User blog:Thewritersdiary/In Defense of Bellamy Blake

I am here to discuss the train wreck that has become Bellamy Blake. There has been a lot of hate flying around on Twitter and Tumblr, Youtube, and even a bit on the Wikia about his character, Pike, and basically just the whole Arkadia plotline in general. I can totally see where these people are coming from - in fact, I am still very pissed off. This whole storyline is giving me whiplash, and not in the good, classical The 100 "holy shit, that just happened" sense. More like in the "I'm going to kill the writers" sense. When I first finished "Watch the Thrones" I was outraged, and I think I have every right to be.

What they have done with Bellamy Blake is so incredibly frustrating, I had to put a tremendous amount of restraint on myself not to write an angry letter to Jason Rothenberg for ruining my favourite character. I love Bellamy. It's no secret. If you've seen me around the Wikia at all, it probably didn't take you very long to figure out that fact about me. All I could see initially was the effort they put into creating, in my opinion, one of the most complex and dynamic characters on television at the moment, just to take it all back. Bellamy Blake's character development has been a huge highlight of the show for me. I doubt I would have finished Season One if Bellamy didn't exist - he sealed the deal for me. Bob Morley's portrayal of Bellamy and the careful attention the writers have put into his character are the only reason that I'm still watching this show today, and from what I've seen, the same can be said for a lot of other people.

It seemed pointless to me to make Bellamy come so far in his growth and on a sure path to being a real hero, just to have him completely backpedal. I thought it was out of character and just plain annoying. I'll admit that it crossed my mind that Jason just did it so that the Bellarke shippers would start to hate Bellamy and root for Clexa instead – shipping wars solved. This idea makes me so angry and yet I can actually believe it judging from how he has treated the fans in the past. Sure, shippers can be annoying as hell, but if he decided to ruin an incredible character just to spite them that would be ridiculously petty and immature, not to mention one of the worst traits a writer can have. Also, he's oblivious and naive if he actually believes that would work. All it would achieve (and has achieved) is making a large group of teenage girls very, very angry (and distressed).

However, after I had the time to cool down, I realized that maybe my initial reaction to what they are doing with Bellamy wasn't such a good one after all. I don't think the problem lies with the decisions Bellamy has made and will make - it has more to do with pacing. There was barely any lead-up to him deciding to join Pike's cause and he didn't have much hesitation in joining him, either. We haven't seen many prior interactions between Pike and Bellamy leading up to this point and there were no bits of dialogue or glances or actions whatsoever that would have paved the way for Bellamy to completely convert to Pike's side. Even one more episode could have helped to make that transition more buyable. Unfortunately, that episode doesn't exist. Instead, I'll try to sort through what made Bellamy make this choice - despite the lack of build-up on-screen, plot holes, and pitiful pacing - because I believe that if more time and attention had been put into this, it could have been believable. The more I think about it, the more I realize that this wasn't really out of character for Bellamy at all and wasn't as unexpected as a lot of people think it was. Here, I'll explain why.

To start, I'm going to build off of the biking analogy. I don't imagine it anymore as Bellamy pedalling backwards, but as though he's just taken the wrong route to his destination. He believes that by joining Pike, it will solve his problems. They will take out the Grounders, his people will be safe - everything will work out. Obviously, it isn't going to work because if it did, there would be no point to this show.

In the past 48 hours, Bellamy has suffered huge losses. His sister, the only person who he cared about at the beginning of the show, tells him that she is leaving him (and may not see him again when she does). His girlfriend is brutally murdered and Bellamy believes that it is his fault. Not only does he lose someone who cared about him (and I'm sure he cared about to a certain extent as well), but he also has the guilt in knowing that he was partially responsible to accompany his grief. Echo, someone who he trusted and vouched for, ended up betraying him, just like Pike said she would. This betrayal resulted in the deaths of 49 people and, because Bellamy left Mount Weather, because Bellamy trusted a Grounder (the fact that she is Ice Nation probably doesn't make much difference in his head at this point), because of Bellamy's mistakes, he believes that every single one of those deaths is his fault.

