Why I Like Incest Fic
It's been a while since I did anything other than talk/bitch about my mundane life crap, so I thought it was HIGH TIME that I made a grand post telling you why Things I Like, and the Reasons Why I Like Them, are awesome beyond belief.
Note: throughout, I'm talking about fanfic, unless otherwise indicated. Also, I'm focusing on sibling incest here, mainly sibling incest where the characters have grown up together and KNOW they're related (i.e., Sam and Dean), because that's my kink. And of course, this is just me mulling over my personal tastes and preferences, and how I came to them; I'm not making value judgments about stuff that isn't to my taste, or the people whose tastes differ from mine. :D
Short answer: I am a kinky pervert. Obviously.
Actual answer: After years and years of reading sibling incest fic, I realized that my love for it wasn't a kink that existed in isolation from all the other stuff I love; rather, the stuff I love about good (by my definition) incest fic is very close to the stuff I love about non-incest fic. (I'm not talking about general "good writing"; I admitted to myself a while ago that I *don't* have a "good writing" kink -- of course, good writing makes everything better, but good writing, in a story that I am otherwise uninterested in, isn't going to necessarily rescue the story for me, if that makes sense? Anyway.) My love for incest fic is one part of my general kink preferences -- and it isn't solely the sibling incest itself, but the fact that incest fic satisfies my overall narrative kinks more consistently than ANY other type of fic.
That's not to say I'm not interested in the concept of incest in and of itself, because I certainly am. Incest is a staple trope of myth, folklore and literature, and the whole matrix of beliefs and narratives absolutely fascinates me. So, I find the *idea* of incest to be very intellectually stimulating (heh, "stimulating"). In addition, my overall taste in porn runs to Defying the Laws of Gods and Men OMG! Less flippantly, one of the chief joys of porn for me is the chance to experience something that I haven't done -- or can't do -- in real life. This includes not just the highly illegal/immoral/inadvisable stuff like incest (forbidden fruit tastes better!), but also stuff that I'm not physically capable of doing, like male/male sex.
Building on the theme of TMI how my real-life experience affects my fic preferences, I've always been a, how shall I put this, instant gratification type of girl. (Shut up, I have a Scorpio sun AND moon.) Seriously, if it doesn't happen soon, it ain't gonna happen, ever. Lack of patience is, of course the major player in this, but I also have experience backing it up; if I have time to get an actual *crush* -- as in, more than just, "hey, I've seen that totally hot person around, maybe I should find out their name" -- it generally means that my initial overture was rebuffed. I have *never* actually managed to land someone on whom I had a serious OMG PINING-type crush.
What this is leading up to, is that since in my real life I am dedicated to resolving UST as quickly as possible, long drawn-out UST in stories *fascinates* me. I LOVE IT. My NUMBER ONE BULLETPROOF KINK is when you have these characters who are living in each other's pockets, who know just about everything about each other, who have achieved an incredible level of intimacy with one another -- but sexuality is that final frontier. Here is my ideal plotline:
1. I love him!
2. But he must never find out, for some VERY GOOD REASON!
3. *angst*
4. But wait!
5. Could he...?
6. He does!
7. And then they have sex, the end.
But the thing that always trips me up is #2. As I indicted above, I want the drawn-out pleasure-pain of UST, but have only a TINY reserve of patience, so the delay had better be for something REALLY COMPELLING. I am CONSTANTLY reading stories where the angst pushes on past my *extremely low* threshold of believability, and I'm yelling, "JUST JUMP HIM, YOU NEUROTIC REPRESSED WIMP!" Oh, the agony of excruciatingly specific tastes! *weeps*
I'm not a huge fan of big power imbalances between romantic partners -- they don't have to be absolute equals, necessarily, but I need a sense that they're evenly matched in some way, that their respective advantages and disadvantages put them on more or less equal footing. Now, see, if I had a "power imbalance" kink, my problem would be solved, because "I can't fuck him, he's the big boss/lowly employee" makes a great obstacle. Alas. But because I like buddy narratives, I need different obstacles, and they require a delicate touch to be satisfying. The classic dodges of "But I don't want to ruin the friendship!" -- which is a bitch when you've got a best friend kink! -- or "But we're coworkers!" will only work for me for so long. "Recovering from a former relationship" can work, but it can get out of hand REALLY fast -- there's angst, and then there's annoying wallowing. Sometimes the characters have personalities that make the delay believable for me -- say, the very awkward and socially inept Grissom and Sara on CSI, or Snape with anyone -- but most of the time, I get frustrated very quickly.
