#tp analysis

[sylveriasarcana]

imagine you're a chill lesbian just trying to get through a boring day at your mall job at knock-off Build A Bear, and some twink loser from your comphet phase that you haven't thought about in like a year shows up with his weird ass boyfriend that's like 10 years older than him who keeps asking what you're doing later but you know he means it as a threat and to top it all off, he's sitting behind you glueing dick and balls onto a giraffe and you can feel his eyes on your back the whole time

this happened to my friend lisa thepassenger

[sylveriasarcana]

Sometimes when reading a ranson fanfic, i’m hit with the fact that benson really doesn’t know randy at all during the events of the movie. Of course he gathers from the one year of working together that Randy’s doesn’t seem to know how to live his own life, that he’s a push over, that he lets things happen. And with these assumptions he believes he is the only person able to fix randy, to fix the things HE thinks need to be fixed. But that’s just from watching him from under a hat while they work together, he hasn’t actually had a conversation with the guy. He only knows Randy’s age, name, past relationships and traumas from short conversations that he pried out with fear. Benson truly didnt know randy , not his interest, not his pet peeves, his favorite music or color, not even his actual name. Sometimes I wonder if benson ever realized this while dragging randy around town. That at some point whether its randy telling him his real name, about Lisa or ms.beard, he came to realization that he truly never knew randy and would probably never get the chance after all is said and done. Now here Benson is, with four murders and a hostage he convinced himself he knew all about, moving through town without a plan to stick to. Maybe thats why he was so shocked and hurt that randy called the police, because it was something he didnt know randy could do. Maybe when he walks out of the diner towards the cops, he would think about what he did with randy and wonder what would have happened if they got to know each other before he did what he did, if it would have changed his feelings about him and help him figure out how to fix randy some other way. Maybe when he is shot down, he thinks about a world where he could have talked randy, asked him to hang out. It would have been nice.

And Randy might be looking at him in the parking lot, thinking the same.

Or thinking about how Benson might be the only person who had actually seen and understood him. Someone who might have known him better than anyone ever did.

4 am thoughts

i fully agree with your 4am thoughts, anon!

i think benson's first hint that he knows fuck all about randy might be around the time they meet up with lisa, like you say. like benson has it in his head that randy and lisa talking it out is gonna fix everything, but... he's really made a mountain out of a molehill there? like randy and lisa probably haven't even thought about each other in years, they didn't have any passionate or tumultuous relationship, they were just a couple of teens that dated for a while and then it fizzled out. i think we even see this a little when they're leaving the mall and benson's going "well she wasn't worth the FUSS now was she, randy" ... you mean the fuss that you caused, benson? lmaooo he's so frustrated that his big plan turned out to be a nothingburger. he was so sure he had this vital piece of randy's backstory but the lisa thing is just not that significant in the grand scheme of things. and if he was wrong about that... well, what else is he wrong about, yknow? what else has he gotten wrong about randy bradley?

and then the final straw is when randy called the cops, because in benson's mind, randy is not capable of that. randy would never do that. but he did! and benson didn't see it coming, because he doesn't know him! the tragedy is that, they absolutely could have known each other. as carter smith said, maybe they might have been good for each other! but nope. they got too caught up in their fantasies of what the other was like, and both of them turned out to be deeply wrong

ooh. thank you for this anon! sorry it took me so long to answer it, i've been chewing on it for like 3 days

[sylveriasarcana]

Do you think benson would also have some for of ocd?

now that you mention it anon, i do have a potential Benson Has OCD headcanon! i've even made tiny references to it in some of my fics! i don't talk about it a lot for two reasons: i'm just that focused on my Randy Has OCD agenda (lol) and because i find the type of OCD i think Benson would have really difficult to talk about. but! i'm up for it today, so let's talk about it!

