Gaia: *pulls out the Flame*

Clarke and Literally Everyone Else:

macus kane went from being a character who would float someone without second guessing it to being a character who would literally die to save his people i stan a man and his character development

Mark my words I’m still a briller shipper always and forever

Doesn’t change.

(Really appreciate all the lovely people that reblog or like this, especially after 5x02)

im still not over the 100 introducing briller for them to drop them the next season. do better

Introducing us an amazing couple with an amazing story and then, without any logical explanation, acting like it never existed? Fuck you, Jason Rothenberg.

Jarod Joseph making everyone’s night by mocking the anti’s.

(via gossipgrounder)

aaaah the shit I find on the briller tag now! amazing! okay so, I ship briller. have shipped it since they showed up. have looked for content. found almost none. went back to lurking. I went to check on Ao3 just to be sure and:

106 for a CANON COUPLE is really pitiful, but okay. I went through the tag. In order to find a fic where they were the MAIN COUPLE without being a sideship and without it being a ficlet collection or something, like a story with beginning and end longer than 1k each, I had to go to PAGE TWO where there’s a WIP of about 7k classifying the fics by length. If I sort it by posting date, the first one that’s longer than 1k, not a wip and not a ficlet collection is at the very bottom of page one and it’s from february 15th. and when I checked the tag last day it took me three pages to arrive... at the episode reactions of 2x03 when murphy made that joke about miller being taken. and out of those 106 fics, 27 are labeled clarke/lexa and 31 bellamy/clarke and I can bet my momenty that out of those 58 if in eight of them the sideship isn’t briller I’m gonna be surprised.

meanwhile at least on the kinkmeme there are some four/five briller fills with I think also a threesome with bellamy where bellamy is the invited party if not more - and I’m not seeing the ot3 on ao3, pity because it was hot - and there’s plenty of prompts, which means that on the kinkmeme in percentage give a lot more shits about briller than people on tumblr or on ao3.

but you have to tag it to complain about someone writing a crack pairing for a kink meme because one of the characters is gay, which most of this fandom doesn’t give a fuck about when it comes to his canon love interest but is totally down with when it comes to shipping him in a fanon mm ship (monty/miller has like 792 fics, while monty/harper has even less than briller it’s like 49) - I mean, you’re ridiculous. if you really care about miller or briller just write some goddamned briller fic longer than 400 words (because you can get by on 400 words for so long) and put it on ao3 instead of complaining about it when it comes to a site where people obviously are more interested in it than tumblr. also, miller and harper are not real people and idek what the fuck is the context for that fic but stop judging people on their shipping preferences. this is fucking ridiculous. like, this tag already updates once in a while, I see that there’s new content, I’m all like :’DDD and then I have to find this on it? grow the fuck up.

also, the fic in question (if I didn’t guess wrong, or at least one of them) said ‘getting each other off, NON-ROMANTIC’. you know that a gay guy can get a woman off and a woman can get a gay guy off and that people don’t need to be attracted to each other to have sex if they just want to get off, or are you living in such a bubble that you don’t even get that far? I know gay people who have been with people of the opposite gender for the exact same reason, do you even know how the world works? nah, I guess not.

god keep ur fucking kink meme shit out of ao3 tag y'all make this fandom even more insufferable than it already is and thats saying something!!! The kind of shit y'all post require a fucking trigger warning it doesnt belong in a safe space

Hello! I see there’s been some confusion! Allow me to clear something up: AO3 is not a safe space.

Let me repeat that. Archive Of Our Own is not a safe space, not in the way you mean it.

From the AO3 Terms of Service:

Why does the Archive have a goal of maximum inclusiveness?

What kind of content do you allow?

The ratings/warnings policy is really minimal. Why is this?

The stated desires/goals when AO3 was conceived and initially developed can be found here, on a livejournal post from @astolat (founder of VidCon, Yuletide, and AO3, and all around fannish legend). In short, the goal was “allowing ANYTHING – het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult.” 

And that, in fact, is precisely what AO3 hosts. You see, AO3 is a safe space for fanfiction. It’s a safe space for people to explore all kinds of fannish content without fear of banning, deletion, or legal reprisal. It was founded, designed, and developed to be a safe space for fandom and fannish works.

There also seems to be some confusion about the nature of safe spaces vs. trigger warnings. A fannish work that merits a trigger warning isn’t something that doesn’t belong in a safe space. The trigger warning is what MAKES something a safe space despite the presence of fannish works that merit warnings.

Something else to consider: there are many other things that include het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, and highly adult material, in addition to incest, pedophilia, infanticide, necrophilia, rape, bestiality, sadism and violence, adultery, and all manner of other things. 

So holding individual women (because that’s what fandom primarily is, women exploring their sexuality in a safe forum filled with other women doing the same) accountable for their fictional exploration of things that a) exist in real life in genuinely damaging forms, b) have significant impact on women themselves, thus leading in some part to the urge to explore those things safely, and c) have existing in movies, television, popular culture, the Bible, and in all of literature since literature began? Well, that’s just an extension of the same culture that polices women’s sexuality in the first place and drives them to find safe ways to explore it.

Ding ding ding we have a winner 🙌🏼

AO3 was pretty much meant to be a safe space …  FOR WRITERS.

FOR WRITERS TO POST PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING AS LONG AS IT IS ADEQUATELY WARNED FOR AND MEETS THEIR CLEARLY POSTED CRITERIA.

IT LITERALLY EXISTS TO PROTECT FANWORKS FROM BEING CENSORED, THREATENED BY LAWYERS, OR TAKEN DOWN OR ALTERED AGAINST THE WRITER’S WILL. THIS APPLIES TO ALL WORKS THAT MEET ITS TOS. ALL OF THEM. YES, INCLUDING AND ESPECIALLY THAT REALLY ICKY ONE.

THAT IS LITERALLY ITS PURPOSE FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. IT WILL NOT CHANGE ITS PURPOSE AND SUDDENLY DECIDE SOME KINDS OF CENSORSHIP ARE OKAY NOW BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE YELL.

If this makes anyone personally uncomfortable, there’s a very easy way to avoid that. Just don’t use AO3. Problem solved.

I guess I should be glad that we have built a world where young fans can be so deeply ignorant of fannish history that they think that the mechanism of repression they’re invoking wasn’t originally built and used to silence them, and so easily could be again.  Their assumption is that they are entitled to have fandom feel comfortable and safe for them; it literally does not occur to them that within their own short lifespans you had to have separate and sometimes secret lists and archives for slash because “nobody wants to see that” and “it’s gross/against God’s will” and “what if the children see it!!!”  (I remember a man knitter having to quit the freaking knitlist because he took such shit just for referring to his partner as “DH/DB” (dear husband/boyfriend) the way the women knitters did theirs.)  And even within the slash community…the very first Smallville slash mailing list tried to ban strong language and graphic content.  A rebel splinter had to break off and found ClarkLex to publish all kinds of stories.  That was only in 2001!  

I know it’s a good thing that we’re now in a world where indignant young people have no idea how vulnerable they historically have been and still are in this particular context.  The time before: that was worse, for many people.  But it’s still very tiring to see.

Please, indignant young people, do start up your own archives where the Problematic Content is banned.  You’ll be setting each other on fire within the year over just where the line is to be drawn.  And advancing your actual cause not at all. 

AO3 is big and easy to use and I have seen some fucked up shit there.

