stillthesunkenstars

[stillthesunkenstars]

Reading 120 hours of Umineko should be required before starting bfbs I’m so serious

[stillthesunkenstars]

My shop is now LIVE!!!

It will be open from March 1st to March 21st! It’s stocked with new merch that I made during the summer and will be updated with some old stocks from last year in the coming week!

[stillthesunkenstars]

i mean it's sort of insane (in a bad way) that jason isn't a beloved character. because he is just- very similar to benny! in a lot of ways! they're both thrill-seeking adventurers, they both love to drink and have sex (with other people and sometimes each other,) they're both chaotic and unruly as hell, they're both nearly impossible to make settle or to ground anywhere, they both- they both want to be parents (though, for different reasons,) they're both heroes, they both fuck up and are stupid (affectionate) sometimes, they both blunder into situations they don't understand and make a mess of things sometimes, they both try their best to be good, they're just so similar!

yet jason gets hate. and for what? because he's hypersexual? because he's a really good porn writer? because he copes using sex? like, fucking hell, you can't even cite his and benny's relationship being toxic because benny's just as bad as him! but in a different, not-so-direct way! and i love that for them! (and they are also adorably in love, btw. despite it all. and they try.)

like, ofc benny is loved by the fandom. i understand. i love her. she's possibly the most realistic character ever, she's so human and- and real, with flaws and fuck-ups and hope and a good heart. and we love her. of course we do.

but why not jason kane? because of benny unreliable-narrator summerfield insulting him in her thoughts when she's pissed off at him? because of brax calling him an idiot to (in my opinion) make it easier to use him as a tool and not see him as the person he is? hell, he was the person to offer brax help! he noticed brax's mental decline and he offered to help and he got nothing from it, he got worse than nothing from it, because you can't accept help- you can't accept help if you don't see the person trying to help you as a person and rather a tool! and brax got him killed for being a huge inconvenience to his plans because jason was a fucking hero and he tried to do good! and ofc it's not brax's fault either, his grand plans were ultimately, to him, for good and he just- he couldn't see how anyone could understand and jason was in his way. and. well. he couldn't have something threatening his plans. (people better than me have explained brax and jason, go check out this post by @stillthesunkenstars, i hope it's not a problem if i tag you.)

and- and he loves kids! peter specifically, but like, kids in general too! or did we miss when he stole the mixed-species kids away and kept them all safe from the fifth axis and they all loved him? did we miss that he listens to the kids like they say something worth listening to? did we miss that he tries to be the best dad he can to peter because his own dad was such a fucking piece of shit? did we miss that he genuinely wants to parent peter too, gets a bit sad when peter grows up a bit stops referring to him as 'dad' too (adorable,) he loves peter like he's his own kid!

it's just- people hate jason kane way too much, and just reduce him to, what, Benny's Bad Taste In Men The Example: Shitty Ex-Husband. or fucking something. and in doing so they completely miss his significance, his character, his lovable personality (because he is lovable! why d'you think benny's in love with him?) his plot significance, his narrative role, i could go on and on and on.

[stillthesunkenstars]

every mother who’s critiqued her daughter’s appearance based on ~what men do or do not like~ owes that child an apology

[stillthesunkenstars]

My shop is now LIVE!!!

It will be open from March 1st to March 21st! It’s stocked with new merch that I made during the summer and will be updated with some old stocks from last year in the coming week!

[stillthesunkenstars]

shoutout to my GOAT @setaregan who is one of the kindest smartest most articulate person I've ever known !!!!!!! Without your tag comments and friendship I would NOT have started drawing the kind of narrative illustrations that I do now 😭😭!!!!!!!!!!!

[stillthesunkenstars]

let 2025 be the year of the resurrected brax (and the rest of the bs cast) metabros....

