bev, here, is threatening her friend at gunpoint, having already kicked him down onto the ground, because she, from observations, had concluded that he's somehow hurt brax, gotten him to leave, and she fully believes that. she fully believes that, and she's threatening him at gunpoint, because she believes that she is avenging brax. avenging the person who gave her a home.
and that's- that's huge. we need to talk about what it means.
i mean, can we conclude that brax semi-intentionally molded her to do this? from the ending of the fifth axis arc, he'd had reasons to start manipulating the world more, to try and reach his goal to prevent anything that horrible from happening. and bev's a huge asset. and, remember, brax was the only one who trusted her in the beginning, to do missions that he sent her on. and that obviously meant a lot. having a famous art theif, who led a whole revolution for a year against the fifth axis, on your side and completely loyal because you're the one who gave her a home and believed in her to do things? someone who's never had a home? i'm not saying all of this was completely intentional, hell, not at all. i think brax only started doing things after he kept bev as his PA, so only the believing-in-her-to-do-things-she-wasn't-qualified-for was intentional and done to get her gratitude and loyalty, in a way. oh and also he was slowly molding her to be more... dignified, i guess, less unpredictable and unhesitatingly violent, more suited to his plans.
hm... thinking about how "the purpura pawn" (anthology: a life in pieces) marks the beginning of bev's second change in character. first one, of course, started after the fifth axis arc when brax decided to let her stay, gave her a home, started training her to be his utterly loyal capable violent right-hand woman (what else is sending her on missions she's not qualified for? obviously training, 'least that's how i read it) (my meta for the 'utterly loyal' bit here) (perfectly willing to get her hands dirty to benefit him/his collection, as seen in this short story, where she just decides to buy the purpura pawn from a black market dealer for the collection, and tricks adrian into going with her + drugs him unconscious when he figures out to prevent him from getting mad, though she misjudged him there a bit. like. come on.)
the second one i'm talking about starts in this short story. bev goes from "i'm a big girl, adrian, i can take care of myself" in the beginning when adrian offers, like, concern for her safety (in context of her going around and getting stuff for brax, illegally and dangerously) to letting herself be carried in adrian's arms to safety when shit has well and truly hit the fan, everything is burning, she's accidentally landed the both of them in the middle of some gang disputes and bloody revenge, and gotten themselves caught in the crossfire. they're both hurt badly. they're both fighting like crazy. but adrian cares, he cares to get her out of it, they're both bleeding heavily and all that but he's... helping. not just himself. no, he's helping the person who got him (the both of them, really) into this huge fucking mess in the first place.
and to me, this is really the beginning of bev letting herself be cared about rather than shouldering things herself. which turns out to be harmful for what brax's planned for her in the long run (though do note, that he didn't see it nor forbid it, did not really make any effort for her to stay isolated. but when benny hated her, he cemented himself as the person who trusted her on missions and with responsibilities, which obviously impacted their relationship/bev's view of him a lot. in fact, brax was the one who started sending her on these missions, benny's jealously came after. we can't really say whether it was intentional isolation, though it would be fun and fucked up if it was. i say that it sort of was, but brax definitely didn't have any bad intentions... to me he saw benny's reaction to him beginning to train her for her Role (in the story written by him) and... kept training her, saw that the enmity was happening and didn't do anything to stop it nor make it worse. just worked towards his goal.)
i mean, bev in parallel lives shooting ms jones and then going to brax about it speaks of unspeakable amounts of trust. again, from loyalty.
and this story, well, this proved that bev could trust and reach out to other people. which... was new to her. this obvious, conspicuous care. and everybody wants to be cared about, after all.
if not for this, what this story set into motion, maybe in short story "work in progress" (anthology: collected works) bev would not have believed jason. maybe she could never have broken out of that, out of misguided loyalty. never could have gained that agency. maybe she would have been defending brax's actions till the end, ever the loyal right-hand confidante, because in her eyes he would have been the only one to care for her in any way. and, of course, benny did care for her. they got over their rivalry. but i really doubt that bev would've been open to a "truce" if not for this story, if not for the initial break in her walls. if not for seeing than she can be cared for, can be loved for something other than what she can do for the person, something other than her use (remember, she was an employee of brax's in the end, no matter how much she felt that he'd given her a home. she got things for his collection, she was useful. one could argue that that was the reason she was kept around in the first place; she was insanely useful during the fifth axis occupation arc, only being there for a couple of weeks but willing to risk it all and lead the armed resistance. her potential for loyalty and how much she'd give/do for it was probably the thing that drove brax into keeping her there and seeing her usefulness for his plans, for deciding that there was a role that could easily be filled by her in the story he was trying to direct, given a bit of training.)
