#he’s a pathetic sopping wet cat of a man and it personally has me captivated-

[benetnvsch]

BWOUFJ SO NORMAL ABT THEM-

[shakingparadigm]

hiii i love your blog!!! i just wanted to ask how you started liking till? :D

bc i recall one of your posts said you werent interested in round 2 at the start, so i wonder what changed over time

HAHA okay I will admit I was not personally interested in Till at first. He had an impact, obviously (by god, is that an actual dude in a VIVINOS series or did I hit my head on the pavement?) but I wasn't particularly drawn in yet.

I really can't pinpoint when I started liking Till, if I'm being honest. I think it's very much an instance of him creeping up on me and then the realization of "oh damn. I'm really starting to like this guy!" which was embarrassing by the way!! Because this is the most pathetic unphotogenic man to walk the alien planets and when I introduced ALNST to my friends they were expecting me to favor Sua (which I did! She was my original favorite and is still up there). When I told them my favorite was Till, the general consensus was kind of an "eeehhh..." LMAO 😭

I think the best way I can simplify my fondness for him is like. His pathetic looks and sopping wet cat behavior has utterly captivated me. My friends tease that my favorite types of character are the most utterly pathetic ones and you know what. Yeah. Guilty.

But I enjoy his character because of just how much he is, you know? He's very much. There's much muchness to his much. He holds so much personality within him and is such an intriguing character to watch, all the ups and downs and everything. I think the instance where I really began to adore him to this extent was the flower comic, where he encouraged a wilting flower to cheer up. It was an unexpectedly sweet gesture and I began to become very fond of him because of it....

I myself am a pretty mellow person, a nothing burger of a person, if you will, and absolutely not even one iota close to Till's level of eccentricity. It's probably why I'm so fond of him, his character is so exuberant and full of passion that I've grown to admire it. Call me Ivan the way I'm attached to and fascinated by people who have qualities I lack.

Thanks for this ask, anon! HAHAHA I love Till he's the worst most stupid fucking boy on the planet and I need him spun around in a washing machine and flung at the sun.

[laniusbignaturals]

What are your thoughts on Benny? I think he’s genuinely fascinating based on his characterization in All Roads as someone who can be both cruel and gentle when he needs to be (maybe his unofficial last name should be Chameleon instead of Gecko what with how he changes his behavior for any given situation). I appreciate the good bit of “sopping wet cat of a man with a foot fetish” jokes about him every now and then, but I feel like the fanbase neglects a lot of what his personality is like.

Interesting to me that he seems to be subjected to a phenomenon which I usually associate with female characters, where they’re the ratio between passionate interest and variations of “hmmm step on me mommy” is unevenly skewed towards the latter end. Although when people shower female characters near exclusively with uncomplicated erotic praise, we can generally call that sexist, whereas with Benny I’m like. Lmao. Sure, sometimes it seems like the tumblerized subsection of the fandom doesn’t give his character the credit it deserves, but that’s more of a frustration than an issue. Your average picrew icon doesn’t owe Benny of all characters more careful attention.

The way I see it, Benny really shines during his captivity at The Fort, which is a part of the game you only see if you decide to go against the grain and allow him to run off. Most players won’t make that decision, so, the side of Benny’s character on display in the Fort scenes - the vulnerable side - is turned into his primary characteristic by those players who do.

Benny as he appears in All Roads is certainly a far cry from the “pathetic wet cat” characterization you alluded to, but you can see fragments of that version of him. What defines him as pathetic in the comic is this weird rigidity which is out of place in his setting, Vegas. Paradoxically, Benny has hardline disdain for his community’s identity before they became a part of Vegas. He’s also vocally distrustful of chem users. At first, the reader is set up to see him as a xenophobic outsider of sorts. He’s Stringer Bell, right, the one who conforms, imperfectly but still, and enforces conformity on his whole group because he thinks it will benefit all of them. I know niggas just like that irl.

Buuuuuuuut Swank obviously thought Benny was willing to be challenged on this front. We did see him confront him about it, however sheepishly. So, Benny’s stubbornness on this front is probably a recent development. And, as we see in Benny’s later discussion with Chance, bathed in that beautifully rendered early morning glow, this isn’t just an ego trip for him, he’s emotional invested in his beliefs. Benny doesn’t insist on rejecting his tribe’s former identity because he hates it, or looks down on it. He’s just become enmeshed in a culture that makes him feel like there is no way for them to live on as they used to. To be forward-thinking is a good quality in a manager, so you can see why Swank and the others trust him. It’s just turned into a double edged sword by Benny’s overbearingness and pretension. The fact that, in the game, he’s canonically a cooze hound is funny when considered in this context. Gotta love a man who fucks for his self esteem!

This part’s just me spitballing: in his relationship with the Khans, Benny often seems to cast himself as the “rational, forward thinking one” in a way that reminds me of House, almost? They’re obviously not the same character or w/e, Benny still represents something very different than House, but it’s interesting how even after he’s rejected Robert, parts of the man’s leadership style still creep up in his own. The drama.