This! Thank you @entirelytookeen :)
How come you didn’t ship bellarke before clexa happened, and now that clexa is finished, why not ship bellarke? I’m just curious and also a little envious as our fandom does not have as good writers as you (yes I am a bellarke shipper)
I confessed in a post about why I love Bellamy that when I started the show, I did so because I found the aesthetic and premise appealing, but I’d first heard noise about it because there was a really popular femslash pairing. (This was midway between season two.) I thought, “with my luck the dynamic between the girls will be boring twee sweetness and I’ll end up shipping the heroine with this goober I can tell is CW-flavored endgame from the first ten minutes of the pilot. Because I already love that goober.”
But I was wrong! Not just about how Clexa played out, but also about Bellamy and Clarke, as I further expand on in that post about him. I tend to ship characters who believe in the same thing, but have wildly different approaches to how to get it – so the fundamental understanding between them is there, but the tension between their methodologies leads to interpersonal friction that (hopefully) leads to better mutual understanding. (I didn’t sit down and decide I would do it this way, of course, I’ve just noticed a pattern.) That’s Clexa in a nutshell.
But it’s not Bellamy and Clarke – they’re the polar opposite in my opinion. They believe and strive for very different things, and all they share is an investment in propping up the system they believe will lead to their different goals, or prioritizing the people who will do the same. If anything I anti-ship them, not because of silly fandom squabbles but because I think they bring out the worst in each other if unchecked.
So much of their interaction in seasons one and two (again, I stopped watching after three and I’m completely uninterested in any other seasons, so please don’t write me saying I’m “wrong” because of them) leads to the most grim and traumatic outcomes: Lincoln’s torture, pulling the lever at Mount Weather, even Bellamy’s undercover mission and the fall of TonDC. They weren’t the only variables at work in those situations, of course. But because of their lack of similar ethos but shared logos, when it’s just the two of them? In close quarters? That’s when bad shit goes down.
To be fair, this is also why I like them as friends. They’re both carrying really deep emotional scars from life on the Ark, so they’re kinda like… trauma buddies. The emotional abuse they’ve both suffered really has removed their sense of when to put on the breaks, as it were, and I like the idea that they can look at each other and say, “thank goodness for someone else who realizes there is no such thing as constancy, or permanent safety, all we really have are coping methods that help us get better at pretending. Someone else who will do, quite literally, whatever it takes.” But at brass tacks this is a really poisonous worldview, as even their behavior acting as individuals can back up. And while I like the idea they can look at each other and feel less alone to see someone who is broken in similar ways, if I want them to heal, they need to be shaken up and shaken out of it.
I don’t think they’re capable of doing that for each other. Together, Bellamy and Clarke tend to fall back into old, Ark-era roles or patterns of behavior – understandable, since they’ve been conditioned to see each other in those roles since birth. (Even when they fight, they’re more fighting the ideas of each other left over from the Ark.) Turning that into a romance feels like romanticizing those abusive systems, i.e. “their love cancels out their trauma.” And I have to be honest, the fandom surrounding them seems to buy into that, with the whole “she’s his princess, he’s her soldier” shtick which I find… repellent.
(not to bash your ship, bunny, but you did ask)
So I was never going to ship them, regardless. And even now, the thought of them ending up together is less upsetting because of Lexa’s presence or lack thereof, and more because Raven and Bellamy are the clear standouts as a (still-living) couple: thematically, narratively, and even in terms of actor chemistry. If Bellamy and Clarke are endgame, it’s just another nail in the coffin of incredibly poor writing and tone-deaf characterization that led to the show becoming unwatchable in its third season. (Instead of, again, Lexa’s presence or lack thereof.) When I used to get angry at the thought of Clarke and Bellamy together, it’s because I believed the show was better than that; I don’t anymore, and that’s what makes me sad.
… so now that’s cleared up, let me take a moment.
Not to rap your knuckles or anything, but Clexa is not “over.” I’m sure you were just speaking in terms of continuance in canon… but still. I’m going to take this opportunity to put it out there that coming into the blog of someone who so (passionately) ships two female characters and asking them, if one was killed off, why they don’t just switch to the heterosexual pairing that involves the character left standing, is not a good look! I’m flattered you like my writing so much and I’m going to take your question as the compliment I’m sure you meant it, but I feel like I would be doing you something of a disservice if I gave the impression that it didn’t also cross a line.
Even if you missed my posts on what an amazing, perspective-shifting experience it’s been for me as a lesbian to write romances between two women for an audience who is hungry for exactly those stories, this remains a Not-Good Look. Considering the rate at which lesbian and bisexual female characters are killed off, taking their deaths as a reason to stop shipping – as in, stop celebrating their stories and love, stop writing the potential that was unexplored, stop honoring what pieces of representation they did provide and why death does not impact its importance – would basically mean the death of femslash fandom as a whole. Which is exactly what the wrong kind of people want. Especially the predominantly male, cis, white, and heterosexual showrunners who see any story that is not an extension of their own lived experience or reflective of how their experiences are the best and should be taken as universal. (#notallmaleciswhitehetshowrunners)
I think shipping as activism is misguided, but at the same time I can believe that an audience caring about the “wrong” couples is a finger in the eye of people who make their livings persuading others that whiteness and heterosexuality are the only valuable commodities. Those people are genuinely threatened by an audience who wants the girl to get the girl, or who rallies around heterosexual couples where not just one but both characters are played by actors of color. Because American television is very much part of the capitalist machine, and if they can’t use it to skew the value of concepts they feel they “own” – that the main dude has to prioritize the white female lead over all other romantic prospects, that the bisexual heroine can suffer interestingly in relationships with other women but her happy endgame has to be with a dude – they have to fall back on things like writing talent, and, well.
I’m wandering into the weeds a bit, but my point stands: if I stop shipping the characters I love just because the people in charge decided one of them had to die, the terrorists win it would be antithetical to fandom itself. A large part of the purpose of fandom is to reclaim popular narratives from those who would use them to toxic ends, to prove that systematic privilege does not mean you get to completely dictate the destinies of those who lack it – even in fiction.
So they killed Lexa. That’s within their purview. But that can’t touch Clexa. It would be an error to translate their mistakes as impact. Or to believe their actions should, in any way, guide my own.