watchtower

Octavia Blake above everything else, is the character in this show who's undergone the most thorough character development. I mean, look at this shit.



That is legit like - maaaaybe a month and a half of character development, from the start of the first season to about 3/4 of the way through the second. Why did she develop so much quicker than the others, you might ask? Because of the show's cast, Octavia was essentially a blank slate when she dropped planetside, ready and waiting to write her own story however she chose to live it. She goes through a few pretty obvious stages throughout canon so far, and develops into a warrior and one of the most fortuitous characters in the show.

The first thing you learn about Octavia is her past. She was the girl they found under the floor - the only one who had a brother because she wasn't supposed to be born. And as it turns out, that's all most of the kids on the drop ship know about her. They know her reputation, her supposed crime. The reason she was scheduled to die on her 18th birthday. The reason her mom got 'floated', spit out the airlock into the vacuum of space. Up until that point, every single part of her life was utterly shaped by that fact. Growing up, she spent an ungodly amount of time in an alarmingly coffin-like space under the living room floor, undiscovered by guards and guests alike. She only once dared set foot outside her family's quarters, and she enjoyed that freedom for a grand total of maybe a half an hour before she was caught, unmasked, and taken into custody in the Skybox where social interaction is extremely limited. So by the time she arrives on Earth, two things are undeniably true: Everyone knows what she's done, but nobody knows who she is. Not even Octavia herself.

Which means the Octavia Blake everyone first meets isn't who she is - it's who she's chosen to be. They know her reputation, but she's not going to be just 'the girl they found hiding under the floor'. She's going to build her own reputation, and she's going to do so with sass, self-confidence, and openly flirting with Finn just after he breaks up a fight (that is, when she knows she has an audience). She even goes as far as to tell Clarke re: Finn, "Before you get any ideas, he's mine." She's never had a boyfriend before in her life, how does she have that confidence? Simple: If she's going to be someone beyond who everyone thinks she is, it's all or nothing, and 'extremely self-confident' even to the point of bitchy is still better than 'scared unsocialized illegal second-child'. This really comes out starting from her very first scene, when she flies into a spontaneous fury at someone calling her out in recognition of her 'crime'. She's ready to punch the guy in the face, until Bellamy diverts her attention to 'giving them something else to remember her by'.

Fortunately, this act calms down a whole bunch throughout the season as she starts to get used to socializing and comes to realize people like her as a person, not just someone to spread rumors about. Not to mention the hardcore dangers of survival in everyday life, which kind of stripped away most everyone's social politics beyond who's in charge. Once that sunk in, she became much less dramatic overall - she's actually incredibly sweet underneath the bravado, and multiple times through the season she's shown taking care someone who's sick or injured. Not as any kind of doctor, but as someone who cares. Someone who can sit with them and talk to them even if they aren't awake to hear it. Her priorities also straighten out a whole bunch, and she quickly starts pulling her weight around camp with zero complaint.

A few things do stick around even as she goes through the first season's maturation arc. For one, her role is pretty much YOLO from start to finish. In the pilot she tells Bellamy, "I don't need protecting. I have been locked up one way or another all my life. I am done following orders. I need to have fun, Bell. I need to just do something crazy just because I can, and no one, including you, is gonna stop me." And it's true, all throughout the season (aside from when Bellamy personally keeps an eye on her) she does whatever the hell she wants. Whether that be romance (she's the only one in the series with three different love interests in one season) or reckless bravery (she's always the first to volunteer to go scouting), or even just an arbitrary forest excursion chasing a radioactive butterfly.