To top it all off, when he asked one of the people closest to him - someone that he risked his life in order to rescue and even climbed up an entire skyscraper with an injured leg just to warn about an attack, the person who probably understands him most, one of the only people (if not the only) to offer him forgiveness for all that he has done - to come back to their people, to him, because they are honestly the only person he has left (after Octavia leaves), they refuse and Bellamy can't understand why because Clarke doesn't even go to the effort to explain to him that she's keeping an eye on Lexa. You can see in this moment Bellamy's eyes turn from pleading to pure resentment. Clarke has asked him to stay when he wanted to leave twice. This is the second time he has asked her to do the same, but she can't even return the favour. She doesn't even acknowledge everything he has done for her, or what he is going through (remember that I am looking at this from Bellamy's perspective, not any other character's). All she can manage to say to him after three months is "I'm sorry".

Before I continue, let's take a look at some key personality traits of Bellamy's. He is extremely impulsive and tends to make quick decisions without thinking through the consequences in the heat of the moment. He is driven by his emotions, whether that be fear, anger, guilt, love, or anything else. Also, he is very passionate about the things that he believes in, and protecting things that are important to him. Bellamy has been known to make many poor decisions in the past. Although this hasn’t always been true, Bellamy puts a lot of trust and faith into people when maybe he sometimes shouldn’t. That’s what happened with Echo, and it backfired on him. It isn’t unlikely that this trait that causes him to trust people that might have ulterior motives would serve as a factor in him joining Pike’s cause.

Another very, very important thing to think about in this situation in particular is that Bellamy is easily influenced by others. He needs guidance, and Jason Rothenberg has expressed that this is truer than ever before in Season Three because he doesn't trust himself to make his own decisions after the events of Mount Weather (and without Clarke). In Season One, he got guidance from Clarke. Now, Clarke isn't exactly around. He has two clear options: Pike or Kane. I'm not surprised in the slightest that he chose to follow Pike, and in order to explain why, I'm going to take a few steps back to the Ark.

I'm going to make the assumption that Bellamy didn't get too close with many people on the Ark because if he did, that would make keeping Octavia a secret that much harder. Bellamy probably kept to himself a lot of the time, didn't interact a whole lot with other kids, and certainly not any of the guards until he became one. This is where Pike comes in. Pike taught all the children on the Ark Earth Skills - he taught them how to survive on the ground. Without that class, who knows how the hundred would have fared initially, regardless of the threat from the Grounders. Judging from Pike and Bellamy’s interaction in "Wanheda: Part Two", they looked to have had a friendly relationship on the Ark. Bellamy already knows Pike, he is familiar with him, and he looks to be one of the few people from the Ark that Bellamy actually trusts.

Kane represents the opposite of all of that on the Ark. He was on the Council and was in charge of the Guard, ultimately. The Guard always represented bad things in the Blake household. Kane floated Bellamy's mother and locked up his sister, who would most likely also be killed on her eighteenth birthday. What was one of the first things Kane did to Bellamy after his arrival on the ground? To arrest him, chain him up, and interrogate him. Obviously lots has changed since then. I think Bellamy respects Kane, but their history hasn't been erased - it's still there and I'm sure Bellamy remembers it all.

Kane and Pike contrast each other sharply. When you compare Kane's first experience in coming to the ground, it is very different from Pike's. Pike has been fighting for his life ever since Farm Station landed. Almost immediately after his landing, the Sky People struck up an alliance with the Woods Clan. The Grounders weren't the issue in Season Two - the Mountain Men were. For Bellamy, his first experience on the ground was very similar - if not as brutal - to Pike's. Both have been directly attacked by the Grounders and their numbers are dwindling as a result. For that reason, Bellamy and Pike can understand each other in a way that Kane and Bellamy cannot. Kane took the brand from Lexa. I think that Bellamy believes Kane to be naive and too easily trusting of the Grounders.

Another thing that should be noted is Pike and Kane's different ways of talking to Bellamy after what happened in "Ye Who Enter Here". Bellamy blames himself. Kane tried to convince Bellamy that it wasn't his fault. Except Bellamy knows that it was his fault and he doesn't want anyone to try and convince him otherwise. On the other side of things, Pike tried a different tactic. He pinned the blame on Bellamy, telling it to him straight. This is something that Bellamy hasn't come across that often, but I think that it was essential in building his trust in Pike. Here is someone who isn't going to lie to him, here is someone who knows what is really going on.

