Ramblings and Musings of skaifaya-heda

Season 1: In this season I really liked Bellamy as a character because he wasn’t one-dimensional like I thought some of the other characters were. I think that he had the most interesting motivations from what I could see, even if everything was about protecting his sister we learned more about him as we went on.

Season 2: Clarke’s immediate distrust of Mt Weather was exactly what I think a lot of us want to see in a character. When we know that something is going to go wrong and then don’t see the characters acting on it, blindly trusting those around them (like Jasper at first). On the other hand, I think that blind trust would be an accurate response by a lot of the original 100. They really were just kids and if they’re somewhere seemingly safe for the first time since they were on the ground, it makes sense that they would wish that it was real. 

Season 3: Octavia was really a badass in this season. We got to see her toughest moments and we had SO MUCH character development with Lincoln’s death and how that affected her. I think that she was a character where we could really see her progression to more of the dark side in this season, even if she didn’t go super dark until end of season 4/ season 5

Season 4: Bellamy was a rock to lean on in this season. The plot throughout this season really lent itself to Bellamy stepping up (even if we saw other characters like Octavia also step up in the end). While Bellamy might not have been a main focus of this season, we still got to see so much character development (particularly when Clarke almost shot him in the Second Dawn bunker) and his ultimatel leaving, no matter hte circumstances, of Clarke in the end left me with so many questions about him specifically. 

Season 5: There’s a reason this list isn’t my favorite characters, just the ones I found interesting. Diyoza was never, at any point, anywhere near a favorite character but I still thought her motivations and methods were pretty well developed throughout the season. 

Season 6: Murphy was my favorite character in this season because I loved his interactions with the primes and his character development that we got to see. 

So I’ve talked a lot about issues within and addressed in The 100 but I’ve never really talked about why I love the show itself. There are so many different shows that I love and all for different reasons; The 100, Shameless (US), Supernatural, B99, and more recently WandaVision. But, The 100 is a show I originally found as the book in 2015. I immediately loved Clarke as a character and Bellamy was always my personal favorite. After I finished the books I kind of forgot about the series for a long time (ie until season 5 came out) and then watched the entire series in a week when I was sick. 

TW: talks about canon-typical violence and death and suicidal thoughts of characters

Survival in The 100 is presented in a really interesting way. In some respects, The 100 doesn’t hold back on killing off characters. But in other ways, there are some characters that seem like they are able to survive anything (like Clarke). She was kidnapped (twice), dragged through the woods by Anya, shot by her own people, invaded a highly armed compound (Mt Weather), was tortured by her own mother, had a blood transfusion so an AI could be placed in her head that would kill her normally, survived a bone marrow transfusion, got almost burned alive by a radiation wave, captured again and had a shock collar on, and literally survived her body being overtaken by Josephine where she was thought dead. 

TW: mental health, suicide, substance abuse as a coping mechanism, and grief of fictional characters are discussed here

I think that no matter where you look in media, mental heath can be presented in the cheesiest, most romanticized way that never gives a glimpse into what those characters are actually feeling because it all feels so fake. Understanding that everything we see in these shows is fake, we also have come to expect the media to rightfully represent the experiences they are portraying. If a show portrays a suicidal character, we expect it to be at least somewhat realistic. This is something I think The 100 does really well. Even if they can go a little science fiction sometimes (see Octavia fighting the Red Queen (ie herself) quite literally), this show portrays a lot of the raw emotions of suicide, grief, and regret. 

