#tldr: Ben is dumb and adorable and I love him

[microsuedemouse]

I think it's very cute the way Ben doesn't know anything. He's trying but he needs some help getting there.

hello I'm sorry it took me all day to answer this but every time I looked at it I knew it was gonna Get Me Going so I wanted to wait until I was sitting down at my keyboard with a few minutes to spare

the short response is: YOU'RE VERY CORRECT AND I COULD NOT AGREE MORE. Ben is dumb as a post 95% of the time and it's incredibly endearing. he's doing his best with this hero stuff, but his best does not involve any knowledge whatsoever. and that's fine, he's got plenty of heart to make up for it

(insert Tick reference here)

BUT ALSO. I hope you do not mind me going off on a character tangent here, friend, because I cannot talk about how dumb Ben is without thinking about how it informs the rest of his character and I have so many thoughts,,,

(quick sidebar: anyone who's been around for a single one of my hyperfixations knows this, but character is my shit. I don't normally feel the need to explain this but my Ben 10 posts seem to draw more attention/new people than most of my nonsense so I'm giving you this info as context. as someone with an English degree, as a lifelong story addict and storyteller, as a writer of both fanfic and original work - character is my biggest strength. analysing, picking apart, developing, whatever. and it's also the thing I can go on about forever.)

ANYWAY SO... Ben Tennyson knows nothing and it's wonderful.

I've mentioned before, while still watching the original series, that everything you need to know to understand Ben as a character is 'he's ten.' it literally completely explains him. even the smartest ten-year-olds in the world would still be dumb as shit if they suddenly had superpowers. he's a very average ten-year-old American boy when he finds the Omnitrix, and so in the process of learning to use it and be a hero... he's cocky and stupid. of course he is. he has moments of insight, because he's not incapable of learning, but mostly he's cocky and stupid because he's ten.

one of my very, very favourite things about Alien Force - which I'm now about halfway through - is the way that Ben is characterised. to me, it's so wonderfully done. because he's clearly changed! and if he hadn't I'd be frustrated, because it's been five years - five years during which every kid in the world goes through immense amounts of change. age ten to age fifteen? huge difference. I can tell you from experience: I transferred to an out-of-catchment school program from grades five through eight, meaning ages almost-ten to almost-fourteen (November birthday). when high school came around I returned to my own catchment and found myself amongst a ton of kids I'd known since kindergarten but not seen since we were nine, and the amount that everyone had changed was crazy.

Ben's growth between series is extremely believable to me. he's no longer stupid and cocky - he's not ten anymore. he often seems anxious, especially in the first season as they're searching for Max. everything about him feels very much, to me, like all the trauma that he experienced during the original series - and probably since! - has finally settled in, and he (and Gwen) has started to process that. his and Gwen's banter and friction is mostly gone; they're supportive of and close with one another now - like two kids who Went Through Some Shit together and have had to lean on each other as they began to deal with that. (I could go on a whole separate tangent about that implied growth they've done as a pair, but that would be a whole long-ass ramble of its own.)

as Ben becomes comfortable using the Omnitrix again, we start to see some of that dumbass overconfidence coming back out, but overall he's shed the cockiness of his childhood and grown into a teenager who's reasonably sure of and comfortable with himself with other people (e.g., the way he deals with Cash and JT now, as seen in The Gauntlet). but he's also still figuring out how to be a real hero, especially when the stakes are high, and he's not always as confident in that role. he does a good job of putting on the hero persona when he's in action and things need to be done, but in between we see him worrying about his capability at and suitability for that job.

but he also continues to be totally clueless. it shows differently from when he was a kid, a little because he's older, but largely because of how he's otherwise changed. that cocksure ten-year-old was too proud not to know what was going on, not to be right all the time! but his pride has mellowed out a lot, and he's developed a certain amount of genuine anxiety about his skills as a hero (as well as, apparently, a surprisingly healthy ability to talk about that anxiety). he's also only fifteen, and fifteen-year-olds are still dumb in much the same way that ten-year-olds are dumb. the brightest kids in the world are still incredibly dumb. again, I'm telling you from experience.

so we now have a Ben who can at times admit that he has no idea what's going on, which is so charming. we also have a Ben who, a lot of the time, doesn't even fully realise he has no idea what's going on, because he's distracted thinking about something else. I love how often the show cuts to shots of his face and you can practically see the loading bar behind his eyes as he tries to take in new information. like it just hasn't computed yet and you gotta wait a sec for it to sink in.

he's capable of cleverness sometimes, just like he was five years ago. but that's not his strength, honestly. we're actually repeatedly shown that his greatest strength is his heart: he's a compassionate and caring kid - he has lapses, like all teens do, but by and large he's a good guy. (this also, I think, makes a lot of sense with his off-screen development into a slightly more anxious, less certain young man. especially when you think about what a big influence Max has clearly been on his growth.)

Ben is a true blue 'pure of heart, dumb of ass' hero, and I'm just so constantly charmed with how it's executed. I have plenty of nitpicks with the show's writing that I'm sure I'll get around to yammering about eventually, but the character writing for Ben Tennyson is golden and so far I'm a huge fan.

holy shit this post got long - apologies lol, but thanks to anyone who bothers to read it!! ily.