to die heroically saving Madi’s life and hang on until he was surrounded by all of his friends so he could refuse medical help because he was ready, it was his time. Gabriel got the “May we meet again speech”. You know who got none of that?

Bellamy.

You know what he did get? Clarke tearfully telling everyone she shot him because she tried so hard to get the sketchbook that she didn’t even fucking take. That same sketchbook that Bill got his hands on anyway. That same sketchbook that is still a god damn mystery because none of the world building makes any kind of sense this season and I still have no idea what the fuck Bill is talking about 99% of the time. But if I have to hear the word “transcendence” again, I’m gonna lose it. Anyway...where was the trying so hard bit last week? She pleaded with him for five seconds and then shot him in the heart. She could have shot him in the damn hand or any other non fatal body part and taken the damn sketchbook and gone through the portal. It’s so fucking stupid.

And then the worst part of it all is everyone being like “wow Clarke, I understand. Bellamy did suck now and he was never going to be able to handle everything we’ve done in the past seven seasons of this show so it was really for the best that you just murdered him in cold blood. Cool. Let’s give you a hug. That must have really been hard for you.”

And the swelling music, making her seem down right heroic for her ridiculous actions?? I couldn’t handle it. I mean honestly, what a joke.

Thank god for Madi calling her the fuck out on the awful choices she was forced to make by this dumb show.

But also, I have nothing against Madi, but I also really truly hate what Madi has turned Clarke into in the past three seasons. I understand that Madi is her daughter and that she would do anything for her, but she continually just goes against everyone else and does insane things all of the sake of her. And you know what? Madi is always mad at her for it and rightly so.

So then there was a period of time in which, if I pretended Bellamy wasn’t dead for no reason, this episode was actually kind of nice. I mean it was only like a ten minute period but it had some good stuff:

1 - Miller and Jackson reunited and they had a real scene together. It was strange. Haha. I think Miller had more characterization in that scene than he has in this whole series since about season 2. We’ll ignore the fact that they were talking about Bellamy being dead. It was still nice.

2 - Indra and Gaia finally got to reunite and they had their nice little reconciliation moment where Gaia told her she was glad she and Octavia found each other and Indra gave her the equivalent of an “i love you” by calling her “her seda” and apologizing for being annoyed for years that she wasn’t a proper warrior. Of course, that meant I was fully worried one or both of them was about to die instantly but so far so good.

3 - Octavia and Indra finally got a chance to talk and Indra did her best to absolve Octavia of all of the Bloodreina trauma. There was a Lincoln mention that was very nice. And I love a little snarky Indra with her “I was the best [teacher]” line.

4 - Drunk Nylah. Good stuff. And I like Jordan and Hope understanding each other. Also Echo finally telling someone else her real name is Ash. It all seems a bit pointless now but it was still a nice moment for her.

5 - Murphy, Emori and Raven being awesome together.

Anyway...so ends the positive part of this mostly rage ramble because then Sheidheda turns up and the show turns into some sort of weird horror video game that was truly bizarre and also incredibly stupid. First of all, WHY IS SHEIDHEDA NOT DEAD?!??! They have had so many opportunities to just kill this infuriating man and they’ve decided not to every time and for what?! Just so he could keep popping up to cause more damage?! It just does not seem logical on everyone else’s part and it seems very contrived on the show’s part. And I’m still not over Bill getting the stupid sketchbook anyway. And I just do not care about these people’s motivations. These characters do not matter.

But back to the weird horror video game because of course Sheidheda shows up wearing one of those nifty helmets that make you invisible so no one can see him yet they blatantly say that someone is there. HOWEVER, no one thinks to like shoot the gun and see if they hit anything? Or swing their swords around to check? Anything? They know what the helmets can do. They know someone came through the stupid portal and yet they still just do nothing and lead him right to Madi??? Sure. Fine. This show is dumb.

So Madi ends up going all Elena Gilbert and being like “no one’s going to go to war and sacrifice themselves for me!” and stabs herself in the stomach, which I’m still not sure how that sends you back to wherever but okay. God the world building this season has been rushed.

And now what?! They go to war?! I have to hear Bill talk about transcendence some more? I DON’T CARE!!!!! WHY SHOULD I CARE?!

Really I just want Sheidheda dead. He should have died like 13 episodes ago and I need him gone now.

Anyway, everything is pointless. This show is ridiculous and does not make any sense. The only content I liked was the section where they referenced all of the stuff that took place on Earth back when this show was a decent show. They really should just stay on Earth and just stop caring about everyone else. Hear that Murphy! I know you’re trying to be good now but NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE ELIGIUS THREE PRISONERS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!

I hope they blow up all the planets at the end and everyone just dies.

#the 100 #the 100 reviews #a rant sponsored by my rage #i hate this fucking show

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no-damsel · 3 years

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The after

The crunch of tires on twigs and rock was a familiar sound to a tired set of ears. In the forest , Bellamy shifted his bare against the damp cold ground trying to get comfortable. It had been a long walk from the wide stretch that he started from, I didn’t matter how far he walked the screaming seemed to becoming from everywhere. He was some kind of ex-leader on the ground which should have made this easier for him.

Earth? What a place. In some ways he was even worse than the other side, at least there he has redeemed himself. The familiarity of earth felt present from the moment he’d landed crawled out near the long, seemingly endless forest.

The last time he'd landed in the middle of nowhere, he'd spent days fighting for his life. Would this be any less demanding? He wasn't a twenty three year old hotshot anymore. He'd survived things that would have made normal men give up and lay down to die. But then again he always had Octavia to fight for.

“It’s Bellamy!” A high pitched voice screeched.

He must have been imagining things, because from where he was standing Bellamy could see John Murphy running towards with a worried look on his face. That couldn’t be real. The last Bellamy thing heard before hitting the ground was a high pitched scream. It wasn’t Octavia, it wasn’t Raven or Echo. It was Harrianna. He had found her.

______

Octavia could hardly walk with the rush cursing through her body. It was the highest adrenaline rush she had ever felt. Her big brother was back from the dead, she was currently looking after a little boy who was currently clinging to her. A green haired women also had her brother’s name slashed onto her body. And lastly she couldn’t stop thinking about Raven. Everything was so messed up.

“Do you think he will start talking soon?” Echo asked softly sitting down next to her.

Octavia shrugged as she watched the little boy pile stones onto each other, playing happily blissfully unaware of how fucked up around him was. He was the most adorable thing she had ever seen. His dark curly hair, big brown eyes...

Echo shifted next to her. “I’m sure one of them will wake up soon and tell us what’s going on.”

Octavia zoned out to whatever Echo was still talking about. There was something familiar about the child, he looked just like Bellamy...oh my god...this was her brothers kid. Bellamy had a child.

“Come on little man”, Octavia said softly as she gently picked him up.

Echo followed her as she barged into the tent her brother was laying in. This would confirm if her theory was right or not, if Bellamy was the dad the little boy would know who he was. Hopefully. Octavia was thankful that Murphy and Raven had dress her brother, it would probably push her over the edge if he was still naked as the day he was born. That was one sight she hoped to never ever see again.

“What are you doing?” Emori asked confused.

Octavia never answered them, she was focused on placing the boy on the bed Bellamy was on. She watched intensely as the boy leaned over him, and banged a hand on his chest while mumbling something.

“What did he just say?” Echo asked stepping closer to them.

“Dada, he just said dada” Octavia confirmed.

______

Sitting with her head between her knee’s Clarke done her best not to throw up. Seeing Bellamy was too much, it had brought up feelings she had tried to bury. He was her friend, her best friend and she killed him. Granted she had no other choice but she still shot him in the chest.

Tears threatened to spill from her eyes as she breathed heavily.

“You done what had to be done.” A voice said bluntly.

Clarke lifted her head enough to see Murphy standing in front of her. Who would have thought it? John Murphy was actually comforting her about murdering someone. Clarke tried to respond but instead sobbed into her hands.

“He forgave you along time ago Wanheda.”

Both Clarke and Murphy jumped at the sound of raspy voice coming from behind them. It was the women they found. Even though she was awake it was a surprise she was still standing, she was pale and looked ready to pass out.

Murphy helped the women to sit down before she fell over.

“Sorry, I’m still feeling light headed.” She grumbled.

“It’s fine...” Clarke said before clearing her throat. “Do you want a drink of water?”

The green haired women shook her head. “Is Fangs here?” She asked while suddenly looking around frantically.

“Fangs?” Murphy asked squinting is eyes at her. He didn’t trust her.

Before the mystery women had a chance to respond Octavia appeared holding the little boy who was squirming in her arms. He was desperate to get to mom.

“Fangs!” the women practically squealed taking him into her arms.

The feeling of nausea returned fast as Clarke watched the scene in-front of her unfold. It couldn’t be real. They where the only people left on earth. Not Bellamy, not this strange women, and not a small child. The blonde couldn’t hold back her sick this time as she threw up all down herself. Mortified she jumped to feet before running to her tent to change.

“You must be Harrianna?” Octavia asked sitting down across from her.

Octavia should have ran after Clarke but the blonde would be fine, Emori and Echo had gone after her anyway. She was more interested in what was going on with her brother. She had noticed ‘Harrianna’ carved onto his forearm.

“Yes, I’m Harrianna and this is Ferris” she explained.

Murphy scrunched up his nose. “Why did you say Fangs before?”

The women let out a dark chuckle, which made him feel uneasy. “He likes to bite” she explained.

Feelings multiple pairs of eyes on her, Harrianna sighed, she might as well start talking now. It wouldn’t be long until the others turned up looking for them.

“He spoke about you all the time Octavia, he misses you a lot.” Harrianna smiled weakly at her. She wasn’t lying, Bellamy wouldn’t shut up about her. “He told me about his time with Skaikru, and all the...adventures he had on the ground.”

“Yeah right.” Murphy scoffed earning a couple of glares.

“He regrets trying to float you because of Wells death.” Harrianna said raising a eyebrow at him.

“Bellamy is dead. Why the hell is he here?” He asked, sounding a little more aggressive than he meant.

Harrianna rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how to hold my tongue” she scoffed. “We got in some trouble, and got sent here as punishment” she explained.

What the fuck did that mean? Murphy and Octavia shared a knowing look. Whatever was going on only meant one thing, trouble.

#The 100 #Bellamy Blake #the 100 bellamy #the 100 imagine #the 100 fandom #the 100 fanfiction #bellamy blake imagine #Bellamy Blake x oc #Bellamy Blake/oc #Octavia Blake #emori the 100 #John Murphy #clarke griffin #raven reyes #Echo

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ablogthatishenceforthmine · 4 years

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Unpopular The 100 Season 7 Opinions

1. People are too harsh on Echo. Yes, I think she was a poorly written character in seasons 5 and 6, but the character for her writing has much improved in Season 7. And the hate for her character has been far too venomous for just being a poorly written character. I feel like fans of the show never give her character a chance. Like when it was revealed that we we going to see an Echo backstory flashback in season 6. BEFORE THE EPISODE EVEN AIRED, people decided that they hated the flashback, and that it was going to be boring and a waste of time. I actually think the flashback was quite interesting, but think the show had problems framing it in context of the themes of the season. I feel like the same is happening in season 7. People aren’t giving her a chance, even though they are doing some really interesting things with her character this season.

And i think people put too much emphasis on “liking” and “agreeing” with a character. To me, it’s more important that I find a character interesting and engaging: I don’t have to agree with all, or even most, of their actions. I also don’t think the show is framing Echo’s actions this season in a positive light. So I really don’t get the complaint, “How am I supposed to like Echo when she does XXX bad/morally dubious thing.” I don’t agree with most of her actions either, but they make sense with her character, and I always understand why she does what she does this season. And I get it, emotional investment in a character is built. The show has done a poor job creating emotional investment in Echo in Season 5 and 6. But i think investment/engagement can work on two levels: emotional and mental. Mental investment is when you find the character, their storyline, and the themes explored with that character interesting. For me, in seasons 5 and 6, I wasn’t emotionally or mentally invested in Echo’s character. But in Season 7, I am mentally invested in her character. I am still not emotionally invested or care too much about her pain or if she survives because of the shoddy character work the show did for her in the previous 2 seasons. But I am interested in her character, and am excited to see her journey this season.

The show is doing a lot of interesting exploration or Echo’s character this season. But it seems to me like some people came into the season determined not to like or be interested in her character. They never gave her a chance to be interesting to them this season, which I think is a shame.

