in the end it turns out they're both lesbians. They all resolve their differences and live happily ever after on the Island of Total Drama and Dubiously Necrophiliac Lesbian Orgies, the end
There exists an abandoned Star Wars TFA fanfic out there where they basically swapped Rey/Finn/Kylo's roles all around, except Rey ended up more Poe than Finn. If I were to devote any energy to doing the concept myself, I'd prolly have Rey as a TIE pilot who crashes on Jakku and goes, okay, okay, I can work with this. Never really outright rebellious, very pragmatic and selfish, because she doesn't really have room for compassion. I'd really lean into the weird mystic dessert monk Kylo thing they had going on, make him a devotee of the Church of the Force deal that Jakku's got going who doesn't really get that the reason the Force works for him isn't cause he has The Most Faith, he's just got those ripe space wizard genes. Prolly have him still Ben Solo, kidnapped and held for ransom at age five, but his captors crashed or something and he doesn't remember how he got on Jakku, just knows that he very firmly believed that his folks were gonna come for him as a kid and faith's basically all he's got going for him, so. He forgets to feed himself a lot and pretends that it's a meditation technique to draw him closer to the Force. Finn as Kylo is a. Weird sorta proposition. I don't think much'd have to change. He gets pulled in as Stormtrooper fodder as a kid, but Snoke senses that he'll be strong in the Force and sorta personally raises/trains him and it's gross and awful. He'd be a very Jedi darksider. Keeps a tight handle on his emotions for the sake of doing what is Right, no matter what his gut instincts tell him. and then they all make out or something
I came up with an incredibly in-depth probable biological explanation for A/B/O fic down to the hormonal level bc I got annoyed that nobody EVER explains why there's also normal sexual dimorphism. Does that count?
ALRIGHT HERE IT GOES... warning for references to reproductive organs. Like, lots. Like, pretty much all of it. Spoiler: the A/B/O rework Normal people are hermaphoditic, and are Betas. The range of body types is caused by sensitivity to hormones. "Women" are androgen insensitive to some degree, have smaller penises, larger pelvises, and cycle more frequently. Ambiguously NB people are default. Manly looking males are partially estrogen insensitive. The extreme ends of the spectrum are considered Most Attractive historically, so they've been selected for for a while, but gender roles/expectations are pretty minimal and people rarely reference gender beyond pronouns. ABO!humans do a lot more communal childcare and polyamorous families than IRL!humans, partially as a result of their biology, and partially because that influenced how it developed. In recorded history, most core family groups have <4 partners together at once, and pairs are pretty common just bc that's less difficult to organize. *Pulls down Biologist goggles* Instead of like IRL, the indifferent gonad splits in two early on. Both the Wolffian and Müllerian ducts are preserved, and testicles always descend. Women have smaller testicles than normal, so genitals besides penis are not too different from real humans in appearance. Ovulation starts the cycle and comes with a pheromone cue you need to be up close to smell. Mates (those usually in close physical contact) respond to this cue with increased libedo. Mates of pregnant/in heat (the cue is the same, but enhanced if pregnant) individuals are more aggressive and do not cycle. Copulatory increase during this period and into pregnancy happens because miscarriage is usually immediately followed by ovulation. Ejaculate contains another cue that signals to the fertile individual that sex has taken place. The typical cycle length is more like 2-4 months, not 1; it's maintained by mediated fluctuation in both estrogen, progesterone, and androgen levels, with androgens being higher while the body recovers from unsuccessful ovulation. Women-y folks ovulate more frequently and are less likely to miscarry late in term because their effective androgen levels are lower. Secondary pheromones are the ones everyone in the room can smell. Evolutionarily, some prevent a community from attempting to raise too many infants simultaneously, similarly to the mate response to the ovulation cue scent. Another is released when someone goes into the end of a fertility window without having had sex, which is considered nice in small quantities but super-offensive in large. (Modern bathing practices may have curbed the effect of that somewhat.) So, that's all betas. Who cares about those guys anyway? We're here for the other two parts of A/B/O... Omegas... never pick up the pregnancy pheromone signals. At all. As a result, they cycle abnormally often and seek out sex regardless of secondary pheromones. Or primary pheromones. Or (sometimes) common decency. (A heat!) The one aspect of this that doesn't totally jive with most ABO aesthetic(tm) is that they can just suppress cycling by taking IRL hormonal birth control. Additionally, they're seen as pretty sexy, because in spite of not cycling, they still... kinda... smell like they want sex right now. Alphas, on the other hand... Alphas have the pregnancy sensor constantly activated. They're in Overprotective and Territorial mode 24/7, and are known for being passionate about pretty much everything. They typically do not ovulate... But if they do, it makes them INCREDIBLY crabby. (a rut!) Exposure to the actual signals multiplies all effects. Basically, Alphas don't have Magic Dominance Powers, they have super-PMS minus cramps and are usually very goal-oriented. Pick an effective alpha, and you can just coast along in their wake. So. Back to shipping. You put an alpha and an omega in the same room, and... instant sexual tension! Bam, there's all the xenobiology you could ever need to run an ABO fic in a single go, plus or minus relabeling some of the fluff about societies.
