#he was absolutely shaped by a corrupted system and doomed since the very beginning with the cursed technique he generally considers to be-

[frostbitesjc]

just saw someone on twitter say that geto wasn't a villain but a hero. media literacy is so dead

[head-and-heart]

“Why Did Bellamy Fall in Love with Clarke?”

So I recently got an anonymous message asking me this question and I was preparing myself to answer with the typical “because she’s supportive and he respects her and trusts her and blah blah blah” response which definitely isn’t WRONG, and are definitely reasons why I ship Bellarke, but I also feel like it goes a lot deeper than that. 

I haven’t written a good, solid meta in awhile, I feel like, and this question hit me really hard for some reason, so I am going to answer it separate from the ask in more depth. And, since I’m feeling extra, I’m probably going to make another post answering why Clarke fell in love with Bellamy because - yes - this ship goes both ways and I am sure as hell going to take every opportunity I get to prove that.

To start off, I don’t really think that there is one particular reason why Bellamy fell in love with Clarke. You can’t really go about it by saying “well, Bellamy really likes this trait and this trait and this trait - therefore, he loves Clarke because she encompasses all three” because I don’t think that’s really how love works. I do think that she has traits that Bellamy really likes and respects, and I think that’s how they became friends. But then he fell in love with her and it wasn’t just about those traits anymore. Because love isn’t selective. He doesn’t just love some parts of her and not the others. He loves Clarke as a whole, as a person. He loves all of her pieces and parts and fragments. He just loves her.

But why?

Since you’ve decided to keep reading, let’s get into it.

For me, one of the reasons that I find Bellarke to be so beautiful is because it was so unexpected - not for the audience (I mean, come on? How can you NOT see it coming at this point), but for Bellamy and Clarke. I have no doubt that when those two first encountered each other on Earth, they were definitely expecting to remain at odds with each other for a long time.

They definitely weren’t expecting to fall in love. And that’s why I think that when they started becoming friends, when they started to uncover who the other person truly is and not who they thought they were, that’s when they went “oh, shit” because their world was tipped off its axis - everything that they thought they knew turned out to be ... inaccurate.

Bellamy meeting Clarke changed him. It changed the way he looks at the world, she challenged his perspective. 

It’s important to remember that when the delinquents first landed on the ground, Clarke was a symbol of everything that Bellamy hated. He hated the Ark, he hated the council, he hated the system put in place that condemned his sister to live a life either under floorboards or in a prison cell, he hated that there were people who could just be born into privilege while he was living a poor existence, hated that the people Clarke associated with were the people who implemented the system that meant his mother would have to trade sexual favours for her children’s well-being, hated the people who treated him like garbage for at least the past year (and let’s be honest - probably for much, much longer than that).

And here is Clarke: and she represents everything that he hates about the Ark, represents all of the reasons for his bitterness and his hopeless existence ... and yet, he couldn’t find it in himself to hate her.

So here we return to the question: why? What is it about Clarke Griffin that he was so drawn to? 

The simple answer is that she gave him hope. 

She showed him that there was good in the world, that someone empathetic and strong and intelligent and kind could still be born out of a corrupt society. Clarke Griffin showed Bellamy that good people still existed, that the council who floated his mother was not an accurate representation of the whole of society. There was more to life than what they left behind on the Ark. It was a chance to cross the border between the social classes and see people for who they are, not just what they represent. She gave him hope that they could do better, be better than the ones who preceded them.

Hope.

What a powerful emotion. It was one that I’m sure was very foreign to Bellamy. His entire life on the Ark was doomed to end in tragedy. He spent every day of his existence from the moment Octavia was born not working towards anything, but trying to prevent the inevitable from occurring. Living in fear, day and night, of his sister being taken away, his mother being floated, his only family: gone. And him having no control over the outcome. Hopeful is not a word I would use to describe Bellamy on the Ark. Afraid, sure. Bitter, definitely.

But hope?

That was something new. Especially after the year he spent as a walking corpse riddled with regret and guilt following Octavia’s discovery and his mother’s death.

But then he goes to Earth and he has a chance to start over, a chance to be free and to make relationships he could never make when he was on the Ark, to escape the society he was born into, and it all starts with this girl.

This girl who he is expecting to despise, this girl who is a symbol of the reason that his life has gone to shit. Everything in his life, all of his experiences thus far, have shaped his perspective in a way that it would make sense, that it would seem almost inevitable that he would hate her. 

But then she goes and flips all of his expectations right on their head.