[stillthesunkenstars]

there's also the braxification of Benny in escaping the future, creating a false civilization to lure the enemy into metaphorically eating its own tail like what brax would have done almost 2000 years in the future in a past that she doesn't remember (Theatre of War), and by extension the braxification of Brax himself in Dead and Buried, because his only knows about the actions of himself in an impossible future (the axis burnt The Good Soldiers during the axis occupation) through Benny's second hand account before she lost her memories. By resurrecting (a masked) past, they in turn were able to escape from their destined tragedies into a brighter future.

ENOUGH about doctorification we NEED to talk about braxification NOW!!!

[stillthesunkenstars]

I want to believe that brax’s distain for Jason are also part of the villain role that he gave to himself to play. brax keeps the mask on at all times when he is with people, but his afterimage/ghost that he left behind in the collection in Collected Works shows him fighting for his ‘life’ trying have his apology be heard by Jason.

Jason shrugged. The shrug of a small boy. 'I think so,' he said. He forced a smile, 'You said on Cerbeus Iera I didn't want to know what he'd done to me.' 'I understand,' Benny said. 'I really do.' 'The thing is,' Jason said, 'I don't think he knew what he was doing. I mean, it's like he figured out what was needed and never considered the consequences. Greater good and all that.' 'I can't believe you're defending -' 'He told me "sorry",' Jason said. 'That's what he whispered before he vanished, what he'd been trying to tell me the whole time. Peter just misunderstood. You know Brax. Too many big words.'

‘Work in Progress’ - Collected Works

Part of Brax’s tragedy is also that he forces himself to betray those he loves and respects and convinces himself that it’s for the greater good, that his loved ones are actually stupid and small minded and disposable, that he (and no one else) is the only person that can bring forward his plans to catch the elusive happy ending in his web of machinations. Brax craves so badly to be understood, but the safety and the continued existence of the collection takes precedence before himself or his individual friends, so he isolates himself in the role of the villain, away from the heroes of the story and any hopes of personal salvation.

[stillthesunkenstars]

writing a ficlet about brax and bev i need to get my thoughts out

[stillthesunkenstars]

Relistend to Braxiatel in Love and realized it’s actually the best Benny audio ever written . Quotes cited:

oomf’s meta linked

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Liria’s context:

[stillthesunkenstars]

alas i've been filled with thoughts about Irving Braxiatel for the past few days so here's an.... essay i guess? if anyone's interested. everything's under the cut because i sure did write a lot! also about halfway through i start to talk specifically about my fanfic version of him so like. feel free to jump ship if you don't have any clue what i'm talking about.

to me, Braxiatel has always been a character obsessed with aesthetics. not in that he's a superficial character or that his art interest is only driven by collecting beautiful things, but that Braxiatel is very aware of how things look, how he himself looks, and he knows the aesthetics of power incredibly well.

when he founds his Collection, it is genuinely with the goal of creating a collection of all the knowledge and art in the universe accessible to anyone but art collection in itself involves engaging with and moving within certain hierarchies that are all rooted, deep down, in imperialism and classism. for Braxiatel – to be an art collector (at least on Earth) is to invest in those aesthetics of power. it's a classic trope that a character might not come from money and be broke as shit but as long as they maintain the appearance and aesthetics of wealth and power, they're acceptable. so Braxiatel chooses a first name associated with theatrics and class, he wears tailored suits, he never loses his carefully chosen demeanor, he lives in the goddamn palace of Versailles in an effort to cultivate his appearance and others' perceptions of him. it's even implicit that Braxiatel keeps the same face for multiple regenerations to keep that personal aesthetic he established.

but aesthetics aren't apolitical or amoral. inhabiting the aesthetics of power (at least based in upper class Europe) also means inhabiting those structures of power and over the course of the series you can see Braxiatel get caught up in those trappings particularly in his use of the Collection as a political (and imperial) force post-occupation.

