I read a tweet this morning that made me sad. It was from the Creator Executive Producer of The 100, Jason Rothenberg. Apparently, recent ship war activity for the show caused Rothenberg to voice his opinion.
As you can see from the tweet, Jason Rothenberg is not happy:
I agree with Rothenberg. The 100 is a great show with rich characterizations and storylines. ‘Shipping’ is just one aspect. As someone who is the least interested in ‘Bellarke’, ‘Clexa’ or whoever, I can’t say I understand the importance of shipping to some fans. I enjoy watching the emotion, action and strategies of the characters. Clarke kissed Lexa? Okay, next scene of how they were going to defeat The Mountain Men or The Ice Queen was what mattered more to me.
That being said, would I criticize the many fans who make Clarke/Lexa or Clarke/Bellamy gifs? No, if the show allows them to show their creativity, that’s great. Everyone’s opinion matters and is important. Shippers, non-shippers, whoever. It’s when the factions revert to name calling that’s terrible and scary.
People, it’s just a show. It’s an amazing show, but it’s still just a show. Please respect each other and the characters the actors portray.
Comments? Sound off below. Or tweet @thenerdygirlexp and @stacyamiller85 .
TheNerdyGirlExpress 
Reblogged this on stacyamiller and commented:
The article I wrote for The Nerdy Girl Express.
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I think you don’t understand what Clexa shippers are fighting for.
Bellarke shippers want a ship to go canon, & that’s fine, I guess. They want to see that love story, rightly or wrongly. I think personally they are reading romance into the dynamic mostly because of the expectation that the male & female leads of a show *always* are going to get together.
For now, it’s not happening, & no one has told them it will, but they think it should, anyway, & they are feeling entitled to it because that’s how the story always ends, doesn’t it?
But that’s the thing. ‘Male character & female YA leads start out fighting & then fall in love’ is nothing new. If Bellarke doesn’t happen, there are a million other shows & books & movies these fans can go to, where that kind of story will happen.
Clexa fans are fighting against the tide.
Queer women are so underrepresented in media, and queer female romance, an epic against-all-the-odds love story? Even less common, especially with the hero of a show.
Femslash shippers from the days of Xena & beforehand have always been told we are crazy, we are delusional, we are disgusting & wrong & stupid for thinking that two women in a show might get together.
The rare times that two women DO get together in a show, the rare, rare times that queer women get to see themselves onscreen?
It usually ends in tragedy or gets dismissed as a phase.
It’s a sweeps week kiss, or a temporary placeholder relationship before the bisexual woman ends up with her ‘real’ love interest.
It ends in things like Willow & Tara, where Tara gets murdered & Willow goes crazy over it with grief. Or Delphine, who broke up with Cosima, stalked her, and then got murdered just after she finally apologized & they started to make up.
The lack of queer women in media, combined with the tendency for our stories to end in tragedy (whether we are in a relationship or not, like with Charlie Bradbury from Supernatural, recently) reinforces the idea that this is the only story we get.
For young queer women, we see the idea that happy endings, true love, or even just *surviving* and existing? Isn’t something we get to have.
We are there to be sad, or to die, or to break up & be alone. Do you know how depressing that is?
That’s incredibly isolating & makes us feel hopeless.
And then Clexa comes along, and it’s the lead of the show, & an amazing queer woman, and it’s complicated & interesting & real.
They aren’t denying it. It’s real, it’s happening, it’s on our screens.
We are SEEING ourselves.
So yes, we are fighting to keep that.
We are fighting for a story that belongs to us. We are fighting to exist & be acknowledge
If Clexa ends & Bellarke happens like they want it to, this isn’t the kind of show where an amicable breakup happens.
It will mean Lexa dies.
And unlike Bellarke, there aren’t a lot of other choices in media we can go to. What other shows have something like Clexa? What movies?
We don’t have a diversity of other choices that end differently. Because it will end the way most of the other ones do.
It will mean another dead queer woman, another queer woman grieving & alone, before eventually ending in a ‘proper’ ‘real’ heterosexual happily ever after.
That’s not the story we deserve.
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Ship wars have ruined more than one fandom for me too. Sorry it’s happening to the 100 as it’s a great show!
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I just wish people could enjoy the shows and not make things be them vs us.
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I would argue that to many people it isn’t just a show. That many people feel the same way about other shows. People emerge themselves more and more into the show, the characters and the couples. Normally this investment is benign but sometimes it’s not. Look up #olicity and you’ll see a bunch of girls fawning over Stephen Amell. That’s totally benign unless the writers decide to derail that ship.
