#him and jroth can truly and i mean truly get fucked

[braveclxrke]

You know, I haven't said this in years, but it's still as true as the first time I said it

fuck jeff davis

yes this is about what he did to stydia in the tw movie, yes i will stay bitter what of it

[bettsfic]

Hey so like...how do u justify romanticising a minor/adult relationship bc as a minor it kinda makes me uncomfortable. You’re an amazing writer, I just don’t quite get why you chose the age gap

before i address your question directly, and i will, i want to point out a few things that confuse me about this ask.

first, the admission of being a minor with the implication you’ve read my work, and now outright interacting with me. i’ve written maybe half a dozen g- and t-rated fics, and none of them are particularly popular, which i’m guessing means you’ve read my explicit fics, which means you’ve clicked past Ao3′s polite “18+ only” warning. my apologies if this assumption is incorrect – maybe you really have only read my three or four gen/teen-rated fics. that just seems very unlikely to me because all of my more popular fics are mature and explicit.

now, while admitting you are a minor made uncomfortable by minor/adult relationships, you have directly approached me, a 29 year old woman, to ask me why i’ve made the choices i’ve made. granted, by going on anon, you’ve ensured that this is a public forum, but if you’d PM’d me, i wouldn’t have responded, because i am not here to interact with minors.

which brings me to my conclusion of this portion of the ask, which is: i am not writing for minors and i do not want to interact with minors. i can’t control what you read or don’t read and it’s absolutely not my responsibility to cater to you in any way, especially if you knowingly and voluntarily click past the 18+ warning. but i can control my personal interactions, and i urge you not to reach out to me again. 

next i’m going to nitpick the word “romanticize” which is a word heavy in the current moral rhetoric. literally speaking, you are right. i am making an age gap romance romantic. rhetorically speaking, to “romanticize” something means to flatten or gloss over it, sweep potential consequences under the rug. to romanticize abuse, for example, is to make it beautiful, to ignore all the trauma and pain that comes along with it. (i think it is a worthy artistic endeavor to attempt to romanticize abuse in fiction, if for only the ability to highlight how fucked up abusive relationships can feel in the moment, but that’s a rant for another time).

since you haven’t read training wheels, i can tell you outright i am not romanticizing a minor/adult relationship. there are certainly unrealistic/porny moments, but i’m not shying away from the actual emotional consequences of being a 17yo* girl dating a 25yo man. i’m doing my best to depict this relationship the way these relationships are actually felt, because they do happen, and i have been in them. they can be very romantic, but that doesn’t mean i’m romanticizing them. though we’re not in his pov, bellamy is acutely aware of the greater context of their relationship. and clarke, who has no context, is doing her best to navigate the difficulty of her situation, semi-aware that it’s something that will be haunting her for a long, long time. 

i am not beautifying the ugliness of their relationship; i am not fetishizing (another word i take issue with) the minor body. being in clarke’s pov means that bellamy is object of desire, and meanwhile we get, through clarke’s thoughts, the sometimes awkward and confusing realization of what it means to be wanted, loved, used, seen, broken, trespassed, and all the other things teenage girls sometimes have to navigate. 

and i have one more thing to say before i answer your actual question: you are allowed to be uncomfortable reading fiction. in fact, i think you should be uncomfortable reading fiction. all art should make us uncomfortable, because in discomfort lies broader awareness. by consuming things which push at the boundaries of our narrow reality, we are capable of widening that reality, and that’s what it means to learn and grow and become the people we want to be. you cannot become a better, stronger, wiser person without facing and overcoming that which makes you uncomfortable. 

i also resent a bit the implication that i, a fanfic writer, a queer woman, am beholden to appeasing your comfort when straight white male writers are not. i assume you’re not sending jroth letters about how murphy’s sex slavery arc in s3 made you uncomfortable. or that the entire premise of the show revolves around putting a hundred minors in a ship and dropping them onto a potentially lethal planet. or raven, a teenager, sleeping with bellamy, an adult, in s1. and that’s not even mentioning the violence perpetuated against minors in the show. they die! and they bleed! like, a lot!! charlotte, a 12yo girl, dies a gruesome death in s1. they are minors forced to kill or be killed in exceedingly violent ways, and you’re in my inbox asking why i’m writing a fic that depicts a loving and consensual relationship between a 17yo (clarke’s canonical age in s1) and a 25yo. 

now i’ll answer your actual ask.

you use the word “justify” as if i had to do some kind of logistical puzzle to make this fic morally okay in my eyes. i can tell you now, i did not, because the story exists to navigate that logistical puzzle on its own. the conflict poses the question: is this okay? is this wrong? what about it is wrong? for what reasons is it wrong? and i also attempt (in a clunky way because it’s a bit rough, plot-wise) to navigate what “informed consent” really means to a 17yo who has no information to go off of. for me it’s an experiment in what consent really is. clarke wants bellamy, but she doesn’t have a full awareness of the consequences of that want, so is it truly consensual? what does bellamy have to do to fully inform her of those consequences? is it even his responsibility, or should clarke take more agency over her experiences? and lastly, the most interesting question of them all to me – what happens to the minors in consensual age gap relationships? how do they cope with that experience years later? in what ways does it change them?

