·your heart is true·

Latvia/Canada | she/her | fic on AO3 | meta here | Octavia Blake Defense & Protection Squad | Echo Apologist Bitch | Guardian of the Garden of the Hesperides (Diyoza-Blake Family)

[osleyakomwonkru]

It’s 6am and I haven’t slept and I just need to make sure the world knows that Octavia Blake deserves all the happiness in the universe and to live a long life in peace with the ones she loves. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[osleyakomwonkru]

It’s been one year since our Queen saved the human race (again). I hope she’s enjoying her peace and her family. I’ve got a variety of fic going up this week with my ideas of how that could go, so check it out over on AO3 (same username, OsleyaKomWonkru). 

[osleyakomwonkru]

what are some characters you think have a similar personality to octavia?

I'm assuming in other fandoms, not The 100? Because in The 100 she's pretty one of a kind, though of course Hope has a number of her personality traits as well, due to being partially raised by her.

Looking to other fandoms, these characters are best defined as "my favourites". I have a type :D This type can be best defined as "misunderstood badasses who have a light side and a dark side, who love intensely with their whole heart, and too often people take advantage of that for their own ends".

So, in roughly chronological order (from most recent to most distant), my favourite characters of my fandoms of the past ten make that twenty years who also fit this category:

Magnus Bane, Shadowhunters

An immortal bisexual warlock with a painful past, he believes strongly in equality and justice. He's not afraid of speaking truth to power and fighting for what's right. I actually have a fic that I've been dabbling with that is a Shadowhunters/The 100 crossover, set in the bunker with Shadowhunters as history, but since Magnus is immortal he's still alive, even if most of the Shadow World died in the first Praimfaya. At the time of the Final Conclave at the end of season 4, Magnus is a Yujleda healer, he's in the throne room when Octavia wins (there is actually a guy there that, if you squint, looks like him), and her speech of unity reminds him of his deceased Shadowhunter husband Alec, who had the same mission decades ago, and he resolves to help the Skaikru girl make her vision come true.

Regina Mills/Evil Queen, Once Upon A Time

Another queen with a painful past. I've compared Octavia and Regina before, and that comparison still stands. In short, they both start their stories naïve, trusting and believing in love, and both of their starts of darkness resulted from death of loved ones and familial abandonment, though Regina did legit go full on evil for awhile, but she did come back from it. And like Octavia, she also triumphs in the end and comes out of it as the true hero.

Eliot Spencer, Leverage

He’s a gruff badass with a soft spot for kids and is fiercely protective of his squad. He also has a mysterious dark past that he always feels he’s still atoning for, and the episodes where he works to address connections to said past are often the standouts. 

Juliet Burke and James “Sawyer” Ford, LOST

These two... they just melt my heart. I love them so much. I’m so glad that they found each other, but even after living happily together for years, their insecurities and fears still made them panic. Juliet is a badass doctor who would do anything to keep her sister safe, and Sawyer is a conman whose heart grows as he finds love to fill it with. My heart.

Faith Lehane, Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel

The original badass bitch (okay, well, maybe Xena comes before her, but I was never as heavily into Xena as I was BtVS). There are some Faith scenes that I rewatch now that just scream “Octavia!” to me (especially the scene where she’s begging Angel to kill her). It was with Faith that I first saw how crucial love and compassion were to helping people heal from darkness, and it was the first time I saw people deny it to those who needed it - until Angel was Faith’s Diyoza and helped her in a way others couldn’t.

[osleyakomwonkru]

Coming back to this post to add another character from a show I’ve just watched (albeit not diving into the fandom):

Mazikeen Smith, Lucifer

Hell’s best torturer, a demon who comes to LA with Lucifer and has an adventure in learning how to relate to humans and find love and belonging - and a soul to boot. I think she deserved better. While she ends the series firmly committed to Eve and I try to feel happy for her, I always felt like she was putting in all of the work in that relationship, most of the time getting her heart broken, and I found Eve way too flighty and capricious. I would have liked to see Maze end up with Ella instead, who was a warm and kind human woman who was much more what Maze needed in her life.

[osleyakomwonkru]

It’s wild how it is 2021 and there are still people out there who think that Clarke Griffin bore the most on The 100 just because she stole that fancy catchphrase.

[osleyakomwonkru]

what are some characters you think have a similar personality to octavia?

