How to Write The 100 Fanfiction ✓

24 | octavia (rant 3)

buckle your seatbelts everyone!! this is going to be a wild ride.

THIS RANT CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ALL SEASONS. IT'S IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, SO IF YOU'RE NOT CAUGHT UP, STOP READING WHEN THINGS BECOME UNFAMILIAR IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED.

if you know me well enough, you'll also understand that octavia is one of my least favorite characters on the show. i would have appreciated her as a villain if she was actually well-written and we weren't constantly made to sympathize with her when she's actually ... the worst.

let's start off with her early life. octavia was literally raised under the floor, her only human interactions being with aurora and bellamy. this likely severely hindered her abilities to learn basic social skills, but it is not an excuse for her later actions, because there have actually been people who grew up cloistered like this and didn't end up being a person with the lack of empathy octavia eventually becomes. repeat: this can explain her behavior, not excuse it.

she's in the earth skills class with pike and her first interaction with other delinquents is pike strangling murphy. then, when they get on the ground, her first glimpse of the "real world" is her getting attacked by a river monster, jasper getting speared in the chest, and all of the violence that ensues afterward.

octavia has this mindset that she was an outcast in society among the sky people but ??? bitch where??? we have never, ever seen her be sidelined or discriminated against for being a second child while among the delinquents on the ground. she was accepted into the group and the only hindering came from bellamy's natural instincts to protect her (and the horrid amount of responsibility aurora placed on his shoulders, but moving on).

she subsequently joins the grounders, whose "culture" is basically nothing but war and violence and killing. she learns to sword fight for like 2 weeks and is suddenly able to do all of these insane tricks and whatnot?? sure, jan. she isn't even accepted into their group either— the sky people had treated her better than they do, which is why i still don't understand why she's so adamant about joining them.

and this is where my problems with her really start to manifest.

in 2x14, lincoln is struggling with his addiction to the reaper serum and tells octavia that he can't fight it. he's on his knees. octavia, fed up after, like, 30 seconds of trying to convince him that he can fight it, strikes him across the face and proceeds to lecture him on his own culture that he's been a part of his whole life!!! and she's been a "grounder" for like 2 weeks!!! what???

in case you don't understand why this is wrong: octavia just physically abused her significant other who was already in a vulnerable state (on his knees, posing her no threat) and suffering from an addiction. she absolutely did NOT need to hit him and it is not tough love and not something to root for. can you imagine if we just went around hitting people when they didn't listen to us to give them "tough love"??? or, imagine if, hypothetically, lincoln had done this, people would be RIOTING but since it's a white savior girl people are fine with it??

then season 3 happens. pike's faction battles with the grounder army and wins. bellamy leaves indra alive but wounded from pike. indra is haunted by being the only one left out of the entire army, after seeing all of her friends die, so she swings at octavia (to show her that she's still weak) and octavia slams her down. this could be taken as self-defense, but octavia waited a second and indra didn't strike again before she retaliated.