[also just a wider side note for a second – i'm not trying to say that the use of certain aesthetics is inherently immoral, i think that sort of argument is a bit ridiculous and reactionary, but you do have to recognize the political and moral dimensions of aesthetic choices. like irl, it's pretty easy to see how quickly cute ~cottagecore~ aesthetics turned into a pipeline for tradwives and a rise in anti-feminism. same goes for most ~traditional~ aesthetics and whatnot.]

genuinely, i do think that Braxiatel's Whole Deal is a performance and a mask but he's worn the mask for so long that he's embodied its spirit (which, generally speaking, is the cultural role of masks). interestingly, you could say the same for the Doctor as their identity was never (in my view) inherent but something gathered over time because they kept being thrust into the role of 'hero'.

while i started writing this based mostly on thoughts of Braxiatel's role in the Benny series, this also applies to him in Gallifrey. it's really hard to get a sense of his character in Gallifrey because 1) he's still relatively young and hasn't gone through the Everything yet and 2) he's so deeply entrenched in Gallifreyan power structures that he never (or rarely) lets his genuine self through.

his role on Gallifrey is largely based in:

schemes and machinations to carry out various ends usually involving saving Romana: his early season appearances play this straight with him embodying that hero role he set himself up to inhabit, quite literally in the case of him taking the Chancellorship & Presidency which are two things that he personally does not want but is more than willing to cast himself in those roles of power for what he sees as the greater good. in later appearances (Soldier Obscura, Beyond) that illusion of him as the heroic hero crumbles as he doesn't have those power structures (or the aesthetics of power) to rely on.

his "love" of Romana: others may disagree (and no fault to them) but i don't ever see his love of Romana as genuinely romantic but rather him falling in love with the literal embodiment of power (and the embodiment of Gallifrey which in turn represents imperial power). all of his interactions with her are horribly insincere and all based around this constructed hierarchy of the President and her advisor even when that hierarchy isn't real and is only maintained through both of the characters demeanor and aesthetics (the way Romana is consistently referred as President throughout s4 despite in no way holding any rank).

Pandora: this is pretty obvious, i mean Pandora as an entity is power at its very core and it's important to remember that Braxiatel is infected with her throughout almost all of his appearances though it's ambiguous how much she's influencing his behavior. and it's important to remember that Braxiatel is specifically infected with the past and present aspects of Pandora which OH BOY definitely feeds into Braxiatel's worship of the past and how he keeps re-writing the past over and over again without being able to reach a future. but specifically, as i've said before, all of Braxiatel's aesthetics of power come from the past and how he wields history, in the academic & personal sense, as a weapon to control others.

but Braxiatel's investment in aesthetics as a means of power & control has another side too. for a lot of his appearances, Braxiatel is a good or at least a benign person who fights for the greater good. but because most of his identity is constructed, it becomes easier, when necessary, to twist himself into the role of the villain because it's just putting on a new mask, adopting a new aesthetic. at times in the Collection arc, he does become a bit of a mustache twirling Evil Guy but it makes sense to me because he's just leaning further into the imperialist white British man aesthetic (for lack of a more accurate description) that he's already cultivated throughout the years.

and he starts creating these roles, manipulating aesthetics, for other people too. Bev comes to the Collection as an art thief with no intention of staying but Braxiatel manipulates her to work for him and changes her aesthetic (having her dress differently, wear glasses) to be treated as a serious academic and not a thief (which is great until she gains the agency of a leader in Braxiatel's absence). and Braxiatel's manipulation of Jason is probably the most obvious with him editing his history and memories and everything about his life to keep him as a roguish, kind-of-an-idiot guy who's easier to understand and control. when Jason fights back because he is more than some archetype, Braxiatel has him killed in a horrible way to keep asserting power over those he thinks of as family.

it happens to Ace and Danna in Soldier Obscura too! Braxiatel arranges the whole scene as he would have in an early Gallifrey episode to assert power with Danna acting as a brave, self-sacrificial old soldier and Ace as his dutiful student but when neither of them act the way Braxiatel expects them to behave, he kills Danna and erases Ace's memory.

his worship of aesthetics as power and archetypes as identity went so far that when others don't behave as their archetype, their role, dictates, Braxiatel doesn't know what to do so he leaves them in one way or another. it's horribly tragic but it is the end point of a life built around cultivating appearances, managing aesthetics, and devising masks for himself.

