Why Gwevin failed (or Why Bwen is still so popular)

Oldtaku_dd

I can't believe anyone on that show wanted it to be ok for Ben to have romantic feelings for his cousin.

FangDaNerd

Wtf this is incest.

csgt

@oldtaku_dd Never said they wanted it to happen. I just said they didn't want to sink it. They just had to leave enough subtext there for Bwen fans to interpret it as romantic, but at the same time, people who are against the pairing could still see these same moments as purely platonic. For example, this famous scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQfEwUzgwEs That's the most common thing shows do when they have popular taboo pairings, and I could give you dozens of examples of that.

Man of Action had plenty opportunity to do sink Bwen in the future episodes showing Ben and Gwen happily married to other people and yet they didn't. In "Ben 10,000", Gwendolyn is the one who goes to the past and brings present Ben and Gwen to save Ben 10K from his bitterness - a proof that she is still the person who cares the most for him. And in "Ken 10", Ken's mother (Kai?) is completely absent in her own son's birthday party and is not even mentioned onscreen. The person who acts as a mother figure to Ken is actually Gwendolyn, giving Ken the stone dog as a gift and giving Ben 10K parenting advices - while Kevin is still a completely insane criminal, a proof that Man of Action never intended Gwevin to happen.

While Alien Force sunk Bwen in its very first episode, making it obvious to everyone which pairings they were aiming for. By episode five, Gwen was literally begging Kevin to ask her out ("Why haven't you asked me out yet?") and in episode seven, Gwen literally pushes Ben to date Julie (Ben was shy and wasn't going to ask Julie out, but Gwen pushes him towards Julie when he tries to leave). Instead, they could have kept things ambiguous enough for people who like Gwevin to believe Gwen had feelings for Kevin, and people who didn't to believe Gwen was only trying to be Kevin's friend and preventing him from reverting back to his old ways (and would never consider dating a guy who tried to murder her before). And also for people who like Bwen to believe Gwen and Ben had feelings for each other, and people who didn't to believe they were just regular cousins. Why did they have to force their pairings on the viewer?

Omniverse wasn't different, in the very first episode Gwen leaves Bellwood with Kevin, and in Omniverse's future, Gwendolyn and Kevin 11,000 are together (even though they chose to make "Ken 10" canon, meaning that Kevin was still insane and murderous, and fathered Devlin with another woman), and Ben and Kai are clearly together too.

KorseBLI-ND

With me cgst I think ben should of just killed Kevin instead of putting him back in the nullvoid

Oldtaku_dd

OK lets try to get this thread back on track.

I don't think Gwevin failed, but Bwen would have taken more of a hit if Ben's love interests were more of a hit with fans. My favorite example of this. Kai " my relationship with ben is cannon " green. In every appearance except her last one in omniverse ( yea old DD just complimented omniverse ) did she had no chemistry at all. She just took advantage of him. Ring ring Ben its Kai Green I know we havent seen or spoken in 5-6 years but I need your help. . .. mind dropping everything crossing half the world so i can call you a fool half the episode? Thanks bye!

IF they made the viewers like Kai, people might day dream about ben keeping it in the family a bit less.

KorseBLI-ND

Ah probably not oldtaku dd because I watched tenchi muyo and other shows that had cousin couples plus I am a fan of tai and Kari pairing for digimon

csgt

@oldtaku_dd
I agree with you that Bwen would have taken a hit if Ben's love interests were better. I kinda acknowledged that in my original post too. Basically, I talked about 3 points:

In a real life scenario, a girl would be better off dating her cousin than dating a mentally unstable guy who made multiple attempts against her life in the past - that's where I think Gwevin fails.

What you mentioned. Ben never really had a good love interest.

I do like Kai better than Julie, though. An archeologist who travels around the world looking for alien artifacts is WAY more compatible to Ben's adrenaline-junkie lifestyle than a regular girl who likes playing tennis and doing normal stuff (Julie had Ship, but she rarely went on missions with Ben, she didn't really want this kind of life - nothing wrong with that, but it made her completely incompatible to Ben). Julie was absent for most of the episodes and didn't stand out in any way (mainly because she was just a plot device for the writers, the obligatory love interest for the hero. It was clear that the couple the writers actually cared about was Gwevin).

While Alien Force/Ultimate Alien mistake was not caring at all about a pairing for Ben, Omniverse's mistake was the opposite. They did care for romance in Ben's life, and gave him multiple love interests, but... they couldn't really decide and ended up not giving enough development to ANY of the girls. Kai appeared for only like, four episodes - they should've used her A LOT more.

