Pop over to https://secretsofblackthornhall.tumblr.com/ to read the first installment! It’ll update there every Monday starting August 16 (when you can expect the second post) — the first post is just to give a preview of the story! Expect the characters from TDA — Emma, Jules, Kit, Dru, Ty, Kieran, Cristina, Mark, Diana, etc — and a bunch of history dating back to TID and TLH. It’s a serialized novel (that takes place about fifteen months after the end of TDA) that will be posted online for free and have a bunch of multimedia, with contributions from artists like Cassandra Jean, sound files, text conversations, and all sorts of fun stuff. It’ll run until next August — and hopefully give us all something to enjoy!
I was high off my ass last night and had this dream where I was in this dense ass forest and sitting there was a tall woman. She was so tall I couldn’t see her face but she was wearing gold and I was like “uh…hi?” And she said “I made you, do you know that?” And I nodded and she was like “I hear your thoughts. Why do you hate my creation? Why do you try to destroy yourself? I made you perfect as you are. Please don’t break my heart”. Then she started crying and it flooded and I woke up with fucking heart palpitations like what does it Mean™️????
inspiration struck and would not let me go until i drew this
you hear about recovery not being linear (”there are ups and downs”), but actually it’s more like a game of wack-a-mole. this is not a bad thing
to extend the metaphor: when you’re at the beginning of your recover (less kindly known as rock bottom), you have a garden full of moles. you have a mole popping up every 5 seconds, and maybe it’s the same hyperactive mole, maybe it’s a bunch of moles taking turns, but whether they all look the same, you have a garden full of the fuzzy bastards.
so you pick up a mallet and start hitting. maybe you’re bad at using the mallet, maybe you get better over time, but after a while you get tired, bc you’ve been at it for ages and a mole is still popping up every 5, 10 seconds. what you don’t realize is, you’ve actually nerfed a lot of the moles. it’s just now there’s more space for the other ones to come to the surface and start making noise. but if you keep. swinging. the mallet. eventually they’re gonna slow down.
My recovery began when I started treating my depression & moved away from an abusive environment. It took a long time for me to realize I was recovering, bc as soon as one thing improved, another popped up. As my depression improved, I became more alert and active–and discovered that my brain fog & self-isolation had inadvertently been covering up my sensory issues. I had enough energy to start school again–and bc I wasn’t sleeping & lounging all day, I was suddenly aware of my concentration issues. One mole bites the dust, another pops up.
but the secret is: there are a finite number of moles in the universe.
4 years I’ve been wacking away at these fuckers with a mallet. I’ve taken turns wacking depression and its cronies suicidal ideation & self-harm, followed in succession by previous dormant crap related to anxiety, adhd, spd, c-ptsd, and other
👎
acronyms. And behold: progress. (Atm i’ve finally convinced the furry piece of shit called Executive Dysfunction to come out of the ground, which is exciting bc wrangling this bastard means finally getting to work on longterm personal projects again.)
Moles still pop up from time to time, but my life has a lot more space for me in it
the moral of this story is: if u hit a mole over the head for long and hard enough eventually it learns to mind its own beeswax. KEEP WACKING
It is a common mistake in The 100 fandom to consider the period of time between Lincoln’s death in 3x09 to confronting her demons in her mindspace in 6x09 to be one long downward spiral for Octavia. But nothing could be further from the truth. She had begun to heal from Lincoln’s death, but that period of time is so brief that people often forget about it.
That brief period of time is the space between 4x07 and 5x02, and as we will see, the process of healing was much the same then as it was in season 6-7, because both times it involved someone who could honestly help her - as opposed to the people who claimed they wanted to help her, but just drove her further into darkness because they thought they knew better but they didn’t.
The process of how one helps Octavia out of a dark spiral is really quite simple, as summed up in the title: Give no judgment, take no shit. It seems really quite basic, yet plenty of people around Octavia repeatedly failed to be able to realize that. You’ve got people like Bellamy and Kane, who did the exact opposite of that - would give judgment, but take shit (in season 3, in season 5 they stayed with giving judgment, but didn’t take shit). Then there’s Niylah, who wouldn’t judge but also took shit.
The only people who successfully endorsed the adage of “give no judgment, take no shit” are Ilian and Diyoza.
Ilian is a chronically underappreciated character in The 100 universe. He was only around for a season, but he was a character every bit as important (I’d argue possibly even more so) than Lincoln, because he was far more than just a brief fling for Octavia, he saved her life on at least three occasions.
Even a saviour needs saving sometimes.