though it’s not my responsibility to indulge my personal ties to this conflict in order to further “justify” it, i can assure you, i am writing this from clarke’s pov having been the younger party in many age gap relationships, at times a minor. at times coerced. at times completely uninformed. but each time, consensual. i sought out the men i dated. i took the lead. i propositioned them. and i consider: how has that affected me and the way i love now? 

my mom at 20, married my dad, 32. my older sister at 16, met her (now ex) husband, her then-boss, at 23 (they waited until she was 18 to start dating). i dated an 18yo and then a 19yo when i was 14. a 21yo when i was 16. a 32yo when i was 19. a 47yo when i was 22. but i also had a long-term relationship with someone who was just three months younger than me. age gap is not the only way i know how to love, but it is certainly a way to love, and one i find, in lieu of seeking it out in reality, narratively compelling. so i write about those experiences in order to better understand them now that i’m older. in order to take them apart and piece them back together. in order to, in some cases, relive them, because i enjoyed so much about them. 

i don’t pursue older men anymore because i no longer seek male validation. i don’t meet a handsome middle-aged man and need him to love me to feel like my existence in the world is warranted. but that doesn’t mitigate all the old habits and drive and potentially genetic disposition that led me to relentlessly pursuing them in the first place. so now i sublimate that into fiction and offer my experience and understanding to others who might be predisposed in the same way, or people who are not and curious about what that experience is like. and that’s what fiction does.

lastly, i’ve sort of saturated myself in age gap stories. i’ve watched every age gap movie i can get my hands on, read every book. i dive through google and ao3 looking for age gap recs, seeking out the one story or fic or movie that not only gets the relationship right, but figures out how to make it work. that’s all i want – a realistic, plausible solution to this very delicate and complicated kind of relationship. and i can’t find that story, so i’ve decided to write it myself. 

training wheels is an uncomfortable story about a romantic minor/adult relationship and the realistic psychological consequences of it, both in the immediate present and long-term, and you are supposed to be made uncomfortable by it, regardless of your age. it makes romantic but does not romanticize age gap relationships. i do not take the morality of this story lightly, nor its meaning or intentions. whether i succeed in this is up to interpretation, and i can’t control that interpretation, but i can tell you with certainty what my intentions have been going into this story, and exactly why i’ve made the decisions i’ve made regarding it. 

*the age of consent in ohio, where training wheels is set, is 16. i recognize the current rhetoric around this is “legality is not morality” or whatever, but again – the purpose of training wheels is in part to directly address this conflict

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 5: Thoughts on The 100 2x03 Reapercussions

I am very tired and I should sleep but instead I’m going to bring my The 100 rewatch project out of hiatus yet again with Episode 2x03: Reapercussions.

I miss Anya so much!!!!! This is mostly my Dichen Lachman obsession showing but also the way she gives Clarke that ‘yeah, whatever’ look when Clarke says she’ll get her out of the cage... your Grounder fave could never.

The show honestly peaked with S2 and after this it should have abandoned all attempts at edginess because nothing will ever be more Pure Nightmare Fuel than the Mount Weather Grounder Cages.

Clarke/Anya: the ship that almost was.

So when Clarke takes Anya out of the prison room, she opens a door that says “End Containment Area” and underneath that it says “U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Mount Weather Containment Protocol.” And people really thought JRoth made this up omg learn some history.

Considering how they left things (Anya literally trying to kill her and all her friends) it’s actually pretty impressively selfless and magnanimous on Clarke’s part to not just rescue her, but immediately and unthinkably rescue her. On the other hand, Anya feels some remorse for leaving her people whereas Clarke’s like ‘here are some clothes [even though those random bandages are holding up pretty well??], let’s get a move on!’ (I know she intended to come back for them and she was being smart and practical but from the pov of, say, Jasper or Monty, this is cold as hell of her.)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: early S2 Clarke is Peak Clarke: smart, sly, practical, brave.

Byrne mentions Earth Skills teacher “Davis” as being part of the search team for Bell et. al. My question: how many Earth Skills teachers did they have lol?

I fucking love this crashed-ship aesthetic omg I forget how much I love it and then I see it again....

“On the Ark, you did anything you wanted, without a second thought about the consequences.” Like mother, like daughter.

I ALSO miss Jasper and Maya. I’m probably like the lone person out there who still remembers them fondly but they were basically perfect because they were sweet but with the potential for a lot of darkness as well, my favorite combination.

WHERE’S MY ART SCHOOL JAYA AU?

So actually fun fact, that isn’t how the art work would have been stored in Mount Weather. They had special containers for the paintings to protect them and like a special cart thing to transport them quickly from their old homes to the bunker I read a book.

No one ever characterizes him this way sufficiently imo but Monty is really quite uptight in a way. Like first: don’t cockblock him man. And second: just chilll. This is probably why he used to smoke weed.

“Trouble? It’s Clarke. Whatever she’s up to, I’m sure she can handle it.” I mean.... he’s not wrong.

