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Hey, spacewalker!

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octaven for the 6 words?

Raven breathed; Octavia smelled like freedom

send me a ship and i’ll write a 6 word fic

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Raven Reyes and Octavia Blake after a night out - taken by unknown (everyone was too drunk to remember), 2021

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what do you think octavia's biggest strength and weakness is?

Her heart, for both.

Her heart is a strength when it encourages her to love, to trust, to look beyond tribalism and see the humanity in the eyes of the enemy, to believe in the good in people, to do what is necessary to save them all.

But it is a weakness for those same reasons - people all too often exploit her trust and desire to help, and she keeps giving them leeway to do so because she wants to believe that they’re also doing what they’re doing for the right reasons. Nowhere is this more visible than in season 5, as well as her relationship with her brother overall.

Season 5 Octavia is a shattered heart hidden behind the steel mask of Blodreina. Her trust and her desire to save her people were exploited by Abby in the Dark Year, and Kane and Indra further allowed everyone to scapegoat her, all of that heavily damaging her ability to trust or rely on anyone else to share any burdens again.

Until her brother opens the bunker - then she has a ray of hope again. She wants to trust him, she wants him to be the brother she believes in - but again that trust is shattered. When in 5x05 Octavia says to Indra “love is weakness”, she isn’t saying that like the Commanders, where they believe “love is weakness, to be Commander is to be alone” - but rather it is Octavia trying to remind herself that she trusts and loves too hard and too fast, and that people exploit that, even when she wishes it were otherwise. Which is why her response when Indra says “I love you, does that make me weak?” is “I would never say that to you, seda” because a) she clings to the hope that Indra won’t betray her again, and b) Indra’s way of life doesn’t make love a weakness for her the same way it does for Octavia.

And then Bellamy betrays and hurts her in unimaginable ways over and over again, yet she still wants to believe he’s the brother of her childhood. She wants to believe the best of him, even when almost every experience since landing on the ground proves otherwise.

Octavia’s love has always been selfless. She loves with her whole heart. She’s not possessive. She’ll go to the ends of the earth and beyond for those to whom she’s pledged her love and loyalty. Her love isn’t conditional, unlike just about everyone else’s. It’s this selfless approach to love that lets her balance both love for individuals specifically and love for humanity generally without any contradictions. 

Her love can save humanity, yet it can also burn down the world if it has been pushed past its breaking point, making her heart both her greatest strength and her most dangerous weakness.

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Choose: Octavia Blake and the Importance of Agency

CHOOSE.

We all know this word, and we know how it applies to The 100 - it is something Octavia says over and over, but do you really understand the full context of it?

The most important thing to Octavia has always been agency - “the capacity of an individual to act independently and to make their own free choices.” She spent the first 17 years of her life with no agency to speak of - first essentially locked up by her mother and brother, and then locked up by the Ark Council. That’s why, the moment she touched the ground and was free, that it was something that she seized upon.

You see it in one of her first conversations with Bellamy after they land - she says “I’ve been locked up, one way or another, all my life. I am done following orders.” To most, she might just look like your average rebellious teenager, but given that she’s never had the opportunity to exercise her own free will - this isn’t rebellion, this is freedom, for the first time in her life.

For the first three seasons, we see her exercising her free will and her newfound agency to do so many things - fall in love with Lincoln, become Indra’s second, as two examples.

After Lincoln’s death though, Bellamy was there again trying to stop her and take away her agency, this time though as a way of trying to assuage his own guilt. But by trying to “save” her, he was doing the exact opposite - pushing her further away and into a dark spiral. Eventually, after she runs away from Arkadia, Bellamy and Kane finally realize the one truth about dealing with Octavia - you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

Octavia, of course, is no damsel in distress. She doesn’t need saving. And at the end of season 4, she saved herself - her time away with Ilian and then her subsequent victory in the Final Conclave gave her what she needed to centre herself again. And that was *her* choice. She was still in pain, but perhaps a bit less broken.

Of course, this is The 100, and all good things come to an end. In the bunker, she was right back to where she was prior to season 1 - except this time the tables were turned. She was the one in charge, but still with the same lack of agency as when she was the girl under the floor. Indra, Gaia, Jaha, Abby - they all wielded her as their weapon and for their own purposes.