We look at certain characters in the show for this often. One character often used to show mental decline and coping mechanisms in this show is Jasper. As a character who I think was one of the most innocent initially, just trying to have fun with his friend on the ground and flirt with a pretty girl, Jasper is a great example of (possible) PTSD in a character. For all the innocence he came in with he immediately was speared through the chest after helping Octavia to not be killed by a serpent monster in the river on their first day on the ground. The real change that we as an audience could see about Jasper was Maya’s death and how he dealt with it. While some of us think it is unfair that he blames Clarke, Jasper had to hold onto Maya as she dies from radiation poisoning in his arms. The pain and grief that Jasper felt drove him to drive away everyone around him. Clarke, Monty, etc. were all pushed away from him and him into the arms of Jaha and Allie (an AI who would take over your mind with a chip that you would swallow). Allie offered what a lot of people experiencing immense grief may crave for, a way to take the pain away, but in this case it involved sacrificing your autonomy. When they knew the world was ending we were able to see Jasper’s pain and his dependence on drugs and alcohol. In the end, Jasper decided not to go to the bunker as the world was about to burn. Instead, he overdosed on tea made of the hallucinogenic jobi nuts after one last goodbye to Monty.

As a Bellarke fan myself, there are some things that happened in the books that some of us wish had happened in the show, with Bellarke being only one of them. I think this happens a lot, where we get mad because something that happened in the books didn’t happen in the show. But, do we really have a right to get mad at that? 

Here’s my proposal, the book and the show are two entirely different pieces of work, only meeting in fanfic and on platforms like Tumblr. Yeah there may be the same premise of both and they may have similar characters (to an extent) but the directions they took are VERY different. Why is this? Well, the book and the show started production at around the same time. All the show had to go off of was the basic idea and maybe some of the first book (doubt it). This creates a really interesting dynamic between fans of the two. I know that I personally found the books first and then wound up binging the show immediately after. Needless to say I was confused as to whether they were even in the same universe after a while. 

Let’s look at some of the things we wouldn’t have if either the book or show never existed. In the book Clarke and Wells were originally a couple and Bellarke got married. Two completely different people were Clarke’s parents in the book and they had been experimenting on children. Jaha was Bellamy’s father in the books and he didn’t shoot Jaha to get onto the dropship. Octavia was discovered on the Ark at 5 years olf instead of around 15 and was instead arrested for stealing drugs. (So many other things are different too but I can’t go through all of them). In the show Clexa was a thing, and so many characters that we know and love exist (Raven, Jasper, Monty, Miller, and Harper were added). Everything that we know about the grounders from the TV show only exists on screen, completely different in the book. 

So, let’s get started. I think that somewhere Jason Rothenberg lost a lot of us (if he hadn’t already) was Season 7 and the idea of transcendence. At first, I thought that Season 7 was just a play, a mockery if you will, of religious cults. I didn’t mind this at all (at first) because cults themselves are a horrifying concept and I have a fundamental problem with them. What I don’t have a fundamental problem with is religion as a whole. While I am not personally religious at all, I know a lot of people who truly believe it makes their life better and I respect that.

Here’s where my issue comes in. I thought the way the season was going to go is that Codogan went through all of this struggle just to fail. That’s what I would have wanted. I started to realize that wasn’t going to happen after I considered “The Anomaly”. Before Season 7 a lot of what was going on could b explained with TV science. AIs and cryosleep are one thing but green smoke that transports you to another planet and is a temporal thing is completely different. It almost felt more supernatural than sci-fi which is where I think a lot of people got disappointed. 

Another issue came from the transcendence itself. A lot of things that almost make fun of cults don’t bring in these hyper-religious elements and then actually make them happen. What The 100 did was bring in this “crazy” organization who thought they were there to save everyone and then actually made what they said true when all of the remaining humans literally turned into beams of light. The heavy religious terminology such as shepard, etc. combined with Bellamy’s complete character change alienated a lot of fans in my opinion.

THE 100 SPOILERS (A FAIR AMOUNT)

TW BRIEF MENTION OF THE SU*C*DE OF A YOUNG FICTIONAL CHARACTER

“Do better” is what Monty said to them on the video after Clarke and Bellamy woke up from cryosleep. But some might ask why they need to do better. As Clarke and Bellamy would put it, who we are and who we need to be to survive is different (I know I didn’t get that exactly right). I’ll admit, there are some things characters did that have nothing to do with survival (I’m looking at you Bellamy for helping kill an entire army sent to help you because your leader at the time was a xenophobic jerk). But, there were so many things that just needed to be done, at least from my perspective. 