Even from the beginning, she was insistent on seeing the good in him. She knew, from the moment he refused to drop her into that trap in Season 1, Episode 2 that his cruel and ruthless, “I’m getting that wristband, even if I have to cut off her hand to do it”, facade was absolute and complete bullshit. And she never let him forget it. She never let him pretend to be someone that he wasn’t.

Clarke Griffin threw Bellamy completely and totally off-guard, spinning his vision out of focus and sending the walls he’d built up around himself that forced the world away from him, so no one could ever get close, toppling to pieces all around him. 

There was one thing that Clarke griffin - this privileged, intuitive, passionate and fiercely determined girl - did that no one had ever done before: she insisted on proving to him his own goodness, his own worth and substance and purpose in the world. 

And what is so goddamn tragic to me is the fact that someone telling Bellamy that he had worth at all was something he had never truly experienced. Being treated like trash his entire life, basically knowing that his entire existence was destined to be spent in service to someone else, that he would always be the second priority, that his sister came first and all his wants, needs, aspirations, assets, meant nothing if they didn’t ensure Octavia’s safety ... I mean, can you imagine what that would do to a person?

Existing not for yourself, but for another person. Knowing that you could never have a future of your own, could never study what you want to study, never get to live a life without fear, without stress. Never expecting to love anyone, to open up your heart. Having to appear strong, having to stifle down your emotions so as not to distress the one person who you were told to protect.

His entire life, Bellamy was never allowed to think of himself, and he never expected anyone else to, either. He never expected to be acknowledged for who he is, and what he can offer the world. And after Octavia was caught ... he thought that he was nothing. A failure. 

And of all the people on the planet, of all the people on the goddamn universe, it was Clarke Griffin, daughter of a council member, who told him that he was wrong.

She believed in him, believed in his worth. She saw through his mask, knocked over his walls and unveiled the person he truly is inside. Something Bellamy thought no one would ever do, something he thought no one would ever care enough about to try. 

I don’t believe that Clarke and Bellamy were in love in Season 1 - I think they were building up their relationship to head in that direction. However, I do see the scene in 1x03 where Clarke takes the knife out of Bellamy’s hand and kills Atom as the birth of Bellarke because, from that moment on, even though Bellamy wasn’t in love with Clarke yet, that moment set in motion a current of events that ensured that he would. After that, there was no going back. The direction of their relationship was decided.

Why that scene? Why not any other scene?

Because that’s when they saw each other for who they really are. Clarke saw him in a moment of complete vulnerability, where his walls were truly down. Bellamy saw her for who Clarke is: strong, compassionate, empathetic. When she took that knife from Bellamy, it was as much out of mercy for him as it was for Atom. Because she could see that he was at war with himself. She could see it in his eyes. She knew.

“I saw you in the woods with Atom - I know you’re not a killer.”

I. Saw. You.

For the first time, someone really saw the true Bellamy Blake. The first time. And she acted as though who he was, at his core, was a good thing.

No one but Octavia had ever been allowed to see who he truly was, he couldn’t afford to let anyone in. But Clarke forced herself into that place. She found her way in.

I genuinely believe that Bellamy has always wanted to be a better man - not just because Clarke made him want to - but I do think that Clarke gave him the hope that he actually could be.

Clarke Griffin offered him another choice, where he never had one before: she offered him the choice of a fresh start. 

From that moment in 1x03 onwards, Bellamy gained a whole new perspective. That was the moment that he was introduced to a new world, a new prospect. It is no coincidence that Bellamy and Clarke’s ~ official ~ partnership started the episode after that moment. No coincidence that this episode showed another side to Bellamy we, as the audience had yet to be exposed to. 

We saw the version of Bellamy that Clarke saw - that she still sees. 

To answer your question, Bellamy fell in love with what Clarke showed him before he fell in love with her. He fell in love with the concept of hope, that this girl could offer him another way. He fell in love with her conviction that he was a good person, that he had worth. He fell in love with the world through her eyes - her relentless optimism and determination to build a functioning society, a better society than the one they left behind in space. 

Her belief in him was what drew him towards her. His need for affection, his desire for someone to acknowledge who he really is, to finally allow himself to be open and vulnerable and real. For once, to allow himself a moment to let his walls down without the fear of being rejected or mocked.

And then the story continues at a natural pace, so the romantic cues are almost subtle if you don’t pay attention.

