Latest Posts by violamalpelo - Page 3

I'll forever yearn jwcc s3 benrius

about Ben being queer coded

I must start saying this post won't be about ships. This is about some of the things in Ben's character arc that can be paralleled with queer experiences. Feel free to add more parallels on the comments or reblogs.

These are just some general observations that I already pointed out before and that I wanted to put in a single post.

For me, seeing queerness in Ben is not about simply putting him in a relationship with a men. For me, it always has been about Ben's identity as a person, about how his queerness could be inherent to his character.

Now talking about Ben's character during JWCC, the first thing we should mention is how his arc portraits a journey of self-discovery.

The way he changed after the monorail incident. The way he transformed himself and started doing things he hasn't done before. He clearly was trying to achieve more freedom by doing that.

When he turns into his "island boy" persona in season 2, his identity is not clear for him yet. He tries to perform some confidence, constantly trying to affirm himself as brave, but he doesn't know who he is.

In season 4, he freaks out about it and starts thinking he is not good enough for being that persona he was trying to be, and to protect camp fam.

This identity "crisis" is so common for queer people. Not just that, but the feeling of displacement he expresses in S4 when he's thinking that who he already is is not enough, really resonates with lgbtqia+ realities.

When he turned into an "Island Boy" we finally thought Ben was feeling free to do whatever he wanted. But the truth is that he kept feeling insecure about who he was and S4 shows this to us.

That's why I used the word "displacement" to describe his situation. I know he had his friends' support. But anyone in his situation would feel out of place, after all, he was questioning his own identity.

When he advises Yaz after she came out to him on season 5, it looks like he knew what he was talking about. For me, what justify he having that specifically knowledge about life is that he has been questioning himself too. And I'm not even talking about Ben questioning if he is queer himself, I'm talking, again, about him questioning his own identity in general. And this is already enough for us to make a parallel with queer experiences.

In conclusion: questioning his own identity, having a journey of self-discovery, feeling out of place, wanting to achieve more freedom to be who he is, giving advises about coming out...It all feels queer coded to me.

unpopular opinion but i think a ship that's not canon but both halves are canonically insane about each other is infinitely better than a ship that's canon and boring

i want to eat the dharma fish biscuit

Oh Charlie how I miss your gay walk and flared jeans in these trying times

lost was like what if we put the autistic guy of ever on Fuckup island. oh and throw on the beautiful personification of tracy chapman’s fast car. and a sex cowboy. and an old fucking bald gay dude. and a washed up britpop bassist. huhhhh oh well we obviously also have to include my weird pregnancy fetish at least once a season. duh!! and to round it off let’s throw in 2 of the best characters on modern television ever, hurley and Sayid

Gia is the sweetest girl ever and I absolutely adore her… in a vacuum! Or a brand new cast! Put her in the context of the series and it’s painfully obvious that she’s just created so people would stop shipping Darius with Ben. The love for dinosaurs, the adoration of Ben’s quirks despite everyone else making fun of them, even the Dino Nerd nickname (?????????), they literally took all of Darius’ characterizations towards Ben and slapped them on Gia. It’s extremely telling that even when they had to cook up a girl in a lab for Ben to have a straight relationship with, the best they can do is literally still Darius.

My Opinions on Bengia(+A borderline character analysis of CT Ben)

(Obviously, JWCT s3 Spoilers ahead)

Okay, a couple disclaimers before we get into this:

•I like Gia. This has less to do with her as a character and moreso how the relationship itself comes into play.

•I try not to let any hcs/bias get in the way here, there obv may be some because that's just how the human brain works, but this is mostly my opinion with any of those biases put aside.

•This is my opinion as someone whose favourite character has been Ben since the day s1 dropped, and therefore has put a lot of time into "analyzing" him.

Okay, into the opinions.

To put it blunt, I don't like Bengia, wow shocker lmao, but my reasoning is more than just basic hcs.

For starters, when they're together they feel like different people to when they're apart, yeah, couples can seem different together versus with others, but its to the point that their relationship feels like an act to me, something they're trying to make seem perfect and over the top. It feels disingenuous to me. Comparing their "chemistry" to other characters with Ben feels very flat, it feels unnatural. Once again, trying not to let biases get in the way, but fuck dude, Benji's chemistry this entire show has felt more natural (which is a rant in itself), as was Benrius in s1.

I would like what they had in terms of matching each other's freak more if it was platonic, tbh, they just both seem like they're pretending they're something they're not when it comes to a romantic relationship and I don't fw that.

As for how Ben's writing comes into this, this entire show he's been played as a joke character, he hasn't been taken nearly as seriously as the other's, in terms of his trauma, his emotions, how he's allowed to feel about everything going on, etc. The closest things we got to him being taken seriously were his panic attack in s2(which— even that was played as a joke, dwrks writers, not everything to do with Ben needs to be funny !) And his fight with Kenji, which barely lasted and there was never a real, serious resolve, other than ig the plane crash and Kenji protecting Ben just to protect the egg, which I don't like, there was no actual conversation, it was just there, played as a joke, and then it was gone. In s3, when the egg hatches, he's emotional, which is valid, but it's for external reasons. When he has the talk with Gia, he's finally allowed to express some sort of emotion, but it's just to do with their relationship, and I do not like that one bit. This season he felt like he was played down to being Gia's boyfriend, their entire arc felt like watching that couple in the hallway blocking your locker make out and just knowing that as soon as the puppy love phase is over they're gonna break up.

Ben has trauma, so much of it, and yes, people grow up, however when you're ripped out of a moving monorail and face a near death experience, then proceed to NOT get therapy for it, it's still going to resurface as trauma, which we haven't seen at all in CT. I saw someone on twt say that CT feels like the writers never actually watched CC, just read the scripts or something and went from there, and I gotta say that to an extent, I agree. So many characters have had their personalities dumbed down to plot points, and Ben takes a major hit in that area.

Now aside from the character analysis and everything, I *really* hate how the queer relationship was treated, not simply because of the breakup, but because in order to highlight how badly yasammy were fighting, they almost always followed it up with/used it to follow up how "perfect" and happy the white, het passing couple was. I'm sorry, but that's just in poor taste. Using your poc wlw ship to make your m/f ship look better is gross, I'm sorry, like I could be that friend that's too woke but it just leaves a terrible taste in my mouth overall.

I have more opinions surrounding how this show treats queerness, but that's a rant for after s4 comes out to see if they can pull off a miracle and fix it, but for now that is my rant. Yk its bad when I prefer CC Kenlynn's writing over a ship.