#The 100 meta

[blogquantumreality]

Neo-Colonialism In The 100

I’d like to preface this by saying that I feel the Season 1 and 2 arcs are not implicitly in support of a colonialist “we have the right to take whatever exists here” narrative.

When the dropship lands, the young adults and teenagers (it’s hard to come up with one classification since we’ve got Bellamy at 23 all the way to Charlotte who might be 13 or so) don’t appear to be immediately targeted until they cross a river and Jasper unwisely (in retrospect, obviously) holds up a Mount Weather sign and yells loudly in what is obviously gonasleng.

Even afterwards, as wariness rises, the delinquents only secure for themselves a defensive space and Clarke tries to seek peace even though there are repeated incidents that make it harder to get. And Anya seems amenable to at least trying to negotiate something until Jasper’s itchy trigger finger ends up tilting the balance to war.

And even in the aftermath, the kids decide to take Lincoln’s advice and leave for a possibly more hospitable area - hardly die-hard colonialists intent on wiping out the indigenous population.

The Ark landing can be argued as the best of a set of essentially not-great alternatives, and luckily, none of the Ark fragments landed in populated areas. It could be argued justifiably that the Ark landing could have been better controlled to aim at a known uninhabited area.

The essential thrust of Season 2 is the discovery of a common threat amid efforts by Lexa and Kane, as well as Clarke, to secure a workable peace everybody can live with.

However, in Season 3, explicitly colonialist narratives begin to be articulated, which through the “lens” of the camera we the audience are asked to sympathize with even though there is no internal canon support for the allegations made by Pike and Bellamy. In addition, aggression and expansionism with no effort to seek peaceful resolutions are screaming neon bright signs of colonialist worldviews.

Even in Season 4, there are colonialist overtones in the meta-narrative surrounding the finale. It has been reported that S4 was intended to contain explicit S1 callbacks and that S5 is in a sense a “reboot” of the series.

What that effectively means is that all grounder identities have been essentially erased because the bunker, for all intents and purposes, might as well be dead; all the work that over a thousand people have put in has been for nothing. There’s just Nightblood Clarke defending her small patch of Earth against unfamiliar intruders.

[bellamyblake]

rant for 1x09 cause I gotta but under cut since I’m sure I’ll get hate

I really don’t get the O.ctavia and F/inn point here especially at the end of the episode. Yes, Jasper shot first but he didn’t make up the grounders in the trees-they were there and let’s not mention the fact that A/nya arrived with TWO armed soldiers at her side and all L/incoln said was “I was told there’d be no weapons” but surprise surprise there were! 

And Clarke was right to bring Bellamy along and keep an eye on them since she was sure the grounders wouldn’t keep up with any promises L/incoln or F/inn tried to make and she was right. A/nya’s whole angry speech is another aspect I don’t get-yes, the 100 are invaders in a way but come on, you and L.incoln specifically, observed them for ages (if he knew he wanted Clarke to come along as the leader, let’s be real and let’s kinda ignore the fact that the whole relationship with O is a bit...well...I can dissect that but I won’t right now); 

The point is they saw those were just children who knew nothing about the ground, had no weapons and fought against each other from day one. Those weren’t soldiers who went out there to seek land and kill the grounders-those were kids. A/nya’s other point-the falres? Sure, that probably caused fires but it was unintentional. Meanwhile what happened to them-they crossed Jasper on a tree and impaled him, killed and hunted a bunch of the others without any mercy and without stopping to think about asking what they’re doing here and what they do know about the ground (which is nothing); Her other point-capturing L.incoln and torturing him, yes, that’ IS bad, no one is denying that but that happened only after they hurt Jasper on day 1 of them coming down and killing 10 more delinquents and him stabbing F/inn. Let’s be real here, L/incoln isn’t some sort of helper to the 100 at first at all, he just observed them for a while and fell in love (weirdly) in O/ctavia which is why he blew the horn and saved her when he found her fallen. Does he want to change that later? Sure, he doesn’t think what they’re doing is right and he gets in conflict with his people but at first he was sent to scout, observe and possibly kill. 