StandWithWard is an example of a single fandom that felt the show mistreated the object of their investment. In this case a lot of people related to this character due to his past and when the writers dangled a redemption carrot to just rip it away and go the completely other direction, they weren’t happy to say the least. They attacked the writers and showrunners of the show. It was NOT okay, but the anger from the fandom couldn’t have come as a surprise for them.
Ship wars aren’t rare but usually they are contained to forums and those forums often have rules. Twitter doesn’t. It’s not that easy to be at war on twitter. You can simply block or ignore people. So why has this Ship-War on The100 gone off the deep end?
I started to watch the show just a month ago but I’ve been on forums the past week and I’ve followed the debate online the last couple of days. This is my thoughts because I feel like it’s the perfect storm.
– Jason Rothenberg is very active on twitter and doing PR in general. That can be a good thing but in this case it’s not. From the tweets I’ve seen from him he isn’t helping. He is just making things worse. Why? Because no matter what he says, it’s gonna infuriate someone.
– The promotion of the show. It use to be focused on one of the ships and now it’s the other. “Leaks” of romantic content for onside isn’t helping.
– What is happening on the show is what ignited the bomb. Objectively you could say a guest star is getting more focus than the regulars. Not only focus but better writing. The arc “meant” for the regular seems more like it’s for the guest star and meanwhile the other part of the triangle is getting shafted. Also many of the core members has gotten bad writing or is just gone. Many return this week though.
– Other issues. It’s not a 3 regular triangle. One is a guest star so comments about her leaving/dying is a part of the war. One leg of the triangle is a f/f relationship. I don’t have enough experience with that fandom but they seem very aggressive.
So to recap. What’s happening on the show definitely ignited the bomb but it has been building due to the direction of the show, the promotion and Jason’s comments. He has to take a part of the blame for where we are now. It does not help that a sex scene has been leaked – that other romantic scenes of Clexa has been leaked in the past. The f/f vs. f/m also puts fuel on the fire.
I gotta admit though – ever since I started to follow Jason, I sit with my bucket of popcorn and watch the twitter show. It’s quite entertaining.
My advice to Jason. Stop tweeting! At least about anything that even remotely has to do with the pairings. He is creating the forum the fandoms need to meet and collide.
It’s not okay to attack anyone on social media which includes the people making the show. However, writers and producers need to realize they aren’t always innocent victims.
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I wrote a lengthy comment but it hasn’t come up yet. Are they being screened before they are allowed up on the page?
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Exactly! I thought the fandom was above this but clearly not–and it’s not just criticising each other’s “ships” anymore, they’re now just launching filthy insults at each other and at the actors and it’s disgusting. Completely ruins the show because if you watched The 100 purely for a ship, then you’re watching the wrong show! I’ve seen stuff like Clarke being “slut-shamed” because she slept with two girls — Jesus, Bellamy slept with two girls IN ONE GO and then slept with Raven too; Finn cheated on Raven with Clarke! the double standards are insane. And what’s more frustrating is that I think the writers are trying to create something beyond romance here. Much like POI, romance is lovely and is a bright spot–but it’s not the focus of the show. The 100 has so much opportunity to explore war, the morality, ethics, colonialism (which tbh it’s gone a horrible job of so far) but The 100 does do well in terms of sexuality, in that it just doesn’t matter. You love who you love. But in a show where there’s a breaking civil war, an artificial intelligence about to destroy humanity etc etc — sometimes I think if you’re just watching for a ship, then why bother? The show’s not going to explore them in detail — the 100’s flawed in many ways and one of them is that it’s excessively rushed. Its fast pace means it’s exciting but everyone’s redemption arcs bar Kane’s was 100% rushed, and the outlook for post episode 5 is grim. Justification for xenophobic genocide is beyond my comprehension and I just can’t accept it. There are bigger problems with this show than shipping, but it’s the shipping and the immaturity of it, and the nasty bullying and insults it brings about that really, really are horrible to watch. People literally tear into each other. What was season three’s theme? Humanity? And these “shippers” are just exhibiting the very, very worst traits of humanity. It’s horrible. Great article, Stacy. The 100’s never relied on romance — so why should its fans? And whatever happened to being respectful and kind to one another? Whatever happened to freedom of speech and allowance of differences in opinions and accepting it? Shipping wars are so gross. It ruins the show and I feel bad for the writers who are trying to create something great and get weighed down by something as petty as this.
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