All this is my extremely long-winded way of saying that the single most awesome and compelling obstacle ever is, yep, INCEST. It is remarkably consistent: even the most sexually uninhibited character will pause, if only for a moment, at the thought of fucking a sibling. It's all the joy of a best-friends narrative, intensified by a MILLION. They live in each other's pockets. They know just about everything about each other. They are very intimate. But they're not having sex, for a damn good reason: they're RELATED. Incest is a very, very believable set-up for YEARS of frustrated longing and furtive desire and fear of being found out. And the GUILT! Both characters have a very compelling reason to keep silent, because the risk is ENORMOUS. But with big risks comes the potential for big payoffs: in the end, you not only get love and sex, but the thrill of living in delicious taboo sin. Awesome.
In non-incest narratives, I need to be convinced that there's a reason not to confess love -- WHY isn't the character just sucking it up and taking a chance? After a certain point, it looks cowardly, and I've never had much time for cowardly characters. I tend to give slash narratives a longer lead time, because, say, uncertainty about one's own or the beloved's orientation takes time to sort out, as does preparing oneself for potential homophobic responses -- but how much of an obstacle it is is HIGHLY dependent upon the characters' personalities and circumstances. If House isn't dating Wilson because he's afraid of the flack he'll take for being into guys, I'm going to lose interest very quickly. But with incest narratives, the pressure is *always* in the opposite direction; there's every reason NOT to do it, and crossing that line requires *serious* desperation and desire. The passion! the guilt! the glory of love triumphant! Oh god, I love it SO MUCH.
That's not to say that there aren't certain relatively angst-free sibling pairs; I can't see the Weasley twins, tricksters extraordinaire, getting especially hung up on the taboo. But I always liked Fred/George BECAUSE of its weirdness, and was willing to step outside of my overall narrative kink for it. But most fanfictional sibling incest narratives follow my story to the LETTER.
So, in conclusion, I love incest fic because I have a particular narrative kink, and the incest trope can most consistently deliver me the stories I want to read. In addition, because incest is interesting to me in and of itself, it can compensate for a lack of buildup in a story -- if the writer gives enough hints that the decision to be in Mad Incestuous Love was a difficult one, my mind will fill in the rest, because hey, incest. Whereas non-incest stories need to be more carefully balanced to please me -- because the obstacles aren't as compelling, I need to see the angst more to really be satisfied with the story.
After all that, I really need to finish that "Sam and Dean have hot sex in fairyland" thing I've been messing with for MONTHS.
Note: throughout, I'm talking about fanfic, unless otherwise indicated. Also, I'm focusing on sibling incest here, mainly sibling incest where the characters have grown up together and KNOW they're related (i.e., Sam and Dean), because that's my kink. And of course, this is just me mulling over my personal tastes and preferences, and how I came to them; I'm not making value judgments about stuff that isn't to my taste, or the people whose tastes differ from mine. :D
Short answer: I am a kinky pervert. Obviously.
Actual answer: After years and years of reading sibling incest fic, I realized that my love for it wasn't a kink that existed in isolation from all the other stuff I love; rather, the stuff I love about good (by my definition) incest fic is very close to the stuff I love about non-incest fic. (I'm not talking about general "good writing"; I admitted to myself a while ago that I *don't* have a "good writing" kink -- of course, good writing makes everything better, but good writing, in a story that I am otherwise uninterested in, isn't going to necessarily rescue the story for me, if that makes sense? Anyway.) My love for incest fic is one part of my general kink preferences -- and it isn't solely the sibling incest itself, but the fact that incest fic satisfies my overall narrative kinks more consistently than ANY other type of fic.
That's not to say I'm not interested in the concept of incest in and of itself, because I certainly am. Incest is a staple trope of myth, folklore and literature, and the whole matrix of beliefs and narratives absolutely fascinates me. So, I find the *idea* of incest to be very intellectually stimulating (heh, "stimulating"). In addition, my overall taste in porn runs to Defying the Laws of Gods and Men OMG! Less flippantly, one of the chief joys of porn for me is the chance to experience something that I haven't done -- or can't do -- in real life. This includes not just the highly illegal/immoral/inadvisable stuff like incest (forbidden fruit tastes better!), but also stuff that I'm not physically capable of doing, like male/male sex.
Building on the theme of TMI how my real-life experience affects my fic preferences, I've always been a, how shall I put this, instant gratification type of girl. (Shut up, I have a Scorpio sun AND moon.) Seriously, if it doesn't happen soon, it ain't gonna happen, ever. Lack of patience is, of course the major player in this, but I also have experience backing it up; if I have time to get an actual *crush* -- as in, more than just, "hey, I've seen that totally hot person around, maybe I should find out their name" -- it generally means that my initial overture was rebuffed. I have *never* actually managed to land someone on whom I had a serious OMG PINING-type crush.