They became partners, friends. They grew to depend on each other, trust each other, support each other. She offered him forgiveness, tried to convince him of his worth. These are all things that we know, moments we have memorized by heart. This trust, support and devotion are the reason we love them so much. 

We always talk about these things, but do we really address the root of it all? Can we really say that “Bellamy loves Clarke because she supports him when no one else does”? Do we love people for what they offer us, or for who they are?

My response to that is that I think what Clarke initially offered - the prospect of redemption, hope, the concept of a new society - was what drew him in to her. But to say that’s the reason he’s in love with her, because she forgave him, is, in my opinion, an unfair oversimplification of the depth of their relationship, because the truth is, we don’t just fall in love with what people offer - we fall in love with their everything. 

And Bellamy Blake is no exception.

He fell in love with her strength and courage. With her resolve. Her gritty determination and her passion. He fell in love with her refusal to give up or back down, with her insistence on seeing the best in everyone. He fell in love with her honesty. He fell in love with her capacity for love and her compassion and her empathy. He fell in love with her softness, but also her ability to be rough and cold when the situation called for it. He fell in love with her thirst for knowledge and desire to be better. He fell in love with her tact and intellect, and the way she challenged him. He fell in love with her every tear and fragment, every single piece of her that made her the girl that she was. Every rough edge and broken seam. They made her Clarke Griffin, and he not only accepted her flaws, but loved her even more because of them.

We often talk about Bellamy’s self-loathing and I feel we very rarely talk about the fact that Clarke is a broken soul, as well. He saw himself reflected back in her - mirror images. Twin flames. He recognized the guilt over what happened to her dad, her struggle grappling with what her mother did, because when Bellamy reached into himself he found the same inner turmoil. Bellamy saw Clarke, too, and when he allowed himself to look beyond his initial impression of her, he saw that she wasn’t so different from himself.

An imperfect human, trying to do better. Trying to better the world.

Their flaws perfectly compliment each other, as do their strengths. When she is feeling weak, he offers her strength. When he is feeling down, she gives him hope. It’s a perfect balance of their traits and attributes that draw Bellamy and Clarke together. They are two pieces of a puzzle that happen to fit perfectly.

I’m going to bring up the head and heart analogy because of course I am (I mean, its kinda my URL guys ...). I know some people dislike this analogy because they think it oversimplifies Bellamy and Clarke but I don’t think it has the same meaning as what a lot of people say (I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it because of course I have). The idea of the head and the heart is that they balance each other perfectly. I like the original quote where Jason says that without one or the other, you die, because Bellamy and Clarke need and depend on each other.

I don’t think this analogy means that Bellamy is dumb and that Clarke is heartless. Because we actually have lots of canon evidence that Bellamy is highly intelligent and excelled in school, as well as the evidence that Clarke is a very compassionate person with a huge capacity for love. 

The thing I love about this analogy is that its meaning shifts depending on what aspect of their dynamic you’re talking about. If you’re talking about leadership, it is about how Bellamy sees the individual and can appeal to people’s hearts, whereas Clarke sees the big picture and appeals to people’s heads. But if you are talking about their personal relationship to each other, it has a slightly different meaning.

Since Bellamy has a lot of heart and tends to rely heavily on his emotions, when he is feeling hopeless or guilt-ridden, Clarke speaks reason to him, offers a logical reason to go on. She acts as his head, as a reminder of the vision of a better future that she first showed him so long ago. When Clarke is relying too heavily on her head, attempting to stifle her emotions, Bellamy acts as her heart, reminding her of her values and the people that she loves and the reason why she keeps fighting. 

There’s a reason that Clarke sent Bellamy away when she found out “love is weakness”. There’s a reason that she finally broke down in her argument with him in “Hakeldama”. Because he is the heart, and she can’t stifle her emotions around him. She can’t hold her mask up. He’ll only tear it down.

Head and heart. A perfect balance to each other. Bellamy fell in love with Clarke, because he was missing the other half of his soul.

This answer is very lengthy, but I think that a lot of people brush over this topic with an answer like “because she forgave him” or “he trusts her like no one else” and those are all true, but those get talked about so often that I feel my repeating them doesn’t have as much value. I wanted to go deeper than that. 

I tried to avoid talking about why Clarke loves Bellamy but parts of it still came up, unfortunately. I am going to be writing another meta as to why Clarke fell in love with Bellamy, which also has a bit of a complicated answer that heavily relates to Clarke’s backstory in Season 1 (just as this relates to Bellamy’s backstory as well). Stay tuned if you’re interested! I hope you enjoyed.