more muddled morning thoughts under the cut! giant trigger warning for discussions of CSA trauma

so, one of the more evil parts of OCD is that it when you have been traumatized by another person, it can try to convince you that you will commit the same harms someday. for example, someone with responsibility OCD may feel a heightened and exaggerated sense of responsibility for others because when they were a kid, the people that were supposed to be responsible for them failed them. so unfortunately, it is very very common for someone who experienced CSA to develop an extreme fear of being around children because they're afraid they will repeat the cycle. god OCD is... so fucking awful. like, what an evil fucking disorder. i need to kill it so we can all be free-

so, if Benson does have OCD, i think that's the type he would have. i've always had this at the back of my mind when writing him as well, like there are some lines in dygel where Hayley takes a step towards Benson and he takes a step back to create as much distance between them as possible (he's not even doing it consciously, it's just an instinct at that point), and it happens enough off the page that Randy even takes note of that later when he's realizing what happened between Sheppard and Benson. there's a few hints of it in chapter 24 as well! before dygel i had a last of us AU up on AO3 (since deleted, i wasn't comfortable writing for the source material anymore) that portrayed this fear much more clearly, and it's something i'd like to return to for my current zombie AU! Benson and Hayley spend a lot of time together in the zombie AU, and it actually makes Benson realize "wait a second... these thoughts are full of shit" lmao. OCD is full of shit!!! it's a god damned LIAR!!!! ✨

one of the more awful things about OCD is that it preys on your values. if you are someone who does not want to hurt others, OCD will try to convince you that you will, and use your trauma to do it. Randy doesn't want to hurt anyone again, so OCD makes him retreat inside himself and refuse to live his own life, because he can't cause harm if he's barely existing! and Benson doesn't want what happened to him to happen to anyone else, hence his violent insistence that Randy stop sitting back and "let" things happen to him, so i think his OCD fears would stem from that. (fuck, it's so sad that Benson thinks his trauma is something he "let" happen to him. Sheppard deserved at least 15 more punches to the face-)

so i think if Benson had it, that's how it would manifest; Benson doesn't want anyone to experience what he did, so OCD would make him feel like he's doomed to repeat the cycle. interestingly, I think Randy would develop OCD because of something he did, while Benson would develop OCD because of something that happened to him. both traumatic events, and both of which can lead to OCD!

whew that got real. thank you for the question anon! 💖

[sylveriasarcana]

sometimes i think about how miss beard and randy potentially mirror each other

specifically randy saying "the one time i let myself react the way i wanted to i ruined a person's life"

i... think miss beard might have a similar view of the incident but from a different perspective?

like i imagine miss beard as a teacher who rarely loses her cool and wouldn't usually single just one kid out for doing something the entire class was doing. but this one time, she does. she yells at randy for something he wasn't solely responsible for. he gets mad and causes an accident, and has to live with it

and i'm thinking about the way her smile drops when randy starts profusely apologizing for something she does not blame him for, and the way she starts crying just at the thought of randy beating himself up over the incident and being changed by it; it looks to me like something that's been worrying her for a long time. just the thought of randy blaming himself is making her tearful

i imagine miss beard sometimes panicking about that in a similar way randy panics about it. maybe her version of it is "the one time i lost my cool in the classroom, one of my kids got traumatized". maybe that contributed to her leave of absence? not only was she facing harassment from her peers, she was also just so terrified of raising her voice or being firm with her students just in case something like that happened again.

maybe she couldn't teach the way she could before because all she can see whenever she gets up in front of the kids is a sea of potential randy bradleys. and she's not worried about what they could do to her; she's worried about what they might do to themselves if something goes wrong in her class again

i think about miss beard a lot you guys-

[sylveriasarcana]

writing for Benson thoughts: part 4! (other posts about this: here, here, and here! these just my personal notes for getting in benson's headspace that i like to share sometimes, no one else needs to adopt these into their own interpretations! <33)

so there's something that crosses my mind a lot when writing for Benson, specifically when writing Like Ships - "who the fuck does this guy think he is?"

no seriously lol. who the fuck does Benson think he is.