Except for the part where she’s covered in dead bodies. But even then...

So I always felt like the main point of the Reapers was as kind of a zombie police force for Mount Weather: to keep the Grounders scared of the Mountain, so they won’t poke around in it too much. Though of course they also collect Grounders, which is helpful, since the Mountain Men can’t walk that far from their home base (and, as stated, they probably want to keep most of that area Grounder-free anyway). But it occurs to me now that a third use of the Reapers is like dead-body collectors? The Mountain dumps the dead bodies out the trap door, and the Reapers take them away and eat them. So gross and efficient all at once. Mount Weather’s motto basically.

Murphy and his creating-a-distraction stones are still one of the funniest jokes this show has ever pulled, though if it were a quicker reveal after “something like that” it would be funnier.

Never mind, Bellamy appearing out of the bush is true underrated comedy gold,

That said, I feel like everything outside of the Mount Weather and Clarke stories here is filler.

Love! That! Ship!

Major Byrne says that Kane is on the verge of losing control of the camp but... I dunno.... everyone seems to be working together pretty well? Maybe if they had diversified the cast a little, not in terms of yet more Grounders but, like, non-leaders of the Ark, that would be more clear????

Okay, well, admittedly, when the Grounder prisoner is brought in they do start a mini-mob, lol. Also one of the delinquent’s fathers is shot, it would be cool if we knew who he was?? ETA: and then he dies and Abby’s like “does he have any family?” lol he just said that his son was one of the 100 so like obviously he does??

The costuming people, like the set people, really are the geniuses of this show. I love Clarke and Anya’s outfits, and Clarke’s hair somehow being both grungy and beautiful like THAT’s the apocalypse style I wanna see.

Also they absolutely 100% would have gotten together in the S2-S3 hiatus if Anya hadn’t been killed off.

“You saved my life because you needed me” IS true but she also did it absolutely without hesitation, even knowing Anya really quite truly hates her, so this speaks either to some foolhardy bravery mixed in with her practical thoughts, or just straight compassion, or both. I guess that sort of is a Clarke thing. She can be a grudge holder (seriously don’t tell me she isn’t: Wells????) but her grudges are NEVER more important than hard-nosed practical problem-solving.

Time for some gratuitous torture. Honestly, I like Season 2, it’s probably my favorite season, but it has some MAJOR filler problems. Like when it’s good it’s THE BEST but then other times it just doesn’t know how to fill 40 minutes so it resorts to pointless diversions (like Bellamy rappelling down the side of a mountain to save a character who is literally never seen again? for some reason?) or just straight out ugly violence for screaming’s sake (Raven’s surgery, Raven’s Grounder torture, Abby’s shocklashing, etc.) Like honestly I can’t even watch this. I’m just gonna browse tumblr until it’s done.

The Arkers really like the concept of “confessing” don’t they?

Like okay I’m not done WHAT IS THE POINT of this? It all but kills the whole Kabby vibe (I still lowkey ship them but sometimes I think...why?), it’s truly painful to watch, and it has no plot purpose AT ALL not even world-building because, lol, we know the writers don’t care to flesh out Camp Jaha in any real way.

Murphy is taking such sad glee out of instigating Finn’s madness/violence. The Luci of The 100 for sure.

This Bellamy story line is boring though I’m sorry. Some of these scenes (the Clarke or Mount Weather ones) I could watch a million times but this is like... kay, I know what happens already. So.

“There are some lines you can’t uncross.” I mean I think this show has actually shown that’s pretty untrue since people get over almost everything pretty fast. There’s always another horrific thing to do and/or experience!

Yeah my bitterness is seeping in.

Anyway when you come into an interrogation knowing what the “right” answer is, you’ll never learn anything, take note, stupid teenager boys + U.S. law enforcement.

Like honestly this Grounder is 500000x smarter than they are. He saves himself and rains gunfire and destruction upon his enemies. (Well, saves himself for a few minutes--but at least he got to cause harm to those he hates!)

“You thought I was the crazy one, huh?” Was Murphy ever crazy, though, or was he just coldly vengeful?

Speaking of coldly vengeful, Byrne could have been a potentially interesting character? Maybe? I’m not really into the type but as I said I want more Arkers wherever I can find them. And Kane needs real opposition. I have sympathy for him to a degree, but I also think he ultimately weakens rather than strengthens himself.

I love when Monty calls bullshit on stuff. “I can’t see Clarke? Try and fucking stop me, bitches.”

Jasper has such a big heart. Truly the emotional core of this friendship.

I like how Kane speaks as if his “diplomatic mission” of adults is so vastly different than Bellamy and Finn just going off on their own I mean, Byrne is little better than Finn? They’re both easily frustrated and fond of torture? It’s just that Byrne understands a chain of command--barely--that’s literally it.