[at this point, normal people might want to stop reading, everything after that is specifically about my fanfic And They Became Monsters (the fall of great men) including some big spoilers]

a lot of these thoughts fed into my writing of Braxiatel in ATBM and specifically the way i designed the two different versions of Braxiatel i wrote – the Braxiatel from Act 1 who lived his life without interference from the future and the Braxiatel from Act 2 who led his life being advised by his future self.

Braxiatel 1 played the game with aesthetics and power structures a fair bit – he tried to fit in with other Time Lords by pretending he was one of them and he embodied the 'wealthy patron of the arts' role very well and very purposefully during the St Oscar's years but he was never lost in this difference between the person he presented and the person he was. the only real moment of pretense in the fic is in chapter 9 when he meets the Oracle for the first time and refuses to accept that he has no greater role than to be Irving Braxiatel. so the Oracle instead tells him, (“You are an artist and you paint upon the universe as if it were your canvas. Time is but a medium to her master and you crush her underfoot. You will face war with a book of art. You will preserve history in a bottle. You will write the greatest tragedy in the universe.") which... it is true but only because Braxiatel makes it so, because he refuses to accept being himself and nothing more. and when Braxiatel asks how he will win, the Oracle only says that he must accept his fate. by the end of the story, we know this means Braxiatel can only escape this cycle he made for himself, he can only win, but accepting that he isn't the hero and was never meant to be anyone's savior. he can only win by asking for help. but Braxiatel in the moment takes this to mean that he is a hero and he keeps behaving like one.

Braxiatel 2 on the other hand, was a creation. he was told at age 8 that his whole identity hinged around stopping this ever elusive War and he was explicitly directed to focus all his energy, relationships, skills on reaching this goal. he became a mask. but more than that – he based his notions of power and control on the one person who seemed to have infinite power over him: himself. he becomes interested in art not because of any noble goal but because he knows Braxiatel loves art. he knows that Braxiatel wants to save Gallifrey so he does as well. he's not developing an identity, he's only imitating what he sees and hears about his other self.

and this is reflected (no pun intended) through the mirrors. the mirrors were introduced as a pair with the subtlest difference between them but as the story unraveled, we learned there was only ever one mirror sent down a cycle, reflecting the past and future. as Braxiatel 2 came to learn the truth about the mirror, he came to understand Braxiatel 1 as a liar and an abuser and he himself became villainous because his identity is nothing but a reflection. and in turn he manipulates and controls people the same way he was manipulated by Braxiatel 1. (at least until Act 3 when he starts to be able to break the cycle.)

i also chose to involve Faction Paradox (sort of...) in the fic because 1) it was a convenient way to wave away some of the time travel and paradox mechanisms (yeah sorry the story leans much more towards fantasy than science fiction), 2) the family symbolism worked so well, and 3) because their entire Thing is based in aesthetics. and the truth is (spoiler) Faction Paradox was never involved in the Braxiatel's life or in the creation of his paradox. the Godfather who initiated Braxiatel 1 was Braxiatel 2. they never went to the Eleven Day Empire, they went to a room that Braxiatel 2 and John dressed up to look like the Empire because all that matters is for Braxiatel 1 to believe the ruse and all that really takes is the aesthetics of the occult given how aesthetics have shaped his life. John is probably a member of Faction Paradox but his involvement in all of this is family business for the brother he never knew, not Family business. and when Braxiatel 2 takes off that literal mask (the mask of the man he never was), he is finally free to find his own identity and not live in the footsteps of someone else.

the other thing i wanted to talk about in relation to Braxiatel's sense of identity and relation to power is the title of the fic. the And They Became Monsters part was always pretty set in stone because it really is a lovely summary of how the story goes. but i added the subtitle (the fall of great men) pretty close to when i ended up publishing the fic because i kept thinking that And They Became Monsters is really only part of the story and Braxiatel doesn't end up as a monster, part of the point of the story is proving that dehumanizing someone as "a monster" as a way to explain their cruel actions only ends up causing them to commit more cruelty. it's easier for Braxiatel to play the role of the monster, aesthetics and all, than to be his own person. he may not earn redemption or forgiveness but that doesn't mean he can't do good.