2. I don’t want Echo to be a spy; I want her to believe in Bardo and their teachings. I think it’s wayyy more interesting if Echo has actually drunk the kool-aid. And it makes sense for her character to actually believe in Bardo’s teachings. They have a lot in common. They both value loyalty to a troubling degree. They both believe in suppressing and having complete control over one’s emotions. After believing that Bellamy has died, I can see her wanting to bet rid of emotional attachments because they are just too painful. A love is weakness kind of thing. And I can see her deciding that it’s better to be loyal to the mission of saving the human race than to be loyal to individuals, because loyalty to individuals just brings pain. Honestly, I will be really disappointed if Echo turns out to be playing the Bardonians. If that’s the case, then it just all about the plot and plot twist. If what i described above it true, then this storyline is all about character and Echo’s internal life, beliefs, and transformation.

3. I don’t get why people are mad at the show for the lack of Bellamy. It’s not writers fault that Bellamy is barely in this season so far. The actor decided to take some time off. I get that it’s frustrating and disappointed, but it wasn’t the writers’ decision. The show is trying to do the best it can with the hand it has been dealt. And I don’t think it’s been doing that terrible. Bellamy is easily my favorite character of the show; has been since season 1, and every season since. But I don’t think the show is suffering that badly from his absence. Like, I miss him, but I don’t feel the show is empty without him. His disappearance is a mystery I am interested and invested in. And I am so excited to find out where he is and what’s been going on with him. For me, the far more frustrating absence is that of Clarke, who has barely had anything interesting to do this season. She feels completely decentered from the season. I wouldn’t mind her lesser screentime if they screentime she did have was devoted to more interesting things. She has had a few good scenes, but most of her plotlines have not been very interesting this season.

4. This season isn’t bad so far. It’s not one of the show’s better seasons, but it’s not terrible. There’s some very good stuff and some very bad stuff. I really like everything with Bardo and Sky Ring. I enjoyed these kinda self-contained episodes like 7x02. I enjoyed seeing new families and bonds form, and seeing character dynamics we haven’t seen before. Hope is a great new character and I am both emotionally and mentally invested in her in only a short amount of time. I find the mystery of Bardo very intriguing. I am excited for every new bit of information we get on the place and it’s way of life. It was super cool and interesting learning their philosophy and a bit about how they live in 7x09. I just really like the world-building that this season is doing. The bad stuff is, of course, sanctum, which is one of the worst, if not the worst, storylines the show has ever done. It’s boring, especially in contrast to the new and exciting world of the anamoly, Bardo, and other planets. And the Sanctum storyline just seems more of the same, except there are not enough people that we care about in the mix. They are too many new characters, and none are developed well enough. It’s hard to care too much about the warring factions, when we don’t care about most of the factions. Despite J.R. Bourne’s excellent performance, Sheidheda is not an interesting villian. And many of the characters are behaving stupidly and making bad decisions. So, yeah, this season is a mixed bag, but I don’t find it to be nearly as bad as people say it it.

4. I disagree with the “Nothing is happening” opinion. Things are definitely happening. Think about how much we’ve learned since the premiere episode. It’s A LOT. And yes, we have a lot of episodes that are more character driven or world-building driven than plot driven. But I actually like that! I don’t know why people want to speed through the plot. I think the plot can move slowly as long as the episodes are engaging and stuff is happening with the characters, even if its only internally. Think about one of The 100′s best episodes, in my opinion: Season 3 Episode 11, Nevermore. The plot barely moved that episode, but there was soo much good character stuff happening. So i really liked the plot slowing down to show the Octavia/Hope/Diyoza family form, and see Octavia find her peace. I liked the plot slowing down to show us the Echo, Hope, Diyoza, and Octavia’s journey through Bardo training. I liked that it slowed down to explore Echo’s grief and Hope and Diyoza’s difficulties in 7x07. But, that is not to say that this season does not have an issue with it’s plotting because it definitely does. For me, its not in the Sky ring/Bardo stuff, it’s with all the other characters. Clarke, Raven, Murphy, Indra, Emori, etc are soooo behind the viewers in knowledge that it’s frustrating to slowly see them catch up to things that the audience already knows. And the Sanctum plot is moving too slowly too with too much build up. And i do agree with people that yeah, it still feels like we are getting exposition for the season, which is a problem. However, i’ve enjoyed a lot of the ride when it comes to learning this exposition in regards to Bardo, so I do not mind as much.

5. I want Murphy to die. And it’s not because I don’t love Murphy, because I do. He has become one of my favorite characters of the show. And that is why I want him to have a great ending and arc. And I can’t think of a better one than him dying doing a heroic or self-sacrificial thing. Murphy started as an utterly selfish character who would do anything it takes to survive, no matter the cost for other people. Slowly, he has come to care for other people. First, specific individuals, and now, more and more, has has started to care for people as a whole. But, he still struggles with his selfishness and his do-whatever-it-takes-to-survive mentality. That’s why giving up his life for a good cause would be the perfect ending to his story. To go from someone who would survive by any means necessary to someone who willingly died to do something good for others. It would be beautiful and perfect, and i hope it happens no matter how sad it would make me.

#the 100 #echo #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #john murphy #octavia blake #hope diyoza #charmaine diyoza #the 100 season 7 #my posts #ablogthatishenceforthmine #the selfless king #the girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders #Cockroach #octagon

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girlobsessed21 · 4 years

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Thoughts on The 100 7x01

Before I get into the episode, I felt the absence of Bellamy and Octavia, they are my favorites and a very core part of this show. I was worried about the lack of Bellamy in all the promotional material, but Jason explained in an article that he needed some time off and they gave that to him, but he still plays a vital role and we will see him again. At the end of the day, we don’t know what happened, but the mystery around his disappearance into anomaly is quite intriguing.

For now, I’m holding out hope that he will return to my screen in full force, until proven wrong I’m going to be positive. Despite that, I enjoyed it. It wasn’t my favorite first episode, still a strong start spreading optimism for the rest of the season. Lots of surprises that made it worthwhile.

The anomaly colony

Hope wakes up with memory loss while Gabriel examines her tattoos. She runs away and finds a note to herself that says, ‘Trust Bellamy’. Bellamy, not Octavia, who she clearly knows, which seems like Hope wasn’t aware she would find Octavia in Sanctum.

Now, why would Hope want to trust Bellamy and stab Octavia? Perhaps she needed his help finding her in return for Diyoza? This seems like a logical conclusion given that ‘He’ has her mother. The Blakes certainly hold some key to the anomaly, everything points me in that direction.

I can’t say all that much about Hope, due to the amnesia she has no personality yet, but it’s clear she’s smart and capable.

Gabriel being an anomaly-dork. Gosh, I love him too bits. The acting in the scene where they try to figure out what happened to Octavia and Bellamy is a little cringy, but I turned a blind eye and focused on the dialogue.

I’m getting to the good stuff…

Roan coming back to haunt Echo is probably my favorite part of the episode, I’ve missed the king so damn much. He asks her who she is without Bellamy or her queen. I’m so glad they’re delving into the subject. If you read my previous blogs, you’ll know I asked this question many times. She’s such a bad ass spy, she needs a purpose and story apart from him. Nonetheless, I like Echo and I would love to see her gain some of her own identity and build her own life. Being distanced by time and space could really do that for her. Scroll down for the shipping part of this story…

The more important thing is that there are people who control the anomaly and know exactly who they are. Like Echo predicted because of the bad shots they were sent to capture and not kill them except for Hope. I assume it’s because she knows how the anomaly works. Who are they and what do they want? My guess, Bellamy and Octavia. Perhaps Clarke as well?

Loved the three of them entering together because a few second difference could mean months. That means Diyoza and Octavia could have been months, maybe even years, apart.

Rising from and burning to ashes in one afternoon

This new beautiful house with the dysfunctional family and Madi with Picasso is certainly heart-warming in a show that continues to push the bounds of darkness. How great is that little picnic in the yard? Now I’m curious, they drink to Abby, but have they forgotten Kane?

Also, good to see Raven and Clarke on better terms. They really spoiled her character in season 6 but it seems like she’s back on par. It’s clear that good things happen when they’re working towards the same goal, as family. That dynamic has been broken since season 2 and if there’s one lesson that can be learned from season 1 it’s that they’re outstanding on the same team.

At first, I wondered why they weren’t questioning Octavia, Bellamy and Echo’s absence but then I realized they probably saved them a room like they did for Jordan and assumed they were exploring the anomaly. It’s still the same day as 6x13 since they were having lunch. Episode 6x13 ended at dawn and 7x01 starts at lunchtime.

I know Murphy did a lot of obscure things in season 6 but he’s not to blame for Abby’s death. Emori’s right, Russel killed her.

Why did Clarke choose the master suite, though? It seems a little out of character for her to do something so selfish.

On to other things, I must point out Indra’s line: “Someone needs to speak for the commander and I’m hungry.” She’s magnificent, hard and sharp, as always. Pair that with Miller being a dutiful, abiding shoulder and you have greatness.

Raven makes a comment about mothers and daughters and Clarke says she’s fine. Later, Madi also asks her to open up about it, and she still claims to be fine. When I heard this the first time, I was instantly worried because they heap one set of PTSD on top of the other and never deal with it. The woman just lost her mother, how the hell can she be fine. The answer: She can’t.

And I’m really glad they expanded on that to show how utterly necessary it is to deal with your grief and trauma. Sure, Clarke is a powerhouse of a woman, but she’s human and clearly hurt, she can’t compartmentalize and continue on like nothing has happened – I hope she finds a way to actually deal with it instead of following in Jasper’s footsteps. She was already suicidal, give the damn woman a break.

Is civility an ability?

Faith is a powerful and dangerous thing. Interesting topic. While I don’t completely believe that faith is dangerous, when it comes to the point of blindly following charlatan’s into harms way, yes it becomes dangerous. My biggest thoughts on this narrative is whether peace can indeed exist in a world where different factions exist with various beliefs and opinions. I’d like to quote John Lennon:

Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people living life in peace, you

Keyword being ‘Imagine’, this song is written about an unattainable Utopia which is still a reality several hundred years into the future.

“Too many people”

“Good thing ALIE’s not around.”

The humor is all around outstanding this episode even Clarke cracks a joke.

We’re introduced to a few new characters and not much too say about them since we didn’t see much of them. I like Nelson, he is firm in his stance, logical and pragmatic. Trey is just annoying with his faith in the divinity of the primes. The only thing I got from Nikki is that she’s compulsive and lethal while Hatch has this Southern charm and charisma. He reminds me of Sawyer from Lost.

Next, Jordan goes to check on Russel. I appreciate the way they build around the morality we saw withing Russel at the beginning of season 6. JR Bourne is a fantastic actor with the depth he plays into the grief and guilt of losing his family.

Also, the softness of Monty and Harper still shining through Jordan. I’m glad he’s not adjusted and simply trying to keep the peace. Not sure if that’ll change. Curious to know why they saw the anomaly in their visions…

I just need to add that Murphy sitting at a bar is perfect!! Another amazing episode for him and Emori. He questions himself with his own varied degrees of morality while Emori continues to grow by reading Kay Lee Prime’s journal. I guess the believers must be blind to continue following their orders, but hey, props to Raven for exploiting the opportunity and Murphy and Emori did an entertaining job with it. Emori has come such a long way and the ‘We are one’ line felt personal in the sense that she had also established herself as part of the family.

Losing my religion

Can you truly lose your religion? What is a fleimkeepa without a flame, what is Sanctum without the primes and what is Echo without Bellamy? Sometimes faith is stronger than truth. Bad thing, no! Because what is the truth really? Interesting subject to explore but I don’t have an answer on this. I’d rather focus on the fact that I’m glad we’ll get to explore these characters on new paths.

Clarke’s composure vanishes. Boy oh boy, Eliza’s acting. When you compare s6 and 7 to s1, it just shows you the value of experience. The way that switch flipped when Russel handed her Abby’s clothes and wedding band. I looked at the fighting and her explosive rage in detail and I cannot help but compliment her on that perfect portrayal of the result of passive aggression.

Now, I don’t understand how Sheidheda uploaded himself into Russel’s mind drive when it was made clear that two consciousness cannot exist in the same mind. When Clarke killed Josephine in the mind-space, she came back to life within seconds. Will this be another Clarke/Josephine battle and are the other commanders still subdued?

If he is going to be one of the main villains of the season, I would like to get under his skin. I’m not interested in a one-dimensional pure evil villain. I’m hoping JR Bourne will make something remarkable of him.

