#romantic development

Ok so. He touches her shoulder to make her feel better. That’s not a move.

But SHE escalates that touch, making it more intimate.

She covers his hand with her own... I would like to remind the audience of another, similar action in season 3, when Niylah was caring for her wounds, and Clarke put her hand over hers and then moved it to her breast, thus escalating her first human touch in three months to sex.

So with Bellamy she puts her hand on his, and then nuzzles their hands with her cheek, escalating the intimacy to something that COULD be sexual again, but was, comparatively, actually much more about emotions than physicality.

Bellamy’s response to that was to drop the painful conversation and break the intimate touch and to say, “get some sleep.”

If it wasn’t a sexual move, or he didn’t interpret it as a sexual move, then it’s just an abrupt departure (he doesn’t even take his jacket, he walks out in his shirtsleeves,) dropping the conversation of who lives and who dies and suddenly no longer offering her emotional support for this terrible thing.

It’s kind of weird that he’d just ditch her when she needed emotional support for this HUGE list issue. So then that makes me wonder why he’d leave like that. (Forgetting his jacket, which has been confirmed is a symbolic representation of his need to feel armored against the danger of the world. Shirtsleeve Bellamy is open. Emotionally. Wearing a jacket that’s zipped up, he’s armored and got his defensive up. Running off without a jacket leaves him vulnerable. He RAN from clarke. Where was the vulnerability??

Oh yes, he DID interpret her move (same as with Niylah) as sexual in nature and it FLIPPED HIM OUT. He ran. From that gesture. 

She, meanwhile, stared after him sadly, and then went to work. Shortly after that... she went to bed with Niylah. So. Clearly sex WAS on her mind. She wanted him. She couldn’t have him. She went to someone else.

This leads to the next scene where we see them together. After Clarke’s with Niylah, she walks into the meeting late and Bellamy does what? He GLARES at her. 

My speculation? He knows where she was. With Niylah. And he is connecting her getting boned with the move she made on him right before. So what does he think? He thinks it was just sex and he was easily replaceable. He turned her down, so she got laid by Niylah instead. There WAS nothing romantic about her move on him, it was just sex in the time of the apocalypse, like all of Jasper’s group was up to, living it up at the end of the world.

The NEXT scene with them is him telling her it’s time to go and he is ANGRY with her. Clarke is very confused, she doesn’t know why he’s angry with her, I don’t think she connects anything to sex or Niylah or jealousy, because well, he wasn’t interested, right? she made a fool of herself and he turned her down. It couldn’t be jealousy or feelings could it? Nahh. It has to be OCTAVIA. Octavia? she asks, he admits he’s upset about Octavia.

BUT they have OFTEN talked of Octavia as a substitute for talking about their own feelings. When she wants to know how he feels, she asks about Octavia, when he wants to connect with her, he asks about Octavia. This is a pattern before this scene and after. Octavia connects them.

So, he gets over his mad at her, because they’re partners. Shortly after he thinks she’s dead for a moment and then he rescues her in the rover chase and then at the beach, SHE says that Octavia will recognize “how special he is,” and is terrified that he’ll realize SHE thinks he’s special and that move really was a romantic move that he rejected and she can’t face that, and he might not recognize THAT but he recognizes his feelings for her must be spoken, so he starts to say “if I don’t see you again,” and she cuts him off, afraid of the words, afraid of the feelings afraid of that if. 

And then they separate, because MISSION. 

That was ALL romantic development of the mutual pining type. Jealousy. Sexual moves. Rejections. “Does he/she love me?” and both coming to the conclusion “not that way” due to rejection/sleeping around.

Nobody believed my interpretation back when it happened, but people are now seeing it. Nothing has happened since to make me think my interpretation is inaccurate and a bit has happened that confirms it. Clarke has a tendency to go for the rebound shag.  (L,Niylah and Cillian.) Three times is a pattern. And oh they didn’t like me saying L was a rebound after the bellarke fight in Hakeldama, but patterns are patterns. And Bellamy’s jealousy has only GROWN.

This is romantic development. People think I’m making this shit up. 

edited to add the next ask:

Anonymous said:

What do you mean when you say the list scene where clarke makes a move and bellamy turns her down? Do you mean like him only accepting being on the list if she's on it?

++

He does stick with his childhood friends turned lovers plot. Seems like he takes the easiest route when it comes to the couples meeting for the first time, lol. 

It all depends on the premise of her knowing about their predicament, imo. If she does know what had happened, I doubt she would get jealous but would rather becomes Ai’s number one protector™ and would probably make sure that she was there for her at anytime. Their situation isn’t something to be envied. I mean, they lost their identities and are against a powerful organization that has already made attempts at Shiho’s life, so I think Ran would understand why her and Shinichi have this dynamic. After all, nobody understands better than Ran that Shinichi would do practically anything in his power to save someone. 

If she does not know what had happened, I think she would be sort of confused about Ai being this close to Shinichi out of nowhere but would probably try to understand their relationship. I think any jealousy would come from Ran if Shinichi showed any hint of romantic feelings for her or favouritism towards Ai. Ran usually gets jealous when she thinks that Shinichi romantically likes another girl, but becomes insecure when the girl likes him, like she was with Asami. 

And all in all, I think it would definitely be trivial if Ai’s the reason Ran gets jealous when in Ai’s mind, the similarities between Ran and Akemi are too many to ignore and I don’t think that Ai would ever hurt someone she thinks of as a pseudo-sister like that.

Imo, spicing up romantic development due to jealousy is lazy writing at this point when they’ve started dating. Okita isn’t a regular character and his role was there to create conflict though Shinichi wasn’t concerned until he heard that Ran was going to Kyoto and wondered if she would meet Okita. Again, real jealousy stems from the fact that Shinichi thinks that Ran might like Okita. The photo Sonoko sent was a bonus. At this point, Shinichi wasn’t sure where Ran stood, even though all of us could see that Ran didn’t like Okita romantically, and made his move by asking her feelings. 