(the fall of great men) is about the end of the story (Act 3 onward). "falling" is used as a repeated motif throughout the whole fic whenever Braxiatel starts to lose control of himself or the situation at hand. "great men" is specifically in reference to the idea of "great man theory", the lens of historical analysis from the 19th century that argues history is shaped by a few Great Men rather than the prevailing historical theories today that focuses on materialism, social environments, and people across classes. (as you would expect, today great men theory is usually peddled by white supremacists, fascists, and imperialists.)

Braxiatel viewed himself as a Great Man; he wanted to be a Great Man more than anything else to prove that he was extraordinary and important whether his ambitions were focused on Gallifrey or Venice or St Oscars or the Collection. and he had the accompanying aesthetics – a love of all things high art, a clean & carefully picked over demeanor, an acceptance of power in whatever form he could find. he literally rewrote history so he could be the Great Man Hero.

and it didn't work, it never worked, because great man theory isn't real and there was nothing Braxiatel could do to make it real and he knows that by the end of the story. he doesn't stop the war, he doesn't even stop himself, he asks for help and that's the only way to win.

And They Became Monsters is a version of great men history by putting Braxiatel at the center of everything, (the fall of great men) is saying that narrative is inherently flawed and not based in reality. great men will always fall because they aren't real, they're a dream for those who buy into simplistic individualistic stories and i'm sure Benny would agree that it's poor historical analysis. speaking of Benny, she literally comes in during the last chapter to say that none of this was Braxiatel's story, the narrative belongs to everyone and i love ending his story/beginning hers with the same "it's the biggest story every told" line from Crystal of Cantus where the line "and they became monsters" also originates. i'm just :) pleased with how i tied it together.

oh and i have (the fall of great men) in parentheticals because 1) i wanted to clarify that it's a subtitle and 2) it keeps up the notation that the Oracle uses whenever she speaks or adds in prose as a part of the narration as she's the only one who knew the narrative from the beginning (and part of a reason she's my screen-name/url at the moment).

anyways, this was incredibly long and rambly so thanks to whoever read any of it tbh but it was fun to actually write some of these thoughts down!

[stillthesunkenstars]

i say "character of all time" a lot but know that title is meant for Bernice Summerfield and no one else. she's a pacifist military brat. she's an archaeologist who faked her credentials. she wrote a book called Incredibly Bad Jokes of the 20th Century. she's lost everyone in her life that's ever mattered to her. she lived in the woods for months as a teenager with a pet turtle to escape authority. she has a complicated relationship to motherhood. she keeps making friends with the most powerful people in the universe. she's chronically broke. her clone became President of Earth. her bestie is a mass murderer. her life revolves around resisting fascism. she's the first person to canonically sleep with the Doctor. she threw a seance for her dead pet turtle. Sherlock Holmes went to her wedding. her timeline has been re-written over and over again. she's a functioning alcoholic. her middle name is Surprise. she lives with the constant guilt of all the people she couldn't save. she's even bisexual. no one will ever do it like her.

[stillthesunkenstars]

Hello. You're the only other person I've seen caring about braxjason, even if your posts were a long time ago. Personally I'm a big fan of their potential. If I were to write something with them, would you be interested? I'd publish it on anon too.

