Y'know something I have yet to have seen with the ben 10 fandom, I haven't seen any fanfics where an LGBT Ben has to come to grips with his sexuality. I imagine his family would be very accepting but I could see Ben struggling with the idea of his human self, his base self as something he's new to. Realizing he's had to skip his own personal development to put on the role of a hero, he realizes he can't be that pristine action figure that he wants everyone to see him as. He has to deal with a facet of himself he has to address himself.
I could see him realizing he's not straight and his response be a small "oh" and fall silent.
This is an interesting point, especially since I’m currently working on a fic where Ben makes some realizations (and actualizations) about himself. His sexuality and status as aromantic are features, and they are what indirectly spur Rook’s motivations in a way, though I hadn’t planned on having it be truly central to Ben’s story.
For quick background, ‘Exit Strategy’ is an unfinished fic that starts off with Ben ‘accidentally’ getting separated from Rook. The two, in this fic, have a quasi-sexual, committed platonic relationship which Rook wants to make into a traditional romantic one. Since canon (Omniverse specifically) doesn’t make any references or inferences to LGBTQIA communities or terms, I made the decision that Ben is ignorant of a lot of the nuances of gayness, with same sex couples being seen as rare but normal, but a sexless couple being deemed strange. It takes Ben talking about his relationship issues with a person similar to him (an alternate Ben, I admit) for him to realize that aromanticism exists at all.
But for Ben this is a relatively small thing, given his overall narrative of autonomy (I don’t want to detract here, would love to elaborate if mutually desired). For Rook’s it’s more central because his sole motivation in the fic is devotion. Since the characters are in a different timeline, one more similar to ours, they’d be exposed to our terminology and comparable history— I am now a bit curious how Rook would react to concepts like asexuality and aromanticism, when he, in this fic, had previously chalked Ben not wanting to date him as being a form of rejection.
(Did I respond to the actual questions asked? Let me reread the ask…)
(It’s nearly five in the morning, whyyyyy-)
The idea of Ben being disconnected from his base, human self does get touched on in the fic, albeit in ways you are likely not referring to. His disconnect from his Anodite heritage, and by extension a large chunk of his family; the disconnect from not really having peers outside of his family, bosses (counting Max), and partner; and the disconnect of his own physical self not measuring up to those of hos many forms do influence his decisions.
But we’re here to talk about the LGBTQIA stuff, so let’s swing back around to one of the story’s focuses (or more accurately, catalysts): Ben being uncertain of his future. As an aromantic with past failed ventures (examples: Kai and Julie), he believes that what he has with his current partner won’t last and that he’ll never be able to satisfy someone without sacrificing portions of himself (he doesn’t want a standard dating relationship, he wants a friend). At the same time, he also wants to start a family, which throws a wrench into a whole heck of a lot of things. I will mention that he’s twenty at the most— I had him do something that a lot of people in my life have done, which I hate, and that’s ‘Oh, I’m an adult now. Kids Immediately’. But hey, that’s life, and if I’m stuck dealing with these people’s terrible decisions than Ben’s forced making said terrible decisions. She said, mostly joking.
Something that might be interesting is for Ben to learn of our gay cultures and find out that even the part of the situation that he does believe to be normal, which is having attraction to other guys, would be extremely abnormal in our world. I might try and incorporate that…