Octavia hates having her agency taken away, and likewise she hates taking it away from people - there’s a reason why she formulates every order as a choice, even when it is really an impossible choice (that is, there is no “free” choice between similar or comparable options), because that’s the only way she can even tolerate making such demands of people. “You are Wonkru or you are an enemy of Wonkru”. “Eat or die.” “Stay here and die, or march with me and live.”

But she knows as well as they do that it is an impossible choice. And that’s why the guilt and pain of those six years weighs on her. Someone who didn’t value agency as much as she did would have shot those people in the cafeteria without a second thought. But she cried and broke again, because she hated the necessity of it.

Which then brings us into the present of season 5 - for all that a lot of viewers say “Octavia punishes disagreement”, it isn’t true. She is constantly asking for options, only to get none in return most of the time. The only one who ever gives her any is Brell, and I have more to say on her in a different post, but back to the purpose of this one - agency.

It seems that Bellamy didn’t learn anything from seasons three and four. There was nothing he could do to “save” Octavia. All he needed to do is *be there* for her while she saved herself, which he utterly failed at, and recruited more people, like Indra, into his circle of miscreants to take away Octavia’s agency again and again and again, through ultimatums and murder and poisoning. Naturally, she strikes back, as anyone would, but as she especially does when her ability to make her own choices is threatened. It is ironic that Bellamy and Indra were trying to “make peace”, when everything they did ensured that the exact opposite would happen.

CHOOSE.

It means more than it does on the surface.

(If you’re in FB groups about The 100, you may have seen this post already.)

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what do you think octavia's job would be in the modern day? I've read a lot of modern au fics and everyone else's jobs seem to stay similar but octavia's is always very different

I don't really read modern AUs, so I don't know the different jobs you could be referring to, but there are very few fic writers out there that I trust with Octavia and her proper characterization, especially if she's a side character. So I don't know if the writers have put in the proper thought process into selecting the most appropriate job for her.

Because here's the thing about Octavia. I mean, it's a thing for every character, but is especially important for her - if you're writing fanfiction, you have to stay true to the characterization of the characters. You can change the plot, you can change the setting, the universe - but the characterization of the characters has to remain, otherwise they're not that same character anymore. They're just a face wearing that name but nothing resembling the person they were. If you're going to abandon characterization, you may as well just go write an original story, because it isn't fanfiction anymore, it's taking someone else's character names, an actor's face, and nothing else.

So anyway, what I'm getting at is that Octavia's a supremely difficult character to bring into a modern AU, specifically because her backstory - the backstory that makes her who she is as a person, which defines her characterization - is so particular to the setting of The 100. A hidden child, illegal in her society, never being socialized properly because she never knew other humans besides her mother and her brother until she was a teenager. There's a limited number of modern-day scenarios that translates to, but that's necessary should you want Octavia to be the same character.

It's not impossible, of course. I've written one modern AU, where her background is growing up in a cloistered patriarchal cult, that she and Bellamy escape after their mom dies due to being denied proper medical treatment. There are other scenarios that could work too - kidnapped as a child and kept locked up, that being done by her family for one reason or another, etc. But the cult scenario is the one I went with. The job she has in this 'verse, almost a decade after escaping the cult, is being the drummer of an internationally-acclaimed rock band that was formed by her, Raven and Gina (the story is an Octaven prompt). Raven and Gina met her in a pub where she was just fooling around with the drums there, but they saw promise in her and they invited her to join the band.

So all of that is a long-winded way of saying: I don't think there's any specific job that Octavia would have in a modern AU, what job she'd have would be dependent on the circumstances through which she was socialized into the normal world. To quote from Hypable's 7x02 review, Octavia "spent her childhood believing she could never become anything, so the moment her feet hit the ground, she realized she could be anything and tried to become it all at once." (emphasis mine)

That's the key to Octavia's character right there. She's supremely adaptable, she will jump on any opportunities presented to her and will do so with a hundred and ten percent of her heart. That's why it was a natural transition in canon for Octavia to go from being a fear-inspiring warrior queen to a nurturing farmer and co-parent. The same would apply for a modern AU - whatever scenario she found herself in after being thrown into the normal world, she'd adapt to that and that would be reflected in what her job would be.

If she landed in a scenario where she didn't have to adapt right away - where she was given time to breathe, to heal the wounds of her past, a place where she had a mentor who would encourage her to take her time in choosing her future, not pushing her in any specific direction - then I could see her being a teacher or a therapist, or working in law or politics as a mediator or ambassador. Because the core of Octavia's character is her belief in the equality of everyone, in the unity of humanity, and helping people heal and grow from traumas that she's been through herself and come out the other side of.

