would love to hear more of your ryissa!katiet thoughts if you care to elaborate… i keep thinking parallels between ryan and kate’s upbringings and also juliet & marissa both being the kindhearted blonde girls that haunt the narrative
YES I WOULD, thank you so much for asking!!! :)
kate fits sooo well into ryan's backstory--it's easy to picture wayne being in prison most of her life, and diane continuing to date a lot of shitty men that treat her and kate just as badly as wayne did (i feel like sam wouldn't be in the picture much, if at all). i tend to imagine sawyer in trey's place, as a sort of surrogate older brother who does care about her, but has a habit of dragging her into dangerous situations despite his best intentions. ana lucia and her mom would work great as kate and diane's neighbors, and kate and ana def had a close and caring childhood/adolescent friendship (that was a biiiiiiit homoerotic to be sure, but catholic guilt, parental pressure, etc etc, get in the way of them ever truly being a couple). kate has ryan's short fuse and tendency to talk with her fists down pat. (imagining her doing "you know what i like about rich kids? NOTHING!!!" makes me wanna cheeeeer lmao. OOOH also, jack would be luke in this au. that fits soooo perfectly.)
juliet and marissa aren't quite as close a match to me personality-wise, but they do share a similar kindness like you mentioned! and i'd say they both have a desire to rescue people, even when it gets them into trouble. and i definitely think juliet could pull off the spoiled/tragic/troubled popular girl thing incredibly well, and trigger kate's same need to rescue or save juliet herself.
i'm a little ambivalent about who would make a good seth/sandy/summer, which is kinda necessary for me to envision how kate and juliet's initial relationship would progress (since seth in particular is so crucial in bringing ryan and marissa together). i kinda want to throw out jin for seth and sun for summer? juliet/sun would be such a good popular girl friendship, and imagining jin being super nerdy and awkward with his longtime crush on sun is sooooo :') <33 jin WOULD be super into sailing and comic books, too. that fits him so well. also, jin's dad is super kindhearted and caring--we don't get to know very much about him in the show but i could totally see him being the type of person who worked hard to leave behind his own difficult upbringing, and now wants to spread his knowledge and resources around any way he can. and maybe jin's mom is in the picture here, maybe not! but yeah, yeong-il takes kate on as a client, and then invites her to stay with him and jin after diane abandons her. kate and jin are a little uncomfy around each other at first, but jin is a lonely kid who's super excited to have a new friend, and once he tells kate about sun her rescue instincts take over and she takes it upon herself to help jin talk to her (which brings her and juliet closer together in the process).
so curious to know your thoughts, too :) i'm definitely gonna be thinking about this a ton!!!!