Fandom is becoming mainstream. We need to reconsider if “because you CAN write it, no other reason necessary” is a good philosophy these days. It may be that AO3 needs to reconsider its philosophy and possibly change.

Excuse me? What’s wrong with writing something “because I can”? What other philosophy do you want us to adopt? Let’s see if this fits mainstream criteria of normalcy, of “good” and “moral”?  And the answer to that is: NO. A huge big NO. This is why AO3 was created after LJ strikethrough in 2007 - because we wanted a space where it didn’t matter how weird or kinky or fucked up a story is. Where it didn’t matter that it’s not mainstream. Where we wouldn’t be judged, nobody could delete our stuff and nobody could try holding us legally accountable simply for writing something that’s not to their tastes (as long as there is no actually illegal material). 

Why would they “need” to do that? For what reason? AO3 is precisely what we need - apparently now not only to ward off attacks from outside fandom as it used to be, but from inside fandom as well.

How about “Is this harmful?”

There’s this tendency among artists and writers to completely decry responsibility for the stuff they put out, by hiding under the umbrellas of:

“It’s not real!”

“It’s just art!”

This completely absolves them, in their view, from their responsibilities as citizens of the world. You are responsible for the effect your creative efforts have on the world. You are responsible for the harmful stereotypes you perpetuate.

If AO3 continues to exist, it will eventually have to change. That is inevitable. It is reality. I don’t believe it will continue to exist unless it changes. Perhaps it will continue on for some time, but it will, like all things, have to adapt, or die out.

And in all likelihood, as part of that change, people will no longer be able to post potentially triggering material as freely as they have. That is also reality. You can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theatre, either.

Fandom does not take place in a vacuum. It takes place in, and is part of, reality. It’s becoming more and more mainstream, and websites will have to adapt to that.

Sorry if it interferes with your necrophialic scat fantasies.

As in, I am responsible if somebody reads my fic and does something harmful? Actually, no. They are responsible. They have free will. Neither did I force them to read my fic, nor did I tell them it was okay to act out what they read in my fic. Authors are not responsible for other people’s actions. This is also not how it works, legally.

Rofl, because you and other puritans who believe people have no agency want it to? Please do work on your perception of “reality”.

As “freely” as “slapping warnings all over them so that everyone who doesn’t want to read said material can stay away? Newsflash: If you are triggered by the mere existence of something that you don’t even have to look at, then the problem lies with you. Get help.

Ah, so you’ve looked into my head and seen my fantasies? Interesting. Please, oh mighty one, will you not teach me your powers?

Or you could realise that if your narrative were indeed true, if people were liable for what others do after consuming their creations, mainstream media and authors wouldn’t be able to churn out shows and books left and right that are OCEANS OF TRIGGERS. Only those, other than fanfic and fan-art, have NO WARNINGS WHATSOEVER. And why are you not coming after them? Because you can’t. You pathetic little puritan control freaks are going after those you can get to, which is fan creators, mainly women or other non-cis-male identifying people. You’re trying to silence us and make us conform to mainstream sexual morals even in our fantasies that we never plan on acting out. This has been going on for centuries in various fashions, with various pretexts and from various sides.

And I have no patience left for misogynistic queerphobic fuckery like this, I should’ve known this would be the outcome of engaging, so you’re blocked. Tschüss!

@brydeswhale are you for real? no, are you for real? tumblr user above said everything already but I need to go at this too because oh my god oh my god what have I just read.

Congratulations, the real world in itself is harmful. I can 100% assure you that I’ve never been harmed by fiction except if by that you mean ‘I cried because fictional thing X happened’ (which is called either empathizing or catharsis, whatever you like best) but I’ve been harmed plenty by... real things. which were not in any way at all related to fiction. And so it means we have to potentially shield anyone by potentially harmful things?

Like, are we all five or what? Though tbh if you told me that when I was five I’d have found it personally insulting, but IT’S HARMFUL isn’t a reason to ban something. Also because who the fuck decides what’s harmful? It’s subjective. What’s harmful for you can not be for someone else. Like, is there a moral purity committee? Lol. Please, let’s be adults.

You are aware that only fandom cares about fandom and that the above is valid for every other mainstream writer and artist out there? Because newsflash, but if that was valid for everyone including published writers and so on then... idek we’d be living in 1984 where everything is censored and a small party of people decides what others are allowed to think. Seriously? Sorry, but... it’s not real and it’s indeed just art. Or according to you people should stop reading dunno Iliad, Odyssey and the Bible because there’s plenty triggering shit in there never mind incest never mind murder never mind cannibalism never mind rape because it’s... harmful? Or idk Irish fairytales which are fairly fucked up shit? Too bad I spent my childhood reading that stuff and I didn’t come out of it a deviant. Because even when I was six I knew that Dionysus tricking some queen into tearing to pieces her son and eat those same pieces because the son disrespected him wasn’t fucking real. So yeah, it’s not real and it’s just art. It’s not an umbrella. It’s how things fucking work. Jesus.

.... lol, well, if I write noncon fic and I tag it (which won’t ever happen because I don’t write noncon period, actually in my corners of fandoms I’m famous for the fluff where everything ends well and for shipping the least problematic shit I can find so if you think I have necrophiliac fantasies just stop there because it’s not my cup of tea) then it’s your responsibility to not read it. I’m not anyone’s mother and I’m not here to coddle anyone. and when I was fourteen and clicked on fanfic which MOST OF THE TIME WASN’T WARNED FOR OR TAGGED AND IT ONLY LISTED THE SHIP IF THE AUTHOR REMEMBERED IT because when I was fourteen in the archive I read fic in it wasn’t obligatory to label it even with the ship so you had to read on to find out where the hell it was headed, I wasn’t expecting anyone to cater to my fucking needs because I knew what I was doing, and when I clicked a button lying about my age if it said ‘this content is only suitable for people 18+ on livejournal I knew that I was the one doing it. Like, I wanted to read porn and whatnot but I knew that the author said it was for people of age and not underaged readers so if I didn’t like it it was my problem, not theirs. I could get there at fourteen, people can do it now. That easy. 

Also: no one pays me to write fanfiction. If someone paid me to write a novel I might considerate writing something that I know might influence the audience in a positive way IF I wanted to - because mind that everyone can write what they want and they aren’t in any way obliged to -, but if you think that when I’m writing something for fun and without being paid for it sure as hell I’m not gonna take someone else’s sensibilities into consideration when I write it except for tagging it appropriately. I wouldn’t wanna read surprise noncon so I’d tag it if I wrote it. But that’s it. IN FANDOM, what I owe you as a writer is clearly tagging what I’m writing. In real life I don’t even owe you that, because do you think books have trigger warnings on them or have you just never bought one? I read some seriously fucked up stuff in mainstream books that it had no trigger warnings for but that I could imagine by, like, reading the summary. The real world doesn’t owe you trigger warnings. And I am absolutely not responsible for anything other than tagging my shit. Everyone is responsible for their reading experience. If I start a book I don’t like, I drop it. If I see fanfic whose tags I don’t like, I don’t read it. It’s that fucking simple.

And this is where you’re completely getting it wrong, because as a lot of other peeps in fandom you’re assuming that fandom becoming mainstream means that it’s actually somehow more relevant.

Nope.