Shipwreck

There’s a friendship blooming between Clarke and Gaia and I’m all for it. Could they be setting them up romantically? It’s a possibility and I’d take it as a consolation prize for Bellarke if it’s well-built. Focus on the well-built. If Clarke finds out that Bellamy is missing and goes through hell and beyond to save him, I will interpret that as Clarke still loves Bellamy. If they want me to fall in love with Claia, they should make me fall in love with Claia.

Although I’d always prefer Bellarke. From a storytelling or writing viewpoint, all loose ends should be tied with the conclusion. Bellarke is a complete loose shard. If romance is not their destiny, I hope they at least address the topic in full, because it has been building for seven years. If you haven’t read my post on Bellarke, please do so. I explain in the romantic elements of their story in detail.

As for Echo’s vision of Roan. He questions her devotion to Bellamy and says she will even betray the man she now claims to love. I interpreted that as him referring to Mount Weather as well as secrets she’s obviously hidden from Bellamy. For example, her real name. This could go two ways in my opinion. One, they’re trying to set Echo apart from Bellamy, separating them by time and space to break them up or they are trying to teach her how to be her own person as well as the other half of their relationship.

I’m not quite invested in their relationship, and they would have to rip one bigass hare out of the hat to get my attention. Love their characters individually, but season 6 showed me Bellamy still loves Clarke. If Becho’s relationship was built to last, the writers would have written it that way. When you compare it to Murphy and Emori or Monty and Harper, it’s clearly questionable.

That’s it, let me know if I got something wrong, if you agree or disagree, love to hear your opinions.

#the 100 #the 100 season 7 #the 100 7x01 #the 100 season seven #The100 #clarke griffin #bellarke #bellamy blake #octavia blake #john murphy #emori #echo kom azgeda #gabriel #indra kom trikru #gaia #raven reyes #russel lightbourne #jordan green

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travllingbunny · 4 years

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The 100: 7x01 From the Ashes

Disclaimer: This post is about the episode of the show The 100, From the Ashes, the season 7 premiere, and only about it. In this post, I will NOT be discussing any original scripts, unused takes, bloopers, behind the scene photos or videos, scribbled notes exchanged between the writers, or any tweets, Instagram posts, SMS or e-mails by any of the cast or crew members, considering the fact that none of those things constitute the show’s canon, which consists of the actual episodes.

I will also not be discussing anything about the future episodes posted by any ‘spoiler accounts’, and, in fact, I am unaware of most of these things, since I’m trying not to read any spoilers. Please do not tell me any spoilers for future episodes or ask me about them.

I really enjoyed this episode, in spite of the unfortunate lack of Bellamy (which I was already expecting since what happens to him here was already spoiled by the trailer. Of course, I’m looking forward to see Bellamy again, and, before that, to everyone finding out about disappearance and it becoming the focus of the season. But until then, the show has quite a few other storylines to deal with, from setting up and delving more into the Anomaly mystery, to dealing with the fall-out of season 6 in Sanctum, and both of these were handled well, for the most part.

This episode in particular had really good characterizations all around - for Murphy, Echo, Indra, Madi, Raven, Emori, Gaia, even Jackson - and, of course, Clarke, who had an arc that took her tendency to try to repress her feelings to an extreme, until they exploded in a most memorable way. It will cause her trouble, no doubt, but it was great to watch, and something I had been wishing for for quite some time.

There is just one character whose storyline I’m still not sure how I feel about, because I’m not sure what the show is doing with him.

After the last season’s cliffhanger, there was some concern in the fandom that Bellamy would regress to being all about protecting his sister, after their relationship had been redefined with “You’re my sister, but you’re not my responsibility”. Some of that was really exaggerated: there’s absolutely nothing odd or surprising about Bellamy crying over his sister disappearing in his arms. Of course he loves her and wants her safe. But I was concerned they may regress his development if they make him forget about everyone and everything else in his life in order to impulsively jump after her into the Anomaly. However, that did not happen - Bellamy didn’t decide to go on his own, rather than tell others and make a plan. He was taken.

The mysterious people from the Anomaly seem to be able to control the Anomaly, and have some sort of a cloaking device, presumably connected to their suits and helmets, that makes them invisible to others. They also have some sort of a screen inside their helmets, with facial recognition of targets and commands. It’s all a bit creepy - these seem to be humans, but they are receiving orders the way a robot would. (It’s all very Terminator-like!) Maybe because they also have lost their memories while going through the Anomaly? Where did they get the info about who Bellamy, Gabriel and Echo are - was it from Octavia’s memories?

Memories and memory loss are obviously going to play a huge role this season. People who come from the Anomaly to Sanctum seem to lose their memories, except when the Anomaly is still there. Does this happen only on Sanctum, or at the other side(s) as well? How does the fact that the Anomaly sucks in radio signals fit into that? Hope had to use a message she put into her own arm to remind herself to “TRUST BELLAMY”. (Interstellar is mentioned a lot as an inspiration for this season, but this reminds me of another Nolan film, Memento.)

We also see Clarke spout knowledge about how the big mansion was built (by Russell for Simone, to remind her of her house on Earth), which she would know due to still having some of Josephine’s memories. And I’m sure that the fact Madi still has the memories of past Commanders will play a big role - specifically, the fact she has Becca’s memories, which could be the way to tie the present day story to the prequel/story about what happened during and right after the apocalypse. (She also probably knows about Sheidheda more than anyone else alive, which may play into the Sanctum story.)

It’s too early to judge Hope as a character, but the mystery surrounding her is certainly super interesting. Why do the mysterious people from the Anomaly have orders to kill her on sight (as opposed to capturing, which they were supposed to do with Bellamy, Echo and Gabriel)? Is it because of who she is, or what she is - is it about her actions, does she know too much, or is her existence itself that’s the problem?

I loved the Octavia cameo in Hope’s hallucination, with the confirmation that she was an “aunt” figure to her, a part of a found family with Diyoza and Hope. The Anomaly makes you see your biggest desire or biggest fear - and Hope’s biggest desire seems to be to be reunited with her family

Echo’s hallucination, on the other hand, is obviously about her biggest fear - so it makes perfect sense that it’s Roan who appears to her, as he exiled her from Azgeda. Of course biggest fear would be losing her kru and her king/queen and being left alone and adrift. I’m as surprised as anyone that I found Echo's scene to be maybe the best in the episode. But she did have some really good character moments in seasons 6, and this is IMO her best character moment so far, picking up from her red sun hallucination in 6x02, and flashback from 6x11. which revealed that even her identity as “Echo” is fake. It seems the show is finally doing the character development it neglected to give her in season 5, and addressing all the obvious issues with Echo’s development and her relationship with Bellamy. I think this confirms that it was indeed Echo talking to herself while hallucinating Emori in 6x02, since her hallucination of Roan tells her the same thing, that she is still just a killer following another master’s orders. We finally see Echo feeling guilt over the things she did in the past, including her betrayal of Bellamy in season 3. When she imagines him calling her out on betraying “the man she now claims to love”, is it just about her thinking the others would doubt her love, or is she herself questioning whether her feelings for Bellamy are really romantic love, or just loyalty to her current leader? Their relationship, especially in S6, often came off more as the latter.

(It was also really cool to see Zach McGowan again)

The timeline of 7x01 seems to have confused some fans, but I think it’s pretty obvious that, at the beginning of the Sanctum story, no more than a day (probably less than that) has passed since 6x13 - going by the facts that 1) the Anomaly storyline picked up minutes after the end of 6x13, and the Sanctum story was presumably happening at the same time, and 2) Indra had to explain the situation in Sanctum to everyone. The only thing that seems to go against that is that Russell is said to “not have slept” since what happened on the ship, which makes it seem like it’s been longer. Or maybe Russell was just being extra dramatic. “Oh, I have no slept for a whole day!” He certainly spent a lot of this (his last) episode feeling sorry for himself. At least he seemed to have finally realized he wasn’t the superior good guy in all of it (”Tell them I’m treated better than I deserve” - yes, indeed.)

Indra was great, even though poor Adina was forced to be an exposition machine for a part of the episode.

A common complaint I’ve seen among fans is that it’s weird that Clarke and others in Sanctum aren’t worried about Bellamy and co. I don’t understand this complaint, as it’s clear that very little time has passed and that Bellamy, Octavia, Echo and Gabriel must have told everyone they were leaving and why (though I don’t know how many details they told them about the Anomaly Stone). People have been gone for a whole day in season 6 when they just went to the Offering Grove (Echo in 6x06) or the radioactive shield (Raven, Emori and Echo in 6x05), which are within the confines of Sanctum and much nearer than the camp by the Anomaly. What are they supposed to do but wait for a couple of days for them to come back? It’s not like they can call them, when radios and other means of communication usually don’t work on Alpha because of the Anomaly sucking the signals.

In fact, their absence was mentioned in the picnic scene, when Raven toasted to “absent friends” and we got a reaction shot of Clarke (I know, Clarke, I'd be annoyed too if I was you, but Bellamy had to be all "I'm gonna go now and explore the Anomaly Stone while Sanctum is in chaos and you're in mourning for your mom" because the plot needed him to..., before Niylah toasted to the “departed ones” (which would include Kane and Abby) and we got a close-up reaction shot of Clarke trying to keep it all inside, as she did every time in this episode someone mentioned Abby.

The idyllic picnic by the mansion - everyone’s attempt to get some rest and nice time after everything they had been through - was such a contrast to the “powder keg” of Sanctum and the end of this episode. But it also felt fake - just as fake as the deception and lies that Murphy and Emori are Daniel and Kaylee Prime, or that Madi still has the Flame in her head - to keep the devout and Wonkru under control, respectively - and just as fake as Clarke’s attempts to convince everyone she’s “fine”. As usual, the song playing in the background (”Darkness” by Pinegrove) was very fitting:

Suddenly I find I've got darkness on my mind It's a question mark that keeps me looking And it's never satisfied And it's never what I thought Saying I'm happy when I'm not No, I got darkness on my mind Leaning out the frame When it's particulate and gray I'm perpendicular to my whole being When I lean a certain way Saying I'm happy when I'm not Finding roaches in the pot Oh, I got darkness on my mind Some people spend their whole lives looking For someone who could understand While meanwhile a lilac blooming Sometimes on the driest land And I know it's been a long time coming I'm angry and I know that's weak And I'm longing out that open window For whatever it is I seek [musical breakdown] Some people spend their whole lives looking For someone who could understand And while meanwhile a lilac blooming Sometimes on the driest land And I know it's been a long time coming I'm angry and I know that's weak So I'm trying not to be so bitter I'm just looking at it honestly Well, I know it's been a long time coming I'm angry and I know that's weak And I'm longing out that open window For whatever it is I seek Some people spend their whole lives looking For someone who could understand While meanwhile a lilac blooming Sometimes on the driest land, yeah

I like that there was anger, blame and conflict between our kru and that everyone didn’t just forget what happened last season (and for once, Clarke is not the one getting the blame!) It would've made no sense if no one was blaming Murphy, and it makes sense it would be Jackson, who was so close to Abby and who’s not particularly close to Murphy. It also makes sense there was disagreement about the method of keeping peace in Sanctum, and that not everyone would be happy with Memori cosplaying the Primes.

Murphy himself had a really good characterization in this episode - we saw his grief and his feelings of guilt. While he tried to defend himself when blamed that he didn’t know what Russell would do, when left alone, he blamed himself for various actions that led to it, which is something Murphy from a couple of seasons ago wouldn’t do.

It’s great to see Raven looking more like her old, pre-season 6 self, and even better to see that her self-righteousness has gone. She’s more like the old Raven but without the snarky b1tchiness. I’m glad that she got called out by Murphy on her “Miss Morality” role from last season (which never really made sense, pre-time jump Raven was never a moral compass of the group, she was smart, pragmatic and could be as ruthless as anyone).

Another major theme of the Sanctum plot were the new beginnings. Clarke pointing out season 3 feels like another world seems almost like the show going meta and pointing out to the audience how much Clarke and all these people have lived through and been since.What is Sanctum now after the Primes have been defeated, with Children of Gabriel coming back home and clashing with the Devout - brainwashed and loyal followers of the Primes, with the rest of the Sanctumites in between? How are Wonkru and the 36 Eligius prisoners going to start again on a new planet moon? (36?! Wow, so they really suffered heavy losses in that gorge, too, when there are so few left?) Can Grounders be without a Commander? Gaia without her religion? Can Madi be a normal kid, without the Flame - or is that even possible while she has to pretend to still be Heda? The title From the ashes seems to refer to that - and maybe the end of the episode means that you have to burn down the old beliefs and old idols to build something new?