So none of A/nya’s points on that brdige make sense. They knew those kids weren’t invaders-they observed them and saw them for what they were-children, with no way of fighting (like the grounder children did if we are to think like them and know about the conclave) or any way to support themselves. They are just barely surviving. Yet you went there and killed them. THOSE are acts of war. Yes, what Clarke, Bellamy and the others did wasn’t good either-capturing L/incoln and torturing him but they would’ve done and they did the same to them if we look at Murphy and what happened to him. 

The fight at the end of the episode between F/inn and O/ctavia on one side and Clarke, Bellamy, Jasper and Raven on the other is just...plain stupid for me. Yes, F/inn can want peace but he’s delusional if he thinks he’ll get it that way and O/ctavia if we’re going to be real is the one who acts out most as a teenager out of them all. I like this grounder and I’m gonna be with him for the sole reason that it will piss my brother off and that he is something different and adventerous that I want. She acts like none of the 100 ever got killed or hurt by them. Suddenly it’s all rainbows and unicorns and everyone else is wrong.

I’m not saying war and guns is the way but in this particular case Clarke and Bellamy were right and acted smart and in accordance to everything they knew about earth so far. The narrative blames them though just like it does later on many occassions. 

[bellamysgriffin]

why do you think lexa wasn't? genuinely curious/asking

happy to answer this one actually! so this is in reference to my bold claim that lexa's death on the 100 was not part of the bury your gays trope and i stand by that.

so the 100 was a show in which main characters died every season. when adc decided to leave the 100 there was truly no other way to write lexa's character off than to kill her. again, this is a show where lincoln would die episodes later, finn had died the season previous, wells died, monty and harper would die, jasper would die, kane and abby would die, and im sure there are plenty more i'm forgetting. main characters died all the time.

lexa is actually as far as i can remember the only canon queer character who died -- clarke, niylah, and miller all survive to the finale. there was no way to have lexa walk off into the sunset for a season and pop in and out. she was too consequential as a character. when adc left, lexa had to die, and i don't think the way she was killed was particularly disrespectful. in fact, i would argue that her death was the most resonant in the plotline long after she was gone. it advanced the plot, advanced clarke's character, and was a rather beautiful send off scene. lexa was mentioned post-death more than any other character on the show. i know there are some people who have issues with the fact that she and clarke had just gotten together when it happened, but that's just a common writing trope -- the character gets what they want only to die immediately after. super common.

now, that said, i understand that she was one of several lesbian deaths on television that year, and i don't begrudge any queer woman who mourned that death in a deeper way. there is so little representation that when a sapphic character we love dies so brutally it can feel like more than just a television death. that said, i don't think jroth (a man of many crimes) did anything wrong by killing off lexa nor killing her off in the way he did. it wasn't offensive.

the 100 is a survival show. as a queer woman i personally find it just as dehumanizing to demand that the only queer stories we get are happy as to say that every queer story must be tragic. and queer people deserve well-written, resonant tragedies. lexa's arc/clexa's arc on the 100 was beautiful and well-executed, and it wasn't offensive to kill her off. "bury your gays" is not just when a queer person dies. it's when the queer character is seen as expendable, is usually the only queer person in the cast, and usually not on a show/film where characters die regularly. it has ties to the hayes production code in which homosexuality was seen as immorality and was required under the code's rules to be punished, often resulting in queer characters dying or committing suicide.

i don't think that trope describes lexa. i think her death made sense for a show in which there was a lot of death and carnage, i think her character was well-written, well-developed and honored long after her death, and i think we would be remiss to say that she cannot die merely because she is queer when there are truly no other compelling reasons for why it would be wrong to kill that character off on a survival show. and i would hardly call it shock value, which is usually what the bury your gays trope is.

[frecklesandfanfics]

*whistles* Off to write an Abby/Octavia dynamic that would have been amazing to see on the show, but most especially in Season 5. 

It never sat well with me that Abby, who completely resented the fact that Clarke ended up leading them (Abby: they’re being led by a child! Marcus: So are we.) was written to become a drug addict who pushed Octavia to make harder and harder leadership decisions. 

Season 5 could have done with several more flashbacks but when I think on it, no matter how many years you shove in there, it’s hard to believe that certain things are natural character progressions. 

Abby puts herself on Death Row rather than not save Jaha in Season 1, and later she risks being put right back there by releasing Jake’s video message. She let herself be flayed rather than go against her principles and allow Kane to stop searching for the missing kids in Season 2. She tested nightblood on humans and stole the bunker with Jaha because her personal motto was to save as many of her people as possible. She’s a principled woman and a strong one. And you can like or hate this character, I honestly don’t care, but this is how she’s written. 

