#bencest

I consider myself a multishipper, but I default to gen for almost every character dynamic. As far as proship goes, I'm chill with it, but it's not usually my cup of tea.

Albedo with Ben in a selfcest sense is... not really my thing? But inter-species romance is something I think is pretty cool about stories with aliens and monsters just as intelligent as (or more than!) humans.

(total tangent, but there's this juvenile fiction book called Mars Evacuees that has a really neat epilogue where it's mentioned that intermarriage of humans and aliens is a hot new topic now that the war is... over? I think it was over. idk. it was just a cute, funny moment that I think was a really clever way to nod to real-life social issues in a book for kids)

I also think selfcest is, while not my thing, a very potentially interesting thing for fiction to explore. I mean, it literally can't happen in real life, so it's automatically interesting, y'know? So, since a human-Galvan relationship is conceptually interesting to me, and I like enemies-to-lovers as much as the next person, and I find selfcest interesting in the thematic/sheer curiosity sense, I guess you could say I find the ship potentially very interesting even if I wouldn't necessarily find them cute together.

All that said, I would probably write them as having wildly different feelings about their attraction (...gonna circle back to the word attraction though) to each other. Maybe Ben would be attracted to Albedo's Galvan form and be like "welp... that's the Tennyson DNA." Maybe Albedo would think of Ben as inferior/young/etc.when he's a Galvan, but when in Ben's form (human teen form), he sees him the way a human teen would: as an attractive peer. In that case, they would run into the issue of Ben being attracted to Albedo when he isn't in Ben's form and Albedo being attracted to Ben when he is in Ben's form, but neither vice versa. Then you wind up with something like in the episode "Cat Fight" (or... anytime Kai is on-screen) where what they want is complicated by the whole transformation thing and makes it unviable to fulfill that desire, except the kicker...

...the kicker would be that each likes the other in their truest form, but Albedo only likes Ben when he himself isn't in his truest form. I think that would be a very weird but evocative doomed romance story, and I think it would work for them.

The alternative is that, much like chili fries and smoothies, being attracted to Ben Tennyson is in the DNA of Ben Tennyson. (I don't think it would actually be in the DNA exactly, but there would be something going on with the transformation process that makes Albedo feel the same thing.)

In that story, Ben could be autosexual (ace microlabel for someone attracted to themself and no one else) or just... attracted to himself in general. He would probably hide it or even not realize it, and when his friends realize he's attracted to Albedo (or vice versa), it brings up some questions he doesn't want to answer. Albedo would treat it the same as the chili fries - an inconvenience of the present body that he is, due to not dealing with it before, extremely bad at resisting. Whether this would be comedic or horrifying really depends on narrative framing, but I'd try for some horror-comedy personally.

Third option is one where attraction is taken at least partially out of the picture. They would develop a weird sort of... mutual fascination supplemented by unwilling understanding and begrudging but profound respect. The "genetic duplicate" thing would be an afterthought or maybe a mild hindrance to the growing connection. It wouldn't be a major thing.

Two things would be consistent across any iteration of me writing these characters together.

Albedo wouldn't be attracted to Ben until after he's been stuck in Ben's form.

They would both be uncomfortable with each other and their feelings for a hot second before figuring anything out, and that's assuming they ever figure their shit out enough to actually get together.

I guess the gist of it is that I think they'd be really mixed up and complicated if they did get together (or if either of them wanted to, regardless of if they did so). It would be a total mess.

All of that said, once they did get together, I think they'd be fucking hilarious:

They would still bicker all the time. "Perhaps if one of us could manage to die" / "Don't tempt me" <- average interaction halfway through a date night.

Albedo would be a total bitch to everyone else, and Ben would watch with heart eyes and that little gremlin smirk he had as Echo Echo when all of the hims were climbing into Kevin's car.

Ben would be his usual smartass self to others about as often as usual, and Albedo would roll his eyes but secretly find him hilarious. Ben would know that's what he's doing.

*resigned sigh* If and when they have a sex life, they would probably make their shared food cravings into a kink.

Once they each got over their own discomfort with the relationship, they would torment other people with that exact same discomfort. Ben feeling weird about being attracted to himself? Albedo can fix that by triggering his little shit instinct:

Albedo wears contacts and a wig and they make out at some location calculated to optimally intercept people headed for, idk, a party hosted by Nesmith. They torment Harangue by kissing in front of him but never giving him the opportunity to get photo evidence of their relationship. They do an exclusive on the complicated nature of human-alien relationships and the perils of a genetically-damaged former clone with one of his competitors. They put a shitton of emphasis on "former clone" to say "hey, look, we're clearly not genetically identical, that's just ridiculous" and "it's a sensitive topic for someone who's been through so many unintentional alterations." The framing is genius. The scripting is flawless. Harangue can't say shit that he wants to without his ratings plummeting. So on and so forth.

Albedo would occasionally do morally questionable and/or illegal things. He would at first assume this will piss Ben off and probably do it more when they're fighting, but Ben genuinely doesn't care what's illegal and has dubious morals himself, so as long as no one innocent is getting hurt, it doesn't cause an issue. With Ben, anyway.

Sandra and Carl would have a moment of "what the fuck" before rolling with it. Kevin would make fun of them to no end. Gwen would be occasionally weirded out and then focus on their mana and be like "ah. right. completely different people with no background in common. moving on." Idk where in the timeline this would be, but if Rook is here, it doesn't even occur to him to find it strange. He can't tell humans apart very well, anyway.

Also? Gwen gives Albedo the strangest shovel talk of all time, and then Kevin gives him the most normal shovel talk possible for the circumstances.

Grandpa Max straight-up never acknowledges their relationship. For at least months, they aren't sure if he knows they're in a relationship. This is contrasted by Azmuth, who says "this is a terrible idea, Ben Tennyson. Carry on," and never brings it up again.

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