A lot really. I mean, first, with that time jump, we needed to see that Bellamy had grown and moved on from the trauma of earth. Who better to show that transformation than the grounder who represented betrayal and brutality and murder and war to him? The one who betrayed him and almost killed his sister and held him captive. To forgive HER means he’s over the s3 bizness where he treated all grounders as the enemy who deserved death just for existing in some cases. We SAW him learn the lessons, but with the time jump and B/E he now INHABITS it. He’s grown from it. 

There’s also the parallels between CL and B/E. first alliance, then betrayal, then kidnapping, then working together, then saving from sucide, then forgiveness, then love. I know some people consider CL to be endgame, but my theory here is based on CL being over, for important reasons within the narrative. So to parallel two relationships that are important and transformative, but not endgame, and to show the longer pace of B/E which shows that Bellamy was healthier than Clarke was, is a sign of character development.

Bellamy needed a relationship in order to move forward on the ship, so he wasn’t a wreck. He needed to be a whole person, who COULD live without Clarke, because the Bellarke relationship is a relationship of equals, and it’s NOT codependent. They don’t fill in the holes of the other person. They are not INCOMPLETE without each other, They needed to be shown as complete people on their own. So showing that he’d not been destroyed by her loss meant having him accept love, accept that he deserved love. Therefore, he needed a healthy relationship. 

OKAY. This turned out to be A TOTAL EPIC post. And it’s too long so after the jump. STay tuned.

IT COULD NOT BE RAVEN. Wanna know why? Because Raven has her own journey. And she CAN NOT be second choice, because of her problems with finn and clarke in s1. Raven needs someone to be head over heels over her, if she’s going to have anyone. And if Bellamy had been in a relationship with Raven, CLARKE would always be standing between them. And with Clarke’s resurrection, Bellamy’s SOULMATE, Raven would be cast into second place, thus ruining Raven’s character arc, and putting Clarke into the SAME narrative of being the other woman, without any development. This would be a failure of storytelling, lacking growth and transformation which is NECESSARY for this story. 

As long as Bellarke is endgame, Br/aven could NOT happen. If Bellarke is NOT endgame, Br/aven is actually the CLEAR AND OBVIOUS choice for Bellamy’s next relationship. They already love and respect and like each other. Raven is a major character. The audience loves and wants them both happy. If Bellarke were not endgame, then Br/aven would have been. If Bellarke were PLATONIC, for real? Then Br/aven should have been developing all this time. But since Bellarke is an endgame romance, Br/aven CAN NOT happen romantically. 

THUS they needed a character to be his romance, to show him moving on, but it couldn’t be a character who was TOO essential that we would replace Bellarke with that ship, as would have happened with br/aven. Although it also needed to be a character who was tied to the major issues we’ve been dealing with, someone who maybe reminds him a little of Clarke even. Enter Echo. betrayals, ruthless, sneaky, beautiful, cheated in the conclave, almost killed his sister, does whatever she has to to save her people, loyal. 

I’d also like to bring up Echo’s name. And I think her name DOES matter. At first I thought it was because she was an ECHO of CL and that betrayal for Bellamy.  The myth of Echo, as the nymph who pined after Narcissus didn’t make sense to me, as Bellamy wasn’t a narcissist in love with his own reflection... UNTIL someone made the point that the classical concept of soulmates was one soul split into two bodies, so a person and their reflection COULD be a metaphor for this soulmate concept. Which made Bellamy in love with his reflection/soullmate Clarke, which now ENTIRELY fit the Echo and Narcissus myth. Echo is in love with Bellamy who is obsessed with his soulmate Clarke (who in s6 was ‘behind the glass’ like a mirror image! huh. Who was it that posted that theory!? that sounds like a confirmation to me.) Now again, Clarke and Bellamy are separated by this distance, and Echo goes in to find him? I hope Echo doesn’t fade away like her namesake did, but it’s possible. But Narcissus also dies at the river, in love with his reflection, becoming flowers, right? This actually fits my spec that Bellarke will “die” but in reality just be separated from their family and live out their lives in pastoral happily ever after. Anyway. The myth of Echo and Narcissus, means Echo is NOT the soulmate.

Also. JR said Clarke and Bellamy were soulmates. And fine, I don’t use commentary in my analysis... but I do if it fits, and this fits. They are SHOWN as being soulmates from season 4 AT LEAST. “you center her.” “you got it backwards.” for an example. 

Okay, but now lets get to the narrative. What I told you before is more about storytelling and tropes and character development. Or HOW you tell a story. Now we’ll get to canon evidence. There’s still some storytelling in there. I’m gonna start with s5, because that’s when romantic b/e showed up.

This was the big sign to me of what was going on with Bellarke and B/E.

The first episode of s5 was almost ALL Clarke. We were focused on her survival in the wastes. We were given access to her feelings and thoughts and pov. We were given her monologue.  Which was not a monologue.

It was a conversation, one way, with Bellamy. The voiceover of 5.01 was Clarke making her 2199 radio calls. Which is a romantic trope. They were, essentially like a diary, or love letters, or even a prayer, in a way. For that little bit of the story, in fact, huh. We could almost think of that whole episode as being Clarke’s tales of survival, told to Bellamy as a kind of epistolary tale. What we see IS what she said to Bellamy. Hmm. That’s interesting.

ANYWAY. My point was. The audience is put square inside Clarke’s head, and her head is “why haven’t you come home,” and talking to Bellamy and missing him.

THEN we get the scene where Clarke is talking to Madi about them, and missing them and then the camera pan up through the stars to Bellamy looking down on them, unknowingly, at the valley.