But if you are going to take a character from the place where Abby was--tough, ready to fight for her people, and ready to make the decisions she personally feels are right regardless of how tough they are, you need a little more than “she was having these headaches” to take her all the way to being a hardcore drug addict who didn’t support a leader she promised to advise AND harmed the girl who was like a daughter to her AND walked away from her own daughter, the one person she’s been waiting to see for all this time! It is impossible to believe it’s the same character if you don’t have more context, and even with context I’m not sure I would have bought it. 

Just something irritating me tonight. 

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[ultfreakme]

"Gojo should've gotten to live as a person-" THAT’S THE POINT. That is the ENTIRE point of JJK. Every single character who died was someone who "should've gotten to" do a lot of things. Riko should've gotten to live for herself, Geto should've had the chance to be a teenage boy given support and safety, Junpei should've gotten to live without fear, Nobara should've had the chance to let people in without fear, Nanami, Yuki, Mai, Higurama, EVERYONE.

Here's the thing, Gojo is on this list. Gojo isn't the exception because JJK at its core is a story about how overarching systems destroy people; bullying, capitalism, sexism, etc. And this system does not need people to run it. Which is why killing Kenjaku didn't stop shit because yeah he started this mess but its grown beyond him. Fuck, it was there before him.

This is also why despite Sukuna & Uraume being the only ones who are actual threats, nothing is better. The cast got rid of the higher-ups, jujutsu tech as it is, is no more. The major families are dismantled. This should be a victory. This is what the Sashisu gen pointed out as the problem but things have never looked more bleak.

Why? Because the problem isn't Kenjaku, Sukuna, curses, sorcerers or curse users. It's the existence of Cursed Energy itself. This has been pointed out multiple times by Yuki. Its the system and Gojo has been complicit to the system for a long, long time. He's also it's victim. Gojo says he's the exception a lot, but as everyone has rightfully pointed out, he was nothing more than a weapon to jujutsu society.

JJK has followed a very clear pattern to every character right from Geto to Junpei to Riko; characters are representatives of systems of suppression, and they will not escape it. I can't recall a single character that's escaped unscathed, much less alive.

Is it disrespectful? Yes. Is it demeaning? YES. There has not been a single character death that's been dignified in JJK. It's all on a scale of bearable to absolutely horrifying. It is genuinely wild seeing people resort to threatening the author AGAIN. Calm the fuck down. You are entitled to feeling upset about how Gojo has been treated but Yuta stans are being calm despite Yuta arguably suffering the "he is a weapon" thing WORSE. It's still a fictional character and JJK's narratives never treated Gojo with any exceptions despite the character saying otherwise.

[sunshine-zenith]

Something about Ambrosius’s reaction to cutting off Ballister’s arm

He drops his sword and looks like his mind went off line before doing a hard reboot. He acted on his lifelong training before he could process that the weapon he was “disarming” was attached to the man he loves. He looks dumbfounded and horrified, and sure some of that is probably “oh shit the queen is dead” and “did my boyfriend just murder someone?”

But

This face, the way he looks at Ballister here. I’m not seeing “what did you do?!” I’m seeing “What have I done?!”

[fuckmeyer]

the choice between Edward & Jacob is not a question of which relationship is healthier or which partner is best suitable for Bella. neither is correct. neither is best. neither produces a happy ending for Bella. at the end of the day this is still a vampire novel. any choice Bella could make would yield, at best, a bittersweet happily ever after.

if she chooses Edward, she gets the terrifying Breaking Dawn ending: a girl who rejected her call to grow up has hung her love & her eternity on an emotionally stunted partner who hates himself marginally less than he loves her. she's a teen mom with a kid she never wanted who perpetuates the generational trauma passed down from her parents. by keeping this child, the Cullens have set the stage for an uprising/cold war against the Volturi who are likely to take revenge in order to maintain power. Bella is living in a tenuous "dream come true" wrapped in a nightmare & doesn't realize it.