Mothers and daughters were another theme. I liked that Madi mentioned her biological parents (well, mother) on-screen for the first time, since the fandom tends to forget about them and ignore them too often. Madi was unsuccessful in her attempt to make Clarke share her feelings with her - maybe because this conversation showed a big difference in how they see each other? Clarke thinks of Madi as her child, but Clarke has never had a child before, while Madi had parents and suffered their loss; Clarke assumed Madi was talking about her and what happened in S6, but Madi always calls Clarke “Clarke” rather than “Mom”, and tried to connect to her on the equal level, as another daughter who’s lost a mother. Maybe it’s exactly because Clarke sees Madi only as her child that she feels she must be “strong” for her all the time and not show grief.

There was an unexpected parallel between Indra and Clarke in how Indra also tried to suppress outward expressions of grief when her partner - Gaia’s father died, which clearly wasn’t healthy and caused a rift between mother and daughter. (I’m not sure about when that happened, i.e. when Gaia first decided to become a Flamekeeper. I guess it must have been before the timeline of seasons 1-3. So Gaia’s dad is probably not the man that Indra recognized in 2x15 as one of the Reapers? I’m still angry that we never got any resolution to that storyline and that the Reapers were forgotten after season 2.)

The one thing I’m not sure about is Jordan’s characterization and arc. I’m not sure what the show is doing with his exactly, and I’m afraid that they’ll try to leave it ambiguous just how much he is or isn’t brainwashed. 6x13 made it very clear that he has been “adjusted”, which Russell confirmed here, and Jordan’s “adjustor”, who was creeping behind him in the season 6 finale, was very present and active in this episode, and clearly still had a big influence on him. At the same time, we learn that Jordan does not believe in the divinity of the Primes - instead of that, his hallucinations made him see something connected to the mystery of the Anomaly, which Russell describes as something “greater” (almost like he has finally found God, of sorts, after all, which he talked about 236 years before when he first landed on Alpha)? The good news is that it means Jordan will have a role in the Anomaly story, rather than being the advocate for the Devout. What I’m afraid of is that the show will gloss over the fact that Jordan was brainwashed - whether or not he came to believe that Primes were gods, he certainly did a 180 from despising Primes as murderers, being outraged by their actions and knowing very well that Priya was not Delilah but someone who took over her body; to (just a few days later, after “adjustment”) spouting Prime propaganda about the “peaceful” society they had before the Bad People from Earth came (that’s the peace they had when they regularly murdered their people to steal their bodies, left babies to die, and made them go crazy and kill each other from time to time) and having some kind of attachment to Priya herself and her mind drive.

At least, I hope that Russell unceremoniously smashing the mind drive means we’re done with that storyline. I loved it, it was my favorite storyline of the show, but it’s time for it to be over. It makes no sense that anyone is still letting Russell keep his mind drive, for starters. When will they realize they need to destroy these things?

- Clarke’s way of dealing with grief over her mom’s death was certainly unhealthy - repressing her feelings even more than usual, trying to be calm, composed, logical, to do the things needed to keep peace. In her last scene in 6x13, Clarke was open about her grief with Bellamy, looking to him for comfort, finding comfort in his arms and his words. But now he’s absent, there’s no one else she can be that open and vulnerable with. (The only other person Clarke looked for comfort to was Abby.) It’s nice to see that she and Raven have mended their friendship with Raven, she is starting to develop a new one with Gaia over their mutual care for Madi, she has mutual respect with Indra, she’s known others - like Murphy or Miller = for years, since the Delinquent days... and they all want to help her, but she’s not opening up to anyone, not even Madi. She thinks she must be “strong” for all of them, and her Head and Heart are unbalanced - she’s repressing the latter, until she finally explodes.

I love the scene of Clarke finally losing it and beating up Russell (I had already seen it in the trailer, and it was my favorite moment) and then crying while holding Abby's clothes. I don’t know about anyone else, but I love seeing an angry, emotional Clarke, letting it all out, especially when it's anger at people she has every right to be furious at. We haven’t seen that from her since early season 3 (when she yelled and spat in Lexa’s face over her betrayal). It had bothered me for a few seasons that Clarke - who used to be vibrant and could be impulsive, angry, hold grudges, yell at people in seasons 1-2, had become so repressed and muted due to her constant self-blame. I’ve had enough watching Clarke look sad while other people keep yelling at her and blaming her. (The only other instance of Clarke being furious was her hurt and rage at Bellamy and the slap in 5x09, but that was more of a silent, “internally screaming” rage/hurt, which turned into Clarke being emotionally frozen for the next couple of episodes, until learning he was alive. When Clarke is keeping everything inside and not yelling, that’s when she’s in the worst emotional state.)

It is, however, so sad that she still blames herself, too, for her mother’s death, whispering “I’m sorry”, the same way she whispered after seeing her father floated.

My only problem with the scene of that stupid palace burning down is that "mistakes" is a serious real understatement for what Russell has done. I know, I know, this will cause a lot of trouble in Sanctum and Clarke will probably have to go back on some of these decisions to keep peace. But there’s really nothing morally wrong with deciding to execute Russell - not only does he deserve it, but he’s arguably even an exception from the general objection to death penalty, since he’s lived several times the normal human lifespan, by stealing other people’s bodies. And the palace burning down is a symbolic way to send the message that the old power structures are gone - which Clarke pointed out when she said there will be no kings or queens anymore.

Sheiheda taking over Russell’s, or rather his latest host’s body, wasn’t surprising, as that was the most popular theory. But it was cool to see Sheidheda’s creepy mindspace again and Sean Maguire as the original Russell. The bodysnatcher got bodysnatched. That’s something like poetic justice.

I just have to post this because it’s such a beautiful shot!

Rating: 8/10

#the 100 #the 100 season 7 #the 100 7x01 #from the ashes #clarke griffin #john murphy #jordan green #bellamy blake #echo kom azgeda #madi griffin #the anomaly

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kinetic-elaboration · 3 years

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February 8: Mountain Lion Mean Notes

Okay, so I was writing up notes on my Troped Western fic and then I clicked something and it all disappeared! I’m very upset and I hate the idea of starting again but like... I guess that’s what I gotta do :/

Mountain Lion Mean on AO3.

Written for @troped-fanfic-challenge

So as I said in my notes, I watched Hell or High Water on the Sunday the trope document opened and immediately became obsessed, and that was my main inspiration. I saw it and loved it and, like with most things I love, my first thought was how can I do this too?? I didn’t want to do a straight AU of it, because it’s just too good and I don’t want to mess with that kind of perfection, but I knew I wanted a similar mood. I also figured pretty early on that I would try to include a bank robbery.

For the first days after the trope doc opened, I mostly just gathered inspiration and tried to think Western thoughts. In addition to HOHW, my inspiration included:

The Western episode of Charmed

A Western Rock playlist I found on Spotify

This post of southwestern gothic aesthetics

“Ranch Girl” by Maile Meloy (also the inspiration for it is new moon and twilight, which, fun fact, was originally going to be a Western; I didn’t re-read the story but it’s been haunting me since I first read it c. 2001 and is probably a partial inspiration for everything I write)

William Faulkner (especially “A Rose for Emily” and A Light in August) for the “town POV” narration

Sigrid Undset for the floating third-person-POV

The wikipedia article on Westerns, for succinct summaries of the themes of Westerns

The original aesthetic, quoted from my notes: “The vastness of the west, the frontier, a little uncivilized, a little dangerous, tough looking men who don’t talk much, extrajudicial justice, the heat and the desert…“

By the time I sat down to brainstorm, I had a few ideas and a few images already in mind. I wanted to include a bank robbery. I liked the idea of Clarke as a gunslinger and/or purveyor of vigilante justice. I thought I might use Gina as a bartender (this was during the half-moment I thought I might write a Bartender Mechanic fic; obviously neither of these things happened). And I liked the idea of including Murphy as some kinda criminal or unsavory type. The image of Bellamy as a taciturn cowboy came fairly early too.

I was a little uncertain at first if I wanted to do an 1800s western or a neo-western, mostly because I felt like the tropes I was attracted to and the images in my head fit better in the 1800s. But ultimately I settled on neo-western pretty fast, because I thought the imagery and themes would work better in the modern day. Plus I just thought it would be easier tbqh.

My first concern was to not just re-write a shittier HOHW. I was really caught up in the logistics of the bank robbery; including too much of that would necessarily make it a copy of the film, so I tried to keep just the bare bones of the robbery + the general justification (saving the family land). Then I added additional portions of the scheme--not too difficult since I knew I wanted Gunslinger/Vigilante Clarke in there, and I needed some way to show that she takes Justice into her own hands--and additional characters. Again, most notably Clarke, but also Raven and Octavia. The characters have their own backgrounds, personalities, relationships, and motivations, all of which make the story more mine imo. I’m satisfied with the balance of Obvious HOHW Influences and original content.

At some point, I described it to my mom as “Bellamy is Toby, Murphy is Tanner, and Clarke is canon Clarke but in the modern West.” Which I still think is accurate.

Including Clarke, though, and privileging the various relationships among the trio of Bellamy, Clarke, and Murphy, made me feel like I was making an it is new moon and twilight knock off except with Clarke for Raven. I still kind of see it, tbh, in the sense that twilight was itself supposed to be a western--I think it would be fair to say that Mountain Lion Mean IS the fic I set out to write in February 2020--and in the sense that I could have written a different story in the same universe as Mountain Lion Mean that explored the Clarke, Murphy, and Bellamy relationships in a way that is similar to twilight. As is, a lot of that is unsaid and unseen. The two fics have different focuses, so it’s probably only apparent to me just how similar they are. Just like, to me, Mad Women and The Wanheda Tape are the same story even though they have very different aesthetics and plots.

Some excerpts from my notes that I think are fun:

I really want to work with the themes (haha themes) of frontier justice and also the sense that the west is infinite but also small, that nature is hard and impossible to wrangle but that the opportunities are narrow and it’s easy to get trapped in it, the melancholy nature of it, the dichotomy of nature (huge, powerful) versus man (small, struggling against nature and against man). Or some such. Or Murphy just robs banks.

Bellamy owns a struggling ranch. Clarke is a gunslinger (don’t really know if I can use this trope in the current day but possibly?) who doesn’t trust the law. Has a conceal[ed]-carry permit. Is the best shot in three counties. Murphy’s been in and out of prison most of his adult life, mostly for crimes like robbery and assault.

How do they know each other? Possibilities: Murphy knows Bellamy through Octavia (idk why…but I do feel like O should appear, riding a horse) (background Octaven? Just a thought), Bellarke are exes, Murphy used to work on the ranch. Clarke has killed someone (someone Bad) and gotten away with it.

I do like the focus being on these three characters, who have a long history but aren’t currently close, coming together for a mission (to rob a bank) for the benefit of one who is struggling (Bellamy) even thought this is an awful lot like both Hell or High Water and it is new moon and twilight lmao.

I like that mood from HOHW where actually Toby was the most dangerous, and the smartest, and he won—the idea that Bellamy is the taciturn cowboy who’s not good at sharing his feelings but he’s also the mastermind in the end. Is that the twist? You get the impression Vigilante Gunslinger Griffin and Actual Ex-Con Murphy are planning something, but then it turns out to be Bellamy who executes the plan? [Not quite how it turned out lol in that I think it’s decently obvious that Bellamy was a major part of it the whole time but I did try to get some of this in with Octavia in the final scene--to really drive home Bellamy’s importance, as the ring leader, since otherwise one could ask, what does he even do?]

Midway through the planning process I came up with some more images to work from:

B and C out at dusk on the ranch, she’s shooting can, a bit of UST perhaps

M shows up at the bar and there’s an awkward silent entrance—perhaps he’s just out of prison

Murphy or Clarke guns akimbo [I picked Clarke to emphasize that she’s the gunslinger, but I had Murphy shoot out the security cameras to show that they were using his robbery experience]

Bellamy being silent and awkward

At this point, it was just about putting all the pieces together. That’s how I tend to plan Troped fics: I lay out all the pieces I need or want to include and then I figure out the shortest and most efficient distances between them. For example, I knew I needed a bank robbery and for Clarke to administer some vigilante justice--so I use that justice as a way to launder the money. They fake a will for her victim and “give” the money to themselves.