I'm assuming in other fandoms, not The 100? Because in The 100 she's pretty one of a kind, though of course Hope has a number of her personality traits as well, due to being partially raised by her.

Looking to other fandoms, these characters are best defined as "my favourites". I have a type :D This type can be best defined as "misunderstood badasses who have a light side and a dark side, who love intensely with their whole heart, and too often people take advantage of that for their own ends".

So, in roughly chronological order (from most recent to most distant), my favourite characters of my fandoms of the past ten make that twenty years who also fit this category:

Magnus Bane, Shadowhunters

An immortal bisexual warlock with a painful past, he believes strongly in equality and justice. He's not afraid of speaking truth to power and fighting for what's right. I actually have a fic that I've been dabbling with that is a Shadowhunters/The 100 crossover, set in the bunker with Shadowhunters as history, but since Magnus is immortal he's still alive, even if most of the Shadow World died in the first Praimfaya. At the time of the Final Conclave at the end of season 4, Magnus is a Yujleda healer, he's in the throne room when Octavia wins (there is actually a guy there that, if you squint, looks like him), and her speech of unity reminds him of his deceased Shadowhunter husband Alec, who had the same mission decades ago, and he resolves to help the Skaikru girl make her vision come true.

Regina Mills/Evil Queen, Once Upon A Time

Another queen with a painful past. I've compared Octavia and Regina before, and that comparison still stands. In short, they both start their stories naïve, trusting and believing in love, and both of their starts of darkness resulted from death of loved ones and familial abandonment, though Regina did legit go full on evil for awhile, but she did come back from it. And like Octavia, she also triumphs in the end and comes out of it as the true hero.

Eliot Spencer, Leverage

He’s a gruff badass with a soft spot for kids and is fiercely protective of his squad. He also has a mysterious dark past that he always feels he’s still atoning for, and the episodes where he works to address connections to said past are often the standouts. 

Juliet Burke and James “Sawyer” Ford, LOST

These two... they just melt my heart. I love them so much. I’m so glad that they found each other, but even after living happily together for years, their insecurities and fears still made them panic. Juliet is a badass doctor who would do anything to keep her sister safe, and Sawyer is a conman whose heart grows as he finds love to fill it with. My heart.

Faith Lehane, Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel

The original badass bitch (okay, well, maybe Xena comes before her, but I was never as heavily into Xena as I was BtVS). There are some Faith scenes that I rewatch now that just scream “Octavia!” to me (especially the scene where she’s begging Angel to kill her). It was with Faith that I first saw how crucial love and compassion were to helping people heal from darkness, and it was the first time I saw people deny it to those who needed it - until Angel was Faith’s Diyoza and helped her in a way others couldn’t.

[osleyakomwonkru]

fearless in the face of any storm (swallowed in the depths of love’s unknown)

Late one evening on the shore of Polis, Lincoln finds a wounded mermaid - Octavia, an exiled princess of the sea. As he helps her heal, their common passion for righting injustices and fighting for the equality of all forms a strong bond between them, but can it survive the reality of the world they must live in? And what will happen to them when the sea wants her back?

Warning: Blood, injury, mentions of enslavement. 

Rating: Explicit Moodboard: @luminouswriter Prompted by @1munequita as a part of the @t100fic-for-blm​ initiative.

This prompt was made possible by a donation to the American Indian College Fund, a nonprofit that provides scholarships and support to Indigenous students and tribal colleges and universities.

AO3 link to the first chapter in notes!

[osleyakomwonkru]

I've saw a few people compare lexa and octavia. do you think they're similar and/or do you like lexa?

I've seen the posts going around recently, and they're quite accurate - they do have a lot of similarities as leaders. I've always considered Octavia's leadership style a blend of Lexa and Jaha (not exactly by her own choice, really, but by the circumstances provided).

But - I don't particularly like Lexa. It's 100% not her fault though. It's a combination of how she was introduced to me (and what a letdown that story ended up being), and how so many people ignore the similarities between Lexa and Octavia as leaders - and then with one breath celebrate Lexa and everything she does and stands for, but consider Octavia a terrible evil villain for doing literally the same things for the same (or even more noble) reasons.

Predominantly the second one. But it doesn't help that my experience of her was soured by the Clexa fandom's exaggeration of her role and relevance to the storyline, and the complete overexaggeration of her relevance in Clarke's story, which the show then incorporated to then try to fanservice those fans who felt let down by Lexa's death (Clexa fans are never going to sell me on the idea that Clarke's Most Important Person Ever is a woman she knew for mere days, hating her for most of them, and whose romantic relationship can be measured in mere hours).