YES I WOUOD BE SO INTERSTED !!!!!! They are always on my mind even if I don’t talk about them publicly, I’ve talked about brax (and jason) on my Benny discord server in my pinned recently… they make me so ill

Like I don’t really see them as… romantic? But their dynamic are just such great narrative foils together!! So yeah I would LOVE to see your work if you ever write braxjason!!!!

[stillthesunkenstars]

top five brax moments. y'know what alternatively top five benny moments, and also top five jason moments. top five bev moments . as you can tell i am very good at decision making and not indecisive at all. honestly just whatever, do whichever you wish

oh boy.... let's see if i can do this without spending 3 hours going back through my story reviews to dig up everything i love about this series. (also disclaimer that i've listened to everything in the series and read most of the The Important Books but i haven't read everything, especially most of the Seven-Benny VNAs)

update: i did in fact spend way over three hours going through story reviews and old books and experienced way too many emotions so..... all of this under a cut

top 5 Brax moments:

The Crystal of Cantus. listen. i wrote a whole novel length fic called And They Became Monsters, what do you want from me? of course The Crystal of Cantus is my favorite Brax story specifically how he narrates the story to Parasiel and this sharp transition (and great bit of acting) where it's revealed that Braxiatel has been the villain all along by just his line delivery of "Sit down, Mr Parasiel." and it never feels like a cheap reveal? for one, it's been built up in The Mirror Effect and a lot of short stories for years. and for two, it's not really about Braxiatel being a villain (at least in my mind). it's about him revising his own story that he's been writing and casting himself as a monster because it's easier to be a monster than to be a person choosing cruelty and the whole story walks that line so well and has become the foundation for how i approach writing Braxiatel (at least Collection era Brax).

trying to commit suicide in Five Dimensional Thinking. Life During Wartime is a great anthology for many many reasons but this story (along with Fear of Corners) will always have a special place for me. Braxiatel is written so well throughout but specifically his admission to Benny that he's horribly afraid that he's responsible for the Fifth Axis's occupation to the point of considering killing himself. absolutely insane.

Braxiatel and John finally meeting in Where Angels Fear. like the other stories i've talked about, i love Where Angels Fear for many many reasons but i remember reading it for the first time and being blown away by this exchange:

Braxiatel is a character obsessed with control and manipulation (not always bad manipulation but manipulation in the sense that he needs to be the one who knows what's going on and can't stand when others pull his strings) and this story (and this scene in particular) really represents the moment when he loses that control for the first time and realizes that he's lost that Time Lord objectivity he once valued so much. and to a lesser extent, he spends the rest of his life through the Collection arc struggling with this moment of being out of control, his relationship to his Time Lord nature, and making sure something like this won't happen again until he creates a self-fulfilling prophecy ensuring that it does.

4. Braxiatel talking to the Oracle in Tears of the Oracle. Braxiatel, even in the books, is so encased in performance and masks which makes him a fascinating character to study and as i said above, any moment of him falling out of control is absolutely delicious but this is one of very few scenes where Braxiatel has a genuine conversation about himself and specifically his carefully unnamed brother. Braxiatel is introduced to so many people as "the Doctor's brother" when that's not his narrative role – they literally have two stories together where they barely even speak. so it's fascinating to have this singular moment where Braxiatel is a brother even if it's just for a conversation and he gives us one of his most genuine insights into his past and personality beyond the masks he makes for himself. i always had an easier time writing Braxiatel as he cycles through his performances because that's so much of who he is so when i needed to write him without a mask, trying to figure out what his own identity is, i always came back to this moment to root myself.

5. honestly there were so many Brax scenes i started to think of to put here but i gotta give it to his first scene in Empire of Glass.