How does it make literally any sense at all to shocklash a person one hour and make her the Chancellor the next? Like you’ve just encouraged the populace to think of her as nothing special, not above the embarrassing public application of extreme pain--but yes by all means expect them to fall into line behind her leadership. I mean I guess this sort of works if she was already somehow beloved (I guess I’m supposed to just believe that?) and now more sympathy has been generated for her--but such sympathy would seem to come at the expense of Kane. It would seem to be the opposite of what he, or really Byrne, was going for with that disgusting display. But whatever memory is a fiction I guess.

And they have this swelling-music romantic eye-fuck goodbye like??? He was just beating you!! JUST NOW!

What I’m getting out of Murphy advocating for killing the Grounder: first, he has a clear, cold, practicality not unlike Clarke, and two, he still thinks of the delinquents as his friends--how sweet. Two days ago he was killing them, holding them hostage, and stealing their ammo before a huge battle but still. Bygones.

This is not a great ep. for Bellamy leadership lol.

Finn executes a man, while wearing Clarke’s watch, in the place they had sex. Seems...symbolic?? IDK it’s late lol.

I miss Nyko a lot but also now that I’ve seen (part of) Slasher I’m not entirely sure I can ever see Ty Olsson in the same light.

Wouldn’t it be funny if they were literal brothers? Because I always assumed this was metaphorical but...was it? WAS IT?

Weird note to end on, I know. If patterns hold, it’ll be another 2-3 months before I do this again but I’ll try to be a little more on the ball about it.

[javodvarka]

By now, unless you’re living under a rock or incommunicado up on a space Ark, you’ve seen the season 5 trailer for The 100. And you can bet I have some impressions. So strap in, space cowboy.

I have a love/hate relationship with trailers because while it’s great to see new footage, the potential for spoiling something due to the Zapruder-like analysis we use to dissect every little frame really makes me hesitate to go in too deep. Over on Reddit, we picked apart the season 3 trailer until we kinda figured a lot of plot points out that took a bit of wind out of my sails. I guess I’m one of those people who like things to surprise me.

I’m not going to watch this trailer more than five times, which I know probably makes me a Bad FanTM, but I still want a sense of fresh wonder when I watch season 5 and not over-analyze a piece of media which I THINK is intentionally misleading in parts to begin with. Oh, there are some definite “I don’t think this shot really immediately follows the previous one, they just want us to THINK that it does.” We see you, JRoth and company.

Not falling for your shenanigans. Trying to play with our emotions and shit.

First Off, Can We Talk About How Gorge it All Looks?

Let me start out by saying the very first thing that popped into my mind…before the characters, the fighting, the conflict, the angst…I thought “goddamn, there are some really gorgeous shots in this trailer, they’ve really upped their cinematography game.”

I mean, look at this shit:

    LOOK AT IT.

I think the shot of the rover and Clarke on the cliff overlooking the forest is my favorite. That’s the one that got me to lean forward and say “oh hold up, they ain’t playin’, look at this!” But check out that desert sandstorm. Those space pods. That unique angle overlooking Clarke and the wreckage of Polis. There’s a real eye for scope here that I’ve never felt before save for perhaps Jaha and Murphy crossing the Dead Zone in season 2. Many of these shots are serving up all kinds barren earth realness. I can FEEL the sense of loneliness that must eat at Clarke as she explores what’s left of her little piece of earth. If you’re looking for a “show, don’t tell” example of what Clarke’s isolation must feel like…well dude it looks like season 5 is going to deliver visually.

Let me tell you, I’m not a very “let’s take in the scenery” person when it comes to my TV shows and movies. I love great visuals and balk at the overuse of CGI fuckery, but it’s not something that usually sparks off a “dude, did you SEE that?” thought in my brain. So that it’s the first thing that made an immediate impression to me is kind of interesting. And I’m digging it.

I Don’t Know What to Think About Octavia AT ALL and I’m Conflabberated and Conflicterated

Man, I’m so torn with Octavia.

Wait for it…

…………………wait for it……………………………

Where my Umbrugliaheads at??!!

Like, seriously I cannot decide where Octavia sits with me and the trailer does not clarify my position at all. Is she going dark or is she going to be one of the people we can depend on to do the right thing? I see her with Madi and I’m scared of what kind of influence she could exert over her, especially if O’s philosophy and methods diverge from Clarke’s. Octavia likes murder in the key of A and Clarke is more an E minor type of gal.

At times I’ve lamented over the lack of a friendship between Clarke and Octavia, and for obvious reasons their relationship has been chilly. One does not simply get over Clarke’s willingness to let you die in the TonDC bombing. I get the feeling that they only tolerate one another because of their respective relationships with Bellamy, but I REALLY want them to be friends. But now I’m like, what if it never happens the way I want? What if they’re just not MEANT to be friends? What if Octavia doesn’t travel down that “make good” track I desire for her? I have to be fine with that. Not my IP, not my creative endeavor, I’m just along for the wonderful ride.

I will tell you right the fuck now: I don’t trust Octavia one bit. Hells to the no. BUT I WANT TO. That’s my dilemma. And I kinda love the unease this instills in me.