choosing Jacob is the true coming-of-age ending that rips the stitches out of a wound that never fully healed. even if we ignore the fact that she ends up with a man who sexually assaulted her (we must bear in mind Jacob's character is influenced by smeyer's racism, but it did happen), they can't have a secure romantic relationship. based on the high imprinting rate of the pack, Jacob will likely find his imprint in his lifetime & will lose himself to the imprintee. he will no longer be her Jacob. he will inevitably abandon her (whether he wants to or not), & she must reconcile with the reality that she will always be inadequate to Jacob's imprint. & say he never manages to escape the vampires? he will presumably not age for a long time, meaning the relationship Bella always feared with Edward (her being an old grandmother while he stays forever young) remains a possibility. this is the story of a girl who slaps a Band Aid on an open wound & calls herself healed while flinching every time she sees the shadow of the knife that cut her.

if she chooses neither (team therapy), her healing requires her to lose or be at least partially disconnected from everyone she cares about. Bella must spend the rest of her life shut out from one world while never fully existing in her human world ever again. she must always keep secrets. she can never go back home. even in the unlikely event that she manages to escape the Volturi, the threat of being hunted by vampires will never leave her. in addition, she must face her worst fears (aging, losing Edward) while always keeping in mind the immortal life that could have been hers, if only.

even the "healthiest" option produces scars that will never quite heal.

Twilight is a horror. Twilight is a vampire novel. Twilight is gothic. Twilight is fiction. neither Edward nor Jacob is a "bad" choice because neither will give Bella her happily ever after. the choice between Edward & Jacob is simply a matter of which horror story you prefer to read.

[aphel1on]

AURGH auwarghh the autistic parental trauma... the epi was wacky hijinks then dropped this on us out of nowhere... (sobs) laios... laiiiiooooos

[halcified]

ok. falls to the floor. something interesting i find about this omake is that reigens reaction to terus living situation is pointedly Not shown. reigen finds out that teru has no one and spends entire months alone in his apartment and his first course of action is to try to set up positive relationships for this kid while acting casual about it so as to not trigger terus defenses. insane actually

[theerurishipper]

Tim Drake, for no reason at all:

Dick Grayson, Tim's big brother in every conceivable way for the past several years:

[bellamyblake]

HI! I've read some of your meta and headcanons and because I love them I have to ask, do you think Bellamy would've still been made bad even without Bob asking for time off? What are your thoughts on it? I saw you didn't chose the easy way out like most ppl and simply call him OOC but you understood some actions in a different way.

aw, hey! that's so kind, thanks for checking out my stuff. i haven't posted meta recently cause even when i have thoughts i don't always share them but debate about it in my mind so i wont be annoying.

the short answer to that is-yes. i absolutely think bellamy would've been made the villian of the story no matter what bob asked for.

i think the season 7 storyline absolutely copies the season 3 one where the same thing happened and i think that the path here was the same.

he would've gone through what he did in Etheria just like he went through everything he did in s3 A's episodes-something painful would've happened, he would've accepted the idea of transcendence and then after making a few mistakes in which I still think, no matter how much Bob had filmed, the other characters would've acted absolutely the same-

because guess what-

we've already seen in s3, absolutely the same thing.

so they would've still hated him the same way and blamed him for everything instead of reaching out to him. and then ultimately he would've seen things from within this broken system and realized Cadogan was wrong and this is bad and made the decision HIMSELF, then helped the others out, perhaps gotten hurt (like Levitt was in that finale episode, I remember i read somewhere it was supposed to be bellamy) and then ultimately maybe ended on the beach.

that's exactly what would've happened, i have about zero doubts about it cause as i said, we've seen it already.

the problem with bellamy was never that he was OOC. that is why i see things differently-it is the way the OTHER characters see him. or more specifially, how the writers write those characters seeing bellamy.

jroth has always admitted he had a hard time writing for bellamy. that his wife often asked him about it and questioned what he'll do with him and the thing is i dont think jroth always knew what to do and when he didn't, he opted for making him lean into his darker thoughts and trust his heart when he is hurt and alone otherwise making him bad because it was easier and because he knew bob wouldn't mind playing a bad guy as he had stated he liked that in earlier seasons.

the season 3 storyline follows the absolutely same path to the season 7 one (or the one it should've been had it been developed absolutely in the way jroth wanted it to be).

bellamy is a little lost and confused, he's trying to protect his family but then instead of doing things the right way, more death follows, so he decides to trust in to those who offer another option-PIke in s3 who speaks into his grief and absolutely into the guilt he feels.