Braxiatel's art collection is obviously a huge part of his character and this is just such a great foundation of why that is and its articulated so well. and obviously Empire of Glass was written longggggg before Braxiatel's other appearances and the Collection arc but it's so wonderful to read his genuinely good intentions for his Collection (preserving the past, creating a collection of knowledge for everyone in the universe, and combating the censorship and erasure of knowledge and history) with the knowledge that it won't pan out that way. as he becomes more obsessive, he seeks to control the flow of knowledge on the macro level (his Collection always becomes for the elite, not for everyday people and he always has secret displays and Collections that he doesn't show people) and the micro level (him literally editing people's histories and memories as a means of controlling them) as he becomes the exact thing he hates so much here. (also why i need to write my fic about late Collection era Benny meeting EoG!Brax because yeesh they've got stuff to talk about)

top 5 Benny moments:

all of Year Zero. just. all of it. i'll forever stand by the fact that it's the best Benny story because of how it strips her back to the essentials after the Everything of the Collection arc with the way she uses actual archaeology & historical analysis to uncover the mystery of where she is and the broader themes about how one can never erase history because it's ingrained in everything around us no matter how hard fascists try to bury it. it's a familiar theme across all the Benny eras (and it's good every time) but this particularly story just... hits. i don't love how the Year Zero/history arc/Atlantis stuff ends but the beginning is sooooo good.

the moment in The Poison Seas where Benny starts talking about what a mess her life has become and how she could just run away and start all over again if she wants but she won't because "who would fight the monsters? who would be left to believe in the angels?" it's genuinely one of the best speeches in all of Doctor Who and it's CRIMINAL that no one talks about it. it's also such a wonderful to really accentuate the differences between Benny and the Doctor because they are very similar in a lot of ways – similar values, similar interests, the same curiosity and eccentric sense of humor – but the difference is that Benny chooses to stay. she could go and have a life like the Doctor and she'd probably be a lot happier for it but no, she chooses to stay and make a home and protect those she loves because someone has to.

it's not so much a moment but more of a facet of her character – the fact that Benny revises her diaries by putting sticky notes over the entries is sooo important. i genuinely don't know if it originates in Down but it's the first book i read that used them and while i have somewhat mixed feelings about the book, the reveal that Benny made up a significant amount of the story and inserted a simplistic action hero character because she couldn't handle the cognitive dissonance of ever believing a Nazi could do something good because "fascists know no redemption" despite her entire life revolving around uncovering the truth of history, no matter how hard it is. it's one of those moments that really wiggled its way into my brain and is foundational for how i view her character and was honestly kind of relatable? i'm not a historian but i have studied/do study history and it's tough to tackle the fact that the worst types of people in history aren't cartoon villains especially when it's easier to do so and makes a better, cleaner story (something that's tackled a lot in the series going forward!). you have to think of everyone as a three-dimensional person if you really want to know the truth and i'm always glad when Benny stories approach those sorts of topics with more nuance than the tv show ever will.

it's such a small thing and it's barely a proper Benny moment but for whatever reason the part of Where Angels Fear where the stakes as escalating as everyone is becoming more fervent about their worship of the gods and Benny is one of the few rational people left on Dellah and Shemda (the Grel who only seemed to exist for comic relief at first) declared to all of the Grel Master and the god Maa'lon and pointed to Benny and said "I believe in her." it's meant to be kind of a silly moment but when i first read the book, i was so gripped and into it that i just started crying and that was the moment that i knew i loved the Dellah arc.

disclaimer that i haven't actually read the book version of Beyond the Sun so i don't know if it's in there or just the audio version but Benny carving her code into a pendant that says: "Bernice Summerfield is a human being and as such she is all too capable of being cruel and cowardly and yet while she is often caught up in violent events, she endeavours to remain a woman of peace." is such an important moment for me and really clearly lays out so much of her character (especially since this was like the third Benny story i listened to so it really made an impact).