Which leads us to another Octavia constant: Rather than making her shy and afraid of new things, her time spent under the floor has left her more than a little naive and absolutely thirsty for new experiences. She wants to see everything, do everything. She's the first off the drop ship, the first to strip down (right in front of everyone, too) and leap into an untested and quite possibly toxic river. She has no problem whatsoever following a glowing butterfly off into unexplored woods, because it's pretty and fascinating and she wants to look at it more. As an off-shoot of that, she's extremely open-minded - especially with people/cultures vastly different than her own. Grounders are the prime example of this. At first, it only really comes to light with Lincoln, a Grounder who saved her life twice and earned a torture session at Bellamy's hands as his just reward. While everyone else was ready to see the Grounders as the enemy in an extremely black-and-white way, Octavia right from the start was fascinated by him - granted, she had to realize he wasn't trying to kill her first. But once she did, she was extremely intrigued by him and his culture, even going so far as to try and defend him from Bellamy's torture despite Bell being her brother and Lincoln (whose name was still unknown by then) was 'one of the enemy'. Also, Octavia doesn't seem to have any concept of your typical social labels - like 'nerd', as an example. She knows the word, but she befriends people in a really equal-opportunity sort of way. Are you a raging dickhead? No? Okay, let's be friends. Which makes it interesting because she falls in a few times with Monty, Jasper's best friend and the nerdiest of their available nerds, and talks to him effortlessly like an equal even when other characters seem to only come to him for tech help.

Another facet of her impulsiveness is seen in her temper and attitude, neither of which she bothers to keep in check. At least three different times through the season, she's ready to march into an altercation and beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker, but Bellamy holds her back. Her verbal lashings, however, tend to go unchecked. In this first season, she says whatever the hell she wants, whether it's openly hostile or subtly seething, or even just offhandedly derisive - like after Raven helped torture newly-captive Lincoln for answers to save Finn's life, and later at the fresh-water barrel, Raven says re: the blood on her hands, "I'd hate to see the other guy." And without looking up, Octavia says, "You did, when you were torturing him." She doesn't just leave it there, though. After a second, she points out that it must suck to come all the way down to Earth and find out your boyfriend's into somebody else. That right there is basically Raven's fundamental struggle for the first half of the season, so for Octavia to use that is for her to essentially verbally cut right to the bone. That's something you realize as the season goes on, is that she's sharp - not in street-smarts, but in interpersonal stuff. She knows how to make someone feel like shit with just a few words. Adversely, she used that same people-smarts to save Finn's life earlier in the episode. Lincoln was resisting all torture and the others were saying he was going to let Finn die, so she simply cut herself with the knife that poisoned Finn, saying, "He won't let me die."

This is where Octavia begins to diverge from the rest of the 100, and also where she truly begins to grow into herself. Because to the others from the drop-ship and the members of Camp Jaha that followed, the the Grounder peoples are a tentative ally they only vaguely manage to understand... But to Octavia, they are 'her people'. She's finally found her people. Like, it kills me to get all Tumblr about it but she is essentially trans-Grounder, where she's finally found what she's meant to identify as and with whom in a way she's never felt before.

And it changes her. Strengthens her, in almost every way.

This is a girl who was seen basically skipping through the woods, twirling around trees. Now, she travels with the utmost stealth and her weapon in hand. She seemed blind to anything more serious than bioluminescent butterflies and whichever facet of romantic tension she could find at any given time. Now she's second in line to have the weight of an entire tribe fall on her shoulders, and even the love of her life comes second to that. She sassed any form of authority she came up against (Clarke and Wells mostly, but even Bellamy), just itching to exercise her newfound freedom and tell them where they could shove what they think is best. Now, she's one of the best people you could possibly have covering your ass, taking orders and actualizing them with alarming skill - assuming she trusts your leadership, that is.

This is a girl who complained regularly just to throw her weight around, in the first few episodes. Now, I don't think I've heard her complain even once in the later half of the season, save for grand-scale complaints like the soundness of a plan or the injustice of quite nearly being excluded from Grounder training. In fact, she came down from the Ark ready to throw punches even before she knew her enemy, and yet she couldn't fight to save her life - now, she fights only really when she has to in order to protect people or further her training, even though she could kick the ass of any one of the former residents of the Ark and a good number of Grounders too.

These are just a few of the changes we can see in Octavia as she quickly adjusts to her life as a Grounder. But on a fundamental level, it's not even that she's changing - it's like gaps are filling in where there was only nothingness before. She has beliefs now, beyond just urgent in-the-moment notions of right and wrong. She believes in honor, in strength, in the good of her people. She believes in fighting long past the point where you no longer think you can get back up. She believes in the true pride that comes from throwing your guts into becoming a true warrior. More than anything, she believes in doing everything she can so that her people can live a life free of the Mt. Weather's oppression. After a life of hiding followed by a solid couple of years of rebellion, Octavia's finally fighting for something, not against it.

