asweetdeception:

Hi! I can totally see where you’re coming from (and you’re most definitely entitled to your opinion), but at the same time I think that to avoid letting two people who have grown so much together and have been through so much purely because it fits too well into a trope is a little unfair. 

Yes, overused tropes can become cliches and get boring. I too would love to see girl and guy best friends that don’t go romantic, but I feel that this particular instance is so much more dynamic than that trope. I personally think that when writers go out of their way to ignore narrative developments and character relationships only to avoid popular tropes, it cheapens the story and makes it look like they’re putting personal beliefs above the story their characters are telling. And the narrative becomes forced/OOC. 

Sometimes the way a story unfolds makes it fall into some popular tropes, and that is okay. There is a reason tropes exist: because they have proved to be compelling and successful narrative choices time and again. Just because a certain story/relationship falls into a popular trope doesn’t necessarily make it a cliche. Things can fall into tropes and still be turned on their head and explored in ways that make them different and interesting.

Taking the idea of romantic Bellarke: if you really look at it in extremely simple and basic terms, yeah it does look like a guy and a girl who are best friends and fell in love. But the story there is SO much more than that one sentence, and to reduce it to such base terms would be a disservice to how complex and dynamic their relationship/journey has been. 

Bellamy and Clarke aren’t just best friends who fell in love. They are two young kids (yeah Bellamy is older than the rest of them but he’s really not all that old) who have lived through stark different realities their whole life but have somehow also had very VERY similar, traumatic experiences that led them to the ground, and inevitably to each other. 

Bellamy lived his whole life in a very underprivileged position, burdened with a heavy secret that wasn’t his to bear, and yet he also had a sweet little life with his mother and his sister and his career set up to be what he wanted.

Clarke lived her whole life living in great privilege with her happy family and friends, until she was also burdened with a heavy secret that also wasn’t hers to bear.

Bellamy’s whole life is thrown in chaos when his actions, that were meant to be loving and helpful, lead to terrible consequences and he loses his mother, his sister, and his job in one day. Everything good in his life is ripped from him in one fell swoop.

Clarke’s whole life is thrown into chaos when she learns her father’s secret and, in her mind, her actions, that were meant to be helpful, lead to her father being caught. She loses her father, her freedom, her best friend, and in a way her mother all in one day due to what she sees as her one mistake (it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t technically her, because she believed it to be true till a lot later and it changed her as a person). 

Then, in different ways, they are both forced to go to the ground as test subjects. Clarke because she is a prisoner, and Bellamy because he can’t lose his sister. 

Because of the things they have seen and lived through, they both have immensely different views on things and clash from literally their first scene together. But through the harsh realities of the ground and the adversities they face, they go from being at each other’s throats to realizing how beneficial their contrasting world views can be to their people. They recognize how bad things can get when one of them forces their views on the group, and how much better the outcomes are when they put their two realities together and meet somewhere in the middle. 

Through all of this, they learn to see that while they come from strikingly different worlds, they aren’t all quite that different and their goals are the same. They learn to share burdens and see each other’s humanity and core in ways that no one else can see them. They understand each others choices and the pain these choices cost, and learn to support each other. They become partners and co-leaders in every sense of the words and learn to rely extensively on each other’s support and council. They also begin to see the challenges each of their lives has been riddled with and learn to appreciate the struggles of the other side through each other. 

But it isn’t until they are separated and assumed dead that they realize exactly how much they had grown to love each other and how much they relied on each other’s perspective/council. They struggle with their leadership roles when apart from each other because they balance each other out, and we see them doubt themselves and falter in their decisions. 

When they come together again, things start working out and their leadership dynamic returns. Suddenly they find a returned sense of calm and confidence and their belief and hope in themselves and their cause is restored. They understand each other in ways that don’t need to be spoken, and they can communicate a million things by just looking at each other. They’re equals in every sense of the word and complement each other in ways that make them a vigorous force of nature when they are together. 

They trust each others instincts and decisions, but also know exactly when the other isn’t thinking straight and needs to be called out. They respect each other’s decisions even when they don’t agree with them and know that they will always be each other’s trusted confidantes. They have grown so close to each other and learned to care so much for each other that just the thought of losing the other can make them do incredibly rash things and lose the ability to think properly. They are, in a way, about the only person the other can share their vulnerability and their demons with and they are the only ones that can get through to each other in bad times. 

Through everything that they have gone through and grown through, they have become one of the most important things in each others lives and someone who they put above everyone else (sans family). They are more than just best friends, they are the most perfect example of yin and yang and they complete each other in a way that no one else ever can. They are the literal meaning of soulmates. 

If you were in a relationship with someone who had this sort of a relationship with someone else, how would you feel about it? When Clarke was in a relationship with Finn, we saw her put Bellamy and his views above Finn multiple times. She may have seemed to care more about Finn, but her connection with Bellamy always shone through more and she always chose him. This also frequently tended to cause problems between Finn and Clarke. 

We haven’t seen this in relation to Bellamy simply because we haven’t actually seen him in a relationship, but I have a feeling that if we do/did see him in a relationship, we will see this also prove true for him. 

Why would anyone want to be in a relationship with someone whose priorities lie with a different person in their life? Who has a different person they always tend to think before themselves?

In conclusion, Bellamy and Clarke are so, SO much more than just the “best friends fall in love” trope. They are two imperfect puzzle pieces who will always fit together to create a perfect whole. They are two people who see each other’s good, bad, and ugly, and still stand by each other. They are two people who trust and understand each other but can also see through the other’s bullshit and get through to them, and always bring out the best in each other while still loving and working through the worst. They are a perfect match and their relationship is one that transcends labels and basic tropes. And they are not a cliche, because beautiful, healthy, and incredibly profound relationships like these are almost impossible to find in fiction let alone real life. These are relationships and connections people yearn for their entire lives.

I’m sure you didn’t ask for this novel length answer, and you probably won’t read all of it, but this is something I see referenced a LOT as a reason against Bellarke as a romantic relationship, and I have been wanting to write a long analysis of it for a long time. So, thank you for finally making me do it. Lol!