036. the mother we share

[scorpiod1]

December 18th: What draws you to incest ships for streussal

ahahahahahahahahahahaha

streussal, why do you do this to me

I honestly don't know how to explain this but I am going to TRY to explain.

Comments

[ever_neutral]

CODEPENDENT SHIPS ARE THE BEST SHIPS

(sometimes I just wail really loudly and go ALL MY SHIPS ARE THE SAAAAAME)
lol ikr

Same about cross-gen incest. Partly it might be that I don’t have siblings, but I DO have parents…….

Same again about age-difference. I can’t see Katniss/Prim or Buffy/Dawn AT ALL, and I feel like it’d veer into potential abuse because of the caretaker dynamic.

Tbh, if I am trying very hard to be honest with myself, I feel like those are romantic tropes that I used to like as a kid, but grew out of, but still liked, but couldn't deal with them because they were so clearly terrible, so I transferred that to incest shit.
LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO bless you

And yeah, the romanticisation of “there is no world for me without you” with canon het ships squicks the fuck out of me, mainly because it usually involves the female character’s narrative being subsumed into The Relationship. But with ostensibly platonic dynamics? THAT'S WHAT I'M ABOUT.

lol, I remember you bitching about Elena/Jeremy fic. For srs, they were raised as

[kwritten]

My go-to example is The Mortal Instruments tbh (and then it turned out THEY WEREN’T SIBLINGS AFTER ALL, which was even worse, lol).

OKAY BUT LISTEN.

In the second trilogy the ACTUAL REAL-FACTS BROTHER comes back and is EVIL and keeps the three of them locked together in this really weird incest-siblings-being-evil apartment. And it's amazing. The way TMI ends is with Sebastian giving his sister a hell-realm to rule over as his queen. And basically says: "and we'll keep our brother here for you to fuck because I know you care about that" and lord how I wrong!ship that so hard. The actual worst thing about TMI is that it *didn't* end with Sebastian and Clary ruling in Hell with Jace as their sassy pool boy. (Why can't we have nice things?)

Like I know that they all meet 'late in life' and the incest-y parts of it aren't the same as 'we were raised from childhood together' - but Sebastian is very clear that Jace and Clary are his siblings and that he was raised loving/hating them as siblings

[ever_neutral]

lol, you did tell me all of this once. I remember it well. And you've reminded me to go look up these books again, IF ONLY FOR THE LEGIT!INCEST.

This is possibly the most embarrassing comment I have ever written.

Shhhhh, you're home here~~~~

[scorpiod1]

I AM VERY ANGRY THAT NOW I WANT TO READ THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS BECAUSE OF YOU (it's bad enough I legit enjoyed the movie)

The way TMI ends is with Sebastian giving his sister a hell-realm to rule over as his queen. And basically says: "and we'll keep our brother here for you to fuck because I know you care about that" and lord how I wrong!ship that so hard.

....like. this is my shit. my shit. GIVING YOUR SISTER A HELL REALM!! From my understanding, Clary and Sebastian are siblings and Jace was the fake-out!sibling but is related to Sebastian too, since he calls him his brother (or refers to Jace as their brother), or is that just an affectionate term? But oh jeez.

The actual worst thing about TMI is that it *didn't* end with Sebastian and Clary ruling in Hell with Jace as their sassy pool boy. (Why can't we have nice things?)

Someone should write this fic. I'll read it, I don't even go here.

Like I know that they all meet 'late in life' and the incest-y parts of it aren't the same as 'we were raised from childhood together' -

[scorpiod1]

I'M GLAD YOU FOUNDED INTERESTING TBH. I was worried I was going to alienate people and get side-eyed.

