#romantic obstacles

Right. A real relationship that serves as a REAL obstacle to Bellarke. He has REASONS to stay with Echo, chief among them being his self sacrificial personality, his doubt about whether clarke really loves him, his commitment to his family...  all major character traits that they’ve built up for 7years and have informed his relationship with Clarke. 

Who he is is why she loves him but it’s also why he can’t just up and be with her.

That relationship. 

Was. 

A romantic obstacle.

They gave us a love triangle to delay romantic bellarke. So there would be something emotional to confront. So that they could DEVELOP and EXPLORE their feelings for each other without consummating them.

The thing about telling stories, is that not everything in the story is meant to be the endgame.

Some things are meant for character development. 

Some things are meant symbolically.

Some things are meant as OBSTACLES.

I think fandom gets frustrated when storylines don’t end up being the Big Bad, or the End Game Ship, or the Main Goal, and the forget or never knew that there are supposed to be, like, side adventures to build up the strength of the characters, and there are supposed to be failures that test our characters and there are supposed to be relatonships hat served a purpose. 

B/E served a purpose. It was to illustrate the separation between Bellamy and Octavia and Bellamy and Clarke. 

The purpose of b/e was NEVER to be endgame, to be a lasting relationship, to be a fulflling and rich love story. THAT WAS NOT THE STORY. It was a side story, a supporting narrative in Bellamy’s reunion with the two most important people in his life.

The reason why I wasn’t answering all those b/e questions is because they were all trying to make b/e into a main story, when there was no story there. 

They really made their six years apart into kind of parallel and separate journeys. They never met, of course, as he thought she was dead and he was in space, but they travelled in the same direction, always thinking of each other, looking to the other’s memory to keep their focus, their identity, and give them a goal in life. 

He was looking down on the ground, watching over Eden while she was looking up at the stars thinking of him. They were both hoping he would come home. 

They both found a new family. They both got to live life in peace and grieve, and think about the meaning of what they had done on earth, whether it was worth the risk, or whether they wouldn’t be like that again. 

They both suffered the trauma of their separation, but Bellamy had spacekru to lean on, to help heal him, and to allow him to move on, while Clarke was alone except for Madi, who gave her a reason to keep going, and helped her believe in love again, but as a child, did not offer her the support that she needed.

For that she turned to Bellamy, and talked to him every day.

And that caused their awkwardness when he came home to her, because her relationship with him had grown separately and alone, unconnected to Bellamy in reality. Here, they were NOT parallel. Because while it is my headcanon that he also talked to her everyday, (thus why he immediately knew what it meant when Madi told him she had been talking to him everyday,) while looking down on the earth, he thought she was dead and he had no chance of seeing her again. In her messages, Clarke was keeping herself tied to Bellamy. But his were borne out of past, memory, with no thought for being with her again, no hope at all. She had hope that they could be together. He did not.

Because as far as he knew,  she was not breathing.  (Omg. “you still have hope?” “we still breathing?” As long as Bellarke lives, there is hope for them to be together. He LOST her, so there was no hope for him. When he found her again, that hope came back. By the end of the season, it was clear as day.)

So coming back together, their parallel paths show that they’ve both grown together, in a way that has them still on the same path, but their relationship with EACH OTHER gets stuck. Because it was NOT parallel. She clung to the hope of him coming home to her. He had no hope of ever seeing her and so had moved on. Boom. Conflict. Not just conflict. ROMANTIC conflict. 

That’s the way I read it.

We tend to forget that a story is a JOURNEY, and the place it starts is NEVER where it ends up. Clarke and Bellamy have always ended up in the opposite state than when they started the season. Most notably in season 5 when they started the season irrevocably separated, Bellamy even thought she was dead, and ended the season complete and together and soulmates, facing a new world together.

Sure.

He’s romantically attached. He loves her and depends on her. 

Sadly for him, Clarke, and Echo, he’s more in love with Clarke. 

Yes. More. 

You….

We ALREADY HAVE CANON ROMANTIC BELLARKE.