Doing better is needed. The characters needed a place to start over, recover, and just survive. So, where else would they end up but on a planet with body-snatching night bloods and fog that transports you to other planets. Yeah, good job finding a nice planet Monty. 

Something I find really interesting is the sort of Lord of the Flies nature of the first couple of (but specifically the first) seasons. I mean, let’s face it, a bunch of children alone (kind of) in the woods, fighting against each other and other enemies resulting in hangings, and the death of children. Where have we heard that before. 

The episode “Murphy’s Law” in Season 1 (episode 4) does this best in my opinion. It looks at what can happen when sadness and rage fuel rash decisions. In this case, resulting in the suicide of a 12-year-old after she murdered the son of the political leader who killed her parents and locked her in prison (even though the son was actually a good dude). “Slaying your demons when you’re awake so they can’t get you in your sleep” was interpreted a little differently than Bellamy meant, Charlotte. 

SEASON 6 SPOILERS

One of the storylines of The 100 that I hate to love is the whole Josephine incident in Season 6. For those who don’t know, Josephine Lightbourne took over Clarke’s body after an AI chip holding her consciousness was inserted into Clarke’s neck against her will. Ignoring the pseudo-tv-science, I think that this situation really goes into some of the most interesting things about Clarke’s character. Through seeing into her mind (literally), we were able to see Clarke’s insecurities, her fears, her regrets. All in all, it provides a really deep insight into her mind and thoughts.

The show also does a pretty good job of looking at Clarke’s mental state as she goes through this complete loss of control over her own body. She is determined, finding out how to make Josephine tap more code onto her shoulder to let her friends know that she is alive. But, there are also times where she just seems tired, like she wants to give up. 

Something about this whole storyline that I think was actually well done (as well as season 6 could get) was how this looked at Clarke’s relationship with the other characters (specifically Spacekru). It still hits me hard that Murphy was pretty much the only one to realize something was wrong with Clare (until Bellamy). Clarke was so invisible to people that only when Josephine didn’t know the language correctly did anyone, later on, realize anything. Clarke was so alienated by Spacekru after Season 5 that they didn’t notice when someone literally took over her body. 

SPOILER WARNING FOR SEASON 7 OF THE 100 Let me just start off by saying that Bellamy Blake is probably one of my favorite characters on The 100 to look at how he’s progressed. Not only did he start off as the protective brother willing to do anything for Octavia and end up poisoning her (with some good reason), but he also just has really interesting dynamics with other characters. I’m going to look at the whole Pike incident, Clarke, and his death. 

I think it’s safe to say that when all of us Bellamy fans saw his interactions with Pike we were screaming at our screens in frustration. Not only did Bellamy stand by as Pike was one of the most hated characters in the history of The 100, but we also got to see the aftermath of these interactions. I’m not going to go into details about this situation but I think that the most interesting part about all of this was how his interactions with Octavia changed after Lincoln’s death. This is really the reason why the Blake siblings’ relationship was damaged, at least at the beginning. 

I’m also not going to hide that I personally prefer Bellarke to Clexa. It’s not exactly the most popular opinion but I just think the characters mesh better. Clarke’s relationship with Bellamy, even though it was never romantic in the series (AND THEY WERE FREAKING MARRIED IN THE BOOKS), is probably one of the most complex within this series. I’m not even going to touch on all of the baitings the writers put into the series between Bellamy and Clarke but that’s a whole different issue. They started with a strained relationship, went to a point where Clarke would let TonDC be blown up to not put Bellamy in danger, to Bellamy putting the flame in Madi’s head and Clarke leaving him at the fighting pits, and finally to Clarke being responsible for his death. All in all, it was a ride.

My biggest issue with how they portrayed Bellamy in Season 7 is the idea that Bellamy could betray not only Clarke but all of his family like he did. Something I loved between the characters of this show is the unrelenting loyalty, even after everything they’ve been through, between them. I think it was completely out of character for Bellamy to betray them after a cult-like religious journey on a frozen planet and I would prefer a rewrite of honestly the last two seasons. 