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Raven & Octavia: New Normal

for special agent sunshine eli

Octavia glanced up Helios' strong withers and bit her lip when she saw Raven hadn't moved, though they'd been back in Arkadia for awhile by then. Something occurred to her, and she stepped closer so only Raven would hear her; so no one else would ever know Raven Reyes had, briefly, felt fear.

"You can't get down, can you? Let me help."

Raven swallowed hard, her cheeks burning in humiliation; but a cursory glance around her reassured her that nobody was even paying her any attention.

Nobody, that was, except for Octavia; whose attention wasn’t even divided, it was entirely focused on Raven and tinged with clear concern. For whatever reason, it didn’t feel like it did when other people stared at her, though. Mostly it was her limp, or her brace that drew attention; but not with Octavia. With Octavia, she just felt like.. Raven. Not The Smart Chick, or The Youngest Zero G Mechanic in 53 years. Not a warrior, not a mechanic, not a hero. Just.. Raven.

Just a girl. A normal girl.

Finn used to make her feel special on the Ark, which was worth a lot to her, back then and back theres.. but Octavia was the only one who ever made her feel normal. Even when nothing else was. So when Octavia put her arms out for her, Raven didn’t even think twice before leaning over and letting the girl lift her easily off the beast’s broad back.

She didn’t let go once Raven was back on solid ground, though. Her hands lingered instead at Raven’s hips, and she bit back the urge to just tug the girl into an embrace. And Raven, for her part, didn’t seem to mind; in fact, she reached out and boldly tucked a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear and off Octavia’s face.

"Thanks," she whispered. "Keep forgetting I’m broken."

"You’re not broken," Octavia replied; quickly and quite severely. "You’re not, Raven. You just have a new normal to get used to. But you don’t have to do it alone. I’m with you every step, okay?"

Raven maintained eye contact, nodding just a little; and her voice came out soft and almost childlike in its near reverence for the girl from under the floor.

"A new normal."

Octavia smiled at her softly. "Yeah. How about it? You in?"

Raven couldn’t help a little chuckle at the hopeful expression on Octavia’s face, all lit up with a childlike excitement, and she nodded her agreement.

"Yeah, I’m in. Team New Normal it is."

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Octavia Blake and Raven Reyes, being stupidly cute.

Guys!! @toodrunktofindaurl drew this beautiful master piece for me as a Patreon reward!

I’m a proud pledger on Maryne’s Patreon page, because I believe she has a shit load of talent, and that such talent should be supported.

Please go ahead and check her out on all social media, she is highly talented and has a great sense of humor!

This is her Patreon page -  Patreon

And these are all the other places you can find her beautiful art - 

Facebook // Twitter // Tumblr

Thank you so much for this, it turned out even better than what I pictured in my head.

***** Please do not repost without tagging the artist and linking it to her *****

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I ship it...

Zoe+Sophie | Fakes | ep 8

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unmute this for the love of god

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“is this all you got? they locked me under the floor for sixteen years just for being born!” - octavia blake

favourite characters one / three the best of the hundred

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Just a little daily affirmation:

You’ll never be worse at writing than the people at the CW. Your writing will always be better than Riverdale and the SPN finale. You are a better writer

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#TheBestOfThe100: A Celebration Event

September 21st - October 21st

Nearly two years has gone by since The 100′s seventh season aired it’s last episodes. There are many things we as a fandom love about this show, and we should celebrate those things.

This event aims to allow us to remember what we loved about the characters and relationships on the show, and what we loved about the story The 100.

There are a three ways to participate in this event:

Reblog and share others’ creations during the event.

Recommend or Shoutout fics/vids/edits/meta/creators that you love, or works that have stuck with you ( @heartbellamy​‘s[creator shoutout pages]) are an excellent example of this)

Create fanfiction or gifs/edits/meta/vids based on prompts under the cut as well as in their own posts linked here: 

[FIC PROMPTS] // [GIFS/EDITS/META/VIDS PROMPTS]

You do not have to do all of the prompts and there are no set days to post beyond the 30 day timeframe of the event. You pick what inspires you as it inspires you and if none of the prompts inspire you, pick your own prompts. This is a celebration of The 100, all creations are welcome. (And, if you can’t make it in time, late entries are always welcome, too!)

Keep reading

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#TakeBackThe100

Day 5, Favourite Quotes: Screw Fear! I’m telling my wn damn stry!

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