Fandom is more accepted these days and people don’t have to hide fanfics anymore and not many people have to write long-ass disclaimers so that some writer’s lawyers don’t drag them to court, but that doesn’t mean the part of fandom that’s on Ao3 is suddenly that bloody relevant. If you mean fandom including people nerding over SW or marvel without creating content fine, but the percentage of people who are fans of something who actually write fanfic and read it and consume it and engage with it is always a niche. It’s not the majority. out of all my rl marvel friends, who read and consume fanfic, *I* am the only one who writes fic on a regular basis. the people who write and read fanfic aren’t suddenly more or more widespread or actually a high percentage of the audience that consumes a certain media product, they’re always a minority. Like, guys, only fandom cares about fandom, and within fandom, only people who are in it not casually go on Ao3 if they like to write/read fic which isn’t even a given, and y’all are assuming that since fandom is getting bigger than it has to censor itself, but it’s not happening. that’s not what’s going on. creators take into account what fandom wants, obviously, but it’s not just the part of fandom who uses ao3. Guys. We’re not that important. We’re not that relevant. We have just stopped being the fight club, but that doesn’t suddenly mean that you’ll find random children on ao3 reading steve/bucky fanfic which is clearly not labeled for them anyway or that their parents will find it, just because the random children happen to like steve and bucky and to watch marvel movies. If they end up doing that it’s because their parents let them on the internet without safe search turned on and tbh it’s their responsibility, not mine.

Ao3 will continue to exist because it was born to be a safe space for writers to post whatever the hell they like and for readers to CHOOSE TO READ WHATEVER THE HELL THEY LIKE AND THAT’S WHY THEY HAVE TAGS FOR IT AND WAYS TO FILTER THEM, NOT FOR READERS TO DECIDE WHATEVER THE HELL WRITERS SHOULD POST. I don’t like YA novels, but if I walk inside a bookshop that sells everything I can’t go to the director and tell them that I hate YA novels and according to me they perpetuate harmful stereotypes so they should get rid of them. Or idk I’m atheist, I don’t go to the director like ‘hey the Bible being there offends me you have to stop selling it’, or at the contrary, if I’m religious I hopefully won’t go there telling the director that they can’t sell Dawkins because it hurts my sensibilities.

Ao3 is there to give you a choice of what to read out of stuff that THE WRITERS FREELY PUT ONLINE GIVING THEIR FREE TIME TO IT BECAUSE NO ONE FUCKING PAYS US FOR IT. if you pay someone to write X and then they put shit you don’t like in there then you can be angry, but you honestly can’t ask people who use their time to write shit they presumably want to write for their personal reasons to not do it because it offends you, random person on the internet.

like.

lol. and this for an archive that’s for fandom and used mostly by people in fandom, which means that on the outside/in the real world no one gives two fucks about what happens on it.

get over yourself, honestly.

... people will always be able to post triggering material because that’s what the ao3 is for and if you wanna read triggering material that’s not fucking labeled you only need to walk into a regular bookshop. wow. hey guys, I spent my money on a song of ice and fire and there was violence in it and I don’t like violence - never mind that I could have guessed it out of the summary, but I bought it, I made my bed and I lied in it and the publisher is certainly not required to fucking warn me about that. are you all serious? we should censor ourselves in fandom so that you all can live on sesame street or smth (actually sesame street is a lot more mature than what you sound so idk in the teletubbies’ world???) and then you walk out of it and buy a normal book and find it abhorrent if there’s something you don’t like in it?

like, fanfic on ao3 is labeled. and tagged. so you can avoid it. as stated above, when I got into fandom warnings weren’t a thing, ratings were (at least) and pairings were if the author remembered it. do you know how much noncon I couldn’t care for I read because I LITERALLY COULDN’T KNOW IT WAS THERE UNTIL I GOT TO THAT POINT? fandom today is extremely sheltered and easier to navigate than it was back in the day. because everything is warned and labeled and people take that shit seriously. personally as a writer I wouldn’t want to trigger anyone accidentally so I tag my stuff, but back in the day it wasn’t a thing. like, do you even realize how lucky we are that these days it’s all tags and tags? but nah, you have to complain because some of that offends you. get the fuck over yourself. yelling fire in a crowded theater has zero to do with posting online labeled fanfic and idek where did that comparison come from but it makes no damned sense. 

Nothing takes place in a vacuum, welcome to the real world. In the real world, no one is required to cater to your needs. In fandom, it happens... IN THE FORM OF TAGGING. So... what’s even your problem.

Also no, as stated above it’s just stopped being the fight club. It’s not more mainstream - or at least, the part that uses ao3 is really not. We aren’t that important. No, really, we fucking aren’t, and websites don’t have to adapt to shit.

Never mind that as stated MAINSTREAM ISN’T FUCKING TAGGED. Like, one of my favorite movies I saw last year was... you couldn’t see it if you’re younger than fourteen and there was the only warning on it. I didn’t know there was a rape scene in it and I don’t particularly enjoy seeing that shit, but I WASN’T ANGRY THAT THERE WASN’T A SIGN OUTSIDE THE CINEMA ‘HEY THERE’S A RAPE SCENE IN THIS MOVIE’. Or, when I went to see watchmen it had the same warning but no one told me what actually was inside that movie and I hadn’t read the comic before. And I was like sixteen and fairly into violent shit so I was down with that, THE BUNCH OF IDIOTIC MOTHERS WHO READ ‘SUPERHERO MOVIE’ AND BROUGHT THEIR SIX YEAR OLDS TO SEE IT even if it was clearly labeled that it wasn’t suited for children and then had to drag them out when they got to rorschach’s backstory including the guy happily murdering an actual pedophile, it was their fault for not informing themselves before bringing their fucking children to see it, not of the movie for including potential triggering content that wasn’t aimed at children... who were not the audience for it anyway. And watchmen is fairly mainstream these days. Fandom has actually a lot more trigger warnings and the likes than mainstream, so we don’t have to adapt to mainstream unless you want us to lose trigger warnings. Because mainstream media for adults doesn’t shy away from triggering/dark stuff nor media for teenagers (and not even for children, or hunchback of notre dame wouldn’t have been my favorite disney movie in the day but I digress).

Unless with that you mean that everyone has to write *safe* stuff that can be consumed by 12yo and 30yo alike, except that a lot of people at 30 don’t want to consume safe stuff and, spoiler alert, fandom IS NOT HERE TO CATER TO TEENAGERS. everyone can partake in it but the fact that minors are in there OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL doesn’t mean that adults have to censor themselves especially when a lot of those minors are there for the adult content and know that perfectly. (I was, anyway.)

Like. Do you even know what you’re proposing, because I’m not sure you do.

As stated before, I’m fairly sure I never had fantasies about anything edgier than consensual d/s in which one part of the couple is crossdressing if it’s mm or ff or both are crossdressing if it’s mf. no, really. I don’t. I don’t care for noncon, I certainly don’t care for necrophilia nor scat nor anything that problematic and I still think people who are into that shit have all the rights to post it. Of course they should tag it so I can avoid reading it because idc, but if they do I’ll scroll by and let them live because I’m not in purity police and idc for policing what others should think, write or do with their own free time.

Like. Please just stop because you’re embarrassing yourself and your entire side in this dumb debate is embarrassing itself.

And in conclusion, a sincere question from me:

have a great evening and stop policing what others should write. 1984 isn’t a good model to follow.