Something that popped in my head about O and the bunker is this: Wonkru is a new thing. So what is the ruleset this new society lives by? Is this something Octavia will have to create? Is she capable of creating laws and rules and consequences for non-compliance after her experience up on the Ark? Her whole existence was pretty much defined by how punitive the Ark society was for just having more than one kid, so how exactly does a person raised and punished by that system create a system for life in essentially the same circumstances? Limited room, limited resources, close quarters, etc. Does she turn to Kane and Jaha for help? I think it’s obvious given their role in her life – and responsibility for some of her pain – that they exert some sort of influence over her. And that leads me to my SWAG (Sophisticated Wild Ass Guess) about O and Jaha.

I think Octavia kills Jaha while in the bunker. I know, this isn’t necessarily revolutionary as this has been speculated for a while now. But I think Jaha goads Octavia into killing him. Let me break it down: Jaha has a messiah complex, a need to save “his people.” Having failed spectacularly the first time with ALIE, guiding Octavia is his second chance.

At the same time, maybe Octavia is in a compromised position by being the leader of a majority Grounder coalition while having a lot of Skaikru’s old leadership in her ear. I think Grounders are going to grumble about this, cast doubt on Octavia’s commitment to ALL people, and Jaha will see sacrificing himself on her sword as a way to consolidate her power and remove any doubt that she’s committed to Wonkru. It moves Jaha’s great mission forward and maybe is a way, in his semi-twisted mind, makes up for his past sins, one of which being enforcing the laws that killed Octavia’s mom.

I’m excited by where O’s story could go. I feel she was kinda a throw-away plot-adjacent character until S4 and now seeing her come into prominence without really knowing what her priorities or intentions are is pretty exciting. But she also scares the poop outta me. And I think my fav part of the trailer was when she growled “choose.” I don’t know what’s happening there, but I’m PRETTY sure it’s a moment of badassery. And I’m smitten with female badasses.

Which makes a great segue to…

Truly Madly Deeply

So, while I’m watching the trailer, I’m quickly falling deeply in love with someone who got maybe less than 20 seconds of screen time: Charmaine Diyoza.

I kinda started sweating it because while she was cool and calm and collected and has a bit of swag, I’m also pretty certain she’s going to fuck our fam up something fierce. So I was like “damn, I better keep this under wraps because Diyoza has me SHOOK, but she’s bad news, can’t let people know I’m into her, right?”

Then I go online and EVERY FUCKING PERSON IS INTO DIYOZA. Well, those in my T100 twittersphere at least, which is curated carefully to only include the coolest yet weirdly deranged fans of this show who are into threesomes and cannibalism and alien theories and hurting one another with emotional gifs from all the emotional shows.

My shame washed away. There were others like me who loved this person who will hurt our beloved characters and we’re so here for it.

But I have to say, in order to make that strong an impression in only ~20 seconds of screen time, kudos on the casting of Ivana Milicevic as Diyoza.

I will declare it outright: I’m firmly on “Team Fuck Us Up, Diyoza.” Please play with every little emotion I have and suck out my soul until I’m a withered husk. I. AM. HERE. FOR. IT.

Also I kinda get the feeling that maybe Diyoza is a “been there, done that, stole the tee shirt” version of Clarke without all the emotion and sentimentality and complex moral conflict that has been Clarke’s brand since the jump. Diyoza is the “fuck it, let’s do it” future (bizarro) version of Clarke who seems waaaaaaaaaaaay more ruthless than our sweet baby Griffin. I am positively giddy at the thought. I love character parallels. And two strong women at cross purpose, neither totally in the right/wrong? Let the queens reign, baby, and let the bodies fall where they may.

Madi Is Kinda Awesome and This Is New For Me

You guys, I usually HATE kids in entertainment. They are the woooooooooooooorst, bizarrely written by adults who somehow forgot every interaction they’ve ever had with a child and instead write them as stupid proto-human beings with the agency of a jar of mayonnaise. Children, how do they work?

But everything I’ve seen so far has me excited as fuck to meet Madi. And am I here for mama bear grizzly Clarke?

If you know one thing about me it is this: I’m all about Clarke “I’m In Charge Now” Griffin. I’m not just here for it. I’ve bought land and am building a home for it. An underground pool for it. A fire pit? Fuck yeah. I’M HERE FOR IT, GONNA PAY PROPERTY TAXES FOR IT, GOING TO BE BURIED IN THE BACK YARD FOR IT, MY ASS GONNA HAUNT THIS LAND FOR IT.

Madi provides a great opportunity to give Clarke some insight into what a little shit children can be to their mothers and give her a new appreciation for Abby. Abby often maddeningly gets the Skyler White treatment from people on Reddit and I’ve gotten to the point of not being able to speak to those people without risk of banishment. I’m such an anger baby, and here comes my anger baby rant…

WE HATE WHEN THE REAL WORLD AND REAL WORLD SHIT WE DEAL WITH ON THE DAILY IS REFLECTED BACK AT US. Who doesn’t have some form of strife with their moms? Moms are sometimes overprotective and hypocritical and irrational AND GUESS THE FUCK WHAT SO ARE THEIR KIDS. We don’t have perfect moms and we are often shitbirds as their kids, so give mumsy a break. And maybe give her a ring.