But it absolutely infuriates me when people celebrate Lexa but villainize Octavia for similar actions. Or when they even celebrate Lexa, but then villainize Octavia for something she didn't even do - but Lexa did! and they think it is absolutely fine.

For example, one thing that Octavia haters go on about is how Octavia “killed people for disagreeing with her”. No. She did nothing of the sort. She killed people who directly acted against the best interests of Wonkru. She gave clear warnings to people skirting the edge of acting against the best interests of Wonkru. But she didn’t kill people for disagreeing with her.

Lexa, on the other hand, did. Remember this?

Lexa explicitly states that she killed him because he disagreed with her - “Would anyone else care to question my decisions?”

So it’s that fandom hypocrisy that bothers me. It’s not Lexa’s fault, she never shied away from who and what she was, but it means I can’t appreciate her the way other people do, because that hypocrisy and those double standards just drive me up the wall - like they do in how people treat Octavia versus almost every other character in this fandom. Siiiiiiigh.

[osleyakomwonkru]

what do you think octavia's biggest strength and weakness is?

Her heart, for both.

Her heart is a strength when it encourages her to love, to trust, to look beyond tribalism and see the humanity in the eyes of the enemy, to believe in the good in people, to do what is necessary to save them all.

But it is a weakness for those same reasons - people all too often exploit her trust and desire to help, and she keeps giving them leeway to do so because she wants to believe that they’re also doing what they’re doing for the right reasons. Nowhere is this more visible than in season 5, as well as her relationship with her brother overall.

Season 5 Octavia is a shattered heart hidden behind the steel mask of Blodreina. Her trust and her desire to save her people were exploited by Abby in the Dark Year, and Kane and Indra further allowed everyone to scapegoat her, all of that heavily damaging her ability to trust or rely on anyone else to share any burdens again.

Until her brother opens the bunker - then she has a ray of hope again. She wants to trust him, she wants him to be the brother she believes in - but again that trust is shattered. When in 5x05 Octavia says to Indra “love is weakness”, she isn’t saying that like the Commanders, where they believe “love is weakness, to be Commander is to be alone” - but rather it is Octavia trying to remind herself that she trusts and loves too hard and too fast, and that people exploit that, even when she wishes it were otherwise. Which is why her response when Indra says “I love you, does that make me weak?” is “I would never say that to you, seda” because a) she clings to the hope that Indra won’t betray her again, and b) Indra’s way of life doesn’t make love a weakness for her the same way it does for Octavia.

And then Bellamy betrays and hurts her in unimaginable ways over and over again, yet she still wants to believe he’s the brother of her childhood. She wants to believe the best of him, even when almost every experience since landing on the ground proves otherwise.

Octavia’s love has always been selfless. She loves with her whole heart. She’s not possessive. She’ll go to the ends of the earth and beyond for those to whom she’s pledged her love and loyalty. Her love isn’t conditional, unlike just about everyone else’s. It’s this selfless approach to love that lets her balance both love for individuals specifically and love for humanity generally without any contradictions. 

Her love can save humanity, yet it can also burn down the world if it has been pushed past its breaking point, making her heart both her greatest strength and her most dangerous weakness.

[osleyakomwonkru]

what do you think octavias hogwarts house is?

This is an easy one, compared to some asks that I have that will take a lot longer to answer :D

Gryffindor. A hundred million percent.

Reckless bravery and determination are basically the definition of Gryffindor, and that's also the definition of Octavia. I see a lot of foolish people put her in Slytherin due to Blodreina, but that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both a) who Octavia is as a person, and b) the purpose of Blodreina (moreover, it also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Slytherin). Octavia is the opposite of shrewd and cunning. She wants to see the good in people, she gives them the benefit of the doubt even when she shouldn't, she wears her heart on her sleeve, even when she tries to hide it behind her mask.

Gryffindor. No other options.

[osleyakomwonkru]

what do you think octavia's job would be in the modern day? I've read a lot of modern au fics and everyone else's jobs seem to stay similar but octavia's is always very different

I don't really read modern AUs, so I don't know the different jobs you could be referring to, but there are very few fic writers out there that I trust with Octavia and her proper characterization, especially if she's a side character. So I don't know if the writers have put in the proper thought process into selecting the most appropriate job for her.