That doesn't mean she's lost who she used to be. It's the opposite, really - all of the pieces worth keeping are still here. Her open-mindedness has helped her assimilate into the Trigedakru ways so quickly; her compassion lets her forgive Lincoln even when he hecks everything up, and more even than that, it's what makes her feel so strongly about the Trigedakru people despite never having met the majority of them. And her fierce independence and pride, that's what earned Indra's respect in the first place. Octavia still tenaciously hangs on to whatever she's set her mind on... The only difference is that now, the things she sets her mind on are actually worth fighting for.

Her history can be found here!

As for her setting, she's coming fresh off of apocalyptic Earth. It's been a century since nuclear war destroyed all but a few traces of the Earth's population, rendering large areas barren and the rest littered with nuclear fallout. Much of the remaining population, both humans and wildlife alike, show signs of generations of radiation - both a deer and a horse have been shown with two faces, at least one species of butterfly has become bio-luminescent, and enough children are born with some form of disfigurement that it's a commonly-known practice to leave such children out in the wild to try and rectify the gene pool.

Technology levels vary wildly based on who exactly you are. For example, you have the Ark survivors - this includes the 100 (teen delinquents sent down to test to see if the ground was survivable again) + the rest of the Ark who made the journey down after them. Before the Ark plunged down from orbit, it was made up of 12 space stations from different nations, who decided a century ago shortly after the end of the world that since they were the sole survivors of Earth as far as they knew, they'd combine their stations and become the Ark to carry humanity until the Earth was safe again. "In peace may you leave this shore, in love may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels until our final journey to the ground. May we meet again." That's the Traveler's Blessing, spoken at each death back on the Ark. It was meant from the start to be a temporary solution, hopefully sustaining them long enough for them to return to Earth... Which it did, in part, though not a whole ton of that technology made it to Earth. It's somewhere between contemporary and near-future space age, with remnants of their high-tech space station supplementing the more makeshift technology they can pull together on Earth. The main hold-overs include functional airlocks, shock-stick wands functioning much like medium-range tasers, and the electrical work to build a tall electrocution-fence around their camp for defense.

Then there are the Grounders, the individuals who managed to survive the apocalypse and sustain some form of life in the last few generations since. Their technology is extremely low, their threat presenting mostly in extreme skill in nearly every area. Combat, stealth, survival, you name it - the Grounders are bomb-ass fantastic at it. They have no firearms, no electricity, not even a written language, and their spoken language is more or less an extremely butchered English which has managed to loop back around and sound hella dignified. They've also developed a strong sense of honor and cohesion... Essentially, the Grounders (at least the Trigedakru - the nation of Grounders we've seen most extensively so far) have become increasingly atavistic in the last 100 years, though they aren't savages. They also exhibit the closest the series comes to magic or the supernatural: Lexa, the Commander, informs one of the protags that when she dies, her spirit will find the next Commander and that's how they will be chosen, much like the last Commander's spirit found her. How much truth actually lies in this is unknown so far.

The third main group in play right now are those dwelling inside Mt. Weather. They are, at current, the most technologically advanced motherfuckers in the show. Which makes sense, because Mt. Weather is the result of all of America's bigwig government employees and their families high-tailing for the designated governmental bomb shelter and holing up for 100 years with a mess of supplies and technology. The full extent of Mt. Weather's technology has yet to be discovered, but they're capable of things such as: emitting an acidic fog to deter anyone from coming near the mountain, automatically disrupting any and all communication signals to the point of causing repeated crashes of Ark-to-Earth vessels, a wide variety of advanced medical procedures (both legit and shady), and chemically inducing a primitive cannibalistic 'Reaper' state in captured Grounders.