This shit just gets me mad because some of it is driven by misogyny thinly veiled as “Abby is the worst because reasons.” And my tolerance for male bullshit, white bullshit, straight bullshit, entitled bullshit, regressive bullshit is quickly reaching nil. See, anger baby.

Abby is a very understandable character if you have any empathy for the woman who raised you, wiped your poopy butt, and was likely your primary caretaker your whole childhood. When Abby goes momma bear with Clarke, I get it. Now we’re going to see Clarke in Abby’s shoes and I wonder just how far – how “hypocritical” and “irrational” – she’ll go to protect Madi. And what will our reactions be?

I think a big theme of this season is going to be our own examination of our biases and perspectives in regards to the tables being turned – Clarke is now Abby. Skaikru are now Grounders. Eligius is now Skaikru. Charmaine is now Clarke. How will we stretch our perceptions of people who have motivations we’ve empathized with before? Or hated before? How willing will we be to accept behavior and rationale once the shoe is on the other foot and that once-understandable rationale is now wielded by a “bad” guy?

Alien Shit

You guys, there’s something rolling around in the abdomen of a man (is it MURPHY??!!) and if you know anything about anything, it’s either a sentient yam OR an alien chest burster. I don’t know how many people are freaking out about this, but instead of me trying to freak out in tandem and posit any theories, I will simply direct you to my ex-podcast partner and the Michael Jordan of GIFs: Jo over at May We Geek Again. Warning…she’s kinda really into her theory and passionate about it and like an Alien movie historian and…well…you know….

Enjoy the crazy: https://twitter.com/MayWeGeekAgain/status/974350151358779392

I will say that even the slight possibility of introducing some sort of parasite or Cordyceps or anything from space that becomes a huge threat on earth is exciting as fuck. Leaning hardcore into scifi horror is not something I would have EVER predicted after season 1 and 2, when I thought I knew the show’s brand. But man…if they do this…if they DO THE THING…I’m going to pee myself. And fair to say there will be much gleeful urination from other fans as well. You can use “gleeful urination” in your review quotes, CW.

Wrestling GIF quota met! Yay me! I’m aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawesome.

Quick Hits

Kane is getting into man-bun length hair and I can’t hate on it because I don’t hate man buns oh god there goes my street cred.

This is straight up Dances with Wolves, yo. Tatonka!

Where does O pick up the “love is weakness” line? Is there a world where she becomes a nightblood and takes the Flame?

I dunno how the Flame fits into this season, but I always feel awkward about it because Lexa is in there and Lexa…oof…still a gut punch. Miss you boo.

Adulting looks sooooooooo good on all these characters, especially the menfolk with facial hair like MEN. MANLY MEN DOING MANLY MEN THINGS.

Related: I know a fainting couch is an old-fashioned gendered bullshit thing, but Bellamy and Murphy with facial hair and aged up give me the vapors.

So many misleading cuts/editing in this trailer that it’s hard to really trust much about it. Is that Bellamy with the kobra kai leg sweep on Octavia? Is that Octavia that Bellamy is standing over? Who is anyone really fighting? Who are the fanatics? Who stands against Octavia? Is Zeke friendly? It’s all confusing and misdirecting.

I’m thinking Spacekru gets separated and two or more little groups get down to earth separately…I’d say some go with the Eligius crew and some with Raven.

And I think they get separated because Bellamy decides to only expose a couple of Spacekru’s number’s to the Eligius. He’s just keeping his people safe in a situation full of unknowns, which is prime head AND heart Bellamy.

I’m intrigued by this desert set. Is this shot in Vancouver? Is there some Canadian desert I’m unaware of? Why does some action seem to take place here, a location I would think is hostile to life. IS THERE A DESERT IN SASKATCHEWAN? Is it were all the Sasquatches live? Is Alpha Flight headquartered there?

YES, I MADE AN ALPHA FLIGHT REFERENCE.

The trailer is all things for all people:

Hello good space cleavage Echo!

I worry that I don’t get enough of Raven in this trailer. I want more of her each new season and I feel like I get less than what I need of my sweet, sweet Raven.

Is that a sonic weapon that McCreary is using? TIGHT. Just like Lucio! Except way more murdery.

Did y’all catch that scar across Diyoza’s throat? Could it be a burn from one of those electo-collars they slap on Clarke, or did someone try to cut her throat?

Related: “someone who survives a throat slitting = not to be fucked with” – Jo of MWGA. PREACH.

Speaking of that electro-collar – it’s serving up some major Lincoln-torture-parallels-from-season-1 realness. Lincoln was an unknown potential threat. Clarke is an unknown potential threat…

Is Jonathan is my favorite Fab 5er from the new Queer Eye series?

Kinda diggin’ McCreary’s long mohawk look…he’s serving up Miller from The Expanse realness. Okay, I really need to stop.

Oh lort, don’t even get me started about my fears about who is dying in the finale, because when the cast says they were all weeping, you know it’s a doozy and likely a major player. I think it’s Abby or Kane. But I fear it’s Raven. And if it’s Raven, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.

