✨Lifetree✨

Mainly onto M:I and Doctor Who and Hermitcraft stuff right now

[benthan-week-forever]

Benthan Week 2026 Themes

The votes are in! Here are the daily and alternate themes for Benthan Week 2026, running from August 24-30:

Monday, August 24 Day 1: Presumed dead Alternate theme: Ethan and Benji take care of each other’s emotional fallouts after The Final Reckoning

Tuesday, August 25 Day 2: One of them can’t speak/hear/see [mod was glad to find such interest in writing disability this year! to support, here are resources for respectfully writing disabled characters, especially Deaf and blind characters, without reducing disability to a narrative prop] Alternate theme: They meeting during Mission: Impossible I or II timeline AU

Wednesday, August 26 Day 3: Ethan is actually a traffic analyst (or whatever his job was in MI3) but somehow gets roped into a crime unwillingly anyway, so Benji has to help solve it while not tipping off Ethan Alternate theme: Historical period AU (WWII, Victorian, Middle Ages, etc.)

Thursday, August 27 Day 4: Someone wears a Benji mask in front of Ethan (or the other way around) Alternate theme: Ethan being the damsel in distress

Friday, August 28 Day 5: Benji gets the mission to kill Ethan Alternate theme: Benji takes Ethan clothes shopping to stop him wearing basic black

Saturday, August 29 Day 6: Ethan treating a badly hurt Benji Alternate theme: After a concussion, Ethan thinks he actually is John Lark. Benji has to convince him he’s not.

Sunday, August 30 Day 7: Truth serum Alternate theme: Benji and Ethan on the run together

Enjoy creating for the next month and a half (or, in time-honored tradition, doing it all the night before in a wild rush)! The blog will begin posting and the AO3 collection will be revealed around 8 AM US Central Time on the 24th. Looking forward to another fun year of Benthan 💖

[itslifetreesworld]

I’ve spent way too much time on this game…

[itslifetreesworld]

Long nights🌃

[redwing]

guy who needs a warm bath and a bowl of soup badly

[itslifetreesworld]

Thinking about this show once in a while..

[itslifetreesworld]

☁️spirit of clouds

[benthan-week-forever]

Benthan Week Theme Voting

We brainstormed lots of great ideas, now it's time to choose the ones we'd like to inspire us this Benthan Week 2026!

Vote for your favorite themes at this link: https://forms.gle/GGkyZ7SNSBn2AeqL6

Voting will close on July 5.

[elphaba897]

Cornetto!!!

[emo-machine42]

[qprsarepeak]

Saw this art trend on tt and just had do do it with @itslifetreesworld ‘s evil benji

Tried a completely new drawing technique with this one too

[itslifetreesworld]

The sun of Casablanca

[bravo-echo-11]

look how guilty he seems here i feel like he's less worried about the bomb and more worried about disappointing ethan :(

[jingle-knight]

I’m soooooo embarrassed. My lord told me “good night,” but I thought he was calling me a good knight, and, well, you could hear it clink against my codpiece.

[nipuni]

Hardy and Miller are on the case! across different police divisions 🚓

[benthan-week-forever]

It's time to start brainstorming themes for the event of the year, that's right, Benthan Week 2026!!

This year’s event will take place August 24-30. Feel free to check out the Info & Rules if you’re new to the event or have questions. Whether you’ve been here since the event’s beginning or just stumbled onto this ship from the latest Mission movie, welcome!!

First up, let’s get brainstorming! Each day of Benthan week needs a primary and secondary theme to inspire creators. You can check out past themes and works by scrolling the blog or checking past years’ AO3 collections to get the inspo flowing! The more ideas, the merrier :)

Add your ideas to the brainstorming document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S5eLWzt2ag88ox9ojVsZWnCjjp-JhUPHUd_LY4L39K0/edit?usp=sharing

The brainstorming document will close on June 22nd. Then, the blog mod will circulate a google form so we can all vote on our favorite themes and get creating!

Looking forward to another amazing Benthan Week celebration!!

[bravoechoes]

There are two examples of cut scenes from Fallout and DR that I wish they’d kept in/incorporated somehow, because they both offer a glimpse into how Ethan behaves between missions. The first one is him going into hiding after Kashmir to avoid Sloane. He does this as a negotiation tactic to force her to hand over Lane to MI6 in order to free Ilsa. The second one is at the beginning of Dead Reckoning, where he’s offered multiple missions by Kittridge and refuses all of them, evading the IMF and staying under the radar. You watch him walk through public streets alone, off-balance and separate from the rest of the world, until eventually the movie opens with Kittridge placing a bounty on Ilsa’s head to flush Ethan out of hiding.

And I think what’s interesting is that in both of these instances, Ethan isn’t forced into hiding (like he is in Rogue Nation or Ghost Protocol), he is choosing to hide as a form of leverage. It shows a much more calculated and angry version of Ethan, one that is actively hostile to the IMF, working for his own interests as opposed to “the greater good.” We usually see him in high-pressure situations where he’s not in control and trying desperately to solve a series of increasingly insane and dangerous problems. But these two examples show the opposite - he is very calculated and slow moving. This is how Ethan behaves when he is in control, and it’s an inversion of the panicked, rushed, lightning-fast way he behaves during missions. 

It also offers additional texture to the lonesome and empty way we see him act between missions, where he’s literally sleeping in abandoned buildings and isolating himself from the world lol. It gives those at-rest periods more of an edge. In those moments, he is still working, but in a “selfish” way, using his own skills and reputation to get what he wants (eg protecting Ilsa). And imo it gives Ethan more agency in his life and helps inform how he relates to his own desires. His self-isolation acts as both a passive and active form of protection - he hides because he knows that getting close to people puts them in harms way, and he also hides as a bargaining chip for his friends’ lives. It gives you the impression that Ethan is aware of his own value as an agent, and deploys that value for political/strategic means. And for me at least it demonstrates a more cold and shrewd side of Ethan, where he can exert his will and behave in ways that are more hidden or subtle. People often joke about him being dog-coded, being a sad wet puppy, etc etc, and while all of those are definitely true lol, I like this much more deliberate and calculated side of him, where he has more control over his own actions when he isn’t being forced to just gut-react to everything. He’s great in a crisis, but when he’s not in a crisis, he is very, very still

[itslifetreesworld]

Also. Another thing I came across in Vienna