I've always found stories where the incest is downplayed so... cringeworthy, and wrong, like watered-down Lifetime movies with no substance. It doesn't make sense to me to write them that way. I can't get into stories like that because there's a layer of fakeness to it and I can't suspend my disbelief.

ugh yes full agreement. When incest is downplayed, it adds an element of unreality that completely throws me out of the story, and the characters. I find myself blinking at the screen and wondering WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE (though hilariously, I think Lifetime made Flowers in the Attic and Petels in the Wind make two incest films that embraced and RAN with the incest to it's ridiculous trashbin conclusion, it cracked me up)

It actually sometimes squicks me out even when I ship it, like the times I've written Spencer/Melissa from PLL, I have to stay in Spencer's head because when I think about it from Melissa's pov, it's like... I have a

[kwritten]

I think in reading this I realized that most of my incest shipping is on the ridiculous side. Like Waverly siblings and Derek/Casey. but these feelings I generally keep on the silly side of my tumblr and don't really explore too deeply.

H O W E V E R

I will forever be distraught over The Mortal Instruments.
I angst daily about Clary/Jace from an incest perspective. I write really long, really awful comments about how my endgame was Sebastian/Clary(/Jace) and I'll never, ever back down from my assertion that Clary being gifted a hell realm by her brother who really wants to fuck her senseless isn't possibly the most heart-breaking thing that ever happened.

LOL @ fandom for reading Elena/Jeremy as cousins. As if.

(but really Klaus/Rebekah wounds me on the daily)

but the incest should feel ugly and not normal, at the end of the day, even if I don't necessarily want GRIMDARK stories about incest. It should still feel wrong, you know?
YES.

[scorpiod1]

LOL BUT I LOVE RIDICULOUS INCEST REALLY. Even if I don't talk about it much, but idk, part of me is delighted at adding incest to Disney canons (Waverly is Disney, I think? Wizards of Waverly Palace? And so is Derek/Casey, I think? though I am not sure where that's from). I mean, I am person who made up incestuous OCs a few times so like....we're all ridiculous here, really.

I am so sorry about Clary/Jace. Giving your sister a hell realm though is just...a lot. There's nothing not incest there, really, people should have just embraced it.

SO MUCH LOL but also WAI @ those ppl, I just. ALL I WANT IS DECENT FIC. (I am sad I am apparently the only person who does not feel intensely about Klaus/Rebekah, even if I DO like them)

[kwritten]

Wizards of Waverly Place is Disney.

AND SO IS LIFE WITH DEREK HOW HAVE YOU NOT SEEN LIFE WITH DEREK?! It's basically Brady Bunch with "I hate my stepbrother but basically we just make eyes at each other and should probably make out already" mixed in with "siblings" shenanigans. Casey/Derek is one of those lovely 'we are family because we are being raised in the same house and we call each other siblings but we're still probably each other's endgame" ridiculousness. Kid shows. Are just the worst, honestly.

((Like please don't ever get me started on Victorious because the LEVELS OF CODEPENDENCY in the ships on that fucking show are completely ridiculous.)) ((And also has the potential for a really great siblincest between two awesome ladies, I've never read any Tori/Trina fic myself but I know it must exist.)) ((Nickelodeon is nearly as evil as Disney in giving me shipping angst

i had to break this into 2 because i talk too much

[streussal]

I had trouble deciding on an icon for this post, but decided to go with Flowers in the Attic. VC Andrews: making people ship incest since before I was born.

Almost all my incest ships are codependent. And if they're not, they probably have resentment issues. (Or both.)

yeeeaah, cross-gen is not my thing either. I can sometimes do like an uncle or aunt thing if they didn't really interact much when the younger one was a child. (Or if the age gap is small, which makes the relationship more like cousins.)

(And I ended up finding Bates Motel too squicky. Though I'm still really attracted to Dylan for some reason.) (Also can't ship: Angel/Connor. I know the fanged four was all kind of incestuous and Connor was raised by someone else but. Angel really thinks of Connor as his kid okay and Connor has enough father issues no no no the Cordelia possession thing was bad enough.)