Not particularly crazy about dialog getting repeated every season. A minor nitpick, but it’s feeling inorganic at this point.

How many people are in what I can only assume are cryosleep pods?

Where was serial killer Vinson? Did I miss him?

The Bunker’s hottest new club is Blood’s Sweet Faire. Featuring battling siblings. Blood. More blood. 90’s emo makeup. Kane in beard. Poor lighting. Depeche Mode almost inaudibly played so you’re like “is that Depeche Mode or is it in my head”? Microbrews.

I lament the lack of more Echo, Raven, Murphy, Emori, Monty, Niylah, Indra, Gaia, and Harper in the trailer. I realize there’s only so much you can show in a trailer, where there’s limited time to get the broad strokes of season 5 across, but I’m INVESTED in all these beautiful people.

Parting Thoughts

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

WHERE’S THE TRAILER?!

I know nothing about Canada

TWEET/RETWEET: If you enjoyed this review, could you do me a favor and share / retweet / like it on twitter? I hate to ask this because I hate asking anyone to do anything for me, but I’d really appreciate it.

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST OF THE 100 MUSIC!: Hey people who like sounds entering your ear holes! I have a Spotify playlist, which is music from and inspired by The 100. You can find it right here and marvel at my musical tastes. I keep it up to date with anything featured on the show or in promos.

SHIT YOU SHOULD BE WATCHING WHEN NOT WATCHING THE 100: 

These are a couple ICYMI shows that are excellent and you need to come flail with us on Twitter over these series:

The Expanse – a truly great sci fi series that looks freakin’ fantastic, has a great cast, contains some mind blowing moments, and boasts fuckin Chrisjen Avasarala who can rock a red furred cloak like a QUEEN. I swear all fealty to Chrisjen!

The Leftovers – likely the best TV show ever? IMHO, it has everything, including Carrie Coon, who somehow miraculously started “mainstream” acting as a woman in her 30s. She’s a revelation. This whole show is amazeballs. If you ever want to derail my day, just start tweeting Leftovers gifs at me and I’m ruint. RUINT.

There are some The 100 reviewers/recaps/writers you should absolutely be reading, and I offer them up for your enjoyment; I have no affiliation with any of them, save for being a fan:

Selina Wilken – a mix of passionate fandom and truly professional journalism.

Erin Brown – unfairly beautiful writing. Like seriously, stop being so good.

McKenzie Morrell – recapping her damn face off and great interviews with the cast!

Toni_watches – piss your goddamn pants funny photo recaps.

Jo Garfein – great fandom charity auctions.

Disclosure: this is my own indie site. This is on my time, my dime. Becho is endgame.

The 100 – Season 5 Trailer Impressions By now, unless you're living under a rock or incommunicado up on a space Ark, you've seen the season 5 trailer for…

[bettsfic]

Whaaaa have u finished s5?????!!!! THOUGHTS???

i mean overall, critically speaking, it was probably one of the best single seasons of any teen tv show i’ve ever watched. like top 10, up there somewhere with buffy s2. the plot was tightly wrought, most things that happened made sense (which is something i’ve learned to let slide with this show), and every character had a reasonable motivation for doing what they were doing. granted, the bar was painfully low after s3 and 4, but i think if i picked up this show at s5 without seeing any of the prior seasons i still would have loved it.

THAT SAID, because i have seen the rest of the series, some of the OOC elements bothered me. i only saw a few glimpses of clarke’s history as the great wanheda (that quick knife to niylah’s throat? NICE). i didn’t like that all of her motivation had been reduced to motherhood when we’ve seen her in the past as a leader and lover and fighter and healer. BUT i also really loved the clexa moments, which didn’t feel cheap at all to me, and made clarke’s relationship with madi much more interesting after several cringey moments of “i’m willing to torture you to protect you.” similarly i didn’t like that abby’s character was reduced to her addiction and that guided everything she did. i like addiction narratives, but only when they’re not a plot device, which this very much was.

conversely, i think bellamy became more complex somehow, and his arc made sense -- he had six years in space to think on shit, and that changes a person. he continues to be probably the only truly trustworthy character on the show (i mean trustworthy to the audience) because his sense of loyalty is consistent and overrides all other traits, and his conflict (like captain america’s) always involves the compromise of his loyalty. in the case of this season, the people he’d spent six years with, or his sister, who is only a shadow of the person she once was. bellamy remains one of my favorite television characters of all time. (also note, i LOVED his fight scenes this season -- i can’t tell if it’s bob or the choreographers but all of them were really beautifully done, and it was a refreshing change of pace to not see him constantly beaten down every other minute. his face was only bloodied in one episode all season!!). 