I did worry, and still worry, about the timeline re: the Bellarke marriage and the will because I’m quite sure it doesn’t make sense and doesn’t work. But it also... it doesn’t keep me up at night because the whole point is that it’s a scam!! Worrying about legality in a scam is sorta... lol. What I mean specifically is that I wanted it to be clear that Clarke does not kill Kane FOR this scheme. They use something she already did to their advantage. So she and Bellamy can’t be married at the time Kane is killed. That implies the murder was pre-meditated for the bank robbing purpose. But I’m also fairly sure (and I should know this because I took T&E but like...honestly can’t remember) that the people in the will are counted at the time of death, not the time of probate, or you could like... adopt extra kids or marry or divorce someone to affect the will. Plus all that stuff about simultaneous death etc. etc. Also, on a practical level, if Clarke wasn’t married, Kane wouldn’t have an obvious reason to write her spouse into the will. But I get away with this in my head by saying, first, no one’s going to say the husband that’s standing right there doesn’t count as a husband--the law is the law but it’s implemented by people and they fudge corners all the time. They do what seems to make sense even if you’d lose points for it on a law school exam. And second, the will could have been written with the assumption or hope that Clare would marry. Possibly even, though I don’t say this in the fic exactly, on the condition of marriage--Clarke gets 100% to share 50-50 with her husband if she’s married, 0% if she’s not. Doesn’t really matter. It’s supposed to read as outwardly clever and create Mystery and play with the Exes Aesthetic even if it doesn’t hold up the strictest scrutiny. (JDs don’t @ me.)

I justified including the marriage as a necessity because Kane could possibly leave money to Clarke’s husband but he wouldn’t leave money to some rando. I do stand by that part.

I also decided at some point that I wanted to include Background Octaven but be really subtle about it so it was something else the reader would have to piece together: that Raven has a girlfriend, then that Octavia has a girlfriend but, hey, isn’t Raven a bartender?--and then it comes together in the last scene as we see that their relationship was factored into Bellamy’s plan all along: some of the loot goes directly to Octavia and her partner, officially as payment for Raven’s services, unofficially because Bellamy wants to give O a gift. Anyway. Either it was too obvious or too subtle/boring because no one mentioned it but I thought it was cool lol.

At this point in my planning I basically had everything I needed, so I wrote a quick outline of scenes, as I always do, to see how it would flow scene to scene and if I had a place to put all the necessary plot info. I also ended up doing “what I need from this scene” lists for each scene so that I knew what I had to have on my mind to include before I sat down to write each one.

The actual writing was done over 3 days and fairly easily and quickly. I had a lot of fun not just with planning but with the actual process of creation. I think it’s because I was just honestly excited to be in this universe and play with this aesthetic.

Not to blow my own horn here but some parts that I was particularly pleased with were:

“Arkadia hasn’t seen a drop of rain in thirty-two days. The asphalt on the highway shimmers with heat; the air crackles with heat; the heat rises, stifling and strong, from the parched dirt and the cracks in the pavement.” Like I’m sorry but that’s a good image, I like that a lot. Whenever I felt discouraged, I just read that again and felt better.

The description of past Bellarke because boy howdy do I not care to write romance anymore but that was fun. I thought it was hot.

Transitioning Murphy laughing until the coyotes can hear into Bellamy hearing coyotes at night into Bellamy still hearing them during the day. I don’t know if it worked quite like I wanted to but in my head that is a very Cinematic transition, okay? I also like that even though Clarke and Murphy aren’t literally riding off together in that scene, for the reader, they are leaving the narrative never to be seen again. So they get their Dramatic Exit.

Octavia’s explication of the Theme and Bellamy’s possible motivations. I’m pretty proud of myself for actually having a theme and I think I did a good job of explaining it without being too heavy-handed. I also think it was perhaps risky to end with the POV of Octavia, a character who’s barely been in the fic before the last scene, but ultimately that decision felt right to me and I think it had a good flow, a nice mellow exit from the narrative.

What I didn’t like as much was a lot of the first scene. I think it has some great bits but it was the most re-worked part of the fic, and there are still some paragraphs and phrases that I feel are a little stiff. For example, this is a paragraph that I cut entirely:

Diyoza was sure the Griffin daughter did the deed back in January and she's sure about it still. She even gives a quote to the Sun-Times about it, despite her troubles with Green. But she had no proof then, not even a body to justify a murder charge, and she has little proof now. So no one believes the investigation will come to anything.

As you can see, it gives no new information. There were other sentences and phrases that weren’t doing work but were interrupting the flow, which also got cut, but I’m still not sure that the flow is perfect in the final version.

Also displeased that I edited out a * from the version on AO3, thus letting two scenes run together. How embarrassing!!! It’s fixed now though.

Overall though I’m so pleased! I love this fic and I love that I can love things again. This year has already been so hard, just like being battered again and again by waves of a storm, and it’s only 5 weeks in but this experience was so unabashedly good and I’m so grateful for it.

#the year 2021 #2021: writing bts #mountain lion mean #troped

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sometimesrosy · 4 years

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1. Do you think Bellamy’s ��What the hell are you talking about?” *was* off? One minute I think, “Nah, he just has no idea why they have them captive and is wondering what the hell is going on between Anders and Octavia that she’d offer to tell him about Clarke, and it’s CLARKE who he just freaked out and saved days ago, so of course he’d be like WTF do you want with her, what’s going on here that I’m missing, what’s happening?” He doesn’t know

2. about time dilation yet, so to him O was just taken seconds ago, and to him, maybe she and Anders seem too aquatinted for a few seconds. But then he does seem so confused that he almost seems like, “Who the heck is that? What’s going on?” I’ve watched this scene so many times trying to figure it out. 😂

+++

I think it’s a mystery and there’s not enough information for us to know this yet. Was he disoriented? Was it just a rational question of what’s going on here? Was his mind partially erased? Was it not really him? Was it someone (left handed and with a ring) who was in a sort of camouflage that looks like him? Was it a false memory? I really don’t know. Not enough clues yet.

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blodreina-noumou · 4 years

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Top 5 favourite Octavia dynamics? Is there anyone you'd like her to share the screen with in S7?

Oooh, this is a juicy one, thank you!!

1 - Seda and her Second - aka Indra and Octavia

It could be argued that the most important person in the later part of Octavia’s life (so far) was Lincoln - but I’d put Indra above him on the list of people who have impacted her the most. They’re truly the definition of “started from the bottom” - Octavia makes herself Indra’s enemy by taking Nyko hostage in exchange for Lincoln’s life.

Then the young woman continues to insert herself into Indra’s world, despite the older woman’s insistence that Octavia doesn’t belong there. Indra’s trepidation about Octavia’s potential, and initial willingness to keep Octavia out of harm’s way -

- “I saved your life.”

“And now I’m saving yours.” -

- makes it all the more satisfying when Indra offers Octavia a coveted position as her apprentice. From there, they only grow, learning to respect one another, and eventually, coming to love one another as a mother and daughter might.

It’s significant that only two people ever really cracked the Blodreina facade - Bellamy is the first, but Indra picks away at it, too, never giving up on the warrior’s second and fiercely kind-hearted person she knows is underneath the blood and armor.

We didn’t get nearly enough of them in s6 - did we get anything at all? Regardless, I know that if anyone is going to be as upset as Bellamy that Octavia has disappeared, it’s Indra. And I’m ready for the OG mama bear in this series to go on the warpath for her adoptive daughter. That being said, we have to honor Lincoln - without him, Octavia and Indra never would’ve become allies.

2 - Linctavia - aka Lincoln and Octavia

This dynamic was one of my early surprises in this series. I wasn’t fully on board until s2 - Lincoln remains a pretty mysterious character throughout the first season, which really makes Octavia’s infatuation with him seem more like a wild teenager’s rebellious dalliance than anything else. Plus that age difference.

But in s2, we get to see them talk and work together, and we see just how far Octavia is willing to go to keep Lincoln safe, and vice versa. It becomes clear that this is so much more than just a casual fling, and that falling in love with Lincoln has had a major impact on who Octavia is.

Lincoln’s untimely death is right up there with Lexa’s and Jasper’s for me, in terms of moments that detonate my floodgates every time I rewatch. I don’t know that I’ll ever be fully happy with Octavia being with anyone else - except for maybe one other steadfast and nurturing grounder...

3 - Niytavia - aka Niylah and Octavia

From the moment Octavia offered up her lamp in exchange for some of Niylah’s clothes, speaking softly but earnestly in Niylah’s language, I was hooked. I think Niylah is one of Octavia’s truest and most loyal friends, and that Octavia will always look out for Niylah and consider her safety.

I was a bit disappointed when we only got to see them together in the first half of s6 - I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll have at least some scenes together in the final season, even if it’s pretty clear the writers are setting up Octabriel.

The quiet but steadfast bond these women share is one of the more underrated aspects of this show.

4 - The Blake Siblings - aka Bellamy and Octavia

Oh man, what a complicated pair. I don’t think there are many relationships on TV quite like the one the Blake siblings share. For the first sixteen years of her life, Octavia was Bellamy’s biggest burden, and pretty much his only reason to live. He had no prospects outside of taking care of his little sister, making sure she was as happy as she could possibly be in her tiny world, and keeping her existence a secret to keep his family safe. That alone is complicated enough - once you pile on six seasons worth of angst, betrayal, squabbling, sacrifice, and abandonment, their relationship becomes almost impossible to define clearly.

But one thing is for sure - these siblings love each other, to the bitter end, and there will always be a part of them both that needs the other.

I’m betting Bellamy’s primary motivation in s7 will be reconnecting with his sister, figuratively and literally. At the end of the day, their relationship is just as vital to the core of The 100 as other, more celebrated dynamics (like B&C). I’m invested in only a handful of things for the end of this series - seeing where these two end up is at the top of that list.

5 - The Fleeting Fling - aka Jasper and Octavia

Look, I love Linctavia, and I totally get why Octavia did what she did - but sometimes, especially during s1 rewatches, I can’t help but feel like she did Jasper just a liiiittle bit dirty. Their puppy-love was cute and harmless, and while I didn’t exactly ship it, I do think that their early interactions are Peak Delinquent, and cuter than they had any right to be.

The show then went on to squander a lot of potential by not allowing their darkness to play together later in the series. Imagine a Red Queen with a Red Knight, Jasper gone full serial killer/glorious executioner, after being trapped forcibly in the bunker. Octavia harnessing his rage publicly in the ring, using him, giving him power that neither of them really want, while they simultaneously only allow their softness to show around each other. It’d be right on the brink of shattering when the bunker pops, of course, because this is The 100 - maybe even Jasper himself would’ve been in the pits, instead of or against Kane.

The cuteness could’ve been twisted into some real prime darkness, but the show went a different direction - and on some level, I’m glad. The innocence of their connection and their friendship is preserved by Octavia never quite witnessing the depths of Jasper’s despair, and Jasper missing Octavia’s descent into darkness entirely.

***

Thanks again, anon! I’m sure that was more than you wanted, but that’s the way I do things around here - and I’m also sure most people sending asks know that by now, haha. 😅 I had a lot of fun with this one!

#octavia blake #the 100 meta #linctavia #niytavia #the blake siblings #stephspeaks #asks #anons #send me stuff

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desperate-entwives · 4 years

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And what’s he then that says I play the villain?

Merry late Christmas and happy late New Year, @infernalandmortal <3

Emori did the dishes like she always did: carefully, balancing the plates in the flat of her larger hand as she gripped the sponge with the other, dexterous in a way that comes only from necessity. She was giving her dishes extra focus, and after that would come cleaning out the fridge, and then going through her clothes for stuff to sell on ebay, and then and only then might she think about the audition she’d promised Raven she would attend that evening.

“Don’t you need more tech people?” she’d asked the night before, sure they were a rarity. “I could be a tech person. I’m good at being a tech person.” “Normally we’d beg for more tech people,” she’d replied, “but luckily for you, we actually don’t need them right now. And you need to get out of your comfort zone.”

And it wasn’t like she was wrong.