"i'm gonna shoot all my coworkers, they deserve to live less than i deserve to impart all my wisdom upon Randy" lol who the fuck do you think you are

"i'm gonna centre my whole wardrobe around the idea that i'm daring everyone around me to question it because why wouldn't everyone around me be focused on what i'm wearing" lol who the fuck do you think you are

"i have a rant against mall workers in my back pocket despite being a fast food worker" lol who the fuck do you think you are

"you need to stand up for yourself and make your own decisions! by the way i have never done that for myself ever, but i'm gonna tell you to do that" lol. dude. who the fuck do you think you are

like. part of what makes Benson so tragic to me is... he is not special. he does not have all the answers. he only gets on randy's case about making his own decisions because he knows he's no longer in a position to make any for himself. he is literally just some guy that deserved better than what he got, and he has a very inflated sense of how important his own opinions are as a result of that. because to me, benson is someone who got dismissed a lot in the past and continues to be, so now he has a chance to get his half-formed thoughts out there, you bet he's gonna take it!

like benson is very complex to me but something that's so integral to me when i'm tryna get in his head is: lmaoooo who do you think you AAAARE.

and when i'm writing for him, this usually manifests as little internal monologue rants, not unlike the ones he has in the movie. like. lmao benson no one asked for your views on teen pregnancy. but we sure did get 'em! gotta wonder what other opinions he's holding back if that's what he's saying out loud lol. been playing with this a lot in Like Ships! it's pretty fun!

tl;dr: there is a lot to consider for me when writing benson, sometimes to an annoying degree (lmao portraying Everything He's Got Going On is a real challenge sometimes), but something that's always in the back of my mind is: who the fuck does this guy think he issss lmaooooo

anyway, hope you enjoyed another one of my Benson Rambles TM!

[sylveriasarcana]

controversial opinion but best scene in The Passenger 2023 is Benson halting his crime spree for a bit so he can, with great focus and intensity, decorate a stuffed giraffe and dress it up in little outfits

that's cinema, baby

[sylveriasarcana]

appreciation post for the side characters in The Passenger having no idea why Benson is there for Randy's big moments of Character Development TM and trying to phrase that as gently as possible

"randy i'm glad you're getting closure and everything but... who is this gay freak behind me glueing dick and balls onto a giraffe"

AND SHE NEVER GETS AN ANSWER!!!!!!!!

[sylveriasarcana]

more Writing For Benson TM thoughts (i did some already at this link!):

so i've been enjoying a lil break from writing for benson (randy chapters randy chapters!) but when I am writing for benson, something i worry about a lot is getting the character right. i try NOT to worry about it so much, write for yourself first, but sometimes i do, and when i do, i try and keep the following in mind:

benson's behavior and attitude, to me, is so dependent on whatever situation he's in.

like consider the pre-shooting scenes: the guy is moving like his bones are too heavy for him looking like the embodiment of Utter Exhaustion. okay, where's that coming from? he's at work, sure, and it's early in the morning, but what else? what else is making him more tired than anyone else in those scenes? the feeling of being stuck? the frustration with other people being stuck that do not have to be? that's where i'm gonna start when getting into his head!

and the post-shooting scenes: someone injected life into him all of a sudden, he's like a new person. he's just done something terrible and is... happy. whistling while perusing diner menus, making Brady Bunch references at the wait staff, positively giddy at the idea of having seven hours left. seven hours isn't long! and yet he is delighted to have his seven hours! where's the exhilaration coming from? relief at having seemingly gotten away with it? or maybe the freedom that comes with the knowledge of knowing you've hit rock bottom and can't go any lower? what happens when that runs out? is there a sense of denial going on there?

and then after meeting Sheppard: rock bottom isn't fun anymore. we've had exhaustion, we've had exhilaration, so what's happening now? maybe anger, or even fear? benson's just been faced with a trauma he did not expect to process today. maybe he expected the cops to have caught up with him before he had to relive his Sheppard experiences. or maybe, the shock of seeing Sheppard again has made it sink in for him: there's no going back from what he's done. the seven hours is nearly up. what's the reaction to that?

so basically, as long as i'm asking questions and thinking about the situation i've put him in and figuring out the reasoning behind the reactions to that, i feel pretty good about how i'm writing benson! <33 god i love putting that man in situations. especially of the torment nexus variety

but enough about me!!! how do you write benson? how do you get in our favorite unethical but effective therapist's head? please tell me, i love to hearing about other folks' fics and thought processes behind them! (my dream is like a TP fic writer's group interview where i get to ask you all questions about your stories and you guys are like "tumblr user sylveriasarcana please let us out of your basement" and i'm like "yeah yeah ok so about those hayley headcanons")