(trigger warning: brief mention of suicidal thoughts of a fictional character)

While there are many characters from “The 100” that I find really interesting to talk about, none compare to how passionate I get when I’m talking about our very own Clarke Griffin. From the beginning, Clarke has had fans and haters both within the show and out. Somethings I find fascinating about this character are the constant moral conflicts she is faced with, as well as the way other characters viewed her. 

On one hand, Clarke can be viewed as someone just trying to save her people. For every “wrong” action she took, she had a justification, even if that justification can be thin. She is just someone who is willing to sacrifice everything and everyone (else) for her friends and family. On the other hand, Clarke can be viewed as a character who is selfish instead of selfless as her catchphrase of saving her people implies. She can be viewed as a person who, instead of being just when she irradiated Mt Weather, did it for revenge. Or as the one who, instead of sacrificing herself by staying on Earth during Praimfaya, just wanted to be the hero. 

(also, side note here. I mean selfless in the terms of “I bear it so they don’t have to” and I love that damn quote)

But there’s a flaw within this ideology. Why would Clarke, in an effort to be a hero, leave Bellamy at the fighting pits to save Madi? Yeah she’s her daughter and she wants to protect her, but that didn’t win her any favors. Instead, those who dislike Clarke may view this as a revenge against Spacekru for leaving her there or against Bellamy for putting the flame in Madi’s head (which goes against a lot of what she stands for as a character). 

None of this is even taking into consideration Season 6 Episode 2. “Red Sun Rising” depicts Clarke in a suicidal mindset because of the red sun, hearing from her mother on a non-working radio that she is worthless. Would someone who’s only doing what they do for revenge or worship do something like this? Maybe. Maybe the consequences of her actions were worth it for a single moment of being “Wanheda”.

The 100 is a show notorious for the high amount of morally ambiguous characters with a wide range of reasons why they are that way. I’m going to focus on two characters though, Clarke and Octavia. Both of these characters have similar motivation behind what they’re vilified for, they do it for their people. 

Clarke irradiated Mt Weather, killing upwards of 300 innocent lives (even though they all profited off the draining of grounders and teenagers but that’s an issue for another time) to save her people. She also let the bomb drop on TonDC to save Bellamy. For the same reason she did these acts, she also injected herself with the Night Blood and stayed behind on Earth, killing herself from what she knew at the time. All of it was to save her people. Some people understood this perspective and some didn’t.

I personally don’t think that this is that dissimilar to what Octavia did for Wonkru. Her actions in the bunker, even the cannibalism and the fighting pits, were all for sheer survival. The environment of the bunker that she was in demand for those actions. The difference I find, between the characters’ views of Clarke and Octavia, is that even after the bunker Octavia continued to be in “war mode”. There was never a point where Octavia was at peace in Season 5, she was constantly in a place where she needed to protect her people with no remorse, even if it meant killing her own brother. But, Octavia was also a character who started with more presenting innocence than Clarke. She was the girl fascinated by the butterflies and loved Lincoln despite her suffering under the floor whereas Clarke was haunted by her father’s death from the beginning.

Now, none of this is to say that Clarke was more well-liked than Octavia (even though she kind of was if we’re being honest with ourselves). Thanks to the red sun in Season 6 Episode 2 we were able to see just how vilified Clarke still was and even how her actions altered her opinions of herself. That is where I find one of the biggest differences between Clarke and Octavia surrounding this mindset. After Mt Weather, we saw that Clarke couldn’t stay at camp because of what she’d done and during the “red sun incident” we saw just how little she thought of herself. This is in contrast to what we saw after the bunker with Octavia. Instead of presenting her as truly remorseful for what had happened, we saw her as brutal, unyielding. This isn’t touching on her actions in Seasons 6 and 7 but that’s an entirely different topic that’s actually really interesting (in terms of a character’s development and redemption arc).