[filligan-universe]

Understanding THE LORD OF THE RINGS

The Lord of the Rings has already inspired two blog-like posts from me: one, written on a particularly nostalgic day, chronicles the most tear-jerker moments of the trilogy and the other, my review for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, served not just as a critical analysis of that film, but I used the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a consistent counterpoint to illustrate why those films are so seminal. I note these two pieces to emphasize this point: Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a monumental cinematic achievement in my eyes, and greatly shaped my appreciation for film and its possibilities. They’re simultaneously well-honed adventure epics and brimming with hints of former lore -- of a history that has shaped the world we get to see. Having taken The History of Middle-earth course, those gaps are now filled, and my appreciation and comprehension of Tolkien's world is far more complete than it was before.

The portrayal of Middle-earth in the films is one of decay, of a bygone era long-crumbled, and the remnants are now scattered kingdoms filled with weak or illegitimate leaders. This is clear from the first viewing of these films, and I always understood that there was a rich history behind these images. The film consistently brings them up: Aragorn sings of the Lay of Lúthien, Frodo and Sam happen upon a decapitated statue of a king, Gandalf warns “they are not all accounted for -- the lost seeing stones” -- the only backstory we get of the Palantíri. Indeed, even things we are shown in the prologue are only given so much information. Viewers have no idea of Mordor’s history -- was it always there? Has Sauron always been a plague on Middle-earth? Where did he come from? And little is told of Valinor, the land Frodo sails off to in the end, the land Gandalf gorgeously describes to calm Pippin during the siege of Minas Tirith. 

The Silmarillion tells us of before Earth (or Arda) is even created, how the beings that helped shape it reside in Valinor across the western sea. From it we have better descriptions of Valinor than the poetry Gandalf musters, and we understand the Valar themselves -- their limitations of understanding, their unique desires to see different aspects of Arda to fruition, and the thousands of years of history that explain why Valinor is such a coveted destination -- and a particularly impossible one for the race of Men. 

That’s a heavy amount of information already, but it’s enough to bring the grander vision of Middle-earth into the light. Before the course, my understanding of Valinor was that it was a Tolkienized vision of heaven; a place where you never die, you never hunger, you never feel pain. And while heaven isn’t exactly a wrong term to describe Valinor, it’s also incorrect in its lack of nuance and understanding. Valinor is a real place in Arda, a place with its own geography and names and cities. The majestic beauty of the Valar, the godlike beings who first shaped Arda and reside in Valinor, bestow upon the lands a light that gives it a heaven-like quality, but it isn’t a heaven in the religious sense. 

While I always inferred a sense of ancient history to The Lord of the Rings, I had absolutely no comprehension of how far back that history ran, nor how much the geography changed since Arda’s formation. When we follow the Fellowship into the Mines of Moria, there is a sense of hundreds of years of decay, but the truth is the oldest places of Middle-earth are under the sea -- sunken from a great battle to expel evil (more on that later). Time, and just how much of it has passed and shaped the people, the world, is lost in the films. All we see are bones now; ruined monuments, frail kingdoms. Another example from Moria is when the Orc stampede awakens a Balrog. This moment is superbly done in the film and still gives me goosebumps: the music halts, stone creaks, and Gandalf for the first time has no answers except “run.” The entire following sequence has entered pop culture. But I was left to come up with my own idea of the Balrog’s origins. It seemed like the depths of Middle-earth held a powerful evil, one of the worst of which could be the Balrog. Turns out, well...

The Silmarillion describes one of the Valar, Melkor, who strayed from the light from pride and desire, and eventually sought to undermine the other Valar and rule Arda. He was the one who began to torture Elves, twist them into Orcs through cruelty (this is shown once in the films and is quite ambiguous -- another gap filled by the history). And Melkor, later named Morgoth, supplemented his armies of Orcs with legions of Balrogs. There used to untold numbers of those foes. They slaughtered Elves and Men in several wars, before the western lands sank, and they even had a leader named Gothmog (a name I suppose Jackson & Co. liked so much they donned it upon the crippled Orc leader in Return of the King). Tales of these wars, of the heroes within them, are often told in detail, and when Morgoth was finally defeated (after a very, very long time), the remaining Balrogs fled into the deeper, darker regions of the world, to hide and await the return of their master. The now-classic Khazad-dûm sequence is given layers of context from this: a creature of ancient evil, created by a Valar of all beings. No wonder Gandalf is out of options; the Fellowship doesn’t have a chance against such a creature. Moreover, when Gandalf holds the Balrog on the bridge, he says, “I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn.” The Silmarillion teaches us that the Secret Fire, or Flame Imperishable, is with Ilúvatar, and that Anor is another name for the Sun. Again these indications of a greater lore behind the present storytelling, but only indications -- only mentions. The Silmarillion doesn’t break down this phrase, but it does use this terminology. I could get the gist of what Gandalf was saying beforehand, but now I know exactly what he’s saying and referencing. And this adds layers to Gandalf, too. Sure, he knows what a Balrog is from the start, but now I know he’s referencing Illúvatar, the light of the Sun as provided by the Valar, and he knows the Balrog’s master, and Melkor’s first fortress Utumno. A kind of snowball effect begins to occur with the extra knowledge of this history, and soon every character feels deeper, feels more connected to a root system going back thousands of years.