When you already made the spreadsheet for the AU: Spoiler: (disclaimer...) Only one column is supposed to be an AU, but I spent so much time writing it that now they both are. Hooray!
i don't know if this is a weird au or not. (there have been several variants on rvbswap in the red vs blue fandom, just swapping different groups of characters, but this variant swaps two groups that haven't been swapped with each other before and i think this is the only au thread on kintsugi so i'm gonna talk about my au idea here.) so, anyway, in this variant of rvbswap, the blood gulch crew, the director, tex and carolina, are swapped with the desert gulch crew. and that means, well... Spoiler: long rvb au sperging so, swap!tex is on the desert gulch red team, and dating swap!church, who is on the desert gulch blue team. and they have known each for a while, before they joined the army. and swap!tex, a short time before the freelancers (ai!swap!biff plus maybe some other canon freelancer) come down and kill her, has swap!church's baby: swap!carolina. 'cause, quite naturally, they've been fucking. and swap!carolina manages to pass under command's radar, first by accident, and then on purpose, when swap!church is like, "no. nope. i'm not trusting command with my baby." and once all the freelancers leave and things go back to (sorta) normal, command is incompetent and disinterested enough that it's no longer that hard to hide a kid from them. and the desert gulch teams unite into one upon swap!tex's death, 'cause swap!church's love for her and swap!tex's position on the red team make it an issue affecting both the teams. which means swap!carolina has lots of dads, uncles and an aunt, who take care of her and teach her how to fight. and she ends up radicalized against the freelancers, 'cause swap!church is mad at them and wants revenge on them and they killed his girlfriend, and the rest of the crew feels the same way, though perhaps not as intensely. swap!prime!temple, meanwhile, is the director, and swap!prime!biff, who he loves, had died in the war. swap!prime!temple makes swap!alpha!temple (though i decided he uses numbers in latin for his ais instead of the greek alphabet), who ends up also producing swap!beta!biff alongside him. swap!beta!biff becomes a freelancer. and then, well, he decides to split the ai even more. and things end up going badly, and swap!alpha!temple gets sent with agent florida (though i'm thinking that temple might use shakespeare characters for their names instead of states) to blood gulch, where swap!surge, swap!gene, swap!buckey, swap!cronut and swap!loco are. and swap!beta!biff, implanted with the swap!omega!temple, eventually goes there too, when swap!alpha!temple experiences his first death. and i reckon swap!epsilon!temple and washington would play some sort of role in the au too, but things get hazy for me once i get past the basics of how the au changes the roles and the story. like, i definitely know that things will be different, but how different they will be and what kind of different they will be is something that will probably be much clearer if/when i start writing it and the characters start doing things and basically making the plot themselves. in a way, this au idea is basically me saying, "these people aren't the exact same as each other, that's incorrect, but they do have a lot in common. and in some scenarios (but not all scenarios), they would make the same choices as each other."