the reason why pike wins bellamy over is because unlike Kane who keeps saying none of this was bellamy's fault, because he simply cannot read bellamy the right way and clarke isn't there, pike tells him the thoughts he falls asleep with every night-it's your fault, you killed those people, you didn't save gina.

a similar thing happens in s7-deucette and the others offer a way out. if we have to be honest with ourselves, clarke and bellamy's *doing better* never actually worked and especially not in s6.

bellamy is seeing more and more that the more he tries, the worse it gets, even when he's doing his best.

seeing his first sin-his mom, who was the death he didn't want to cause but did because he let his feeling show and wanted to make octavia happy, just speaks volums to him.

i also want to mention here that there are two more people who definitely play a role in his choice to trust what they're talking about here and that are Jasper and Monty.

Jasper because he saw there was no way out of their violent ways and opted to leave the world and Monty who too, separated himself from the clarke and bellamy world and decided to live a quiet albeit lonely life with harper because he realized that IS doing better or at least living better. partly both their reasons were selfish and ultimately don't help the entire group.

what deucette and cadogan offer, do. they safe everyone. that is what bellamy wants-to help them all, it was always his goal from the moment he adopted those kids on the ground. frankly, clarke lost that somewhere, but i dont think he ever did, especially not after season 4 when he spent all those years up on the ring with the others.

i dont find him OOC. i find the story shitty, yes, absolutely but i think and i will get yelled for that but that the City of Light storyline in all honesty wasn't at all that different from the lights and finding another form of eternal life-it was just underdeveloped and ofc jroth couldn't do something like CoL again in 7 as it already existed so he made it these weird beans of light.

do you know who the only character who never was invloved with CoL or that SL from the hundred was?

Bellamy.

Do you know why? Because I don't think Jroth knew how to do that at all. he had that chance here again, to try and indulge a SL where he could perhaps put bellamy into this world. the only problem was that he doesn't know how to write bellamy into a major storyline without making him a villain or making his actions a part of some redemption ark (e.g s2 and s4).

and in all honesty, the problem was never with bellamy. it was with clarke and everyone else. because the same thing that happened in s7 had already happened in s3.

no one, not a single soul, tried to undrestand what was happening with bellamy then. clarke argued but she wasn't there and didnt see him suffer-in fact she left him and said-they are your responsibility now, something he has lived for his entire life and now repeated for 48 kids he barely got there. octavia lashed out and just wanted to leave with lincoln, have her own life, miller, harper, kane, sinclair all worked against him without understanding him. kane preached the entire time how he's making a mistake but he never once tried to speak into what he feels the way pike smartly did. monty was somewhere in the middle, ultimately turned good.

in s7, clarke, o, raven and everyone else argue with bellamy. he tries to explain himself, tell them what he saw, how it all happened, that his mom was there, that he saw something. do you know what happens?

nothing. they bash him and tell him he's nuts.

let's see some examples of the opposite:

in s 2 ep 16 clarke says-I have no choice, I have to do this.

What does bellamy do?

he covers her hand and turns the lever with her.

in 3x16-she says i have to go into CoL after taking the chip.

what does bellamy say-I trust you.

in 4x01-she says ALIE said the radiation is coming for us all.

Bellamy said-we're looking into it, I trust her.

in 4x03 Clarke says-I don't deserve to live, not after everything.

Bellamy says-Yes you do and writes her name on the list.

in 4x13 Clarke says-I think I may be dying, mom had a vision of me dying.

Bellamy says-so what? You will be okay. AFTER SHE ALMOST SHOT HIM IN 4x11 MIGHT I REMIND YOU ALL.

the problem was never with bellamy. not in s7, not in any other season. yes he is flawed that is without saying, he did make mistakes, and that is why i love him and clarke and octavia because they make mistakes.

but don't let us make the same one-that the way he sees everyone else is the same they do because it isn't and never was.

and

that is the tragedy of bellamy blake.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Siffrin plays Disco Elysium AU: Featuring backseat gamer Loop.

[possamble]

Parallels between Marcille and her mother

[starflungwaddledee]

this is probably why meta knight moved the conversation to the hallway

based on @das-a-kirby-blog's comic based on my comic. comic inception. colour palettes are from das.