First of all what year is this that y'all still use the word squick (????) secondly this isn’t whatever that is this is going to a place that most of us go to (the Bellamy/Clarke tag on ao3!!) to get away, and that we treat as a safe space, only to see like incest fic (a personal trigger of mine!!) or rape fic or like whatever other bullshit y'all are circle jerking to like? Keep it on your kinkmeme page! Because unfortunately we can’t filter “nasty ass fanfiction written by middle aged women” on ao3, sure as fuck wish I could though!

nb: Sorry to shift this sideways to my personal blog but this really doesn’t need to be cluttering up the Kink Meme tumblr, you understand. 

To your tags “ #ANYWAY#I think I asked nicely the first time lmfao ”. You absolutely did ask nicely which I’m appreciative of. However, being thankful that someone chose not to accuse me of molesting a child I lived with (my inbox has been wild) is a surreal place to be in my life. 

I use squick for a couple of reasons, the first of which being that I’m nearly 30 and have been active in the fanfiction community since the 7th grade so I’ve always called it a squick. The other, more salient, reason is that a squick is not a trigger. I’m firmly of the mind that fandom in general uses trigger with little regard for the actual significance for people who are triggered by things. Not offended or grossed out but genuinely triggered. While I’m sure that there are absolutely fics which have genuinely triggered people and I of course can’t speak to anyone’s personal experience, the vast majority of people who say fic is triggering them are not, in fact, suffering from a resurgence of deeply harmful psychological trauma which significantly affects their ability to lead “normal” lives. They just don’t like it. Being upset by something isn’t the same as being triggered by it. 

To that end if you are making AO3 your “safe space” and expect that you will not be confronted by content that you find offensive you are acting in error. As was pointed out the last time I tried to run a Kink Meme for this fandom, AO3′s mission statement from conception has been to host fanfiction without morality policing or censorship with some very few exceptions (personal attacks and plagiarism being two such exceptions). AO3 and quite frankly fanfiction in general shouldn’t be where you look to find a safe space; There are too many people looking for too many disparate things. 

If you want safe space within the Bellarke shipdom or fandom in general I heartily encourage you to create that. Back in the day (#fandomgrandma) personally run fanfiction archives were all the rage. I’m sure that the (free) source code for those, complete with forums, is still floating around on the internet. If my experience in the Bellarke shipdom has taught me anything it’s that you will absolutely get a bite if you decide to host a The 100 or even just Bellarke archive with morality rules. If you’d like to see what those kinds of private archives can look like: Pomme De Sang was my stomping grounds for a while. Yeah, I made some questionable choices in high school but the PdS archive and forum are a pretty standard example. 

It’s gonna be a long day isn’t it?

omg i’m deadass so fucking tired of old people 

This just in: 30 is now Old. No one tell the Bellamy stans how old Bob Morley is.

edit to add: 

Actually, fuck you. I’m really over this fandom being so moralizing and self important. I worked really hard on being clear and articulate and non-confrontational about something which is a really sensitive subject for me. In case you were wondering, yeah I’m still raw about last time and the things people have been saying to and about me in my inbox or on GG run the gambit from exhausting to legitimately terrible.  

I treated your concern with respect and actually addressed it because I know that it’s important to you and it’s shared by other people. I don’t want to blow off your experience and the parts of it which are troubling that I play a role in just because I disagree with where you’re coming from. So I tried to be helpful, I gave resources and a good fucking idea. It’s this off hand dismissal of anything that might complicate a narrow, clinical world view which makes me so sick of this fandom. 

You try to run something nice and you get shit.

You know what the worst part is? I’m very annoyed and yet still sitting here being genuinely and notably grateful that a) you’re not a former friend who has decided to go for the throat and b) you’re not accusing me of being a rapist. I honestly can’t even tell if fandom’s gotten worse of if I’m just a lot more tired. 

Fuck it, I’m going to the beach. 

All of this 100%

Also: @bob-morley I don’t think that this is so much a matter of who’s “old” and who isn’t, as opposed to who has experience in fandom.

People who are experienced in fandom already know what squicks are and triggers are, and they already know that it’s perfectly fine to have either and to not want to read/see things because of them. Seriously! Not everything is for everyone! And that’s fine!

They also know that Ao3 is a website that is literally founded on the principles of allowing any and all types of fiction to be posted and respected. They have actual real life lawyers to protect said fanfictions and the people who post them. So by all means, send them an angry letter, sign a petition, become a lawyer and boycott the website all together: do what you want, I don’t care. They’ll laugh in your face, and that’s assuming that you even get a response in the first place.

(I do want to add: there’s no shame in not being experienced in fandom!! We all start somewhere. The real problem is when we pretend that we know everything about the culture that we’re immersing ourselves in. It’s a problem when we bust in here like we own the place, then start telling people who have been doing this for years and literally built the culture that we now get to enjoy and share: “you’re doing this wrong and you’re a piece of shit person because I said so.”)

You are far from the first person to decide that “my own personal ideals are the highest of the high, and everyone else needs to leave so that way I can enforce my safe space” and you will absolutely not be the last.

However, if you were experienced in fandom, you would know just how dangerous this mentality is. You would know that all it takes is for one thing to be compromised (ei: no rape/incest fics) and then everything comes tumbling down.

“But Avocado! Aren’t you jumping to conclusions?? Surely we can just take out the bad things without getting rid of the good things like LGBT+ rep and freedom of expression??”

Unfortunately, my sweet little sugar plum, people have tried this time and time again. And guess what? It’s failed. Time. And. Time. Again. One thing gives and before you know it you have a website where you’re only allowed to post PG fanfics with M/F pairings and no premarital sex or violence or drugs or literally anything like that and no I’m not exaggerating. It has happened. Time. And. Time. Again.

“So what are we to do?? There are so many horrible horrible things out there and by golly, I shouldn’t have to read them!!”

Well, here’s the real kicker: you totally don’t have to read anything you don’t want to! I KNOW. SHOCKING. BRAND NEW INFORMATION. I highly suggest that you make use of Ao3′s extensive tagging system, which is fully decked out with Rape/Non-Con warnings, Explicit Warnings, Violence Warnings, and honest to god so so many tags that it’s almost like you could tag absolutely anything and everything on that damn website.

Oh wait– YOU TOTALLY CAN.

“But Avocado!! What if there’s a fanfic that isn’t tagged properly???”

Well, my precious baby dew drop, you could always politely ask the author to properly tag their content. But after that? You’re just going to have to close the fic and stop reading it. I know. It’s an impossible task, but when you’re left unsupervised on the internet you’re going to have to be your own advocate. Don’t read what you’re not comfortable reading. It’s that easy. You’re allowed to stop reading at any time too! I promise. It’s totally allowed.

“BUT AVOCADO!!! WHAT IF THEY’RE WRITING EXPLICIT INFORMATION IN THE DESCRIPTION???? WHAT IF THEY USED BAD WORDS AND THE VERY SHORT DESCRIPTION WAS ENOUGH TO MAKE ME EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE TO THE POINT THAT I FELT COMPELLED TO SEND ANGRY MESSAGES TO PEOPLE ONLINE?????”