THIS IS THE MOST POETIC THE MOST ROMANTIC SHOT IN THE WHOLE SHOW. MAYBE IN EVERY SHOW EVER. It is a poem. She yearns for him, across time, beyond the stars, and he’s looking down on her, thinking she is dead, and the INFERENCE is that he’s yearning for her too, past death.

A love that literally lasts past death time and space. ULTIMATE EPIC LOVE STORY. And they are finally going to be reunited. AH, resolution for their separation and their love.

AND THEN... dun dun dunnnn, the plot thickens. 

Out of nowhere, the reveal that Bellamy and Echo ARE LOVERS. 

BAM! OBSTACLE. more, ROMANTIC obstacle. 

Clarke’s yearning was romantic in nature. We don’t see inside Bellamy’s head, but making the obstacle to their reunion no longer tech, but instead an established romance, means that the narrative has set Bellarke on a romantic path. Because otherwise another romance would not be an obstacle. Heck, Echo is not against Clarke. Even when she was threatening her life she wasn’t really against Clarke. She gets her. As a leader and partner, she gets her. Echo is ONLY an obstacle if the goal is a romantic relationship between Clarke and Bellamy.

That it’s set up this way, as a shock, is part of the romantic narrative.

THIS is on purpose a slap in the face. Because the audience has been set up to want them to come home TO CLARKE, to want a Bellarke reunion and to FEEL that they belong together. 

THEN when Echo is sure things will change between them, and Bellamy assures her that nothing will change between them on the ground, this is what’s known as DRAMATIC IRONY. The audience knows that Clarke is alive, they know that the bellarke bond is epic, they know that Clarke is yearning in a romantic way, they know that when Bellamy finds out that Clarke is alive EVERYTHING will change with his relationship with E. 

But then, we get a misdirect, or rather, a plot obstacle to B/E. Octavia is not forgiving and she’s scarier than ever. 

B/E is set up from the VERY BEGINNING as a romantic obstacle.

Then to prove it, we get

Clarke’s VERY shocked and jealous face when B/E reunites and kiss. That the camera focuses on HER, shows her watching them, and not on THEM means the main emotional weight of the scene is not the lovely reunion between loving partners, (thank god you’re ok i was so worried i’m so glad to see you again love love love,) but rather on clarke. (omg bellamy is kissing someone. bellamy is not mine. heartbreak, jealousy, shock!) See the focus is NOT on the established relationship, the B/E leg of the love triangle, but on CLARKE, the pining one, the one whose love is unrequited. The soulmate.

IF B/E were endgame, the focus would have been on the relief of the reunited lovers. But we’ve just spent like two episodes on the reunited (non-romantic apparently) soulmates, and the CANON relationship can’t even get an infocus shot?

A close up of someone’s face means the narrative wants us to feel their EMOTIONS. We got lots of those when Clarke and Bellamy reunited, when they hugged, when they struggled to regain their connection. But with the B/E reunion. Their faces were obscured, not shown, blurred.

Ok. And YES, Bellamy then moves on to focus on Echo and B/E, and saving her from Octavia, and that is to show that B/E is real. Because no obstacle that is not made real is going to be enough to really scare the audience into worrying that it could stop our heroes from their goal. IT HAS to be real. But even while Bellamy is proving to O that he loves Echo, the focus is NOT really on B/E, but on the Blakes relationship.  And on Bellamy and Octavia. This is teaching us who they are now, after 6 years apart.

Then there’s a love scene between B/E, or half a love scene anyway. The beginning. It is cut off in the middle and cuts to CLARKE getting ready to leave.. Oddly, the music for the scene stays the same, which CONNECTS the two scenes. A LOVE SCENE cut with a LEAVING SCENE. An established romance confirmed, a pining soulmate leaving aka giving up. And in the next scene, we get this dynamic reinforced... however, there is a change. The romantic couple is confirmed again, while Clarke watches. HERE we are shown a closeup of her face, tears in her eyes, all about how she feels about their relationship, after the close up of their faces I think, and sadness and love yes. this is real. Then Clarke steps back, straighten her shoulders and accepts it. She won’t interfere. He’s not hers to love. HOWEVER, then Echo LEAVES. The established couple separates. And we turn to Clarke and Bellamy immediately he knew she was there somehow.  

While B/E are split up, Bellarke are brought back together, although at this point they are non romantic, with each member choosing Echo for him. And we spend many episodes with them rediscovering their soulmate bond and getting closer and more intimate as they do so. While Echo has her OWN narrative and it has nothing to do with Bellamy or b/E. 

This leads to Bellarke making pledges to each other, over her daughter, and he swears to take care of Madi when/if Clarke dies. Bellamy promises to parent his soulmates daughter while his canon girlfriend is off risking her life. They bond as, well, co parents. Making them a family unit, Mother, Father and Daughter, though no romantic or sexual relationship between the two? 

Not so fast.

“Another traitor who you love.” Octavia lays out the issue. Bellamy loves Echo. Bellamy loves Clarke. She is comparing Echo and Clarke in his love. This is a ROMANTIC love comparison. She’s goading him. He doesn’t take the bait. Because he has a plan. 

Bellamy sacrifices his sister for Clarke’s life. Poisoning her. His sister who has been established as the person who means more to him than anyone else in the world. When it was O or E? He chose O and let E go off on a suicide mission to win a place with wonkru. When it was O or C? He chose C and poisoned O. That is an equation. Bellamy loves these three women. C more than O. O more than E. C>O>E. When compared, Clarke wins over Echo. If Octavia made it clear that the love is romantic, then Bellamy made it clear that his love for Clarke is deeper than his love for Echo, even if he’s not ready to face that or deal with it.