For all of these reasons, I don't find it all that surprising that Bellamy would follow Pike instead. They have history, there's no bad blood between them, they have shared similar experiences on the ground, and Pike is someone that doesn't sugarcoat things or twist his words (in Bellamy's eyes at least) who Bellamy is beginning to trust. Kane, however, is someone that represented bad things on the Ark, someone who Bellamy still doesn't believe understands everything that Bellamy has gone through, and who sometimes makes the truth seem better than it is or just doesn't tell him everything.

Kane wants to sit back and let Lexa deal with their issues, but Bellamy doesn't trust Lexa (more on that later) and it's been apparent from the start that Bellamy doesn't just like to hang around and let other people do things for him. He can't just stand still - he needs to take action, and listening to Kane isn't going to help him do that. Following Pike will. All Pike wants to do is take action against the Grounders, achieve justice for everything that has happened. That is something that Bellamy can relate with. If you look at it this way, Bellamy doesn't really have much choice in what leader to follow for what he wants to achieve. He wants to protect his people, which is what he believes he is doing, and following Kane, in his mind, isn't going to do that.

I'm pretty sure that every character on The 100 has some kind of PTSD, to different extents, and all of these characters are dealing with theirs in different ways. Bellamy is no exception to that. People forget that Bellamy had emotional baggage before that dropship was even launched to Earth. He believes he is responsible for his mother's death and his sister getting arrested. He shot a man in order to get on that dropship. He has killed countless people in self-defense. Bellamy Blake is responsible for the deaths of 320 people getting floated on the Ark because in one selfish act, he destroyed the radio that could save their lives. This happened only in the first five episodes and it only gets worse from there.

<p class="MsoNormal">What he did in Mount Weather haunts Bellamy. Not only did he mass murder over three hundred people, innocent children included, but he also came to know some of them. He was friends with Maya and now she is dead - it's his fault. Bellamy Blake considers himself a monster - he said it himself in "Day Trip". And although Clarke was quick to reassure him that that wasn't true and to offer him forgiveness, I don't think that really changes anything. I think he still views himself as that monster and, in all probability, those views have probably only been strengthened over time. Instead of forgiving himself for what he's done, he's just pushing it back and slowly learning to accept it.

<p class="MsoNormal">It's been stated by numerous writers and cast members that when Clarke left Camp Jaha in the Season Two finale in order to deal with her guilt, she also took away Bellamy and Monty's chances to deal with their own. It isn't that they can't deal with it, but they won't, not without Clarke. This is especially true for Bellamy. He is stubborn and closed off. Clarke was one of the few people that he ever opened up to and without her, I think he is lost. Bellamy doesn't know how to sort through his emotions - the grief and the guilt - and so he hasn't tried. He hasn't shared these feelings with anyone because he feels that in order to do what Clarke told him to, take care of their people, he can't let his emotions get in the way of what needs to be done. Instead, he has just been pushing it down for the past three months (and longer, if you consider the earlier things he did), ignoring it and letting all the rage and resentment and pain accumulate inside of him.

<p class="MsoNormal">Aside from what happened in "Day Trip" (which was just over halfway through Season One), we have yet to see any real breakdown from Bellamy. This snap has been a long time coming and I'm surprised that it hasn't happened earlier. For me, I view the deathes of 49 people in Mount Weather (including Gina), Echo's betrayal, and Clarke's refusal to come back with him as the final straw. It's like it flicked a switch inside of him and now he has to release all of his pent-up anger. Bellamy's emotions started going wild after "Ye Who Enter Here" and he has no idea how to direct them. That's where Pike managed to come in, providing Bellamy guidance when he needed it. Unfortunately, I doubt it was the kind of guidance than any of us wanted.

<p class="MsoNormal">Pike tapped into Bellamy's guilt and his anger towards the Grounders in a time of vulnerability and used it to his advantage. I'm sure Pike has probably recognized that Bellamy is passionate and impulsive, as I stated earlier, and fiercely set on protecting his people. He knew Bellamy when he was just a kid. Both Kane and Pike tried to lead Bellamy in their direction. The difference is, Kane tried to get Bellamy to swallow his anger and guilt whereas Pike instead encouraged Bellamy to use it. Kane meant well but, ultimately, his attempts failed. It's like he was trying to stop an erupting volcano - it obviously wouldn't work.