You may not like this, darling sweet pea honey pie, but if you are that easily affected by content (and there’s no shame in that!! Genuinely, having squicks/triggers is nothing to be ashamed of and you do not have to live your life as if you don’t have them) then Ao3 probably isn’t the website for you. And I know that sucks to hear, considering that it’s arguably the biggest and best website for fanfiction, but it is not created to be a safe space. It’s just not. So if that’s what you need, then you might need to look in other places.

oh my god what the hell did I just read I need brain bleach. blergh.

also: everyone has addressed the basic points here ie ao3 being a safe space for WRITERS and squick vs trigger and the likes and y’all have been very polite and lovely, so since I’m on a sideblog and I can be as blunt as I want, I’d really like to point out that the concept of

is like.... the most fucking hilarious thing conceived in the history of hilarity never mind that it 100% reeks of self-entitled in a way that’s... almost cute if we assume y’all are young and weren’t around when fandom wasn’t involved in purity wank wars. or better, if purity wank wars happened usually they were against fandom by external people. but never mind.

first thing: sorry to break it but ‘nasty-ass fanfiction’ can be written by anyone and I’m 90% sure that most bad fanfic I read wasn’t from OLD PEOPLE, whatever you mean by it.

second thing: when I started writing fanfic at the ripe age of fourteen it was shit. like. 100% shit. I can self-testify that. I started getting better at it after... reading... fanfic... written by older people. some of the best fic I ever read was from fucking older people. some of the best smut I ever read was from people over the age of forty. I learned more from the ***MIDDLE AGED WOMEN*** than I learned from my peers.

also: middle-aged women are not your enemy, middle aged women are not your fucking mother, middle-aged women have rights to sexual fantasies same as y’all, middle-aged women don’t write particularly nasty shit or nastier than average and it frankly disgusts me that someone would just go like ‘EW OLD PEOPLE’ on this, because wow then y’all complain about ageism? fuck that. middle-aged and old women and young women and in between can write whatever fanfic they want and they can post it wherever they hell they want and they aren’t your babysitter nor they have some duty to keep you safe from shit you don’t like.

also: when I was sixteen I started meeting people in fandom/the internet outside of my immediate friends who were my age. a few of them were over forty and had been in fandom for years. you know what happened? we got along perfectly well and no one thought it was weird that we talked to each other. wow. amazing, right? I’ve been friends with nasty middle aged women when I was younger than most people fighting puritan wank wars on this hell of a website and I’ve kept on befriending them since and I’ve been friends with people much younger than I was and none of us died for it. wow. amazing, innit? anyway, if all fanfiction around was written just by teenagers the quality would drop for fucking sure.

also: guys, were you born yesterday or what, because kink memes have always existed and always will and the one hereby mentioned is actually pretty tame by the standards of the good old days of my fandom experience. like. blacklist what you don’t like on ao3 or tumblr, don’t go on the kinkmeme and leave people alone. also, if y’all are twenty and according to you 30 is old: hate to break it to you but you’ll be there in no time and I hope for you you’ll have reconsidered your stance because by then we’re all going to be fucking damn ancient then.

learn some fandom history, learn some basic respect because you wouldn’t talk to your mother’s friends like that, learn to use your fucking tools to have a safe experience on the internet (spoilers: I once was in a KM where at some point all the prompts turned noncon and I just stopped going there because I hate noncon but I didn’t tell them to stop prompting noncon how amazing) and stop sounding like self-entitled little brats if you want to look even halfway mature. spoilers: if you’re eighteen or so you’re an adult and if you’re older than sixteen you’re on the way there. learn some maturity or good luck handling real life when it hits you in the face.

christ, I can’t be reading this pseudo-calvinism purity rhetoric in the year of the lord 2017.

In this, the year of our Lord, 2016, Jarod Joseph became a legend.

@decento

How do you guys manage to ignore L/xa sending an army of 300 to kill 100 kids?

L/xa literally killing 300 of her own people by sneaking out of TonDc and letting a missile hit it?

L/xa abandoning Clarke at the mountain to die?

L/xa kidnapping Clarke and holding her prisoner in Polis while Clarke refuses to talk to her for a week?

L/xa forcing Clarke to bow to ensure the safety of her people?

This isn’t the Grounder show. There’s a reason they didn’t show us Bellamy murdering those Grounders (because it isn’t supposed to have a huge emotional impact).

Also, LMAO. Even after murdering those 300 Grounders it’s Clarke Griffin who still tells Bellamy Blake “I trust you.” But ya’ll can keep pretending Clarke ever actually cared about the Grounders and their customs. 

If anyone has a problem with denial it’s not us….

@loveneverl4sts

People swear like he killed all those people singlehandedly. As if he wasn’t following orders and being guilted and manipulated into it. As if he didn’t fight to spare the wounded and didn’t save Indra’s life. As if he wasn’t the only one to ever speak up to Pike about going too far. They ignore canon so hard it’s comical.

Wait, do people actually ship Reek/Theon and Ramsay together??!! What the fuck?! Did everyone miss the part where Ramsey tortured Theon, cut off his genitals and brainwashed him to believe he was worthless and renamed him Reek to dehumanise him? Oh yeah totally OTP material…

There are Thramsay shippers out there, for sure. They might rewrite the characters to their liking. And there are lots of people who don’t ship them but get off on non consensual sex between a master and a slave. It’s all imaginative and made up and any ship is acceptable if not understandable to me. Just my opinion.

I mean you think what you want but just because something is imagined doesn’t make it acceptable or not wrong. Whether you want to accept it or not ships are in some way or another a reflection of your desires, fantasies, world view, likings or even learned behaviour and a lot of people want to deny it but people will always have a connection with characters and ships personally if that be conscious or not (note abusive and possessive relationships teenage girls fantasize about which is learned behaviour).

But if they want to change the story to something less fucked up then I guess I can’t blame them. But as the characters actually stand, people like myself are not gonna accept it.

But trust me I’ve seen enough ship drama to know when something is kink shaming and when something deserves the hate, like child/adult ships, sexual assault fantasies, abusive ships etc etc. and this ship (unless rewritten) is well deserving of that.

And to say that all ships are acceptable is a bit vague don’t you think? I mean unless you think underage/child ships incl adults (shipped by adults) is okay. I’d pick your words carefully. I’m not hating I’m just saying.

This is not meant to be mean or whatever I thought I’d give a counter argument.

Hi there, a thramsay shipper here. which in my case (and the case of most thramsay shippers I think) means that I am very much interested in the dynamic between Theon and Ramsay. It has always been the case for me that I’m attracted to this type of relationship, most of the ships I’ve been really involved in included elements of kidnap, torture or non-con. Thramsay is certainly the most extreme one i’ve come across and I am totally open in admitting that that is why it’s my ultimate favorite ship. to also be completely open with you: I get off on non-con and only non-con porn, mostly in the case of slave/master stories and I have a weird fetish for kidnap/prisoner situations. I am really interested in power plays and often imagine myself involved in one, in which I am the submissive. All of that stuff is also something that I can’t control, it’s a part of me and I can’t get rid of it, neither do I think I should because I also happen to be the person I know who gets most emotional about torture in real life. who is most passionate about human rights and fighting against barbaric practices like the death penalty. i’m very much able to separate reality from fiction, are you? And yes, you are very much kinkshaming…. There’s also the fact that I (and many other thramsay fans) have a history of sexual abuse (light sexual abuse in my case there’s cases of much more serious sexual abuse in our community then mine) and many of us use thramsay as a way to cope with that. And I really don’t think it’s up to anyone to judge how me cope. Then again, even if it weren’t coping, it’s not your business to judge what we like to read about/what we’re interested in. we don’t need to justify ourselves to you… (yet, once again i’m apparently doing it argh….) My rule is don’t judge anyone for feeling/thinking things, especially things you can’t control. If and when they act on it kindly refrain from being a self rightious prejudiced asshole, thanks.

p.s.: my sexual desires weren’t “learned” they are a part of me, society had nothing to do with it… do you really think you understand someone else better then they themselves do?