Like some ships I just can't do because the age gap is too much (Katniss/Prim, Buffy/Dawn--both don't feel like parent/child but there's an element of

Re: i had to break this into 2 because i talk too much

[streussal]

SIDENOTE: One of the reasons that Flowers in the Attic works for me and most of the ghost-written VC Andrews books do not, is because FiTA really commits to the incest. A lot of the later ones have "oh we didn't know we were related I guess we can't be together" or "damn I was always attracted to my sibling HEY COOL WE'RE NOT RELATED LET'S BANG" (which is even weirder to me). Whereas Cathy and Chris were always aware they were siblings and it's weird and fucked up. (And honestly Chris is kind of a shitty love interest, but way less terrible than her other ones.) And later it turns out that their parents were not just half-uncle and niece but HALF SIBLINGS so Cathy and Chris are super related looool.

(The VC Andrews protagonists actually written by VC Andrews are also allowed to become bitter as a result of their experiences, which is much more satisfying to read.)

Taking an incest ship and trying to make it more palpable or less wrong kills part of the appeal for me?

same!

Chuck/Herc in Pacific Rim -- I am so confused by

RE: Re: i had to break this into 2 because i talk too much

[scorpiod1]

Did VC Andrews write the FiTA sequels? I kinda wanna read it, but I heard Chris rapes Cathy, which is really deterring me (and something I'm glad the film fixed), but I'm also interested in the sequels when they're an established thing? LOL I was unaware VC Andrews had more incest books under her name, even if they never quite went full incest. The ghost writers were weaaaaaak.

damn I was always attracted to my sibling HEY COOL WE'RE NOT RELATED LET'S BANGoh god I always find that SO WEIRD. I think Arrested Development did that but for laughs over how ridiculous it was. Otherwise, it's just ??? If you were attracted to your sibling, finding out you're not blood related is not like...A FREE PASS

RE: i had to break this into 2 because i talk too much

[scorpiod1]

lol I had the same trouble. Let's see if I get to use all my incestuous icons for this post. Codependency and resentment mix well, though, right? A lot of my incest ships sort of thrive on resentment on some level

[redbrunja]

Anyway that changes with incest, because while the codependency is still bad, it's much more difficult to really fix it or extricate the character from it. Like, I feel if siblings ends up having sex, there's no going back. like, idk man, once you decide to have sex with your brother/sister/sibling, how do you ever really come back from that? Even if one half of the ship goes far away, that's not something that can be undone, there's still going to be that TAINT there and I like the idea of something like that leaving marks, something that can never really go away. It's hard to break up with your brother and/or sister, really.

Right?

Taking an incest ship and trying to make it more palpable or less wrong kills part of the appeal for me? All I want is to roll around in how awful it is.

Own it if you're going to do it!

(like example: There is a huge huge fandom for Chuck/Herc in Pacific Rim; I wouldn't be into it anyway, because cross-gen is just not my thing at all but even so, it's played so weirdly cutesy and nbd in fic I just

[scorpiod1]

Own it if you're going to do it!

EXACTLY. Like I don't understand shipping incest and then trying to actively downplay the fucked up elements in canon, like, why were you even drawn to this ship anyway.

I like some other Pacific Rim ships, like, I convinced myself to ship Mako/Chuck, on the grounds that their fathers are close friends, so they might have some kind of history/past. Even if Chuck's an asshole, it's something I'd be interested in exploring. But some other ships are just....mind-boggling and nonsensical (what is a Chuck/Raleigh even) and nothing reaches the higher glory of Mako/Raleigh, most beautiful ship to ever be.

[redbrunja]

Yeah, I kind of like the idea of Chuck and Mako maybe having a thing, and Chuck still being hung up on her.

(what is a Chuck/Raleigh even)

LIKE HOW? WHO CAN WATCH PACIFIC RIM AND THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?~!?!?!!?!? THE ENTIRE FUCKING MOVIE IS BASICALLY RALEIGH ♥ MAKO!!!!!!