AND THEN SHE LEAVES HIM TO THE PIT. He knew he’d betrayed Clarke, but it is confirmation to him that Clarke does not return his feelings. So, when that’s sorted out, he has a moment where he’s choosing between Clarke and Echo (the earth vs the sword, it’s a heavy handed bit of symbolism so we don’t miss it.) He chooses Echo. It’s the logical choice. Head over heart. 

MEANWHILE, Echo and Clarke are having their own life or death convo. In which we find out that Bellamy loves Echo, Echo loves Bellamy, Clarke always cared for Bellamy but thinks him dead at her hand. NOT SO FAST. Bellamy is alive, “oh now you care?” AND THEN, revelation from the past FlameLxa tells her love is not a weakness, she was wrong to betray Clarke (canon love) and Clarke should not do the same thing (betray her love bellamy.) Remember also CL and B/E are paralleled. Remember also all the same players were at MW the original betrayal. L walked away, Echo walked away, Bellamy was under the ground, and Clarke stayed to get to him. it’s just interesting. So in the end, Clarke betrayed ELigius, spares Echo and sends her daughter (another love equation. Clarke canon loved Lxa, but she tells Madi she loves her SO much more than Lxa. Now she risks her greatest love Madi to war in order to save Bellamy. Here’s the equation. Clarke loves Bellamy>Madi>Lxa. We have two equations using actions to prove a primacy in love. Clarke love Bellamy more than all of her other great loves. Bellamy loves Clarke more than all of her great loves.

HOWEVER B/E comes back together to fight. As a couple. It is a couple reunion, but not as romantic as their first reunion, or their goodbye. THEN, they are fighting together and it isn’t romantic. And from there to the end of the season, the B/E romance disappears. 

HOWEVER, Bellamy learns that Clarke cares for him so much that she called him every day for six years. That changes his perception of Clarke, and how Clarke feels for him, and when she urges him to come in, he says, broken, I can’t leave them behind. “Not again.” With the understanding that leaving HER behind was the trauma that he can’t do again. 

So where did B/E go? It doesn’t matter. It’s literally not important to the narrative. Echo literally goes to sleep. B/E is frozen. What is important. Bellarke’s intimacies of saying goodbye to their families and their connection that is still there. And THEN them waking up TOGETHER and facing the loss of Monty, the revelations, the new world AND the commitment to be better, to be the good guys, together.

Known: B/E is a canon relationship. Clarke loves Bellamy and has been pining for him for six years. Bellamy loves Clarke but has moved on though he cannot ignore his feelings for her. Bellamy CHOSES Echo, but Echo keeps disappearing from his story while he focuses on Clarke and their relationship.

HOW do I know Echo is the romantic obstacle and Bellarke is the endgame rather than Clarke being the romantic obstacle and B/E being endgame?

Because the story focuses on the deepening relationship fo Bellarke, while his attachment to Echo stops it from moving forward. It focuses on the FEELINGS of Clarke about B/E, but not the feelings of Echo about Bellarke. It is never even presented. Her feelings are absent, when if her ship was endgame it would be about her feeligns at least partly. Now we do seem BELLAMY’S feelings, but his feelings which start out as about Echo vs Octavia, who hates Echo, shift and become Clarke vs Echo... evenn though Clarke does NOT hate Echo and accepts her just fine. So what is the conflict?

The conflict is that he can’t have competing feelings fo Clarke if he loves Echo. That means his feelings are ROMANTIC.

YES. He does choose Echo near the end of s5. This is because Clarke leaves him to die. Not because his feelings for her are not as strong (remember C>O>E) but because HER feelings seem to show she doesn’t care about him. UNTIL Madi spills the beans, and then he shifts back to Clarke a bit, even though his choice is STILL Echo.

Bellamy loves Clarke but thinks Clarke doesn’t love him so he chooses Echo.

Clarke thinks Bellamy loves Echo and not her, so she refuses to show him or admit to him that she loves him and she attempts to move on and keep him as her “platonic” soulmate.

Echo loves Bellamy and Bellamy loves Echo but Echo has no idea Bellamy also loves Clarke or that he is deciding between Clarke and herself. She has no say in this narrative. It’s not about her. It’s about Clarke and Bellamy. She thought the problem was Octavia. And while that’s a problem, it doesn’t affect Bellamy’s feelings for her. 

Echo has done nothing to make him not love her. Their relationship has remained stable. The only change is that there is another love in the equation. That Clarke’s existence puts B/E into jeopardy means that the Bellarke love is AT LEAST as strong as the B/E love. Possibly more... the love equation says more, but we will get more proof of that in season 6.

When we actually see the love triangle thrown into comparison CONSTANTLY. S5 had Bellarke and B/E separated. We got very few shots of them all together, and when we do, it’s Clarke’s jealousy and dismay on display.

However in s6, right from the beginning, the shots have all three of them in view. With Echo between Bellarke or Clarke between B/E often. Oddly, we also see Echo supporting Clarke. Or not that oddly. They’re a lot alike. She’s not competitive with Clarke, though. Even though there IS a competition. She does’t know about it. We see Bellamy choosing B/E with Clarke on the outside in ep1, but by the time they get to Sanctum, we start to see Bellamy choosing Clarke, or Clarke AND Echo (come look at this echo) with his focus on Clarke not E. We see him REACHING OUT to Clarke. (commiserating about raising their adopted kids without school, then the radio calls conversation which she runs away from because she’s scared.) Even in the eclipse psychosis, he goes after Echo first, but then turns his attention to Clarke. Murphy gets in the way as he always does, but he ignores everyone else. 

As time goes on, though, we get a NEW dynamic. He’s starting to argue with Echo. It’s over Octavia mostly,  but Clarke and Bellamy use Octavia to speak about their feelings for one another, without admitting them, so is that happening here? He’s using the argument over Octavia to express his feelings of frustration and distance with Echo?