BELLARKE?? the bellarke moments were so good and so infuriating. as much as i appreciated them, i just kept thinking about what the show would be like if they’d gone canon at different points earlier on, and how that would make their relationship so complex. if they’d been together during praimfaya and bellamy spent six years thinking she was dead. if they had the same ride-or-die loyalty of monty and harper or the passion of murphy and emori, and how much more interesting that would make the show and the characters and -- well, i also firmly believe that any romance arc shouldn’t stretch over 5 seasons, so at this point it’s looking more like a gimmick to keep people watching, and i think if it were really confident in its quality, it wouldn’t need to use slow burn romantic tension to engage its audience. too much build-up ruins the breaking point, ya feel? five seasons is enough.

anyway. raven, sadly, never gets a character arc in order to let her either grow or shrink because, being the engineer, she’s always forced into a function of plot. in every season, her job is to move a machine from point A to B, and her obstacle is always physical torture. it’s a shame because i think lindsay’s performance is so good. i dug zeke’s character and their romance, though, so i hope to see more of that in s6. 

and murphy. wow. for the first time we get an actual internal arc. even if it’s as blunt and heavy-handed as a brick, murphy had no clear-cut external goal, and everything about his growth this season was his internal acceptance of usefulness and heroism. as i type this i’m seeing a pattern, though, because emori, despite having a very interesting potential arc as grounder-turned-engineering-apprentice, was reduced to a function of murphy’s self-realization. i would have liked more development for both characters, because i think they were really close to something epiphanic that never got fully formed and had the potential to advance the moral cornerstones of the story.

ugh, echo. fuck echo. i think the only way she could be redeemed to me is if she showed bellamy the same loyalty she had once shown roan, and bellamy, rather than turning that loyalty romantic, would have dismissed it as being forced and toxic and destructive, so echo would be forced to actually consider herself as an individual rather than a member of a unit. but everything about their relationship was so sloppily done, and i found myself looking away whenever she was on screen. (which is not at all about the performance, which, again, was stellar.)

monty and harper provided a fraction of a wider perspective toward fixing what i think is the ultimate problem of the show, which is that the writing seems grossly unaware of its own moral assumptions. and maybe i’m projecting because i recently got that same feedback from an author i really admire (and he was right) but i may have internalized it so much i see it in other things now. monty and harper provided a much-needed “we don’t have to participate in this, and there are other solutions to be found” pacifist perspective which really helped round-out the season and provided a breath of fresh air to an otherwise exhaustingly dark plot. 

diyoza? stellar. perfect. wonderful. 10/10. a competent, lawful neutral to act as a foil to octavia’s chaotic neutral leadership. i liked that she was pregnant, but i disliked that her motivation and mcreary’s weakness was reduced to their feelings about that pregnancy, so it felt like just a gimmick to manipulate the plot and tip the scales against mcreary. 

kane is always fab, but i’m biased because i think henry ian cusick is the second best actor on the show. i wish he was more coherent as a character. as it stands he’s just kind of silly putty that gets formed into whatever he needs to be. i would be SO HERE for a kane/diyoza/abby triangle (which i would turn into an OT3 immediately). the daddy vibes this season were great. 

one of the most understated characters has always been indra, played by the best actress on the show, adina porter. this season i really adored her relationship with gaia. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a mother/daughter relationship as formal and loving as theirs, and how it seamlessly encompassed their respective love/worship of octavia. they’re a good example of characters how further the plot but also get to be actual characters. idk why it’s so hard for this show to figure out the difference between plot devices and characters but it’s really hit or miss.

aaaaand then there’s octavia. i was pissed earlier in the season that jaha was killed off just for the sake of landing some leadership advice, because i really liked jaha’s character and (like many of the more competent characters who are put into the hands of incompetent writers [see: lexa]) thought he’d been poorly utilized the past 3 seasons. i don’t get why octavia was the leader at all?? like, kane, indra, abby, and jaha were all more qualified, and they were all in the bunker together. i think there was supposed to be some commentary on charisma and loyalty or something but it got lost in the heavy-handed “we do what it takes to survive” and “we pursue violence for peace” rhetoric that oversaturates the entire show because jroth can’t think of anything deeper or more meaningful to say about the complexity of being (and it’s what will probably get the show canceled in the next year or so -- no growth in moral reasoning = no new drama to be found). the only part that really sold me was octavia’s decision to shoot the people who refused to eat, even though i thought it was a dumb premise to begin with, because the flashback was well-placed and the performance was great, and it showed a genuine breaking point between octavia and blodreina. 

if i had written the season, there were a lot of things i would have done differently (we get this ominous shot of the worms that doesn’t amount to anything, and a twist ending that felt cheap even if it was emotionally compelling), but in comparison to the prior seasons, i commended this season on not pulling its punches on the practical details like it’s always done (clarke eating windshield bugs to survive), threading in the consequences and details from all the prior seasons and the show’s own canon (abby using The Blight to motivate octavia into forcing everyone to eat), and overall slowing the fuck down (the entire season leads up to one [1] battle). 

i don’t think the show will ever fully recover from lexa’s death, which decimated its fanbase and lost trust in the writing, but s5 put up a decent mulligan of s4 to wrangle the juvenile moral quandaries the show attempts to assert. if s6 can advance the philosophical implications of its own world, lose the “our people” bullshit jargon, and focus on the fucking characters which is the only reason anyone watches the damn show, then i think it could really be up there with the other cult faves like buffy and star trek and supernatural.