The chores (which Emori, incidentally, usually put off as long as God and Raven Reyes would allow) took about forty-five minutes, and she milled on the steps of her apartment building for a good ten minutes after, wondering why she’d agreed to this but knowing, entirely, that she had, and not just because Othello was one of her favorite plays. After the end of a cascade of problems (legal trouble, the end of graduate school, and helping her brother escape the abusive household they’d been raised in, you know, typical things) Emori had realized her ability to maintain casual relationships had almost disappeared, her roommate and best friend notwithstanding. The past three months had been a quiet spell; work at the lab and nothing much else. Raven, who volunteered as lighting technician and occasional stage manager with one of the hundreds of theatre groups in the burrough, was committed to helping her not fade into social obscurity.

It was nice. It was also annoying.

As she leaned against the complex’s glass door and wondered how else she could kill time and ignore her raging nerves, Emori suddenly noticed a guy standing at the foot of the steps, staring at her.

“What are you looking at?” she snapped, trying to resist the urge to tuck her left hand into her coat pocket.

Brows raised, he lifted his palms like someone surrendering. “Just want to, you know, enter my apartment building.”

Her breath came out between her teeth as a hiss. “Right. Sorry.” She stepped aside, trying to ignore the embarrassment flooding through her.

But at least it was a distraction from the nerves, which had dimmed momentarily only to rage again once remembered. She checked her phone. Two hours to go.

---

The time was eventually killed at Socrates Sculpture Park, and by the time the audition rolled around, Emori was calmer. Something about the way people took garbage and made it beautiful (though, essentially, useless) fascinated her. So when she stepped into the church basement that was being rented out for auditions, she felt confident. Excited, almost.

“Good, there you are,” Raven said, abandoning a desk where she’d been perched with a half-filled piece of paper on a clipboard. “Thought you were gonna back out.” “I’m a woman of my word.” “Are you?” Raven clicked her tongue and added Emori’s name to the list before handing her a small audition form. “Here, fill this out. We’re just doing cold readings today.”

Raven’s small desk was tucked into the side of the room: the rest of the space was taken up with lines of graying folding chairs, which had been cleared from one side of the room. Presumably that would be their stage area. As she made to go sit in the far corner, Raven rolled her eyes and gestured for her to come closer. “Why are you making this so hard for me?” Raven tugged on her sleeve and walked over to a dark-haired man reading from a tattered script. “Hey Bellamy, this is Emori. I’ve told you about her.” “I don’t know what you could have said,” Emori said honestly. “That you have stage presence and absolutely no experience.” “Thanks.” “It’s nice to meet you,” Bellamy said, grinning at Raven before turning to Emori. There was something about his demeanor that put her immediately at ease, and she figured there could be more intimidating directors. “I’m looking forward to seeing you read.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she said, and Raven elbowed her in the ribs.

---

While Raven signed the other actors in, Bellamy introduced Emori to a few other regulars with the company before settling in the front with the assistant director, a tall brunette named Echo who struck Emori as the opposite of calming. The audition process was entirely informal– relaxed, even, for such serious subject matter. Emori read for Desdamona and Emelia and even the titular character (“this is gender-blind casting,” Raven called when she was summoned up, “and the only limitation is that Othello can’t be white.”). She was halfway through a soliloquy when the guy who was staring at her outside her apartment building walked in. She felt like she was going to choke on the middle English and her words fell away because, yeah, that was him. The same sharp blue eyes and prominent nose. “Keep going,” Bellamy said to Emori before casting a glance in the newcomer’s direction. “It’s not your fault that some actors are rude assholes who can’t make it to an audition on time.” “I had a situation,” the guy said, so casually that Emori realized they were probably friends, and, as though to solidify this deduction, stepped forward to ruffle Bellamy’s hair before sitting down. After finishing, the assistant director stopped Emori from leaving the stage before turning, looking at the newcomer with either exasperation or fondness, maybe both, and saying, “Murphy, read for Iago.” “I’ve barely had a chance to read the sides,” Murphy complained. “Too bad,” Bellamy said, and cast a glance at Echo. She nodded, and he continued. “Emori, do you have the excerpt from Act Three up there with you?” Emori shuffled through the papers and found the scene in question, which was a dialogue between Iago and Emelia. When Murphy ambled onstage, she was suddenly aware of his physicality, which shifted a little bit once he stood across from her. It was the character, she realized; the sharpness of Iago intensified the sharpness in him. It made something in her liquify; it was a challenge, almost, and she tilted her chin up as he said, without being bid to start, “How now! What do you here alone?” “Do not you chide,” she said, familiar with the lines by now, “I have a thing for you.” He smirked at that, stepping around her in something almost feline. “A thing? It is a common thing—” “Ha,” she muttered, turning to keep her eye on him. “—to have a foolish wife.” “Oh, is that all?” she said, curling her left fist as though hiding a scrap of fabric. She turned away from him before dropping the information: “What will you give me now for the same handkerchief?” He stepped around her, glaring down as their eyes locked. It’s funny, Emori thought, exactly how intense eye contact could be, even when you were speaking to someone emotionally clothed as someone else. “Wh– what handkerchief?” he said, turning the stutter into a character choice relaying eagerness. The stutter wasn’t in the play, so Emori tucked that information away somewhere in the back of her mind. “What handkerchief?” she said smoothly, and smiled up at him like she had once at a policeman she’d bribed out of a shoplifting arrest. All darkness in the eyes, a bit of trust, a hook and string. “Why, that the Moor first gave to Desdemona, that which so often you did bid me steal.” “Hast stolen it from her?” he said, and a grin crept onto his face. That liquid unraveling again; she tried to resist it, to keep the mask up. “Okay, guys,” Bellamy said before she could articulate her next line, “I think we’ve seen enough.”

---

Emori left without Raven, who had to discuss casting with Echo and Bellamy for a while. After smiling at some of the other people she’d met (among them a quiet blonde girl named Harper with a strong stage presence, the kind that makes you stop breathing and listen, and her boyfriend, a dark-haired boy who worked with props), she started down the street towards the closest subway entrance. “Hey, wait up,” a voice called, and she turned to see Murphy jogging to catch up with her. “Hi,” she said, realizing that, though she felt she knew him after that reading, they’d never actually had a real conversation. “You’re Emori, right?” “Yeah.” “John Murphy,” he said, ducking his head a little. “We’re neighbors, actually.” “I remember. Sorry for snapping at you earlier, John.” He barked out a laugh, slightly self-deprecating. “I’m used to it.” She grinned, but said, “Well, you shouldn’t be used to that.” Something flashed in his eyes and she decided to drop it for now, because there was something serious under there to excavate, and she had to be careful about doing that these days. “You’re good,” he said, almost awkwardly, and she realized it was a compliment about her acting. A beat, and then: “I hear you live with Reyes.” “I do. We met in college.” “I’ve known her forever. It’s why she hates me.” He said it flippantly, so she laughed. “I take it there’s a whole story there.” “You have no idea. Well, you live with her, so maybe you do.” She and Raven were close, but she didn’t know all that much about Raven’s life before college. “I tend to think a past version of you wouldn’t be real anyway,” she said, choosing the words carefully. “You might be alone in that,” he said, and she realized they were walking in synch, the exact same speed and pace, in spite of his longer legs. “I’m alone in a lot of things.” “Mysterious.” She stopped walking and looked up at him. “Why were you staring at me outside my apartment?” she said, because she’d been wondering all night. He ran a hand through his hair, avoiding her eyes. “You were blocking the door,” he mumbled. She raised an eyebrow. “It’s okay,” he continued. “I liked that you were blocking the door. I guess that’s why. Also, your hand.” “What about it?” she said, defenses ready to manifest, covering all the doors. “It’s cool.” That took her aback. “Cool?” “Yeah, you know. Kinda badass. Your whole vibe says you could beat me up.” He grinned, and that awkward vulnerability slipped behind that sharp charm again. She was beginning to learn his patterns already and that one word, already, curled into her brain and started to live there. The implication of time lingering there in her thoughts. “I’m into that.” She laughed, and leaned against the railing of a closed shop. “Liar.” “I could prove it to you,” he offered. “Sometime. If you want.” She studied him, the way headlights caught in the sharp panes of his face. There were people everywhere, as there always were in Queens, but he was the only one she could take any notice of. She had the distinct feeling that he was slippery, and she’d caught him. “How about we take a walk, instead,” she said. “Anywhere in particular?” “Socrates,” she said, before she could change her mind. It was sudden, but she realized there was something in him she did want to excavate. The only way to keep herself accountable was to take him to her vulnerable place; the sculpture park, with all of its artfully scattered trash. “The park? I love that place,” he said, and before the words could register, her phone buzzed. So did John’s. Hers was a message from Raven: The cast list will be sent out tomorrow but you know who you got. And then, like an afterthought, another buzz. You know what the guy walking you home got, too.

She guessed John’s message was similar, because they both grinned as they looked up.

“Ready for marriage?” she asked. “It’s a little fast,” he said as they began walking again, “but I’m game.”

#ilu Amanda here have some theatre kid memori #memori #emori #john murphy #the 100 #one-shot #a little rough but I'm happy with it #sorry this is so late #I posted this on desktop hopefully mobile doesn't mess it up too much??

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atavisticenthusiast · 5 years

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S6 thoughts and SPOILERS

... under the cut. This includes information from 6x01 and 6x02 (I’ve seen both), so don’t read on if you’re avoiding spoilers. Lots about (Bellamy’s) psychosis.

Can I just say first that I am shocked, SHOCKED, by how much Bellamy and Clarke’s relationship has been foregrounded this season? Not that it hasn’t always been central to the show, but as I die-hard science fiction fan, I tend to be equally invested in characters AND their surroundings. The new world is gorgeous, mysterious sci-fi GOLD, and (to me at least) it paled before the character dynamics. These episodes - 6x02 especially - delivered on the emotional front, unlike S5, which foregrounded the action. Now relationships have BECOME the action.

Clarke and Murphy’s relationship stands out. He’s the only member of Spacekru to whom Clarke gives as well as she gets. She accepts most everyone else’s criticism. He’s also one of the few other people who have, at one point or another, been suicidal and isolated from the group. Since he’s the only person who witnesses Clarke’s psychosis-induced suicide attempt, he’ll be crucial in helping her address her mental health. And I do think that scene marks a turning point in their relationship; something in his expression softens when he realizes what she’s trying to do, and he immediately starts to talk her down. Which isn’t to say all is forgiven, but he might be closer to forgiving her than anyone but Bellamy. (Though maybe Bellamy hasn’t forgiven her as much as he wants to believe. More on that later.) Murphy’s also a loose canon, and between alluding to Clarke’s drawings of Bellamy, pointing out that the eclipse causes people to hurt those they love, and suggesting that he can’t shoot her because “Bellamy would hear,” he’s unwittingly propelling them towards confronting their feelings for one another. Thank you, Murphy.

It’s clear that Bellamy and Clarke are squarely on the same side when the season begins, and he doesn’t hesitate to speak up when Spacekru criticizes her. (Neither does Echo. Cheers.) In 6x01 and pre-psychosis 6x02, he actually seems a few degrees warmer towards her than he did in last year’s finale (and that includes the one-armed hug). He’s the only person that waits for her to leave the main ship for the drop ship. He touches her arm when they land and Shaw snarks at her and smiles. Then of course there’s the radio conversation (so much smiling, both sides) and tosses his radio awkwardly (doesn’t know what to do with his hands) when she walks out, suggesting that he didn’t get what he needed from that conversation.

And then the toxins begin to affect him. I’m not sure any of us will be able to explain this properly until the characters address it themselves (hopefully in 6x03, x04), because we only hear CLARKE’s experience of the psychosis (Abby talking to her). All she says aloud is “shut up,” and all we hear from Bellamy is the equivalent of “shut up” - we don’t hear what he hears. But we can speculate. When Bellamy begins to experience the effects, he is trying to enter the room that Emori and Echo have locked themselves into because he thinks Murphy will try to kill Emori. Though he shouts for Echo to open the door, the content of his shouting doesn’t have anything to do with Echo, interestingly enough. (Not to say he doesn’t care for her, we know he does, but maybe that he’s focused on protecting people who need protection.) Clarke, meanwhile, is trying to coax him back to the school house so she can secure him before he gets worse. He rounds on her and says, “Maybe you haven’t noticed, Clarke, but I don’t nEeD you aNyMorE.” Yes, his voice breaks on those words.