(btw, I think it’s kinda funny that you are judging thramsay shippers but have a Clarke/Lexa gif on your blog…. do you ship them? I mean… I don’t watch the show cause I don’t watch bad shows but my friend who watches it told me it’s abusive and creepy as fuck…. the kind of relationship i’d probably like if I watched the show)

First off i never said your desires were learnt i said it was an option as to why somebody may ship and be attracted to a certain relationship.

But if you can separate your likings and reality i guess i cant blame you for anything other than liking something like that which despite me understanding that, am not going to accept it.

I guess if you honestly believe it is a part of you no matter what i argue it wont change that so what can i say?

I understand you when it comes to coping mechanisms because i know that sa victims use rape and abuse fantasies to cope and im sorry that you are one but you have to know that it can equally be a trigger to other abuse victims, you dont live in a vacuum.

And btw Clexa isnt abusive by any means (i know an abusive ship when i see one and one for example is captain swan from ouat) but people who ship the opposing ship say stuff like that cause they cant admit that ship happened and that it is a f/f ship (plus by their logic their ship is also abusive js) anyway this isnt about that ship.

Look Im not any time soon going to ever competely accept these “kinks” and maybe i am kinkshaming but tbh i dont care. But dont get me wrong i do inderstand in terms of coping i do but like i said above you dont live in a vacuum. I also understand that you feel thats who you are and nothing i say will change that.

I think as long as you dont think it is realistic in the real world and ever put yourself or someone else in a dangerous position I cannot blame you but you dont seem that you would.

Stay safe my friend but Im never going to accept it and plus you put something on the internet people are gonna criticise it, you have to accept that.

But that’s just the point. We can’t control it. What ships we like is beyond our control, so is which characters we like which people we like in real life. It’s all beyond our control, usually it has to do with our own personality and experiences. So no we can’t control it, and we shouldn’t have to. Everyone should be allowed to be who they are without judgement (of course as long as no one else is hurt in the process)

Did I at any point say that this is the only way of coping? I don’t believe I did. I don’t judge others for how they cope, unlike some people. And that’s why it’s important to tag thramsay so people who don’t want to see it don’t have to, because obviously it would be upsetting to some people, I mean… it’s not like you even have to be an abuse victim to find that disturbing stuff upsetting… none of the thramsay fans I’ve met think that everyone should cope with sexual abuse the way we do. We don’t tell people that they are bad victims, that’s what’s repeatedly told to us. So I don’t understand your comment about living in a vacuum, if anything that applies to you cause you’re the one who in your own words can’t accept that I (and others) enjoy something that you can’t understand.

About the clexa thing, let me just tag my friend, cause like I said, I haven’t seen the show… @indecento

Ok, you say you understand but then you come up with “you don’t live in a vacuum” argument again. What do you mean by that exactly? Because I didn’t know that not living in a vacuum meant I have to change myself to your liking because you can’t possibly understand that there are people different from you, who like different things…

And yes, people are going to criticize it. I’m fine with criticism, people are also going to be prejudiced assholes, which I can deal with but will also point out to them because being a prejudiced asshole is not a good thing. I could btw, say the exact same thing to you…. If you post something like that, in the Theon tag none the less (and most thramsay fans are huge Theon fans…. For me he’s my favorite character to the point where I wrote a damn book about the guy) people are going to criticize you on your ignorant prejudices.

er okay I was summoned I reply.

first: I hate both t/ramsay and c/lexa for different reasons but guess what I don’t go tag my opinions about either. maybe because I know that people will ship what they ship and as long as they tag their shit I don’t care and they certainly don’t want to know all the reasons why I don’t like their ship.

but: while c/l isn’t anywhere near the level of fucked up that thramsay is, if you think you have a waaaay moral higher ground when criticizing fucked up ships, sorry but I don’t think it’s the case. because I mean, never mind that moral higher ground when it comes to shipping is an idiotic concept, but we aren’t talking about dunno *tries to think of fairly not fucked up ships* me as a jon/sam shipper looking down on thramsay shippers. I mean I ship sansan I certainly can’t go around telling people that their ship is wholly horrid and mine is the most perfect thing ever.

now just to have it out of the way: before you assume I’m a bellamy/clarke shipper who can’t deal with clarke being in a rship with a woman, let’s get it out of the way that I lowkey ship b/c because I think they’re a well-written relationship but most of my ships in general are m/m and I’ve had plenty of f/f ships too - I give zero fucks that clarke and lexa are both women. (also, my main ship investment in the 100 is kane/abby anyway so I’m neutral here.) my problem is the dynamic.

as in: man, c/lexa is hardly a fucking healthy ship. lexa spent half of S2 pretty much detaching clarke from the people she loved throughout her ‘LOVE IS WEAKNESS’ philosophy, which brought to clarke kind of going and sending bellamy into the mountain when twenty minutes before she was like ‘I don’t want to lose anymore people’, but that’s like not even the basics. before they kissed the first time, never mind all the love is weakness crap, lexa basically was 100% of the reason the missile hit that town where they were having the meeting - she sacrificed a bunch of people needlessly, she pretty much talked clarke into it when the people who might die were her friends and her relatives gdi, then there was that kiss which was hella fucking creepy because clarke had lost finn - a guy she technically *loved* or so we’re told - ten days before and openly said she wasn’t ready for a relationship, in an episode where she had to put a knife to lexa’s throat in order to convince her to not kill octavia for having figured out that shit about the missile. or if it wasn’t that episode it was the one after but I’m fairly sure it was the same one. and that, after she had asked more than once to trust her on octavia. but nah, lexa was gonna have her killed anyway because it wasn’t safe. now, even with all of that, they work for that long for that alliance and then BAM WELL THEY OFFERED US A DEAL BYE - lexa left clarke high and dry at mount weather throwing away all that work in a 100% true shitty move and tbh if she hadn’t done that maybe clarke wouldn’t have been put in a position to kill 300 people. maybe. just maybe. that totally was healthy for clarke since she ended up living on her own for three months because she couldn’t deal with the guilt! but yeah, sure, healthy.

then in S3 they had to rush it because they had seven episodes before they had to kill off ADC for contract reasons but if you want me to think that I have to buy that it’s IC that clarke, who has harbored resentment for wells - her best friend - for a helluvalongtime and who has done that with her mother for even longer would forgive lexa just like that in one episode with that being IC good luck - it was some of the most convoluted writing ever. that entire rship was written in a very convoluted way until that frankly horrid ending - btw I 100% agree lexa deserved better than that crappy death and I don’t even particularly like her so I mean I’m trying to be objective here.