it showed her that she is a person who can be loved and deserves care despite her faults, despite the fact that she was the one who got them into the whole mess in the first place, despite the fact that she was, then, a liability. not an asset, not useful in the slightest, harmful, in fact. and despite it all adrian cared, he cared to get her to safety, to get them both to safety, though from bev's viewpoint that went against all logic. it broke that logic. it started to show bev that she could be cared for, that she could rely on her friends. that she had and deserved friends, close people; and later on, her own inner circle. not to be used and distantly 'cared about' like brax, but to be loved and trusted and depended upon. that is the most important point where she differs from brax. and that prevents her from going down his path, no matter how close she got to it. her loved ones called her out and pulled her away and she listened and worked on it, however many times it happened, because she loved them and valued what they had to say and believed that she could depend on them/their advice, et al.
that's bev. and i believe that this story sets her down this path, her own path.
Do you have any hot takes on the Benny series? 👀
alright so i'm... unsure what the exact definition of a hot take is, but uh, here's some... things? opinions? (edit: also i went completely off the fucking rails here and started ranting big-time. i hope it's okay.)
one that doesn't properly count is that it's genuinely so sad that benny series is less popular than, say, gallifrey or whatever, because it is better in every way. personal opinion. i say as someone who was into gallifrey first. benny series i love youuu 🫶
right, (proper) first of all, i am not a hater. i am a lover. which might sometimes require me to rise to the defence of the characters i love, if that makes any sense. i do not hate on stories because they're "unbelievable" or "the plot is bad" or whatever (unless they have, say, bigotry). what i dislike in stories are bigotry and mischaracterisation (my previous point of being a Lover.)
i did actually like "twilight of the gods"!!! they all go through shit, horrible shit!!! like, alright, fine, i get why people don't like it as an ending to the dellah era. i get that. however, i actually like it!!! (speaking of, i should re-read dellah era properly one day, instead of just rotating "where angels fear" and "tears of the oracle" and "deadfall" in my rereads lol.)
similarly, with "in living memory", people have said that it's a, uh, cliffhanger-y ending and not really too good of an ending to legion era, since the next time we see benny (with the unbound doctor i believe, and i don't have any authority to speak about this era of hers since i... haven't listened to a single one of their audios together. i will One Day.) is another setting entirely. and i guess some people don't like the episode as a finale, but i really do believe that it's amazing!!! i mean, in terms of finales, it does a very good job! the epoch are all defeated! shit's tied up, well, mostly. not really, but i don't like things where it's all neatly tied up with no room for anything else, anyway. and it's the nature of doctor who. the episode ended with the legion era team thinking/saying that they could use the power of the epoch one last time... and i really like that. those sorts of endings/finales, where it's really the dawn of a new era, are really nice to me. they don't have to show the new era they may or may not be walking into. things don't have to be cleared up. i don't really care about the logistics of how benny went from legion era -> unbound doctor era. why do we have to have everything spelled out for us anyway? i like having fun, i like having spaces in between for fics... the episode confirmed that some fanfics are even canon to benny!!! which is so fun :3 it was when gary russell said that she didn't remember anything, and what she did was written off in her head as stories they recorded, novels, anthologies, fan fiction... hehe :3 (and the ending of the episode may have spawned a fic wip for me where benny uses the power of the epoch to... get jason back. because i love him and she does too, she mentions his name as one of the things they could use the epoch for.) so, yeah. i liked the episode as a finale and also as an episode, a lot. like, of course, nothing can be flawless. but this episode is still amazing.
on the same topic, i do really like the legion era. yeah, sure, it's not the best, and a lot of things are left unaddressed, but i really like what we do get to see, and we can draw inferences from that. it's not 100% good, but i do still love it. a lot. the concept of... legion, though very unaddressed and sidelined, is really nice from whatever we get. and i'm working on a more realistic legion era fic anyway, where i address stuff!!! fun.