I have several thoughts here:

First, this is setting up a parallel line later in the season. We know they don’t technically need one another to survive any more, but that they do want each other. I can see this being addressed later in the season in a, “It’s true - I don’t need you. But I choose you,” kind of way, but then, we also thought they’d have a “what does your heart say” moment last season to parallel the “what does your head say,” so who knows. I like this concept though - you shouldn’t need someone to love them, it’s not healthy to be that dependent. But to want them? Even though you know you could survive without them? That speaks DIRECTLY to “Life should be about more than just surviving,” and Monty has told them to live. That is HEALTHY. That is ROMANTIC.

Second, he’s saying the opposite of what he feels (because he does still love her deeply, and right now he doesn’t have any other word for it than “need”), and this is an attempt to make her as insecure about their relationship as he is. We’ve already seen ample evidence that he is uncertain how Clarke feels about him. In these two episodes alone, he fidgets around her (tossing the radio when she bails on their talk to watch Murphy sing) and is still thoroughly shocked that she radioed him every day for six years. So saying that he doesn’t need her is his addled way of evening a playing field that he perceives as unbalanced (she sent him into MW alone, she chose the Grounders and he lost Gina, she aimed a gun at him, he poisoned Octavia and Clarke left him to die, etc.) It’s simply not true.

My third thought is a bit more of a stretch but takes their surroundings into consideration. He has JUST been talking to Echo through the door when he is distracted by Clarke, and “maybe you haven’t noticed” suggests that there is something evident about him that should prove to her that she’s no longer needed. To me, that says, “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I have a girlfriend now, so I don’t need you anymore.” Again, it’s more of a stretch than the other two, but YOU GUYS. He could be comparing her, again, to his canon girlfriend (and we know there’s a long history of him only having romantic relationships when Clarke is MIA) and suggesting that whatever he feels for Clarke he now feels for this other person. Non-platonic feelings. Still lying to himself, but he does want to believe it’s true. I also think the “maybe you haven’t noticed” is hilarious because (except for the night Echo defected), he has missed all of Clarke’s jealous expressions when she watches them together, and might think that his relationship doesn’t bother her when we know it does. So saying what he says could also be a way to elicit a reaction.

Where I am confused, admittedly, is when Bellamy tries to kill Clarke (and Murphy) and shouts that he is protecting an unspecified person or group of people. Does he mean that he is protecting Clarke and Murphy by killing them, or that he is killing them to protect other people? The two things that set Bellamy off are Clarke and his feelings for her, and his need to protect people (Emori + whoever else he’s protecting by killing Clarke). Saying things like “you’re going to die for real this time” seems like an odd manifestation of his fear of losing her again (maybe), whereas saying things like “how many times have you tried to kill me” left me confused ... she only left him to die once? When and why did this become a revenge killing? (Would LOVE to get some peoples’ thoughts on this ... though like I said at the beginning, I think there are some things we won’t understand for sure until the subsequent episodes are released.)

Then we see Abby, Raven, Jordan, and the Sanctum woman waking them up. Raven asks CLARKE what happened to Shaw (interesting - it wasn’t accusatory so does she think she’ll get a straight answer from Clarke and not the “he died a hero” story that Bellamy concocted?). Then Bellamy looks at Clarke with dawning horror, and although she’d been touching his arm, she releases it now. I think that, although he may have forgiven her, he is painfully uncertain about where HE stands with her and THAT is what we see during his psychosis. And Clarke now knows that all isn’t forgiven/forgotten, and hearing him say those things to her while she was hallucinating about all the people she loved and lost certainly took a toll. I wonder if she'll be worse off emotionally in 6x03, before experiencing some of the positivity we saw in the trailer. Also - I just watched the trailer again and there are a couple of scenes where it looks like she has some bruising around her neck ... namely, when she meets JR Bourne and when she’s in the blue dress at the rave. Would love a second opinion.

Anyway, there’s a lot more I’d like to discuss about the episodes but this got loooong so I’m cutting myself off. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, my Ask box is open.

#bellarke #bellarke spoilers #The 100 #the 100 meta #the100 season 6 #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #bellamy x clarke #john murphy #team cockroach #the 100 spoilers #the 100 6x02

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osleyakomwonkru · 5 years

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Octavia as The 100′s Jesus Figure, Part 3: Planet Alpha and the Second Passion of Octavia Blake

Now we come to the culmination of Octavia’s Jesus story. You can read the first two parts here (“Origin Story and the Meeting of Two Saviours”) and here (“Saving Humanity and the First Passion of Octavia Blake”).

As I said in the last post, Octavia’s first Passion narrative, after the bunker was opened, was incomplete, and thus she did not die on her cross - her mission continued. The opening of season 6 made this very evident.

Trial and Judgment

One thing lacking from Octavia’s first Passion narrative was a trial where she was judged by the people and by Pontius Pilate - now here in the cafeteria on Eligius IV, that aspect is fulfilled. Octavia reminds Wonkru of what she did for them, yet they beat her for it (“Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists.” Matthew 26:67). While the crowd wants her death, Abby as Pontius Pilate steps in. Pilate did not see a reason to charge Jesus - paralleling the fact that Abby is one of the only people who knows that Octavia is not guilty the way people believe her to be - and tries to wash his hands of the situation. Abby gets the crowd to spare Octavia, but only by telling them that living with herself was a worse punishment. With this final unloading of her own guilt onto Octavia, Abby washes her hands of her.

When they get to the ground, Bellamy steps into his role as Peter once more, denying Octavia three times - “What the hell is she doing here?” (end of 6x02), “What are you even doing here?” (beginning of 6x03) and “My sister died a long time ago” (end of 6x03). This last one is significant, because this was also the moment when Bellamy cast his final judgment on her and sentenced her to death in the forest - for what would follow would then be the road to Golgotha, the place of her crucifixion.

The path that Jesus takes to his crucifixion is known as the “Via Dolorosa” (Way of Suffering), and Christian tradition has determined a number of Stations of the Cross that are represented along this way where Jesus carried his cross. The main features on this route are the Falls (where Jesus physically faltered in carrying the cross) and the Encounters (where Jesus met people along the way).

Octavia has her experience of both of these on her way to the Anomaly. She is beaten and held captive by the Children of Gabriel, trapped in the Crucible and aged by the temporal flare, and as its effects spread, she begins to lose her mind. She meets others in her journey, including Rose, Jade, Diyoza and Gabriel. This whole experience in the wilderness finally leads to the Anomaly - Octavia’s Golgotha.

Crucifixion and Resurrection

Octavia’s crucifixion begins with her dash into the Anomaly - which she again does to save her people (Diyoza, the last she has of them). She runs back out what appears to be only a few seconds later (though we know it was much longer than that), but she hasn’t been resurrected yet - her suffering on the Cross has happened off-screen (with a story and experience yet to be revealed). She returns from the Anomaly in a state of limbo, as it were, unsure of what she experienced and unsure of what is to come. To complete her resurrection, she needs to go into her mindspace and face her demons - which she does successfully, and returns to life with her mission clear.

In the following episodes, Octavia meets those she’d lost before, and they don’t know quite what to make of her. Her commitment to do better and bring light to the world clear, she convinces Bellamy to go along with the peaceful plan to save their people. She convinces everyone to join her and Gabriel to save all of the people, not just their own. She dives through fire to stop the Sanctum priestess from using her self-immolation to set the tavern on fire.

In so doing, her status as a messenger is revealed to everyone - Gabriel sees the Anomaly Stone tattoo on her back, and it confirms to him - and tells the others - what should have been clear from the beginning of this story: Octavia is special in a way few others of this narrative are.

Ascension

After the dust settles in Sanctum, Octavia, Gabriel, Bellamy and Echo head back towards the Anomaly to solve the mystery of the Anomaly Stone, using the key that is tattooed on Octavia’s back. She presses the octonion, last symbol of the code - the first letter of her name, a sign that her coming was prophesied centuries before (“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.” Isaiah 9:14).

As the Anomaly rushes out to engulf more of the moon, Octavia remembers what happened in there (though we’re not yet privy to the details) and knows what is to come. Hope enters the tent, and to the shock of everyone except Octavia, drives a knife into her belly. Octavia’s acceptance of her fate and her whisper of “be brave, tell him it’s done” into Hope’s ear takes us back to the crucifixion narrative that we have yet to get the details on (“Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ With that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” John 19:30).

Bellamy catches Octavia in another image reminiscent of that of Mary holding Jesus’ body, and Octavia’s ascension follows immediately after, as the Anomaly claims her as its own again, and she vanishes from Bellamy’s arms in a swirl of green mist.

On This Rock I Will Build My Church

So what does this mean for season 7? Has Octavia vanished from the present narrative for all time, or will she return in her Second Coming?

Right now that’s unclear, and I know I’ll have many speculative posts to come over this hiatus. But the end scene does make clear that whatever happens, Bellamy is going to have a key role in it. In 6x11, Octavia reaffirms Bellamy’s status as Peter by calling him her rock (“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” Matthew 16:18), despite his earlier denials of her. When Octavia vanishes, her blood remains on his hands, a reminder that it was him casting her out that set her on this path to begin with. The finale closes out with him falling to his knees in the forest and screaming her name.

This should mean that Bellamy will take up the cause of learning his sister’s story - both the missing crucifixion narrative in the Anomaly and the story of her mission in the bunker that so far he only has bits and pieces of, likely told by people who did not understand her true narrative role. Once he knows her story, he’ll make his amends to her (which he’s neglected over the past two seasons), be that personally upon her Second Coming, or in her memory as he works to do better, fighting for the unity that she always championed.

The finales of The 100 always close out with a new mystery, but this is the first time one has ended with such an abrupt cliffhanger. While some finales have left some people’s fates unclear, such as season 1, this is the first one where not only is a fate unclear, but the circumstances surrounding it. We didn’t know at the end of season 1 if Bellamy and Finn survived the ring of fire, but had they not, there wouldn’t have been a mystery to it. Here, there is a very big mystery.

Why? Why end on a cliffhanger like this? Simply put - because Octavia is special. Her storyline can’t be resolved in a few short minutes, and after relegating her to the C plot for most of the season, that’s all they would have been left with. But by closing out like this, the show reminds us that she is an important - possibly the most important - part of this show’s mythos, and we need a whole new season to be able to properly tell that story.

Remembering also that this will be the final season - as decreed by JRoth, for the sake of the story he wants to tell, not the network - that further reinforces her importance, because if he wants to build to a final message with the show that isn’t the grimdark “no heroes, just survivors” motto the show has otherwise operated on (which is the rumour), there’s no better way to do that than by revealing the truth of Octavia’s Saviour narrative and making it clear to the other characters.

Octavia is special. It has been a long time coming, but it seems that the other characters are finally beginning to realize just how special she is.

#the 100 #the 100 meta #octavia blake #bellamy blake #biblical parallels #passion of christ #saint peter #saviour narrative #saving humanity #redemption of humanity

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bombshellsandbluebells · 5 years

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Hiiiii!!!! I was wondering, from your film opinion, how well do you think the 100 did with the psychosis scenes and the portrayal of them? (If this is a barrel of worms you dont want to open I get that!) 💕💕💕

Don’t worry, I’m ALWAYS happy to talk about filmmaking :)

When I first watched this episode, I distinctly remember getting the impression that everyone was over-acting in these scenes - so much so that it kind of took me out of the episode. Everything felt very over the top and fake. Even if I liked the idea of what was happening, the scenes themselves didn’t work for me.

Now that I’ve rewatched the scenes like 8 times, I think I’ve figured out why.

On the surface, the way that this episode was shot and edited makes sense - everyone’s going crazy, so let’s distort the image and edit things in an unnatural way, right? The thought process here was clearly to make the audience feel the same distortion/unnaturalness that the characters suffering from psychosis were feeling.

To be fair, that’s not really a bad idea. And maybe done with a bit more subtly that would have worked. (They used similar filmmaking in 5x11 The Dark Year and I think it worked a lot better then.)

Here are the problems (for me.)

1. This episode relies far too much on the cinematography/editing to sell the affects of the psychosis than it does the acting.

In fact, it actually overshadows the actor’s performances. It’s probably not intentional, but it feels like they didn’t trust the actors enough to make us feel what we needed to feel WITHOUT the aid of flashy cinematography and editing.

Let’s start with the editing. For the most part, good editing is invisible. Stylistic editing can be done really well and with great affect, but the drawback to stylistic editing is that it ALWAYS draws attention to itself. This can easily pull you out of what’s happening in the story and distract you. It can also make what’s happening on screen feel fake, because you’re being directly reminded that you’re watching a film/television. The less you cut and the longer you hold on shots, the more the audience gets drawn into the performances and the action of the scene.