even with that, even if we assume that lexa understood that she fucked up and that she had some decent character development, which I don’t see that much but other people I trust do so let’s just go with that, it’s not like - I mean, their relationship is still hella unhealthy. clarke is there with ptsd and the likes and lexa lets her do whatever she likes out of guilt and that’s not healthy. not at all. never mind that the fact that lexa’s convinced of something and then a moment later clarke going like ‘no but you should do it like this it’s better’ and lexa being like AH YEAH SURE GOOD IDEA WHY NOT in the span of three seconds... I mean, clarke isn’t a flawless perfect angel and she can definitely manipulate people or convince them subtly if/when she needs to convince them. I don’t think she even does that consciously but it’s not a relationship based on mutual trust and communication for sure, never mind that whenever it looks like clarke’s in danger lexa’s solution is WELL I’M ARRESTING YOU FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, never mind that she decided clarke had to be the ambassador for her clan WITHOUT CONSULTING HER OR THE CLAN FIRST. just to say one. and I could go on for the next two years about all of that, but like, no one has a problem with c/l because it’s two women, or at least no one who isn’t an homophobe (and I’m not), I have a problem because it’s creepy, at points it’s downright dub-con-ish, they both manipulated each other at different points and I thoroughly detest how the show had to take that OMG ROMANTIC turn in S3, though I also don’t understand at all how even before S3 anyone could think it was romantic, healthy or something that benefited them both. because it didn’t?

tldr: obviously we’re not talking the level of fucked up that’s thramsay, because it’s not and there’s quite nothing around as fucked up as thramsay, but c/l is hardly fucking healthy. it’s not. and the problem isn’t that it happened, the problem is that it’s seen as some kind of amazing love story people should aspire to and tbh if someone wants a romance like theirs for themselves I’d get fairly worried on their behalf. 

also: as stated, I hate thramsay. there’s a bunch of stuff that I don’t get. but as long as it’s fictional and people are taking it for what it is (and most times they don’t romanticize it at least as far as I see) I don’t see why it’s anyone’s business to judge what others like to read on ao3 or ship or whatever. hell I certainly don’t go around in the c/lexa tag asking what do people see in that ship that is anywhere near healthy because idgi and I’m not a masochist (I mean if I posted such a thing in the c/lexa tag I’d get anon hate to last me a lifetime within the first five minutes of posting it probably), how about letting people ship what they like to ship? *shrug*

Platonic love

I love the Bellarke fam, and how we’ve taken up the platonic meme like no other, spinning a 180 on a C/exa insult.

BUT. It just makes me laugh.

You guys know where the term platonic comes from, right?

It’s a word named after Plato. Idealism.

Platonic love essentially means the IDEAL FORM OF LOVE.

Basically, you understand one’s mind perfectly, you see ideal beauty in her soul. You recognize his flaws and love him anyways.

Contemporary usage of the term is inaccurate, invalidating romance and focusing solely on sexual desire, which according to Plato, was NOT nonexistent in this relationship. Just not the main focus.

It’s freaking amazing that C/exas think Bellarke is platonic. Because seriously, what better love is there?

(I honestly apologize for this longass rant I thought it wouldn’t be as long /o\)

Hi! Soo uhm let's say that in this fandom I lurk because I'm honestly terrified to engage directly (and that's why I'm writing it from a sideblog that no one on my main knows about) but I've been following this 'bellarke is platonic' fandom debate for a bit and I'd like to offer my two cents on the matter being that I studied philosophy in uni and I almost graduated on ancient Greek/Roman philosophy so I have FEELINGS about it ;)

okay so if I may, a couple things about the ORIGINAL meaning of *platonic love*: as most people have already pointed out, in that original meaning it absolutely does NOT mean 'I love someone else but not sexually or romantically it's just Very Pure Love TM'. Actually, it requires a sexual component, though it has to be coded in a certain way, which is also one of the reasons I think that it doesn't quite qualify when talking about bellarke in either sense. Like, if you go step by step through the original outline of how it works, you roughly have the following situation (I'm going by my uni memories here I hope it's understandable):

- as far as Plato's concerned, TRUTHFUL knowledge of how the universe works/is is what the wise person/philosopher has to aspire in life (mind that Plato was not a democrat and didn't think it was for everyone but never mind me). That is, you have to know the world beyond your senses and what you esperience of it and go to the platonic ideas that shape it - also most of Plato's ideas are concepts ie goodness, justice and so on.

- since it's a hard path that most people don't understand (because most people are happy being ignorant and don't care for not being), in order to follow through it you have to be strongly motivated and you have to be willing to question everything that you thought you knew about how *anything* works.

- in order to do that, you must have LOVE for what you do. But that love's ultimate target is *knowledge*. Like, love for KNOWLEDGE in its purest form is what ultimate platonic love means but the thing is that it's not something you wake up with in the morning when you didn't have it before, it's something you cultivate and that you have to get through gradually. As in, you learn to love knowledge through loving other things first, among which PEOPLE (but not ANYONE, specific people).

- basically (it's pretty much what the entire point of the Symposium is), love more or less goes like this: you think that there's just one kind of it at first - devotion to someone. Then you realize that no, actually there's two different kinds of love - one is just carnal, and that's like a normal human function but that's about it, and the other is also intellectual. As in, what the OP is about: knowing someone beyond carnal. BUT that doesn't mean it's over, because never minding the part where some people are supposed to be together/are more fit to be with each other (it's the infamous soulmates part of the Symposium that most people seem to assume is the entirety of the dialogue - it's not), the thing is that if you stop at loving someONE, you can't go to the next stage. Because you have to love KNOWLEDGE the same way you love that person intimately and beyond the physical - that's basically your test drive. AND here comes the other specifics: a platonic relationship between two people implies that one of them ALREADY has learned the ways of philosophy and the likes and is willing to teach the other throughout any possible means - like, a sexual relationship is indeed required for this kind of exchange, but that sexual relationship has to have an ultimate teaching target. Throughout knowing intimately someone who's willing to be your teacher (and following their lead) you also will be able to move from loving some*one* to love the entire world and what's beyond it. That you will have learned also by questioning yourself and so on. (Which is why platonic relationships usually imply that it's two guys in them, because y'know Ancient Athenians, their ideas about the concept of pederasty and so on.) Like tldr, if you read the Symposium, when at the end Alcibiades goes on a drunken tirade about wanting to sleep with Socrates because he loves HIM and he wants the knowledge he thinks SOCRATES has, Socrates basically leaves him dry because Alcibiades is basically unable to see being Socrates's person and so he's not ready to go on the next step.

- therefore: if you want a bonafide TM platonic relationship you have to know someone intimately both intellectually and carnally, but if they aren't teaching you anything or you aren't teaching them anything then it's not wholly platonic in the wholesome original meaning of the term.

(Obviously, the modern significance of the term has absolutely nothing in common with any of the above. Especially the part where the sexual part doesn't exist. It's a fundamental step.)

BUT, I would like if I may to suggest a way more suited ancient philosophical comparison as far as bellarke is concerned imho. because I mean, everyone goes ranting about platonic love and the likes but I think that plato is a red herring here - I mean I ship bellarke if that wasn't obvious yet, but I don't really think their relationship's point is going beyond the two of them as single human beings and learning the mysterious way the universe works with one of them eventually moving on and teaching them to someone else. (Unless you want to decide they're platonic SOULMATES and stop there, which is an entirely acceptable option and would require an entire other post, but never mind me I'll go on and try to finish this rant XD)

So, you really don't want to look at Plato. I think you might want to look at Aristotle instead. Specifically, at the concept of the unmoved mover or prime mover.