hm... i guess for characters, i do really love all/most of them. that interpretation of the mirror effect i showed in my fic, plus the stuff i wrote in the notes of it:
i read brax's actions in the mirror effect as him desperately trying to salvage the situation, while not letting anyone know how much of a bad time he's having. and sure, there's some things he wouldn't have liked to say, such as how he knew about what happens there in the first place (when he told jason not to go in after benny, and told him what happens in the mirror worlds, for his own good), but brax did ultimately tell jason when he exited from the lift for the second time (after brax hypnotised him.) i wrote what i think of brax's motives/reasons and whatever was going on in his mind in the fic, so i won't discuss it too much here. but basically, brax wasn't doing what jason, influenced by th mirror world, accused him of. not to such a grand scale. not until later. and i guess this does serve as foreshadowing, from my reading of this episode. brax wasn't in control at all in the mirror effect.
also, brax retconning his reasons for doing All This to jason, because he can definitely justify hurting his friend as being a part of his plan, later. see, to me, cantus was just... brax doing what he thought would help most. "this way, you can be the saviour and protector you've always wanted to be!" <-cyberleader-ing him. "jason, this is your destiny" [as written by brax, to help immensely in his plan. because lbr brax does care, but by cantus he's far gone enough...] like. okay going completely brasjason insane here, That Scene in cantus, jason screaming when the coronet was put on him and brax shushing him??? like that???? WHILE jason's still screaming???? Did Things to me, i swear. "you're only making it harder for yourself..." telling jason to just give in to the cyberconversion so it'd hurt less for him... am i insane? probably. jason, at last, telling brax to keep benny safe. "this way, you'll be keeping us all safe. goodbye, jason... thank you for everything" <-genuinely sounds like he's saying goodbye to his friend!!! like, to brax, he had to do that for his Plans, to keep the Collection and its inhabitants safe, and jason was just the tool to do it. it doesn't mean, strictly, that he doesn't care about jason. rather that jason's more a tool in his plans, a useful tool, and he may even be making them all (himself included) unhappy but it has to be done. for the plan. to save them all from what's coming.
apologies if this doesn't make sense, my head is blurry from... calculus :/ and i completely lost the fucking plot and started unwell ranting.
anyway, bev time!!! i've spoken a bit about her and brax in a post (here), and i am here to add more!!! the thing is, that brax didn't really care about bev (nor adrian) that much, because she came afterwards. benny and jason are holdovers from dellah era, where brax genuinely had friends, let himself care for them properly, without façades or hiding shit. here... bev was kept because she was incredibly useful against the fifth axis, because brax recognised that she could be trained/molded into an assistant for him. to do his work for him, to get him shit for his collection (like jason used to do, but he's graduated from that and onto greater things now) and he can... help her grow, i guess. because in the end, what bev ends up becoming is because of brax. he gave her a home and turned her into what she is. but it's hers now. and, yeah, brax was the only person to trust bev with important shit in the beginning too! but after cantus, it just soured a lot. because brax left. he had a choice and he left. and bev moved in to fill the position of director, and she did it wonderfully!!! i don't think she ever forgave him for just fucking leaving like that. bitterness turned to hatred because look what he did to her friend (jason) !!! plus, the collection's hers now. she's the one who has to cope with his absence, she's the one upon whom it all falls. because benny's off benny-ing, and bev's the one left to deal with real life shit. brax doesn't really care about bev as much as he cares about, say, benny, or even jason. but bev... well, brax gave her a home. and then he left!
another take, i guess, is that benny's a HUGE hypocrite! lmao one time in happy endings (which i re-read a few weeks ago), she was seriously thinking about how she really, really wanted to fuck john watson, just mess him up, and THEN she went 'oh yeah this isn't the same as jason checking out ace's tits. btw. he did worse.' like girl i love you. i LOVE women who have serious problems. benny has this compulsive need to frame herself as Good or Cool (case in point, the sticky notes over her diary entries, writing/retconning herself in as better than she actually was in that situation.) i LOVE her and i believe that characters should be allowed to have flaws!!! and be loved for them!!!! like GIRL, your ISSUES. she Throws Shit At Jason when she's mad at him... girl I Love You<3. let women have PROBLEMS!!!!! >:3
uhhhhhhh i can't think of any else at the moment. OH and also i love stories people deem "unnecessarily dark and edgy" like yes give me. so. yeah! i've spoken way too much lol.
got any takes of yours you'd like to say? :3 i'd love to hear them!