That’s why I’m so sure. They’ve already started it. It started, without a doubt, in Praimfaya, left us in tortured cliffhanger land with 2199 days of radio calls to Bellamy Blake, ramped it up in 5.01 with Clarke wanting him to come home and looking into space at Bellamy wanting to come home and looking down onto Eden, and CLINCHED THE DAMN BELLARKE DEAL with that B/E scene and the dramatic irony of having a romance with E and him saying nothing would change between them WHILE THE WHOLE AUDIENCE KNEW THAT 2199 days pining Clarke was not only waiting for him on earth, but NEEDED him. 

Here’s the thing that people are confused about.

They’ve forgotten that BELLARKE is the story they’ve been telling for 5 seasons now. They think because B/E kisses and bones that this makes B/E the primary relationship and not a complication of 6 years, space, time and death, and the OBSTACLE plopped down in the middle of season 5 designed PRECISELY to keep our lovers apart until they get over their shit and finally reach the point of the whole romance.

There is not one romance story without a romantic obstacle. Now, not all romantic obstacles are about a romantic rival, but that they picked this as the romantic obstacle for Bellarke told me, before the season even started, that it was WITHOUT A DOUBT happening this season. Because Bellamy and Clarke have avoided looking at each other romantically or sexually, so that the obstacle to their romance was set up in episode 1 as being an opposing romantic relationship told me that this was IT.

I’m not shipping when I tell you I think Bellarke is happening this season. I’m writing a story. Or rather, I’m looking at how JR and his crew are writing a story. And how they put together the story elements and where they are leading. 

HOW it’s going to happen? That’s up in the air a bit. But as I see them putting things in, like the way Bellamy touched her when they first hugged, which indicated sexual tension, the reconnecting of “heart and head”– “heart and head” which was confirmation that their connection was STILL on a deeper soulmate level, and THEN the TWICE shown Clarke jealous of B/E kissing, which means she is showing CANON interest in Bellamy as a romantic partner… what we have is a canon romance story that was set up before the season started and is being brought into the main plot.

Welcome to the pain, my friend.

Yeah, we’ve all been asking ourselves that since, at least season 2. 

Jroth is a dirty rotten scoundrel who is pulling this story out like some sort of magic trick. And he is absolutely trying to make us suffer, but that’s how you tell a good story. And he’s doing it because he loves the story, and he loves us (he does, believe it or not) and he loves bellarke. FIVE seasons he’s been drawing out bellarke. Do you know what kind of commitment that is to a story? to a couple? To a romance, in the face of tv ratings and cancellations? To not get to the point of his main romantic pairing while risking the end of the story every year? In the face of public outcry and political controversy? And to STILL maintain the story? And to STILL continue with this slow growing, epic love story of star crossed lovers, faced with tragedy after tragedy?

He once, a few years ago, probably during the dark times of season 3, said that Bellarke was something that wouldn’t happen *now* but was an epic story that would happen in time. I wish I could remember what exactly he said. But looking back at it, I can see how he intentionally delayed the love story and built up the other layers of bellarke relationship, and deliberately put obstacles in their way, personal, physical, romantic, political, philosophical, emotional, psychological, ending s4 with no obstacles at all– but the end of the world, the actual stars, purgatory, and death itself. I mean. SHE DIED. 

So now Bellarke has overcome death, space, time and the end of the world to come back together and what stands between them is… B/E? 

Okay.

Fair enough. It’s not epic though. It’s kinda tragic and it sucks, but it ain’t no wine dark sea of stars and the gods of the apocalypse you know what I mean? 

And if you’re paying attention, which isn’t hard because it’s glaring and obvious, B/E is set up as a doomed relationship. This season should be about getting our lovers together. Should be? It is. We’ve already seen it. It’s set up that way and has been since episode 1 with Clarke looking up at the stars wanting to come home and Bellamy looking down on eden wanting to come home. Whether he was dating Echo or not, the reunion of Clarke and Bellamy is the story. And this show has ALWAYS been about Clarke and Bellamy, TOGETHER. It’s just this time, finally, the together is heading into the romantic, because the obstacle of them being together is not because they hate each other or because he’s risking his life in the mountain, or because of psychological and political turmoil, or because of the apocalypse. The main obstacle to getting Bellarke together in this season is a romantic obstacle. B/E. Which means Bellarke will get together ROMANTICALLY this season.