What this is leading up to, is that since in my real life I am dedicated to resolving UST as quickly as possible, long drawn-out UST in stories *fascinates* me. I LOVE IT. My NUMBER ONE BULLETPROOF KINK is when you have these characters who are living in each other's pockets, who know just about everything about each other, who have achieved an incredible level of intimacy with one another -- but sexuality is that final frontier. Here is my ideal plotline:
1. I love him!
2. But he must never find out, for some VERY GOOD REASON!
3. *angst*
4. But wait!
5. Could he...?
6. He does!
7. And then they have sex, the end.
But the thing that always trips me up is #2. As I indicted above, I want the drawn-out pleasure-pain of UST, but have only a TINY reserve of patience, so the delay had better be for something REALLY COMPELLING. I am CONSTANTLY reading stories where the angst pushes on past my *extremely low* threshold of believability, and I'm yelling, "JUST JUMP HIM, YOU NEUROTIC REPRESSED WIMP!" Oh, the agony of excruciatingly specific tastes! *weeps*
I'm not a huge fan of big power imbalances between romantic partners -- they don't have to be absolute equals, necessarily, but I need a sense that they're evenly matched in some way, that their respective advantages and disadvantages put them on more or less equal footing. Now, see, if I had a "power imbalance" kink, my problem would be solved, because "I can't fuck him, he's the big boss/lowly employee" makes a great obstacle. Alas. But because I like buddy narratives, I need different obstacles, and they require a delicate touch to be satisfying. The classic dodges of "But I don't want to ruin the friendship!" -- which is a bitch when you've got a best friend kink! -- or "But we're coworkers!" will only work for me for so long. "Recovering from a former relationship" can work, but it can get out of hand REALLY fast -- there's angst, and then there's annoying wallowing. Sometimes the characters have personalities that make the delay believable for me -- say, the very awkward and socially inept Grissom and Sara on CSI, or Snape with anyone -- but most of the time, I get frustrated very quickly.
All this is my extremely long-winded way of saying that the single most awesome and compelling obstacle ever is, yep, INCEST. It is remarkably consistent: even the most sexually uninhibited character will pause, if only for a moment, at the thought of fucking a sibling. It's all the joy of a best-friends narrative, intensified by a MILLION. They live in each other's pockets. They know just about everything about each other. They are very intimate. But they're not having sex, for a damn good reason: they're RELATED. Incest is a very, very believable set-up for YEARS of frustrated longing and furtive desire and fear of being found out. And the GUILT! Both characters have a very compelling reason to keep silent, because the risk is ENORMOUS. But with big risks comes the potential for big payoffs: in the end, you not only get love and sex, but the thrill of living in delicious taboo sin. Awesome.
In non-incest narratives, I need to be convinced that there's a reason not to confess love -- WHY isn't the character just sucking it up and taking a chance? After a certain point, it looks cowardly, and I've never had much time for cowardly characters. I tend to give slash narratives a longer lead time, because, say, uncertainty about one's own or the beloved's orientation takes time to sort out, as does preparing oneself for potential homophobic responses -- but how much of an obstacle it is is HIGHLY dependent upon the characters' personalities and circumstances. If House isn't dating Wilson because he's afraid of the flack he'll take for being into guys, I'm going to lose interest very quickly. But with incest narratives, the pressure is *always* in the opposite direction; there's every reason NOT to do it, and crossing that line requires *serious* desperation and desire. The passion! the guilt! the glory of love triumphant! Oh god, I love it SO MUCH.
That's not to say that there aren't certain relatively angst-free sibling pairs; I can't see the Weasley twins, tricksters extraordinaire, getting especially hung up on the taboo. But I always liked Fred/George BECAUSE of its weirdness, and was willing to step outside of my overall narrative kink for it. But most fanfictional sibling incest narratives follow my story to the LETTER.
So, in conclusion, I love incest fic because I have a particular narrative kink, and the incest trope can most consistently deliver me the stories I want to read. In addition, because incest is interesting to me in and of itself, it can compensate for a lack of buildup in a story -- if the writer gives enough hints that the decision to be in Mad Incestuous Love was a difficult one, my mind will fill in the rest, because hey, incest. Whereas non-incest stories need to be more carefully balanced to please me -- because the obstacles aren't as compelling, I need to see the angst more to really be satisfied with the story.
After all that, I really need to finish that "Sam and Dean have hot sex in fairyland" thing I've been messing with for MONTHS.