Look. I’ve been showing you the love triangle. It is a CANON love triangle, which means B/E is romantic and requited and Bellarke is romantic although it’s unrequited. 

I need to show the love triangle in order for B/E to be A ROMANTIC OBSTACLE.

But just showing the love triangle means it could be B/E that is the endgame and Bellarke that is the love triangle.

How do we know this isn’t the story? 

Well aside from the love equations. We see Bellarke get closer while we see B/E bickering constantly over tactics, over octavia, over feelings, in season 6a. Clarke talks to him about her regret over the pit. The making amends scene is actually pivotal in their relationship. In the C/B/E love triangle. 

He accepts Clarke’s amends, and her claim that he is so important to her. He didn’t want to talk about it. But she is open and they are intimate. Cut to Clarke being PHYSICALLY intimate with Cillian, and Bellamy looking on with all sorts of emotions in his face. Sorrow, happiness, pining, regret, jealousy, acceptance, longing, who knows? And we IMMEDIATELY get Echo coming up, trying to talk to him about Octavia, and him turning ViCIOUS on her, blaming her for not being human, not being emotional, not being open (which clarke just was and is.) He’s STILL watching Clarke.  B/E is falling apart, not because of anything that Echo did, but because of something that Clarke did, again. HER actions are the deciding factor, and HIS emotions are where the choice is coming in. Echo has no control over it. Her emotions don’t matter. Her actions don’t affect it. He is not a character who has agency over this storyline, over her own relationship. This scene leads to Clarke being betrayed at the same time that Bellamy apologizes to Echo and Echo, FINALLY, opens up to Bellamy about her past. 

For the first time, Echo has agency in how her relationship goes, and Bellamy admits he’s a dick and commits to Echo. NOW. If this story were ABOUT B/E as endgame, this would be the point where their relationship rises to new heights and becomes stronger.

Instead. Clarke dies. And Bellamy’s attention and emotions go to CLARKE. Even when she’s dead dead, all he can think about is not having Clarke, how it’s not living, Echo comforts him but it goes nowhere. Instead, we see him grieving ALONE. Echo is willing to destroy everyone, but Bellamy chooses what Clarke would do, and keeps everyone safe. 

Until he finds out Clarke is alive, and then all bets are off and it’s a race to bring her back, canon, “you only care about Clarke.”

Yeah.

True.

Another pivotal scene. Bellamy leaves Echo to take care of their people and goes with Josephine to save Clarke. Echo says “Go save Clarke,” which is a parallel to Clarke telling Echo to “go save him.” Echo let Bellamy go to Clarke the same way that Clarke let Echo go to Bellamy. 

We’ve now switched who the primary relationship is. It’s Bellarke, not B/E. Echo and Clarke made the choice to let the other woman “have him.” They gave up their claim.

Everything we see with Bellamy and Josephine acts as if Bellarke is romantic and the true love in his life. An epic love compared to Josephine and Gabriel DOZENS of times. And Bellamy’s last ditch save her from death scene is GLARINGLY romantic in the way that all the best fairytales are romantic. 

There was never anything to compare to this in the B/E story. 

The next morning, Bellarke talk about leaving Echo and spacekru behind to save Clarke, and Bellamy still isn’t willing for her to risk her life to save them, although she insists, and they agree to do it for Monty. SO MUCH INTIMACY. And Octavia witnessed it.

Their goodbye is more romantic and more intimate than Bellamy’s reunion with Echo, even though she was STATED as at risk and being in danger. She almost died. And all she got was a hug, much like he’d hugged Harper after the fighting pit. 

The hug when Bellarke is reunited, however, is cast in romantic buttery light, with emotional close ups of their faces, and a rather intimate discussion of feelings and pain, with a parallel to their OTHER hug outside Camp Jaha, which was one of the pivotal moments in their relationship. 

This in contrast to the pat on the back he gave Echo before this, and how Echo, who is standing right there, disappears from the scene.

The final scene after this Bellarke intimacy, has B/E back together. ExCEPT there is NO initmacy. He’s the leader, she’s the soldier. No feelings. Just defense and tactics.

From the beginning of season 6 to the end, Bellarke and B/E have switched placed. on the non-romantic/romantic scale. Comfort and intimacy goes to Bellarke. Team work goes to B/E. 

THE JOURNEY of the love triangle switches from the primary leg being B/E with a side order of Bellarke partnership, to Bellarke with a side order of B/E partnership.

Technically, because we’ve had no time to sort out all these emotional issues with B/E (although we kind of have with Bellarke) B/E is still the canon ship. 

But that’s just a matter of dealing with the plot point. Because the NARRATIVE is now about romantic Bellarke, and all that’s left to deal with in regards to the B/E romantic obstacle is how it ends. (And for Echo’s side, she has been focusing on Ash, and her own independence. They have set her up to have a self empowered storyline, which means she does not need and should not have a king anymore. Bellamy is her king, even now. And she needs to be her own person. Which means B/E is doomed even without Bellarke.)

Thus I have shown why C/B/E is a love triangle. Why Bellamy needed a relationship ANY WAY. I take for granted that Clarke was in love with Bellamy and he was her fantasy boyfriend over the time jump. That Bellarke is romantic as is B/E, that the show has created a love equation for both of them. How the love triangle is shown in s6. How B/E fades while Bellarke grows, and that B/E is the romantic obstacle while Bellarke is the soulmate endgame. 

That has honestly puzzled me so much.

It is straight up like a love triangle, soulmates, dead wife back from the dead, enemies to best friends to partners to lovers, slowburn bellarke fic, with incredibly romantic tropes built in, like everyone sees it, and jealous!clarke, and he’d do anything for her, and all is lost, and lessons from the dead, and parent trap.