What is the unmoved mover: tldr, Aristotle had a physics conception that was later proved all wrong but that people bought until modern science, but let's basically said that the universe works with celestial corps/spheres moving circularly. Now: every motion is a change. Every change has to have a cause. You can't have change/motion without a cause. But you also can't go back indefinitely. Therefore: there has to be SOME point this all stops at. So there has to be ONE thing that doesn't move or change but inspires change/other things to move. As in, the unmoved mover. Now, according to Aristotle the unmoved mover is NOT a god (gods exist outside that realm) - it's more like, pure 100% essence of thought TM that inspires everything else including the world to move around it and which is absolutely not imperfect, and like the closer you get to it the less imperfect you become.

(In a very dumb example. Let's say there's a bunch of marvel nerds having a meet up in the middle of a public square. all of a sudden, Chris Evans comes out of a coffee shop, goes in the middle of the square and stops there waiting for someone. Most of those people will recognize him and go there to ask for a picture or anything without him needing to move. Some of them might have undignified reactions and other people might have to stop them from going over before they like faint in front of him or something. That'd make Cevans the unmoved mover which causes a bunch of people to move towards him and a bunch of actions with repercussions and so on. Sorry I know it was a dumb example but I couldn't come up with anything deeper.)

Actually, at some point he said textually that the unmoved mover is 'an object of love and desire' and attracts everything else the way something loved attracts the lover. And being that the unmoved mover is always in a state of happiness, whichever thing admires it is also in that similar state. This is also based on the entire concept that you have FINAL causes of things happening and EFFECTUAL causes of things happening (final: you do something FOR one reason. Effectual: the effects of an action).

By the way: this has been co-opted by Christianity in the Middle Ages (thanks to St. Thomas) and the Christian God has been turned into the unmoved mover which moves the entire universe and so on. (Side addendum: in Dante's Divine Comedy [another epic I think bellamy would be very much into] Paradise is structured in the same way with God being in the middle and everyone else basking in His beatitude and so forth and it's implied that it's His *love* that moves the universe. It's all very poetic.)

Now, I've been caught up with this show for not a lot and I'm not at the stage where I write bellarke meta with any sense, but from what I see they tend to do the following:

- obviously they work better together than they do apart, but that goes unsaid. At the same time though, it's not that ONE of them leads the other (same as the platonic relationship implies), but rather they learn FROM each other and feed off each other and that interaction helps them become better people/leaders (they need each other, right?), and that also happens through the effects of their actions (EFFECTUAL CAUSES).

- BUT they also do a lot of things FOR each other - like tbh bellamy/final causes is a fairly good contender for otp of the century since he acts FOR others a lot (more than he does for himself). clarke included. (VERY MUCH SO.)

- the farther they are from each other, the worst decisions they take and tbh the more unhappy they seem to be to me (and the closer you are to the unmoved mover the happier you are as before).

- they started disliking each other, ended up NEEDING each other, both had to work for it, and they DO tend to gravitate towards each other (bellamy moreso than clarke probably). I mean, neither of them is an ABSOLUTE unmoved mover towards the other though they feed off each other in good ways (and I daresay their relationship has been kind of the unmoved mover of most of the plot since it's always been central anyway) but come on, don't tell me that you don't see modern AU bellamy sending clarke valentines cards with YOU'RE MY UNMOVED MOVER WILL YOU COME TO DINNER WITH ME.

- there's love in what motivates most of their actions (for each other, for their friends and whatever you want it) which isn't necessarily the kind of feeling that goes y'know BEYOND THE REALM OF PHYSICS, but it's still what *moves* their actions/gives them causes to take their decisions, causal or final or what you'd rather have, and the idea of love *moving* or being the *cause* of someone's action is definitely more aristotelian than platonic anyway.

so okay I've said my piece and y'all probably wondering what kind of weed I smoked this morning, but if I may propose I think they're more in aristotelical love than platonic love myself. ;)

“i can’t believe they threw away the story of the girl who fell from the stars and the girl who ruled the world just to tell a different story no one cared about”

u mean….to tell the actual story? about the hundred? that story? about the people who have been around since season one? the actual main characters? that story? u know, the actual show?

the story of the girl who fell from the stars and the girl who ruled the world:

the “actual story”:

thanks for ur time

the part where anyone asked:

…..oh wait, we didn’t.

lol someone has already broken down the ratings and lexa didn’t change them at all they actually decreased after she came on the show but nice try

Season 1 Ratings, where L/xa didn’t exist and we were focused on the actual story (AKA The 100):

A final average of:  0.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 1.85 million total viewers.

Season 2 Ratings: L/xa made her first appearance in episode 206, Fog of War, which had a positive increase thanks to the Bellarke hug in the prior episode 205, Many Happy Returns. 

Please note that every episode after L/xa’s appearance, with the exception of 4, showed a decrease in viewership. 209, Remember Me, was the return after hiatus, and uptick in viewership is normal for returns and 210, Survival of the Fittest, benefited from that momentary upswing. After it became clear that we were still watching “the story of the girl who fell from the stars and the girl who ruled the world”, episode 211 and 212 saw a serious decease in viewership. 

213, Resurrection, was strongly focused on The Delinquents (The actual story) in Mt. Weather and we again see 214, Bodyguard of Lies, get an upswing in ratings because of 213 being Delinquent (The actual story) focused. Now, what happens in 214, Bodyguard of Lies? Oh, right. The Cl/xa kiss. And right after the episode aired we again see a dramatic decrease in viewership.

A final average of:  0.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 1.54 million total viewers.

On to Season 3: With a season that seemed to promise less Grounder interaction than last season we see a significant increase between the Season 2 finale and the Season 3 premiere ratings. 

After it became clear that we were back to watching the “the story of the girl who fell from the stars and the girl who ruled the world” the next 3 episodes saw a decrease (in significant amounts) in viewership. In fact, after episode 303, Ye Who Enter Here, where Clarke inexplicably bows before L/xa, the day after spitting in her face and threatening to kill her, we see the next episode has a decrease in viewership of 15 percent, the largest of the season thus far, for episode 304, Watch the Thrones . 

But, guess what happens for episode 305, Hakeldama, where we all knew a Bellarke reunion was imminent, thanks to the promos? We saw a ratings increase, and again, the following episode 306, Bitter Harvest, which was Arkadia (The actual story) heavy as well, saw a ratings increase as a benefit. 

Once it became clear that Clarke was back in Polis and not interacting with Arkadia (The actual story), we see another decrease for 307, Thirteen,  the episode when we knew thanks to promos there would be a Cl/xa sex scene. 

308, Terms and Conditions, did see a decrease, probably due to the loss of Cl/xa viewers, but 309, Stealing Fire, saw another gain, after an episode (Terms and Conditions) that was entirely based in Arkadia (The actual story). We then have two more episodes of decrease again, right after an episode that was centered in Polis (the story of the girl who fell from the stars and the girl who ruled the world). 

 And yet, as the show has gotten more and more Delinquent focused and back to The actual story” we are seeing more and more gains. The audience is clear in what we want, and it was never “the story of the girl who fell from the stars and the girl who ruled the world”. 

When presenting facts, it’s always handy to show all the numbers

DISCLAIMER: i am very aware that the whole clex.a fandom are not hypocritical biphobic demons but enough of them are that it made me salty enough to make this (and yes, all of these posts were posted by clex.a shippers.)

lol damn