Or "I normally hate romance as catalyst for character development but sometimes, especially if a parallel girl is involved, I shamelessly LOVE it".
If you haven't read part one of this, please go do that because I'm picking right up where I left off.
So... TV blogging // reflection time, part two. This time, I'm going to shift gears a little bit and talk a little less about my parallel girl and a little more about romance as a catalyst for character development. Also, fictional darlings one would not expect to have such strong moral compasses. Oh, and sibling personality clashes. And don't worry, the parallel-girl stuff and why I ended up so completely attached to a 17-year-old hurricane girl on a post-apoc show is still here, just... less of a focus.
(As mentioned in the previous post, here there be spoilers, so if you wanna watch cold, exit this page now because I'm analyzing elements of episodes 1x07 and 1x08 of The 100 in as much detail as someone who refuses to rewatch said eps is capable of. There's discussion of darker material here - nothing worse than one might see in an average war movie, but played with appropriate weight. Consider yourself warned.)
1x07 is one of those episodes. Anyone who's gotten heavily into fictional media has those few pieces that they can never put themselves through ever again because their heart cannot handle it. This is a prime example for me, primarily because the main plotline of the ep involves the torture of someone who doesn't deserve it and the strength of the one truly good person in the room. (Yes. You did read all of that right. And this is a show centering around teenagers. Sometimes that does worry me a little.)
It should go without saying that things get blown out of proportion when Octavia gets rescued. The aforementioned older brother? Yeah, at this point his primary "good" personality trait is that he is majorly overprotective. That combined with the fact that a poisoned knife ends up embedded in some part of another person's body (I'm intentionally hazy on details because that character is the human personification of good ideas and bad followthrough and I don't caaare) means that... y'know, taking this mysterious outsider prisoner is a fabulous idea. Never mind that (a.) there is not supposed to be any human life on Earth (there is and most of it is hostile) and (b.) basically every member of that group is (understandably) territorial verging on murderous. Let's torture the only seemingly decent one!!
Obviously, the main point of this exercise in brutality is that Bellamy Blake is an impulsive idiot. By this point in the show, that's a given, and stringing up another human being and whipping them with a slightly modified seatbelt (I am not kidding) is still not the most terrible thing he's done in his life. But, y'know, doing this to find a cure to help someone who can best be described as "useless parasite" is still a bit excessive. Not helping is adorable blonde Clarke, formerly the voice of reason on the show, who encourages this. Or Raven, the parasite's soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, who ups the ante with the equivalent of jumper cables. Yes, really. If nothing else, she gets points for being creative.
In the midst of all of this, Octavia is having a crisis. Torture is not a spectator sport, and yet there she is, trying to find a way to stop it because her Person (I'm gonna call him that since his name hasn't been revealed at this point in the episode) does not deserve to have this happen to him. He saved her life. Twice. Yes, he did basically chain her up in a small space, but how was he to know that was going to send her into flashbacks?! He still hasn't said anything, but he seems to understand when she's talking to him and he hasn't done anything to hurt her. Plus, he's pretty and at this point in the game, Octavia's not looking for much more than that. She just doesn't see the point of this.
After yelling at her brother gets her absolutely nowhere, and after watching the jumper cable part of this display, Octavia gets a brilliant idea that I am convinced is the number one reason she is awesome. The aforementioned poisoned knife is sitting on the ground just feet away, and she reasons that since her Person has been protective of her before, he'll show her the antidote if she uses the knife on herself. Which she does, and it's at that point that he finally reacts. Beforehand, despite having an array of unpleasant things done to his own body, he managed to be perfectly stoic and unflinching. The very moment the blade touches her skin, suddenly things are more important. We still don't know this guy's name or anything about him other than that apparently he's some sort of warrior, and even that's questionable, but it's painfully obvious that he cares about her. He saves her, again, because that is what people in love do.
Yes, all of this is headed towards what ends up being the most unexpectedly adorable onscreen relationship I have ever seen (and I've seen more than a few contenders for that honor). But what's important, especially in that buildup, is that Octavia is aware of what she's doing. She is aware that she has power and she can save an innocent life and so fricking help her, that's what she means to do. This is my sacrifice, her eyes say as she hurts herself to make everything stop. This is the least I can do.
And in the aftermath, because our girl continues to be fabulous, she does even better. She is the one who stays and cleans off his wounds and finally, finally, gets actual words out of him. At this point, she's earned it. This is especially important because, as established, Octavia has no basis for what decent human behavior looks like. Until a few weeks ago (at the longest), her only exposure to other people had been her mother (from what little the show gives us, not a great person), her brother (a loose cannon, to put it lightly), and an array of guards who presumably didn't care one way or another about her existence. Her more recent human experiences have included a pair of socially inept tech geniuses and a homicidal twelve-year-old (again, not kidding, this show goes a lot of interesting places), and the two ladytypes who might've been good influences on her have just shown what darkness they're capable of. So why is Octavia different? That's a huge question, and one that (unfortunately) doesn't have a logical answer. The most likely one, however, is that she knows how it feels to be out of place. She bleeds for outsiders because she's one too. And between that and the fact that this guy's clearly got some sort of surprisingly healthy attachment developing towards her... she's going to do the decent human thing because if she is one thing, she is better than her circumstances.
There's one more thing I want to discuss before I tie up this out-of-control reflection, and that's the events of 1x08. After being utterly heartbreaking - and I am still not over this, the darn episode aired five months ago and I am not sure my heart will ever be over it - Octavia decides to do something even more dramatic and let her person go. At this point, the poor dear is still tied up and presumably going to stay there a darn long while. Or not, if his precious ladyperson has anything to say about it, and she does. A brilliant maneuver involving hallucinogenic nuts later (now is a good time to point out that 1x08 is as "light and fluffy" as the show ever gets), he's free. A smarter person would run like hell right away, but Lincoln (yes, he has a name now, and yes, names are weird here) has one little thing to do first. And... cue the kiss that indicates that come hell or high water, these two are a thing. They are a thing and they will stop the world for each other and it is absolutely heart-melting.
I guess the reflection point there for me is that finally, finally, I am idealizing something healthy. It's always weird to look at pairings I heavily ship and note how far those things are from what I actually want to happen to me in real life. Not this one, though. What blossoms out of dark beginnings here is a perfect example of what I'm pretty sure real love is. These darlings are not perfect. They are flawed and complicated and they see those elements of each other and it does not matter because there is also something worth saving. They take risks, they have their quiet moments, there's an intensity to it but also an underlying sweetness. This is the kind of love that needs to be discussed more, because as far as I can tell, it's realistic and it's beautiful. I could definitely idealize worse.
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