Through the history, the origins of seemingly random things can be traced, thereby eliminating their randomness. Sauron, though the highest power of evil in the Third Age, was a mere lieutenant to Morgoth. And Sauron was a corrupted Maiar, a lesser version of the Valar, tasked to aid the Valar with the keeping of Arda. In the Unfinished Tales, we learn that wizards like Gandalf and Saruman are Istari, sent in the fallible form of Men in the Third Age by the Valar to help steer Elves and Men along the path of the light in the wake of Sauron’s growing influence. This was always a point of contention with pedants: “Why can’t Gandalf use magic to help them out here?” -- akin to the “Why can’t he summon the Eagles to fly them straight to Mordor?” argument. My answers, before the course, were more defense of story structure than actual answers. But it makes sense, given the history of Maiar like Sauron, that the Valar would send the Istari to Middle-earth with restrictions on their powers, lest they be tempted to rule by force or seek power. This still happens with Saruman, and so the Valar seem wise to have placed limitations on wizardly powers. But again, these answers are not clear from the films. The films don’t tell us what Maiar are, and thus Gandalf and Sauron simply are. They exist without given reasons. The history detailing the Istari not only illuminates on Gandalf and Saruman’s backgrounds, but it raises the stakes for Gandalf. His susceptibility to human weakness makes him less otherworldly, less out of place from the Fellowship, and the challenges he faces seem greater. He cannot just poof away his problems. And these sorts of things continue to show up in the histories. Ungoliant, a presumed twisted Maiar in the form of a wretched spider-beast, is pivotal in a dark moment in the ancient history of Valinor, and her appearance (without even mention of it) makes Shelob’s presence in Return of the King more acceptable (as in, it’s more than just “a giant spider monster happens to dwell in this tunnel”) and fearsome.  

To the strongest point of the history’s effect on the films, I think the theme of doom and how it ripples through the timeline even to Lord of the Rings is the most compelling and rewarding for later re-watched of the films. Morgoth doesn’t start out as this vicious, evil spirit, but his slow descent from disobedience to power-hungry lust is what does it. He learns to lie, to deceive and spread half-truths, to sow evil into the hearts of (first) the Elves and (then) Men. And it reaches out from there. Countless times, a small act from Morgoth eventually incites violence, and those involved don’t even know of Morgoth’s involvement half the time. In Valinor, during the First Age, Morgoth is the catalyst for rumors of discontent among one of the Elvish clans -- the Noldor. And when Fëanor creates the Silmarils, beautiful orbs of light from the Trees of Valinor, Morgoth steals them with the help of Ungoliant. Because the Noldor have learned of deceit, learned of greed, and even learned of weapons thanks to Morgoth’s “advice,” violence and tragedy strike through Valinor as Elves attack Elves, banishments from the Valar are placed, and foul oaths are taken. The Silmarils, through the course of the First Age, bring nearly every big player in that era to their knees, and this theme of doom echoes around them -- the fate of Arda being tied to them. Fëanor, so enamored with his creations, swearing to destroy any kind of being -- Elf, Man, or otherwise -- in pursuit of the reclamation of his treasures echoes the weak will of Isildur to destroy the One Ring. Even the rings themselves are connected to Fëanor via ancestry through Celebrimbor.

This theme of all beings of Illúvatar and their weakness, their ability to succumb to power, to self-aggrandizement, to doomed desire, encircles the entire history of Middle-earth; it isn’t just unique to The Lord of the Rings. The fact that this keeps playing out again and again, in different ways, with different consequences, and yet always with grief and strife one way or another, makes those themes in The Lord of the Rings even more tragic and poignant.