But there is a lot of angst. And I guess the obstacles to a romantic bellarke love story seem insurmountable. If you BELIEVE in bellarke, they just seem like romantic tropes and romantic obstacles on a long term romantic bellarke story and you can watch as it all falls together. 

But if you believe that Bellarkers are DELUSIONAL, and JR is evil and just fucking with us, and Bellarke is just PLATONIC, then you can’t trust that all the obstacles set up in s5 are just OBSTACLES, not an entirely different narrative arc in which Clarke and Bellamy do NOT end up together. 

I just reblogged a post which basically said “I love romantic angst, but if it doesn’t lead to a happy ending and LOVE being the point of everything then I don’t want it.” I think that’s what’s happening to the fandom. They have been convinced that romantic bellarke is NOT the point and there will be no happy ending. So therefore, season 5 is an angst they are not here for.

I think a lot of people feel that s5 is a betrayal of them. Personally almost. They think Bellamy betrayed not just Clarke by dating Echo, but also them. I’ve seen people rate s5 Bellamy as the worst Bellamy, and I’m just amazed at that because he’s so heroic and strong and protective and he saved all those people. He was the hero of season 5, not Clarke, and with all those people saying that Bellamy has been sidelined, this is his season to shine. But I guess the people who hate Bellamy in that season might be the Clarke stans who think it’s spacekru vs Clarke, and think Bellamy’s loyalty to spacekru makes him worse as a character. Or OOC, even though Bellamy IS protective so it’s not ooc for him to be protective of spacekru. It’s not like he isn’t protective of clarke also? He sacrificed his sister for her! BUT they may also be looking at it from Clarke’s POV. She idealized him and when he came back from space with Echo, she realized he was NOT her imaginary boyfriend, and then when he “betrayed” her and put the flame in Madi to save Clarke’s life, she believed he was against her and just as awful as everyone else. So fandom’s opinion of Bellamy is Clarke’s opinion--- but Clarke is much more forgiving than fandom.

Alternately, in the spacekru vs clarke fanwar, some people come down on the spacekru side. And they declare that Clarke is now the villain and they hate her. and Bellarke is declared dead now, as they love B/E. They love Bellamy from that season, but think him OOC in s6. Both factions hate Bellamy not because he’s *changed* but because his loyalty seems to focus on the woman they DON’T ship him with. I think both are inaccurate interpretations because in both seasons, he’s focused on CLARKE. Just because Echo is his girlfriend does not mean that he’s not still in love with Clarke. He doesn’t know what to do with it until he loses her again in s6.

BUT because season 5 has both Clarke AND Bellamy confused about what it means to be in love with each other and neither are ready to act upon it, the fandom sees that confusion first, instead of the love. 

The thing about a good love story is that we want to SEE the development. And a good love story should not all be POSITIVE development. Without the obstacles, we are not as invested in the love story as we would be if they had to FIGHT to love each other and to be together. Because it has to be IMPORTANT enough to the characters that they would overcome anything to be with each other.

Now, I know that Bellarkers are frustrated with the super slow burn of bellarke, and that’s fair. But that means they want a quicker love story than is shown. And that’s just not what they’re writing. I’ve heard people say, “Okay I know you’re supposed to show not tell a story, but it’s time to stop showing and TELL us they’re in love.” And that. Is just not how you tell a good story. And the people who say it KNOW that. They want to sacrifice the story being told in order to get culmination of bellarke, what they want. 

Look, I may be captain of #teamfuckingkissalready but I stopped posting that. There’s a reason. It’s because I didn’t understand the timing of the story before and now I do. It’s a SEVEN SEASON LONG EPIC LOVE STORY. JR told us that we would eventually get to the bellarke story, but not yet (he said that in s2 I think?) He told us that bellarke was the main relationship (that makes it a bellarke fic.) He told us they were soulmates. (and if that meant platonic soulmate then he would not have made B/E a thing only to have Clarke jealous of them kissing because THAT ONE SCENE made it clear their connection was indeed romantic, reinforced with Octavia saying “another traitor you love” and comparing b/e to b/c.)

They have been holding onto bellarke as a romance since season 1, doling it out in drips and drabs. ARGUING in the writers room about when to show romantic bellarke. They don’t argue it in the writers’ room anymore because THEY ARE WRITING A BELLARKE ROMANCE NOW.

BUT if people were convinced by the CL fandom, and gaslighted into not believing the textual evidence they saw with their own eyes that it was romantic, and bullied with toxic gossip from people who claim themselves as “authorities” and “in the know,” then they don’t see the romantic storyline anymore, but only that the obstacles have stopped the forward momentum of romantic bellarke.

That’s not true. Bellarke romantic development has continued forward, but a few canon scenes of B/E makes them thing none of the romantic bellarke matters anymore. Bellamy was STARING at Clarke, jealous of Cillian, and picking a fight with Echo because she wasn’t more like Clarke, and THEN abandoned Echo at the shield to disappear with Josephine so he could save Clarke... and people think Bellarke is less important than B/E? When after the fact, he’s like “oops, i saved you and forgot about my girlfriend” and STILL tried to keep her from going back to save Echo et al if it was going to put Clarke at risk?

A story is not about disparate canon scenes. You CAN’T separate them out and say you know what’s happening. A love scene with Echo does not mean Echo is endgame... unless you have scenes before and after that MAKE it endgame, make it the primary relationship. INSTEAD, whenever there was a love scene or intimate scene with B/E, it was SURROUNDED by scenes putting Clarke as the hero, Bellarke as the primary relationship, Clarke as the one Bellamy would do anything for. But when Bellarke was in an intimate scene, it was surrounding with... more bellarke. Feelings. Discussions. History. Partnership. Devotion. OR in other words, the development of the bellarke narrative arc. 