He saved her after she’d been stabbed by Echo and stepped off the cliff. He saved her when she tried to kill herself by stepping out into the black rain. And he saved her during the Conclave when she was losing a 3-on-1 fight against some of the other champions. His help during the Conclave was part of what inspired Octavia to save all of the clans from Praimfaya, giving them each spots in the bunker. She knew that after winning the Conclave with Indra’s sword, Ilian’s help and Roan’s alliance that she couldn’t claim it just for her own people. It belonged to all of them - and she tells Indra as much later on.
That’s just the physical lifesaving. He also saved her emotionally, in a way that Lincoln wouldn’t have been able to do - nor a way that Bellamy or Kane or anyone else close to her ventured to try. He challenged her in a way that she wasn’t used to. This part of the “take no shit” part - she’s a strong personality, and while that’s absolutely wonderful for the world when she’s in a good mood and has hope and love because that’s when she saves everyone, when she’s in a dark spiral the world needs to watch itself.
Trapped as they were in that cave in 4x07, Ilian challenged her and made her face the small numbers of demons she had at that point (compared to later in life). Others would have coddled her, and Octavia doesn’t respond well to coddling. She needs a challenge, something to push her forwards. This inspires her to forsake violence and come back to his farm. Now, obviously that doesn’t last very long, but she does then take up her sword again to fight for all of humanity, so it works out in the short run.
The bunker, of course, as we’ve discussed many times before, gave Octavia even more demons, even more darkness, and for six years she drowned in it with no way out - people either betrayed her (most people), or they coddled her (Niylah), and neither were ways to bring her back to having healthy hope again.
Enter Diyoza.
Already their banter at the end of 5x13 showed so much promise (though obviously Diyoza didn’t know the full extent of her history and her demons yet, that only came later), and season 6 leaned into that hard. Diyoza challenged Octavia in the same way Ilian did, making her face feelings and emotions she’d have rather just ignored, while also saving her when the chips were down because that’s what you do when you’ve got a fallen angel with suicidal ideation (at least, that’s what you should do, Diyoza and Niylah are the only characters who passed that test in season 6).
When they end up on the other side of the Anomaly, Diyoza doesn’t stop challenging her. We know that Diyoza helps Octavia battle her darkness, because Octavia says as much in her letter to Bellamy. She also provides something to fight for - not in the form of an actual battle, but still a challenge set before her, and that’s helping to raise Hope. Octavia’s found purpose in helping children before (Gavriel in 3x06, Rose in 6x04), and this is a long-term project that Diyoza works to get Octavia interested in and away from the Anomaly and what she perceives as lost causes on the other side of it.
Of course, that’s not enough for Octavia and she still fights for her brother for six years, until Diyoza finally puts a stop to it by destroying the helmet and with it Octavia’s chances of getting down to the Anomaly. As much as Octavia is angry about having that choice taken from her, she does make peace with it and settles into her life on Skyring, committing to Hope and Diyoza in a way she hadn’t before. She gets her new family, courtesy of Diyoza.
These ten years of peace have much more long-lasting ramifications than her few days farming with Ilian, because they set the stage for Octavia’s more extended season 7 storyline. She’s tested and challenged multiple times, and each time she comes out stronger emotionally, rather than being worn down as she was in the bunker when she didn’t have that emotional grounding.
Kidnapped by Bardo and mindraped for weeks? Her only concern is protecting Hope, not her own fate.
Retaken by Bardo and witnessed her brother’s supposed death? Screw them, she’s keeping them out of her head (remembering also that she kept them out by force of will alone while Diyoza, Clarke and Madi all used pain as a defense mechanism instead).
Faced with a grieving Echo, a stark mirror of her past when losing a lover? Embrace her old adversary as family.
Freedom requires indoctrination? Three months of Bardo training, and she resists it all, even turning one of their greatest assets.
Her longest and dearest friend sacrifices herself to save her child’s soul? Her concern is for their child, not for herself.
Her brother reappears, betrays them, and is killed? She forgives her brother’s murderer.
The human race is about to destroy itself? She convinces them not to - and is the only one who could have successfully done so.
Indra was right when she said that Octavia’s strength was always within her. And for a time, Indra nurtured it. Until she didn’t. And with Octavia’s emotional strength dissolving with each death and betrayal, physical strength is all she had to fall back on.
Meanwhile, Ilian and Diyoza were well familiar with Octavia’s physical strength, and they considered (rightly) that the strength within her that needed nurturing was her emotional strength - if she had that, she didn’t need to use the physical.
And how do you nurture that in someone like Octavia? As I said at the start - give no judgment, take no shit. You do that, and Octavia will save the world.
