#I'm gonna keep the anti B/C tag off because I'd like people to know my feelings have shifted about them

[blodreina-noumou]

4, 12, 13! The 100 (duh), and for 13, you can choose the character

Thank you so much, my friend! 💛

4. Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?

This is known, of course, but Be//arke. Part of why I dislike them is because they’re such a popular OTP, and because I get a little bored with seeing that subsection of the fandom make everything that happens in this show about their ship.

That being said, I’ve been less salty about it lately. 

We will finally know, one way or the other, what the writers have intended all along, with the upcoming series finale. 

Either they will be an explicitly romantic couple, or they won’t.

Because it’s undeniable that they care for each other, deeply, or that we’re meant to get that impression, at least. They love each other, however ill-defined what exactly the nature of that love is has been on screen. They are each other’s buttons, the one person they’ll each go way too far for, even when other people would make more sense as hostages or bait. 

Bellamy spent all of s6 ignoring his canonical girlfriend so he could save Clarke. It was a snapshot of a few days within that universe, but it’s really hard for me to still be like “B/C shippers are delusional, smell my skeptic farts, mreh heh heh” when the past season emphasized their connection so much. He visibly mourned Clarke in a way that we did not see him mourn Monty and Harper, who he spent a lot more time with. He immediately supported Clarke at the beginning of the season, despite everyone else in his family being (imo, rightfully) very upset with her recent betrayals. He was shown to be in conflict with Echo more than with Clarke this past season - although he and Echo made up and are still solid, from where I’m standing. So that’s messy and kind of unsettling. What’s the plan with that?

Because if the writers aren’t headed towards an explicitly romantic relationship, they’re doing a hell of a job stringing B/C shippers along. 

And that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, regardless of how I’ve always felt about those characters as a ship. The writers and actors are far from oblivious about how that section of the fandom feels. The idea that they might be muddying the waters for no reason other than to fuck with people bothers me. It never used to, but it does now.

I’d actually prefer that they were headed towards a Be//arke Happily Ever After, than that they were stringing along their fanbase that way.

More likely, if history is any indication, things will still be muddy, one of them will die (my money is on Bellamy at this point, because of Bob’s subtweets apparently referencing Be//arke) and we’ll still find ways to argue about it for as long as the fandom persists after the show is over.

So at this point, they’re a NoTP for me, but I’m not super salty about it like I used to be. A year from now (hopefully) we’ll have the answers. Nobody can really say exactly what kind of love exists between Bellamy and Clarke until we see how it ends for them.

12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I used to say The Flame, but lately, I feel they really fumbled the potential that plot device had in s6. I just wasn’t as engaged with the Sheidheda concept as I could’ve been. Too many holes, too much missing backstory, too much blown potential in showing us other Hedas, outside of Lexa, Sheidheda, and Madi.

So these days, I’d have to say that I probably have an unpopular viewpoint for a Clexa shipper - Clexa wasn’t healthy, and was always doomed. The showrunners didn’t realize the sociopolitical impact that would have, because they attempted to take the same blase, non-issue attitude towards sexual orientation that the universe of The 100 has. I think the Clexa story played out exactly as it was always meant to, and if you strip it of its real world implications, it’s some of the best and most heartbreaking bit of character work that the show has ever done. 

It’s not about a timeless love story, but about the tragedy of a budding affection between two young women caught up in the politics of war and their opposing cultures - a tragedy which has nothing to do with them being wlws, and everything to do with them being oppositional leaders, and kindred spirits in a violent world. They were shaped into cold pragmatists, but around each other, they allowed a certain level of vulnerability and softness of the other person. That was what was beautiful, and the tragedy is in the truth that a connection like that never would’ve thrived in the world of The 100.

I’ll always love Clexa, but I don’t feel much like a Clexa, if that makes sense.

13.  Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

I’m going to go with Jasper. The general consensus that I see a lot about him seems to be that he was a better character before 2x16, that people miss Puppy Love Jasper. Some even go so far as to say that his arc didn’t make sense, that he was annoying or a whiny brat in s3 and s4. I couldn’t disagree with that interpretation more.

I feel a lot of people don’t fully understand the series from Jasper’s perspective. There is so much he’s unaware of, so much he witnesses, and so much he misses out on. There is so much implied loss in his life, much more than just Maya. I don’t believe her death is the sole thing that drove him over the edge - I think it was simply the final straw.

Before he’s locked away in Mount Weather, Jasper is shown to have a few close friends - Monty, of course, but also Finn, and Octavia. He spends the most time with all of them, and ends up losing all of them, on some level, by season 3. 

He struggles to forgive Monty for his part in the Mount Weather genocide. 

We never see him receive the news of how Finn died, and I think, given the way Jasper talks about him (“looks like Finn finally got his peace talks”; “you hear that Finn? he thinks he’s innocent, none of us is innocent!”) - I think we’re meant to assume that people sugarcoated it, and that Jasper doesn’t know the extent of Finn’s crimes. So in his eyes, he loses a good friend to a pointless war. 

Octavia falls in love with someone else, just a few days after kissing Jasper, and ends up so busy with her new culture that she more or less abandons him. Monty and Octavia (and later, Harper) all try to reach Jasper, but he’s too far gone at that point - he’s too alone. 

He also loses his parents (he mentions them in s1, and then we never hear about them again, so I think we can assume they died either in the Culling or on the way down to the ground, when the Ark crashes.) 

And he has his budding leadership crushed, his hope that he can somehow impact the future, and prevent the horror around him snatched away, by his former leaders genociding an entire civilization, including people who helped them, including the first girl he ever loved. She dies in his arms, though, in case the general horror of that wasn’t enough.

He loses so much more than just Maya.

He loses more than just about anybody, and it all happens to him while he’s fifteen years old.

Justice for Jasper Jordan. My heart always hurts when I think of him, and I hate to see people talk so poorly of him.

This is so long, and I could go on about Jasper forever, so I’ll stop now. Thank you so much again for the questions, and I hope you enjoy the essays you totally did not ask for, lmao!