And of course, in the last season they messed up again making Kai prefer ALL of Ben's aliens over him. It was actually OOC for Kai, because in the Original Series, when she turned him down, she said: "The alien stuff's cool, just not as cool as when you were a Yenaldooshi." she clearly didn't care for any other of Ben's aliens. If I had to write a BenKai relationship, I would've made Kai a werewolf to explain her preference for Benwolf (similar to what they with Looma/Four Arms and Attea/Bullfrag, but I would've developed more of human Kai and human Ben too)

So, although I did like Kai's "Lara Croft" persona on Omniverse, I think they also messed up real bad with her.

So, basically, Ben's two main love interests were poorly handled by the writers, and Gwen is actually a better option for Ben.

Bwen is a good ship

Bwen329

@csgt I find that odd that man of action would put incest on purpose like that on a kids show after changing gwen into bens cousin. I dont think they cared enough to remove all the subtext because to them the show is mainly geared towards kids and they probably thought the kids wouldn't notice it and be more focused on the action and adventure part of the story.

KorseBLI-ND

I don't find it odd I would do the same thing if I worked on a kids cartoon show

XLR8isBest

Does anyone know how to delete your account on Ben 10 Club? I really don't want to be a part of a forum that promotes incest.

Offbeatcat

@xlr8isbest you've jumped in a hole you can't climb out of.

csgt

@XLR8isBest the forum is not promoting anything. You can stay here and dislike Bwen all you want, just like most people. What do you want the admins to do? Ban me and other users for shipping Bwen even though we are not offending anyone? (actually, we're the ones who get offended in a regular basis being called weird, crazy and other worse stuff) Actually, there are Bwen fans in almost every Ben 10 forum, because it's a popular pairing (unless the forum has an anti-Bwen rule, in which users are immediately banned just for liking Bwen :P)

And I'm not promoting incest either. I'm not telling anyone to get together with a cousin. I'm just talking about two fictional characters. Besides, If you tell me you ship Gwevin, you know Kevin hurt Gwen many times in the past and you don't care, does that mean you support all kinds of abusive relationships? I don't support incest (to be honest, in my country, cousin relationships don't even fall under the incest umbrella)

Oldtaku_dd

@xlr8isbest

This is called E-drama do not let it effect you, trust me.

csgt

@oldtaku_dd This specific topic is for discussing the relationships Bwen and Gwevin (and Benlie and BenKai and others mentioned here too). You might remember that a few days ago, you and me both discussed about these things without any drama. Then a person goes completely off-topic, says they want to quit the forum and that the forum promotes incest simply because there is a topic about Bwen here. But I'm the one creating drama. Right, I can see how that makes perfectly sense.

Oldtaku_dd

@csgt

I never said you were the one causing the E-drama.

XLR8isBest

@csgt I never said you should be banned (because I don’t think that). I never said you are not allowed to support Bwen (because I don’t think that). I never said I support Gwevin (because I don’t). I merely asked how to delete my account because I am tired of seeing that I have notifications on this website only to find out that it’s someone commenting about incest. This type of relationship might not be incest in your country but it is in my country and it is in the country that Ben 10 takes place in.

KorseBLI-ND

@xlr8isbest with me I live in Michigan and I don't care what society thinks about Bowen because I watched rocky horror picture show as a kid

Tactical Ochoa

@xlr8isbest Then go into your profile settings and uncheck the boxes that are under the section called Watch. You won't be able to get notifications from any topic but if you don't want to receive notifications on comments about Bwen, there's your solution.

csgt

@xlr8isbest I apologize if I misunderstood what you meant in your message then.

What I said about Gwevin, I wasn't actually implying you ship it or not. I was just meant that - rightfully so - nobody assumes any Gwevin shipper supports or promotes abusive relationships - even though in real life a relationship like that would undoubtely be seen as abusive considering the things Kevin did to Gwen - but at the same time everybody thinks that just because somebody supports Bwen, it means they are supporting or promoting incest. That is not true, especially considering that (1) We are talking about fiction here, not real life, and (2) Incest is a very broad definition, and is also used to refer to many kinds of relationships that I'm personally against.

Well, considering the country (a semi-fictional version of the USA) that Ben 10 takes place in, you can see that the Tennyson family is supposed to be weird there. Max Tennyson dated a lizard-like alien (Xylene) and Joel Tennyson married a sludge-like alien (Camille). I can't believe the people in Ben 10's universe wouldn't feel icky with these kinds of relationships either. So, definitely Bwen fits very well with the Tennysons' 'weird' relationship pattern in my opinion.

@Tactical-Ochoa gave you the solution then. You just have to stop watching any topics that you're not comfortable with. No need to leave the forum.

Bwen329

I think this incest issue wouldn't be a thing if man of action found a better way to make bens classmate come along for a long road trip. I mean pokemon had misty follow ash for a very long time with a 15 year old brock.