top five Jason moments:

everything in The End of the World.... tbh i first listened to the Benny audios without reading any of the tie in books (and not thinking that deeply about his character because i was 15) so i wasn't a huge Jason fan. i vaguely knew his backstory and that he had been through some shit but not the details so listening to The End of the World was like getting a bucket of ice water dumped on me (in the best way possible). everything about his character, including aspects that annoyed me on first listen, just slid into place and i realized "oh this is a brilliantly written character" so i'm gonna cheat and pick two moments from this audio – the moment when he's explaining what he's doing in relation to video game farming: "The thing about farming is that it was never meant to be a winning strategy. It was a strategy only ever meant to last just long enough. The job of the fighter guy is just to go in and hack and slash and flail about until… he died. He was never meant to win the game." because the Fewell's acting makes it so clear at the point in the quote where Jason realizes that he's talking about his life not just a video game and the absolute tragedy knowing what's about to happen is so delicious. and the second is obviously him remembering his sister and being disgusted that Braxiatel would take her memory from him.

the reveal in Suffer the Children that Jason wasn't collaborating with the Fifth Axis occupation but only pretending to so he could save all of the alien children because sacrificing his relationships and everyone's respect was absolutely worth him helping the innocent like this. all of Jason's interactions with kids and protecting them is soooo important to me and makes so much sense knowing the abuse he went through.

an underappreciated bit in The Crystal of Cantus where when Brax goes mask-off in regards to his intentions with enslaving Jason to be Cyber-Controller, the first thing Jason says is "you're ill, we can help you" and i just....... it's such a small moment that you can overlook but Jason has grown so much and become so empathetic that even when his friend reveals that he's been manipulating everyone for years and intends to kill Jason right here, the first thing Jason does is offer to help. it kills me that all the tragedy that happens on the Collection could have been prevented if Braxiatel only accepted his friends' help.

i'm trying to come up with a Jason moment to beat him pinning Braxiatel to the wall at the end of The Crystal of Cantus telling him to leave his family alone but i'm sorry, i'm predictable. it's also a great contrast to Jason's other immediate reaction to The Situation i listed above.

it's not quite a Jason exclusive scene but just the whole collection of Benny's pathetic men (Jason, Chris, Clarence, Brax) all scheming how to make sure she has a boring vacation so she won't leave them for better things in The Joy Device. it's trope-y but all the hijinks that ensue are so much fun and such a great breath of air for the last few heavy books.

top five Bev moments:

Bev essentially leading the resistance to the Fifth Axis occupation in Life During Wartime. i feel like it's easy to forget that Bev had only been on the Collection for a few weeks before the occupation, she didn't really have any loyalty to anyone on the Collection but she became the fiercest resistance and i just love her little introduction piece in A Life Worth Living that says "...you can see the scars from when she was tortured by the Fifth Axis. She gave nothing away."

Bev killing Ms Jones in Parallel Lives. i really didn't see this moment coming but it's such a wonderful way to resolve Bev's distaste of Ms Jones for being a collaborator while also showing Braxiatel's growing control over her, that he manipulated the situation because he knew that Bev would be the only one who would shoot her and to a certain extent Bev knows that but she never says it out loud until it's too late.

the way Adrian is struggling to propose to Bev in The Judas Gift and she goes up to him and says yes without him needing to ask.... i love Adrian/Bev a lot okay?

i'm blanking on a specific moment from a specific story but just the shift of Bev's in Collected Works in general where she suddenly has the literal weight of their world thrust on her shoulders and she tries to stay so strong while juggling 100 different plates. (also the note, it might be before Collected Works, where she starts wearing glasses so the other academics take her seriously <3)

not to be queer on main but her and Benny making out in Summer of Love. it's the type of queer women moment that's weirdly exploitative and fetish-y and the story.... is not great. but sometimes i need to turn my brain off and go :3 women kissing :3

[stillthesunkenstars]

Like do you guys get it the reason there are so little brax fans in the gallifrey fandom is because people keep insulting him and calling him a bastard!!!! Like who would want to see their faves being bashed constantly. I don't! So I just left the fandom in 2020 (ish)

[stillthesunkenstars]

lowkey if calling brax evil from fucking. GALLIFREY audios is some people's level of reading comprehension then they would also likely to think animal farm is a story about animals too