I get very frustrated, because the people who think s5 sucks because B/E exists and Bellarke had their “all is lost moment” where it seemed impossible for them to get together, and Bellamy seemed to care for spacekru more than Clarke (not really,) are taking fandom analysis, which is often wrong, as more real than the canon.

IDK. I don’t really think it’s that confusing. It’s a BASIC love triangle plot. It’s just slow. So to me, it is clearly and canonically a romantic love story between Bellarke, which means I KNOW Bellarke are getting together. And all the evidence supports that. And so I can handle the angst. It’s “OMG CLARKE LEFT HIM TO DIE!! HOW WILL THEY OVERCOME THIS?!!” not “OMG CLARKE LEFT HIM TO DIE!! BELLARKE IS DEAD!!”

People who hate s5 seem to think Bellarke is dead. 

People who love the angst and pining and romantic tension of season 5 seem to think Bellarke is full steam ahead.

Oh. 

Okay.

Yeah. You know, that does make sense. 

I hadn’t really set up a plot or structure for the season in my head, but I like what you’re thinking. 

And also fits well with the call sheets we saw with two teams, Sanctum and what did they call it? Jump team? 

People were upset that Bellamy wasn’t on it, as if it was some sort of offense that his name wasn’t there. But if it was Clarke going to save Bellamy, that is SUPER sensible. And reverses the season 6 plot where Bellamy saves Clarke. Except this time she’s leading the team to get him back. Jeez. Has she ever led a team before, or has she always been a solo ambassador or scientist or rebel or teamed with Bellamy or under her mother? Which means Clarke will be back with spacekru and part of the family again. 

It would be silly to expect there NOT to be a Bellarke separation. There’s ALWAYS a bellarke separation.

Although there’s nothing to say that they don’t reach romantic kiss/confess/sex BEFORE he gets lost in the woods. Because THAT would be the culmination of s6, and it would raise the stakes of Bellamy being lost, and also would serve as the romantic obstacle in season 7-- getting them closer to romance as it has every season, but throwing ONE MORE OBSTACLE IN THE WAY OF HAPPILY EVER AFTER. That could work too. 

What was that call sheet? ep 7? Perfect for s7a to give us a romantic storyline with b/e break up, facing their romantic feelings for each other because he’s going to risk himself to save Octavia and she can’t bear not telling him anymore, building emotions, and then HIGH STAKES RESCUE MISSION where not only are Bellamy and Octavia at risk, but also the beautiful epic love of Bellarke. 

I like it. I like it. 

I don’t know if I can simply do a rating for each one. But let’s try and see what happens.Season One. 6/10. enemies to friends to...crush. They pulled out before the lovers. Can stand on its own and still be a relatively satisfying story. Not really a love story though. If you take it as a “platonic” relationship, it’s 10/10. SO. 6/10 romance. 10/10 platonic partners. As the beginning of a love story, though it’s not bad. It’s got some good set up. I just can’t rate it for that until I get the end of the story in season 7.

Season Two. 9/10 the most addictive of seasons. This is the one that got me. TRAGIC ROMANCE. No Happy Ever After. They start out separate, are surprised about how overjoyed they are to get each other back, start feeling the feels. Oblique love confessions. Devotion. Love’s a weakness. She was being weak. A separation driven by the essential misunderstanding that was based on how she was protecting her heart from love and HE thought it meant she didn’t love him. KILL ME. Then Clarke’s OBSESSION with Bellamy and keeping him safe and having faith and the reunion where he says “Together” and takes part of the burden. Ending in her leaving. Had me falling to my knees. GREAT. HORRIBLE. HOW DARE THEY. THIS FINALE RUINED ME. 9/10 for romantic pain. No HEA. This story should not be like this but I signed up for it so.... i will suffer and I will like it.

Season Three. 7/10. they spend too much time apart even though the time they spend together is ALL romantic and/or heart breaking and/or powerfully significant. The love they feel for each other is PALPABLE and still tragic, with the trauma and grief getting in the way. Hakeldama itself rates as a 10/10. The finale is 8/10 because they are coming back together as a relationship. TOGETHER.

Season 4. 8/10 The romance here was actually pretty solid and serious and continuous. They continue to be afraid and doubtful, and they spent those episodes apart for no reason, or for plot reasons having nothing to do with the topic at hand. This loses points for lack of romantic and narrative tension. Sometimes it seemed like there was no reason for them not to be together. YOu see the reasons but they don’t seem that important in the face of the end of the world. They treated them as if they were a married couple already, without allowing them to take the next step, despite narrative declarations and attempts to move forward than one or the other of them stops in their tracks. And ending as it did with them separated, gosh darn it. You suck. HOWEVER they are redeemed some with that 2199 radio calls revealed in the end. It would be a lower score for lack of forward momentum except the finale had them *this* close to getting together, they both felt it, and then yoinked it away, only to replace it with 6 years of distance and Clarke canonically in love with him. 

Season 5. 9/10. In an unpopular judgment, I actually think season 5 was WAY romantic. It makes Bellarke the subject of the plot. Clarke is canon in love with Bellamy. Bellamy is living his life with Clarke INSIDE of his heart. The introduction of the C/B/E love triangle is, to me, confirmation that they are treating Bellarke as romantic, not platonic. The freaking JEALOUSY we see when Clarke catches them kissing? *chefs kiss.* The fandom hate for B/E obscures the romantic nature of the story. EVERYTHING is about reuniting Clarke and Bellamy (or the blakes) even the valley battle is about Clarke coming to terms with what she did, who she’s become and how she still loves Bellamy and can’t betray him. The Clecho scene is nearly as important as Hakeldama. And Clarke’s face when she realized Bellamy really was the hero she always thought him to be in those long 6 years? Still in love. He is her hero. She can’t have him, even though he was her imaginary boyfriend, but she’ll take him any way she can get him. And then to end the finale with half an episode TOTALLY about bellarke. *chefs kiss* again. Cementing their soulmate relationship. 9/10. 