<p class="MsoNormal">Something else I wanted to bring up about Bellamy's accumulation of guilt and how he believes he is a monster is that at this point, Bellamy probably isn't thinking all that much on the effect that more dead Grounders will have on his conscience. When you incorporate the Culling, he has the weight of nearly 700 deaths on his shoulders. If you divide 300 by 10 (the amount of people Pike had already recruited), that would make Bellamy have to kill about 30 more people, probably less since more people have joined Pike's cause. What's 30 more deaths to Bellamy? He's already a monster and that will never change. (Again, looking at this through Bellamy's eyes, not my own.) And I really doubt that even if Bellamy chose not to get Pike those guns, Pike would have stopped. He would have found a way to pose an attack on the Grounders, one way or another. Bellamy just sped it along. I think this is part of how Bellamy is justifying his actions in his eyes, because his humanity is no longer at stake anymore, but the lives of the Sky People are.

<p class="MsoNormal">Bellamy probably believes that he has nothing left to lose. His mother, his sister (in a way), Gina, Clarke, even Echo - who he barely knew - are all gone in some way or another. Bellamy has no one left, not really - only his people. When you look at it in that way, it makes sense that Bellamy would disregard everything else. Because Bellamy trusted a Grounder (Echo) 49 people are now dead. Pike used Bellamy's fear and guilt against him. He convinced Bellamy that if they didn't strike, the Grounders would and now all those people, the only people he has left, would be dead, too. Not only would they be dead, but it would be Bellamy's fault also, just like the Culling, just like the Mountain Men, just like everyone who were killed the day before. I don't think that Bellamy was just afraid of losing everyone he has left (which isn't very many) but he was also afraid to have even more guilt on his shoulders, because the weight would crush him. In his head, taking these preventative measures is his responsibility. He's doing what Clarke wanted him to do - take care of their people. As I stated, Bellamy's humanity is already lost - it isn't worth it to lose his people, too.

<p class="MsoNormal">Something that I think a lot of people forget is that, unlike a lot of other characters, Bellamy has had basically no positive interactions with Grounders. In all of Season One and the first half of Season Two, they were still at war with the Grounders. Almost immediately after their truce, Bellamy headed off to Mount Weather and only communicated with Mountain Men and Sky People.

<p class="MsoNormal">Because of Clarke's relationship with Lexa and Octavia's relationship with Indra and Lincoln, etc, people forget that Bellamy wasn't around for these things. He has a very different idea of them, just because he wasn't there. The last time Bellamy saw the Grounders before going to Mount Weather, they had ordered the death of Finn, they tried to poison their own commander out of hatred for the Sky People (and in the hopes of destroying the truce), tortured Raven for a crime she didn't commit and, on top of it all, even passed on some of their colder customs to Clarke, who followed the "love is weakness" ideology for a large chunk of the show.

<p class="MsoNormal">The next he hears of the Grounders is that Lexa has betrayed them and left the Sky People at the hands of the Mountain Men to die. Because of this, Bellamy is forced to do something he never wanted to do - kill every single man, woman, and child inside the mountain - people he knew personally, some of which had helped him. If the Grounders had kept their word, he wouldn't feel the same guilt and Clarke would still be around. Furthermore, the one Grounder that did try to help them was rewarded by receiving a kill order and someone (Clarke) had a bounty on her own head because of something that she was forced to do because of the Grounders betrayal. That is the impression he has of the Grounders. The one time he put trust into them, he was betrayed. Bellamy believes that they will always put their people first, and the fact that Kane is branded by them probably makes zero difference to him. I'm not surprised that he is skeptical that that army outside is really there to protect them. If the Ice Nation attacked them, what would stop the others?

<p class="MsoNormal">Remember that Bellamy doesn't know Lexa's history with the Ice Queen. He doesn't know about Costia, or their hostile relationship. He doesn't know about Lexa's feelings toward Clarke. He doesn't know that Lexa killed Queen Nia, or that there is a new king (I doubt that would matter anyway, considering Roan kidnapped Clarke and stabbed Bellamy). He didn't witness any of the interactions between Clarke and Lexa or Indra and Octavia while he was in Mount Weather. Bellamy has no clue who the Grounders really are except from what has happened in his experiences, which have been less than pleasant.