Because here's the thing about Octavia. I mean, it's a thing for every character, but is especially important for her - if you're writing fanfiction, you have to stay true to the characterization of the characters. You can change the plot, you can change the setting, the universe - but the characterization of the characters has to remain, otherwise they're not that same character anymore. They're just a face wearing that name but nothing resembling the person they were. If you're going to abandon characterization, you may as well just go write an original story, because it isn't fanfiction anymore, it's taking someone else's character names, an actor's face, and nothing else.

So anyway, what I'm getting at is that Octavia's a supremely difficult character to bring into a modern AU, specifically because her backstory - the backstory that makes her who she is as a person, which defines her characterization - is so particular to the setting of The 100. A hidden child, illegal in her society, never being socialized properly because she never knew other humans besides her mother and her brother until she was a teenager. There's a limited number of modern-day scenarios that translates to, but that's necessary should you want Octavia to be the same character.

It's not impossible, of course. I've written one modern AU, where her background is growing up in a cloistered patriarchal cult, that she and Bellamy escape after their mom dies due to being denied proper medical treatment. There are other scenarios that could work too - kidnapped as a child and kept locked up, that being done by her family for one reason or another, etc. But the cult scenario is the one I went with. The job she has in this 'verse, almost a decade after escaping the cult, is being the drummer of an internationally-acclaimed rock band that was formed by her, Raven and Gina (the story is an Octaven prompt). Raven and Gina met her in a pub where she was just fooling around with the drums there, but they saw promise in her and they invited her to join the band.

So all of that is a long-winded way of saying: I don't think there's any specific job that Octavia would have in a modern AU, what job she'd have would be dependent on the circumstances through which she was socialized into the normal world. To quote from Hypable's 7x02 review, Octavia "spent her childhood believing she could never become anything, so the moment her feet hit the ground, she realized she could be anything and tried to become it all at once." (emphasis mine)

That's the key to Octavia's character right there. She's supremely adaptable, she will jump on any opportunities presented to her and will do so with a hundred and ten percent of her heart. That's why it was a natural transition in canon for Octavia to go from being a fear-inspiring warrior queen to a nurturing farmer and co-parent. The same would apply for a modern AU - whatever scenario she found herself in after being thrown into the normal world, she'd adapt to that and that would be reflected in what her job would be.

If she landed in a scenario where she didn't have to adapt right away - where she was given time to breathe, to heal the wounds of her past, a place where she had a mentor who would encourage her to take her time in choosing her future, not pushing her in any specific direction - then I could see her being a teacher or a therapist, or working in law or politics as a mediator or ambassador. Because the core of Octavia's character is her belief in the equality of everyone, in the unity of humanity, and helping people heal and grow from traumas that she's been through herself and come out the other side of.

[osleyakomwonkru]

would you ever follow a bellarke shipper? assuming they were pro octavia ofc

Do they post pro-Octavia stuff or is their blog just a love letter to Bellarke?

I don't care who people ship, I care about the content they post on their blog. If it's just Bellarke stuff then no I wouldn't follow them. I follow a fraction of the blogs that follow me, because I'm on Tumblr strictly for the Octavia content (and a few rare other people whose takes on the show I enjoy). I'm not here for other characters (well, I'll take Diyoza, Hope, Echo, Jackson, Murphy and Emori too in a broader sense, but it has to be hella compelling and mostly original content for me to go outside the Diyoza-Blakes), I'm not here for other fandoms, I'm not here for non-fandom stuff. I’m here for Octavia and the people who understand her.

Plus from what I've seen of the Bellarke side of the fandom, many of them are... how to say this halfway politely? A bunch of kids who thought they were watching a romance show when it was always grimdark post-apocalyptic sci-fi, who are angry that a ship that was never going to sail didn't sail but they baited themselves for anyway, who are just as un-self-aware as the characters that they adore. (Yes, that's the halfway polite version.)

I have met the rare self-aware Bellarke stan, but the emphasis is on rare. The vast majority of Bellarke stans have twisted views of Octavia that are incompatible with the facts presented on the show, and those views preclude them from being pro-Octavia in the first place. And my fandom life comes with enough Bellarke that I can't avoid that I'm not going to go follow more of it, sorry.

[osleyakomwonkru]

Knock me down but I get up A thousand blows are not enough To keep me on my knees I’m stronger when I bleed

I’ve been to Hell and back Picked myself up from the ash It made me who I am Champions aren’t born - we’re built.