Well, it’s not required that love be healthy. There are lots of love relationships that are not healthy. Or that could be healthier. Love is not the answer. Love does not fix all the problems. If a person is messed up and they fall in love, the love doesn’t fix them, they’re just a messed up person in love. 

Maybe two messed up people in love. Sometimes one person’s mess will make the other person’s mess worse. Or they’ll make each other’s messes worse. I think those are the kind of relationships we tend to call “toxic.” I think people often got mad at me for saying CL was abusive because in their understanding of love, which could ONLY be good, love can’t be toxic. I was in a toxic relationship for 10 years and I can assure you, there was still love. It just didn’t make either of our messes better. 

Sometimes both people’s messes fit each other and they kind of fill in the holes or give the other person the right perspective or sounding board and they make each person BETTER. Sometimes love supports the lovers and allows them to be better than they are. Allows them to succeed. Doesn’t swallow up one lover. Creates something that is bigger than the parts.

I do think that’s one of the misunderstandings that shippers have. They think that if there is LOVE then that means a relationship is perfect and ideal and forever and good for everyone. And while that might be true in SOME stories (the whole disney ideal of love is one of the schools of fiction where it is) it’s not true in life and it’s generally not true in the more realistic or psychologically realistic stories.

So you have to figure out what kind of story is being told before you can understand what is going on with the love story/stories being told.

This story *is* absolutely telling us something about love. It just may not be what we think it’s saying, as shippers. Because it’s not written from a shippers, or romance genre, perspective... even though there are some genuinely romantic stories in it. 

There is no intention to make Bellarke obvious as endgame or B/E obvious as not endgame. That’s not the point. That is a perspective of shipwars, where one ship can win and one can lose. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU TELL A STORY. It’s how you play a football game. Shipping is a football game where endgame is the ball. That’s not a story, it’s a battle. 

A story is about CHANGE, about a character starting out one way and changing due to the obstacles in the story and the choices they make. 

If that’s the case, then what we’re looking at is the changes in the characters, in regards to love. And with Clarke and Bellamy, we have some major changes.

Clarke actually started out very loving, loving everyone, embracing everyone, even her enemies (bellamy and lxa most notably) and this allowed her to be able to understand them and bring them to her side. But the toxic message of love as a weakness absolutely destroyed Clarke. She spent 2199 alone, letting her love for Bellamy keep her alive and sane, and he returned and broke her heart by betraying her. So. Like. The lowest she ever got was when her anchor, her soulmate, her true love, turned out to be not only a weakness, but a mirage... or so she thought. She realized that was not the case and came back to herself and committed to being the good guy (her original vision of hope and humanity) and committed also to being Bellamy’s friend, because she believes that was all she could have. And then she gets bodysnatched and spends time in her mindspace where she learns to value herself and that she DOESN’T want to give up or sacrifice herself and she wants to fight and she reaches out and finds... Bellamy. And then Bellamy brings her back with the power of his love for her, and she learns how love is VERY MUCH NOT A WEAKNESS, then taking that lesson and bringing it back and using it to save her daughter and the rest of them and humanity in exactly the same way. She’s returned from the darkness to use her lessons and new powers to save her world (this is the hero’s journey, yo, finally. she’s back from the wilderness.)

And what is the power? 

Love. It is LOVE, nonny. 

In specific, Bellamy’s love for Clarke. Bellarke.

But lest you think this is all one sided, let’s look at Bellamy’s journey with love.

Well, I mean, he’s “the heart,” right? So that should be important to him, right? Even though, according to the “canon” interpretation of shipping, he’s never had a real love story, either it was sex without love or relationship with out story. Fandom claims that his love stories have been minimized, and he has been neglected by the writers, as the hero, from getting his own love story.

UNLESS you realize that the entire 7 seasons is Bellamy’s love story. He meets Clarke griffin in 1.01. He falls in love with her as the seasons go on, she becomes his soulmate, always separated from him by other love stories, politics, time, space and death itself, right? 

Bellamy has ALWAYS been about love, but in the beginning it was a very self abnegating kind of love. He was erased in his love. It was always for other people. HIs story with Octavia is really partly him learning how to claim worth for himself, find boundaries, say no. Season 4 was explicitly about Bellamy learning that he couldn’t save all the people he loved. That it was not his responsibility to take care of everyone. Season 5 had Bellamy living his life, keeping Clarke inside of him by living as she would want him to, internalizing her lessons. He kept her heart within his heart. He became the hero she believed he could be. He became the hero she wanted to be. He reached the end of his hero’s journey, and yet, his story wasn’t over.

The thing is, Bellamy in season 6? Bellamy wasn’t trying to “be the good guy.” Bellamy was trying to live a good life, like Monty and Harper, in love. Bellamy wasn’t looking for philosophy or even really saving his people. He was looking for ONE thing. Love. And he realized the CLARKE was that love. IN season 6. He was not looking to save his people, he was looking to save his Clarke, and he brought her back withe power of his love, alone. Once they were together, then he could go and save is people. They could be the heroes again. But now, his story is a love story.

He is the heart, teaching them all to live in love. And she is the head, teaching them all to live in goodness. And they can both do this because their journeys have BEEN such a struggle and they have been DENIED their goal the whole time. 

To be honest. This is my interpretation of the love story of Bellamy and Clarke up to this point and I can’t actually say that it’s done or complete or even that I’m 100 percent sure. Because the story is not over yet and no interpretation can be made, truly, without seeing the WHOLE story. However, I have enough evidence that I am speculating that this is the trajectory of the story. 

JR said that there is a complete story and there was a purpose to the whole thing, it wasn’t random and he did mean it.