<p class="MsoNormal">Yes, maybe he knows a bit about the Ice Nation and that they are slightly more ruthless than the Woods Clan, but he hasn't really experienced that firsthand and he has no idea where their relationship stands with Lexa. He probably assumes that Lexa is loyal to the all of the twelve clans a million times more than the Sky People, and that includes the Ice Nation. Some people have argued that Bellamy was there when Lexa had the Ice Nation ambassador and Roan arrested, therefore proving her loyalty to the Sky People, but can you honestly tell me that Bellamy was thinking clearly when that happened? I don't know if he even heard her or realized what was happening. This was just moments after the realization that he had been betrayed and because of it his girlfriend and 48 other people he swore to protect were dead, blown up (or stabbed to death). I really doubt that he acknowledged the fact that Lexa was even doing anything about the Ice Nation. After all, hadn't she chosen her people before? What would be different now?

<p class="MsoNormal">He only had two postive experiences with Grounders. The first was Lincoln trying to help him into Mount Weather, but even that was turned sour when Lincoln betrayed him (although I don't think Bellamy holds it against him). After that, Lincoln had a kill order on his head, so it didn't really count. His second positive experience with a Grounder was with Echo, who ended up betraying him in the worst way possible.

<p class="MsoNormal">At this point, Woodsclan, Ice Nation, etc. . . Categories don't matter to Bellamy anymore. All Grounders are the same, even the ones who he trusted. He just doesn't have the experiences to believe otherwise and he is done taking chances.

<p class="MsoNormal">Also, we don't know what has been happening off-screen or during the one week between episodes two and three. Judging from how Bellamy was having a drink with Pike in "Watch The Thrones", I'm guessing this isn't the first time and they've probably had many conversations - a lot of them to do with the Grounders, I'm betting. The change of heart appeared abrupt in this episode because of the lack of on-screen build-up, but Pike had to have had a reason for approaching Bellamy, of all people. Something made Pike believe that Bellamy would help him. I'm sure they had talked numerous times before about the Grounders, and Pike had already started forcing his ideas on Bellamy before this episode. Unfortunately, we didn't get too see it, so it wasn't as believable.

<p class="MsoNormal">Lots of people have compared Bellamy's storyline this season to Finn, but I don't see it that way. The actors and writers themselves have been quick to shoot that possibility down and have described Bellamy's path as very different from Finn's. I don't think they are recycling storylines - this is something different, but I'm not quite sure as to what it will be yet. If they are setting up a parallel here, I think it probably has to do with another one that people have brought up (and has been subtly hinted at by writers). Some people think that Pike influencing Bellamy to do this is similar to Lexa influencing Clarke to let the bomb drop on Tondc. Both times they believed that they were doing what was right for their people and both times neither of them came to decision on their own - someone was pushing them in that direction. I know that these situations are different and the context is different, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were trying to set up a parallel here.

<p class="MsoNormal">Before someone points it out, I understand that I am biased. Of course I am biased - I recognize that and accept it. Bellamy is my favourite character. All I can do in this situation is try to understand what was going on and deal with it. However, despite this, I also feel that people are blinded by their own biases and are too quick to jump to conclusions before taking a look at the bigger picture. Just because you don't like a character or a character hurts your favourite character or does something you don't like, doesn't mean that you should write it all off as the character just being evil - that doesn't just go for Bellamy. Lexa is another character a lot of people don't attempt to understand. Octavia, Jaha, Murphy, Pike, everyone. . . They all do things for a reason. On The 100, there is no black and white, good or bad; there's only gray area.

<p class="MsoNormal">I am not trying to justify Bellamy's actions. I am simply trying to understand them and hopefully help other people understand them, too. In conclusion, I don't think that Bellamy is acting out of character - I just think that the execution was extremely poor. There was no lead-up to his decision and the writers didn't give us enough of a glimpse into what was going on in his mind when he did decide to join Pike.

<p class="MsoNormal">I don't need to be happy with 100% of the writers' decisions 100% of the time (because I'm definitely not happy about this one) but I'm willing to try and understand why they did it and give them another shot to prove to me that they made the right choice in doing so. I'm expecting a lot of people to disagree with this post and because I'm already pretty upset over this switch in Bellamy's character (despite me trying to sort through it) I probably will end up disabling the comments. But, by all means, if the comments section is open, feel free to type away.

<p class="MsoNormal">Thanks for sticking with this post and reading to the end. I'm sure that it probably wasn't very fun for you.

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