The political climate is pretty simple: As long as the Grounders keep to themselves and never pick up a firearm even to shoot at one another, Mt. Weather allows them to live. Mostly. Some get captured and bled for temporary immunity to the radioactivity of the surface, but that's a minority despite it being quite possibly hundreds of captive individuals. The Grounders see Mt. Weather as their natural enemy, but they have no means to combat those within the mountain... Until the Ark survivors show up, colloquially known as the Skaikru by the Grounders and also henceforth in this blurb. At first, the Skaikru were another enemy to the Grounder, an invader which keeps (inadvertently or otherwise) killing their people. They've since become allies, tentatively at first but eventually coming to respect one another, with Commander Lexa sending Clarke (the Skaikru de-facto leader) a warrior bodyguard and Lexa's second-in-command taking Octavia on as her own second, an honor typically reserved for their own warriors. This has united the Skaikru and the Trigedakru in their hatred of Mt. Weather, which those inside the mountain have become aware of and are somewhat nervous about, even sending a missile to attempt to nuke the leaders of all of the Grounder tribes + Clarke in one fell swoop in an attempt to kick their legs out from under them.

Octavia was just recently unplugged, meaning she's reaching the end of her rehabilitation process and is soon to be released into the Real World proper.

Octavia is a regular human being, with no special abilities aside from a natural sort of tolerance/immunity to radiation in moderate doses. All of her special skills are firmly in the 'badass normal' category.

Octavia has been in training for a couple of weeks now to become a full-fledged Grounder warrior, and already by 2x12 she's shown to be quite lethal. Her training consists of a brutal sort of hand-to-hand combat as well as with blades, strength and endurance training, stealth training, survival skills (including hunting/scavenging, what can/can't be used as poison, how to find covert warmth and shelter, etc) and constant teaching on their language (Trigedasleng), customs, and values. This is what has turned her from a naively brave closet-baby from outer space into a full-fledged badass.

You want me to jump. [ sure, it was no problem at all when they told her, but now she's seeing the gap from this rooftop to the next firsthand and the only reason she's not straight-up calling bullshit is because after the decently humiliating process of extraction rehab, her pride can't take any more hits right now.

this is impossible. but she's gonna do it. ]

Remind me, why do I trust you assholes again? [ it's hushed just like the first part, like she's talking to herself because they'll hear her either way. don't worry, guys, she doesn't actually think you're assholes. she's just putting her game face on, with all of the sass and reckless abandon it entails. indra wouldn't approve of the chatter, but indra isn't exactly here now, is she? if she was even real in the first place.

octavia backs up now until she's just a yard or so from the opposite side of the roof. then she takes a deep breath, sets her jaw, and drops into a sprint for the edge. here comes the jump, in five steps, three, two, one, and she leaps. and she soars, at least that's what it feels like. she lets out a sharp exhilarated exhale, her mouth twitching into a grin, because this is actually happening. it's working.

...almost.

she aced the jump, in theory. in practice, however, her arc comes down a little short and the balls her feet just barely catch the rooftop before sliding off, sending her dropping down hard onto her elbows with most of her body dangling over the edge and slipping more by the second. she lets out a grunt and spits a disgusted expletive or two in trigedasleng, attempting to wriggle up onto the rooftop with the leverage she's got, but her arms hurt like hell from the landing and this just isn't gonna be a thing.

if this were life or death, it'd be different. as it is, she finally gives in and lets herself drop over the ledge, landing none too gently on the top-floor fire escape. and she lies there on her back for a good few seconds, breathing and wallowing in her failed attempt. which brings her to: ] If you guys are laughing at me right now, I'm gonna find out. I'll make your lives a living hell, you know I will.

[ she shouldn't be out here. that's what they told her, as a suggestion rather than a rule but it was clearly a suggestion they wanted her to take. but here she is. she can't help it. before she was unplugged, her first step into the fresh air and lush forest of earth was the first time in her entire life that she felt... free. she wanted to see it - no, she had to.

but she wasn't expecting this.

it sucked the breath right out of her lungs, much worse than the cold could've managed alone. part of her says there's no way in hell that this could be earth. but she knows it is, deep in that twist in the pit of her stomach, and all she can do is drop down slow to her knees in the dirt and take in the desolate landscape until she remembers how to breathe.

she's been out here too long. octavia's not stupid, she'll realize soon that she should head back, but not for a few more minutes yet. not unless someone comes up to remind her, anyway. ]