[osleyakomwonkru]

I just left this comment on AO3 but I just needed to say it here too. Thank you for gifting us with your amazing writing! You're my favourite fic writer for the 100 and probably my favourite writer in general. You understand your characters and how they would react to any situation so well and your writing style is so imersive. Your Niytavia fics are the work of an angel and I cannot wait to see more of those two from you and more of Octavia. Thank you so much for what you do for her and this fandom. <3

Aw, thank you so much! I have lots more fic coming, but it's kind of irregular right now... I've got a lot of stuff that I have already written that I want to post, but I also have to balance that with posting stuff that I need to post (prompts and requests and such), and most of that is still a work in progress.

But I've got lots more Octavia and Niytavia stories to tell, so don't worry! You'll be set for a good long while :)

[osleyakomwonkru]

How is it 2021 and there are still people out there who think Octavia is some vapid self-centred woman who doesn’t care about any other human beings?

Excuse me while I go violently hurl, because she is precisely the exact opposite of that.

[osleyakomwonkru]

do you know when you'll be updating any of your fics on ao3? I'm a big fan

Since you're anon, I don't know if you're one of the people who does kudo and/or comment on my fics or not. If you are, thank you! But honestly not that many people do that, so I can't be sure.

Here's the truth: Writers like knowing they're not writing into the void. They love comments and kudos. That's why we post our work instead of just keeping it for ourselves. But we don't know if anyone likes it or if anyone's a "big fan" if we don't get that reader interaction, y'know?

I've posted a fair number of stories over the past few months, and engagement on them is way way down compared to earlier stories I've written (to say nothing for other fandoms I've written for). Two out of three of the most recent stories I've posted have no comments at all.

Now, I know I'm not that great at comments/kudos either. I'm trying to get better about it - though to be honest I don't read a lot of t100 fic because there's very few people writing what I want to read. I'm very particular and most people just don't write what I'm into, so I have to do that myself. That's one of the reasons I've posted over 400,000 words in this fandom over the past three years.

So to answer your question - yes, of course. But I also have many stories and many series, so I don't know which in particular you're referring to. I also have a great deal of stories I haven't even published any chapters of. If I had an idea of which themes really grab readers' attention, I'd know which ones to focus on, but like I said, engagement is really low these days, so I haven't a clue on what people are actually interested in reading.

Which means that right now my focus is on the prompts I'm completing for @t100fic-for-blm - I won't get into all of the details of the stories I'm writing there since that would spoil the surprise, but as a taster: there's another story coming in the Lincoln Lives 'verse, there's a lot of Linctavia AUs and a Niytavia sequel to one of them, and I also have that Octaven AU to finish.

Once I've dealt with all of those, then I can get back to writing my Season 7, which I've had to put on the back burner. When the mood strikes, I'll also edit and post a number of other fics I have sitting in my Scrivener files, such as a 4x04 missing scene, more of the Diyoza-Blakes on Skyring, and so on. I have no shortage of stories. But what I do have a shortage of is knowing that people want to read them, and which in particular strike their fancy, and what specifically they like about them.

So the moral of this long response is: Writers like knowing what people enjoy, so go leave a comment on a story you've read recently, let the writer know what you liked about it!

[osleyakomwonkru]

This is the sound of surviving This is my farewell to fear This is my whole heart deciding I'm still here, I'm still here And I'm not done fighting This is the sound of surviving

[osleyakomwonkru]

she sleeps with one eye open (but that drum’s still beating loud and clear)

International rock sensations Make It Go Boom have secrets. Secrets that prevent them from playing domestic shows. Secrets that keep their pasts a mystery. Secrets about who ends up in whose bed every so often.

Secrets they all remained, until the paparazzi got a lucky shot of drummer Octavia Blake and vocalist Raven Reyes locking lips behind the wedding tent at Octavia’s brother’s wedding. Now as their fans clamour for more details on a relationship they haven’t defined, the media spotlight threatens to crack their entire history wide open.

The truth about Octavia’s hidden past, the truth about Raven’s spinal injury, and the mysterious cult lurking in the shadows that connects them - can they risk sharing the truth with the world? Or will what should have been a private kiss between friends threaten the very foundations of the lives and relationships they’ve built?

Rating: Mature Prompted by an anonymous prompter as a part of the @t100fic-for-blm​ Initiative.

AO3 link in notes!