There’s actually a pretty good example of this in the episode - when Clarke has her “Fine, I’ll be the bad guy” speech, the camera only cuts away ONCE to show us Murphy’s reaction. Other than that, it holds on Clarke, slowly dollying in as her speech builds. I don’t like this speech from a a writing standpoint - the dialogue feels cheesy, and while I think another actor might have sold it, Eliza doesn’t - but it’s well cut - we’re pulled into Eliza’s performance and the emotional moment because we’re not distracted by cutting.

In the psychosis scenes, on the other hand, there’s a lot of short jump cuts where they basically just remove a few frames at a time so that the position of the character jumps. And, in my opinion, there’s way too much of it. It’s more of a distraction than it is an aid to the performances, it draws way too much attention to itself in a very over the top way that feels fake, and it actually ruins the attempted suspense (more on that later.)

There’s also the cinematography. Every single time a character is suffering from psychosis, they shoot them with a wide angle lens, which distorts the image. The distortion is especially obvious when shot very close to someone’s face, which this episode does a LOT as a visual shorthand for “this character is definitely going crazy.”

A wide angle lens used with a wide shot (notice how deep the room looks; that’s distortion of the space)

A wide angle lens used on a close-up: (yikes! my girl has never looked creepier)

I think like the editing, this is a good thought in theory. The lens selected is meant to further the story of what’s happening, and that is the right thought process to have during filmmaking (unlike, say, let’s just throw a handheld shot in here for no reason because…uh…everyone’s doing it? My biggest pet peeve!!)

But the problem is that by combining:

a lot of jerky, stylistic editing that draws attention to itself and feels unnatural (as opposed to “invisible” editing you don’t notice)

a lot of jerky, hand-held camera movement

a wide angle lens that creates distorted images that feel unnatural

sound effects that feel eerie and unnatural and

the actual performances of the actors that are very unnatural

the scenes just feel a little too over the top.

So much is working at once to make things feel WRONG that the impression I was left with wasn’t the intended one, but actually “wow this feels kind of fake and the acting feels very over the top.”

I think the wide angle lens is probably a good idea, but I don’t believe the flashy, quick, stylistic editing aided that choice. And I definitely don’t think it helped the performances. (The one exception I think kind of works is when Echo is having her breakdown and hearing voices.)

2. The way the editing and cinematography (and sound mixing) were used actually eliminates any of the mystery of who is affected and when they are affected and just what is reality and what is the psychosis.

In my opinion, the strongest element of this episode COULD have been the question “what is real and what isn’t?” Is Jackson trying to save Miller from a very real threat of alien bugs? Or are they hallucinating? Is Murphy affected? Or is he acting in his right mind?

A lot of tension actually comes from this question and from us not being able to trust characters we normally trust, not just the fact that people are trying to kill each other. We don’t know who is affected and we don’t know what actions are being made under the effects of psychosis. That is a situation RIPE for tension.

The problem is the editing and cinematography actually keeps ruining this mystery! Over and over again.

Let’s start with the first psychosis scene. Clarke and Bellamy rush into the room with Miller and Jackson to see chaos.

Here’s how the writing of the scene sets up tension and mystery:

We know that the planet is making people go crazy, and we know it’s probably going to affect everyone.

We know there are some crazy alien bugs that DID try to attack people and Jackson kept some in a jar with him.

Miller thinks there are bugs inside of him.

Jackson also thinks that bugs are inside of him.

The question becomes: are Miller and Jackson both RIGHT and is there a very real threat to Miller’s safety right now? Or are they both hallucinating?

The big reveal moment is meant to come when Bellamy sees the dead bugs. To be fair, I’m not quite sure if this moment is supposed to say “yes they’re definitely crazy, the bugs are dead” OR “maybe they’re right, the jar is broken, the bugs could be free” BUT it is clear that this moment is supposed to be some kind of “oh fuck” moment. Here’s the shot.

The only problem is that just moments before this shot - which is…supposed to tell us…something whatever it is - Jackson goes for the knife and the editing starts dropping frames to create jump cuts and adding unnerving sound cues. We’re essentially ALREADY TOLD the answer - that Jackson is suffering from the affects of the psychosis and not in his right mind - before that intentional reveal of the….dead bugs? broken jar? (I REALLY don’t know what the reveal is meant to tell me to be honest) happens.

The other big mystery later is meant to happen when Murphy finds Clarke trying to kill herself.

Again, the writing sets up tension and mystery:

We know that Clarke is unable to defend herself because she’s not in her right mind.

We ASSUME based on everything the episode has told us previously that Murphy is affected and that Murphy is a threat (because everyone is and he also already supposedly shot at Bellamy and Clarke)

We know that Murphy is already angry at Clarke and that his anger is probably heightened by the psychosis.

We ASSUME he’s going to attack Clarke.

Everything has led us to believe that Murphy showing up is going to end very, very badly. And that tension is great. The reveal that Murphy was fine COULD have been really, really rewarding because of how much it goes against our assumptions.

Except the MINUTE Murphy shows up, we know he’s fine, because the use of the distorted wide angle lens is our shorthand for knowing when someone is suffering from psychosis and Murphy is never once shot with a wide angle lens.

Even in the same scene, Clarke is always shot with a wide angle lens and Murphy is always shot with a normal lens.

WAY TO RUIN YOUR OWN MYSTERY AND CUT THE DRAMATIC TENSION TOO QUICKLY!!

To be fair, earlier in the episode when Murphy is muttering to himself that everyone is crazy, I didn’t actually notice the first time around that he’s shot with a normal lens. But during THIS SCENE, I IMMEDIATELY knew that Murphy was fine as soon as he entered the room, though I was sitting there going “wait he’s FINE?”

The tension - based on our assumption that Murphy is there to kill Clarke - could have been drawn out SO MUCH LONGER if the visual shorthand for people being psychotic hadn’t actually revealed the mystery.

Overall, I think the thought process to film and edit these scenes this way makes sense, but it actually fails in execution. It either cuts dramatic tension too early by revealing the mystery or it’s just TOO MUCH all at once that it distracts us from the actors’ performances and feels over the top.

I hope I clarified everything well, but if I didn’t, let me know!! And thanks for asking a question about filmmaking so I could rant for a bit :)

#the 100 #the 100 meta #filmmaking #filmmaking meta #my meta #ask

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chiseler · 4 years

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Ralph Bellamy

In spite of an extensive and busy film career that saw him in all manner of parts, particularly in his early days, the very name “Ralph Bellamy” became code during the classic Hollywood period for a guy who didn’t get the girl, a thick and thick-witted fellow that the heroine would strenuously try to imagine settling down with while the thin and stylish Cary Grant, who was not made for settling down, waited for her to come to her senses. And if he were merely that, merely the obviously lackluster placeholder option in romantic comedies like Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth (1937) and Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday (1940), he might not be worth writing or thinking about. But just look at him closer, or remember what he was doing for a moment, and the picture immediately gets much stranger, and more disturbing, than that.

When I think of Ralph Bellamy, the first thing that comes to mind is a single concluding shot of him in the masterfully timed scene in The Awful Truth where Irene Dunne, Grant and Bellamy are in a fancy nightclub and Grant’s Southern girl date Dixie Belle Lee (Joyce Compton) gets up to do an embarrassing nightclub act to a song called “My Dreams Are Gone with the Wind.” The song begins conventionally enough as a ballad, but whenever Dixie Bell gets to the line “gone with the wind,” a hidden wind machine blows her skirt right up over her head. Every time this happens, McCarey cuts back to the table with Grant, Dunne and Bellamy and their individual, mounting reactions.

Grant is mortified and keeps looking upward, while Dunne is mortified for him but also somehow disbelieving, even panic-stricken, which she builds steadily in a complex and funny series of push-and-pull facial spasms. The characters they are playing are very conscious, very fastidious, and so this is almost too much for them to handle, and so it’s easy to get so wrapped up in what they’re doing that you forget to gauge Bellamy’s reaction until McCarey cuts to a close shot of him staring at Dixie Belle with an alarming kind of half-formed, sticky lust, both blatant and unconscious. It’s a look of pure stupidity caught unawares, and it is so intensely imagined that it almost throws the scene off balance. Just who is this guy? What is he capable of? Bellamy got an Oscar nomination for The Awful Truth, which suggested that people felt a new screen character had been introduced.

His name in The Awful Truth is Dan Leeson, and Dan is an oil man who has a domineering mother. In His Girl Friday, he is an accountant named Bruce Baldwin, and Bruce also has a domineering mother. In that movie, Cary Grant makes an art of looking at Bellamy’s Bruce as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing and hearing. And so it begs the question: just what is he seeing and hearing? Maybe a proto-Norman Bates? Bellamy takes a certain kind of hearty American male dimness to such a point of larval weirdness that you begin to question just what might happen to the women if they did somehow end up with him. Those two movies suggest that the women would be bored with his niceness and long for Grant’s edgy playfulness, but are the men Bellamy is playing really all that nice? Isn’t there the suggestion of a pervert somewhere in his character, revealed for what it is in that close-up of him looking at Dixie Belle Lee with her skirt blowing up over her head?

We need to go a little further back in his filmography to find the most troubling character he ever played, Allen Macklyn, another rich guy, in Hands Across the Table (1935). When manicurist Regi (Carole Lombard) first goes to see Allen, he is seated and talks with his back to her for a moment and then turns around until we can see that he is sitting in a very glossy and plush wheelchair. She takes that in, and while she does so, Allen’s eyes light up with lust as he looks her over from stem to stern. When he talks to her, the dialogue tells us that his life is a lonely one, but that’s not what Bellamy is playing. If a more vulnerable or appealing actor had played Allen Macklyn, the way the film uses him as a stopgap might be somewhat unpleasant, but because it’s pervy Bellamy, he lets us right off the hook. When it becomes clear that Lombard’s Regi is going to marry Fred MacMurray, Bellamy doesn’t seem crestfallen; in fact, it is easy to imagine him offering to pay to watch them make love! There’s no pathos in his playing here, only that note of creeping and unsatisfied horniness that was a fallback mode for Bellamy, his most distinctive contribution to the screen. Whenever he does it, I’m always torn between “Ick!” and perverse fascination.

Dig a little further back in his career, in the films before he became “Ralph Bellamy” or “that guy in the movies, Ralph Bellamy,” as Cary Grant meta-ishly calls him in His Girl Friday, and you will find even odder things, slow-talking judges who seem horribly stubborn and sure of their own power, gangsters who seem to have wandered into the profession by mistake but sure do enjoy themselves bullying people, reporters and pilots and society duds, all of whom share Bellamy’s intense and pre-occupied and immovable quality. The most startling moment in his films is probably the scene where he unexpectedly punches the vampy Constance Cummings in the face in This Man Is Mine (1934), as if a beast in him might be woken up from its slumber if you weren’t too careful. He worked a lot in the early 1930s, averaging between seven to nine movies a year, and he might be called an all-purpose player in that he could be put into most roles in his early days, but he bends everything to his own implacable, impenetrable essence, which could seem menacing even when he was at his sunniest (or especially then).

By the 1940s he was doing mysteries, but he was also very involved in founding the Screen Actors Guild, and he was president of Actors’ Equity from 1952 to 1964, honorably doing all he could to make sure Equity resisted the blacklist. In later life he made a kind of career out of playing Franklin Delano Roosevelt, again in a wheelchair, in Sunrise at Campobello, which he did on stage and then in a movie version in 1960 with Greer Garson fluting it up as his Eleanor. But the disturbing side of Bellamy was perhaps most fully revealed by his doctor in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), an amiable fellow who turns out to be in cahoots with a group of devil worshipers. He is creepy enough in that movie to suggest what Dan Leeson and Bruce Baldwin might actually have had in mind for those screwball comedy heroines.

He did a lot of TV and lasted well into the 1980s to play rich old codgers in Trading Places (1983) and Pretty Woman (1990), and these films were enough to show that his persona had changed remarkably little since the 1930s, which were a very different time. The thing about Ralph Bellamy that’s most unsettling and unexplained is that watchful, unchanging quality he had, and what it might have been hiding. By most available accounts he was a good guy in life. He married four times, the fourth time happily and for decades, and he was politically progressive and reputable. So why is it whenever he’s on screen my skin starts to crawl, and why is it that I sort of enjoy the sensation?

by Dan Callahan

#Ralph Bellamy #The Chiseler #Dan Callahan #Greer Garson #Trading Places #This Man is Mine

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