the-venerable-ace

[the-venerable-ace]

moots i will refollow you over there

i made a new account since tumblr wont fix my problems!!!

follow me @andie-platonically

[the-venerable-ace]

i made a new account since tumblr wont fix my problems!!!

follow me @andie-platonically

[the-venerable-ace]

Forget love triangles, I introduce to you the friendship triangle:

Riz thinks Fabian is his best friend

Fabian thinks Adaine is his best friend

Adaine thinks Riz is her best friend

[the-venerable-ace]

(stolen from r/lupinNetflix)

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thanks, man

the person reading this is going to survive the rough patch they’re going through

[the-venerable-ace]

for april fools we’re deleting this entire site sayonara you weeaboo shits

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Bandmates

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i also think it’s weird that we literally never hear about ben’s other friends or family?? like we know from the flashbacks where he’s on vacation (literally just a way to write him out of the show when its convenient, btw) that his parents are friends with some of the Rich Assholes’ parents. so like,, how did they feel about his friendship with assane? does he have any siblings? does he still talk to any of his family, and if so, how much do they know? did anyone other than claire visit him in prison?

yes the scene where he’s betrayed by assane is emotional. but imagine how much more resonant it would be if we knew that ben had given up everything for assane. if ben gave up his relationship with his parents for assane only to have assane betray him for his own mom, someone he hasnt spoken to in what, 30 years?

if the writers wanted to make ben’s character this tragic figure who devoted his life to a friend that ultimately uses & betrays him, thats great! that’s a very interesting character! but they had ways of doing that that still make ben a person.

thinking about what OP said, maybe if they had a scene when ben is arrested where they let him make a phone call (not sure if they have the one phone call rule in france but im sure they have some similar equivalent) and he realizes that because he still has to pretend that assane is dead, he has no one to call. a moment where he has truly lost everything.

or, if he has other friends/family, a scene where they visit him & ask what the hell is going on, and he can’t tell them, & it makes this distance. where assane has reunited with his family and separated ben from his.

i really like all the scenes we see between ben and claire because you can tell they genuinely care so much for each other, and it pains ben to have to lie to her. i hope we get more ben in the new season, and more interaction between them.

(also, i love the idea of an aroace ben, OP. it actually makes so much sense)

In the interest of making this blog a bit more intelligent and less of a collection of dumb memes, here's an actual "hot take" that I have...

Ben is likable but he's also jaw-droppingly underdeveloped in the official canon of the show. Basically he's what TV Tropes terms a Satellite Character, in that he's almost always shown in the context of his interactions with other characters, with these scenes being from their viewpoint and not his. He never gets a real arc or storyline of his own: Claire and Guédira are consistently the central POV figures of the assorted B and C plots, while Ben appears in the A plots but in an exclusively supporting role.

The show actually DOES have opportunities to expand on his character a bit more but for whatever reason it never takes advantage of them. You'd think that Ben getting sold out by Assane and tossed in prison would have been a perfect candidate for this, but he appears in like three scenes in the last few episodes of Part 3, with these once again being mainly from the perspectives of Guédira, Claire, and Assane (not to mention that the audience still doesn't know exactly how he sustained all those injuries).

An additional issue is that so far, Ben hasn't had any meaningful conflict in his relationship with Assane, which seems unrealistic given what an utter mess Assane is a lot of the time. Claire has the obvious conflict of desperately wanting to believe in Assane but being let down by him over and over again, and also having to deal with how his antics are negatively affecting their son. Guédira is an Assane Diop stan while also being a police officer who's supposed to be trying to jail him, which is a comedic conflict but it's a conflict nonetheless. We never get any of that with Assane and Ben; their friendship is fun but it's weirdly smooth-sailing. We don't know if they can survive the kind of turmoil that arises between Assane and Claire on a regular basis, because up until Ben gets thrown to the wolves at the gala, he's never been on the receiving end of Assane's dishonesty and erratic behavior. (This is why I actually think that the betrayal was a good narrative choice.)

So Ben's characterization is that he's the technically-competent friend who's also a loyal, solid dude...and that's it. We don't really know who he is in the same way that we know who Assane, Claire, and Guédira are. And the result is that the fans can project pretty much whatever they want onto him. If they want to say he's in love with Assane, fine, because there's nothing canonical that obviously confirms or refutes it. (In contrast I think it's fair to say that any notion of Assane reciprocating these potential affections is 100% fanon; the showrunners clearly view him as someone who can charm anyone he wants to while also being completely heterosexual, although one could argue that they're attempting to have their cake and eat it too.) The same is true if they want to say that Ben is in love with Claire, which is a theory that I've seen crop up a few times. My own opinion is that he's probably aroace or something along those lines, but at the same time I find the interpretation that he loves Assane to be plausible enough, although I have absolutely no emotional investment in it.

Anyway, bottom line...Ben's character should be developed more. Also I personally think he should turn on Assane. But that's just me.

[the-venerable-ace]

Some quick Bad Kids (with their Junior Year updates) as Text Posts (+ 1 tweet)

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Cybin siblings

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grix using dominate monster on riz fucks me up so much. Like. Imagine how much damage that would do to your perception of yourself. Magic, the language of the universe, considers you a monster. God. He’s just a kid.

[the-venerable-ace]

Thinking on it, it was probably really hard for Sklonda as a parent knowing her son was being bullied and not having control over how it was handled by his schools. So I dont blame her for being really defensive with Riz being called The Ball by his friends because of his past experiences.

[the-venerable-ace]

certified coolkid moment: finding the rotting corpse of your classmate in the woods

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Accept and support repulsed people or die by my blade

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Expectation: the intrepid hero’s have to take the SATs!

Reality: the riddle of the vulture dimension is multiple choice

[the-venerable-ace]

"oh, you act so romantic with your friends-" SHUT UP! I CAN ACT ALL MUSHY AND SWEET WITH MY FRIENDS, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT!? COWARD! YOU DON'T SHOWER YOUR FRIENDS IN AFFECTION AND LOVE!? YOU'RE WEAK! WEAK AND PATHETIC!