The Bad Wrong But Disturbingly Hot, In Some Cases, Fictional Sibling Fictional Incest Poll!

[rachelmanija]

In honor of Cantarella being about the tenth manga to make me root for the incest pairing, I present a fictional sibling incest poll! It is limited to siblings, half-siblings, clones, cousins, and other non-parental cases, because I find the latter too disturbing to even think about.

Please spoiler-protect all comments that need spoilers, either through blackout or rot13.com. If it is revealed as a surprise anywhere later than halfway through volume 1, it is a spoiler!



[Poll #1348303]

ETA: If I could edit polls, I'd edit Faye/Diana from L. J. Smith's The Secret Circle into the last category.

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

first answer is Seishirou/Setsuka (or Anthy/Akio because I think that's where they belong, rather than in second category).

Fourth is Blackcest, in general.

I'm sad I don't have any incest icon anymore.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Blackcest: what, who?

You're probably right about Anthy/Akio! I couldn't recall if it was stated/shown or just strongly implied.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Blackcest: House of Black characters from Harry Potter: Sirius/Regulus, Bellatrix/Narcissa, Bellatrix/Andromeda, Bellatrix/Tonks, Sirius/Bellatrix...

I see Akio/Anthy as canon, Miki/Kozue as strongly implied and canon from Kozue's part, Nanami/Touga as merely played with for mindfuck purpose :)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there a scene with Akio/Anthy that almost explicitly made it canon? Specifically the scene where he's calling her his little mouse (or whatever) and telling her to squeak for him off screen, and she does, and it does a "fade to black" thing? I remember being very creeped out by that scene when I saw it!

That was before Cantarella and Angel Sanctuary warped my brain, though.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

There are even more obvious later on in the series. It's never... graphic sex, you know, but it's undoubtedly happening.

Perhaps you should try watching it again now :D

Someday I really need to try finish reading Angel Sanctuary.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I just need to figure out what i did with the DVDs!

[oyceter]

I think there is a scene in the anime where we see Anthy standing naked in front of Akio as well! Or taking off her clothes in front of him; I can't remember.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. At some point it definitely shifts from subtext to canon. With spectacular artwork.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I think we're remembering different parts about the same scene!

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

She takes off her glasses in a definitive way, at least.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

You made me choose between Cesare/Lucrezia and Setsuna/Sara! Curse you! Though, I had to go with Setsuna/Sara because, while I find Cesare and Lucrezia's relationship more interesting, I don't exactly root for them.

[fairly mild Cantarella spoilers, the important part of which can fairly easily be guessed] Because sometimes I am a mushbot and so I root for the Harlequin romance Chiaro/Lucrezia, which at least has a vague chance of not ending very very badly. Now, the other canon incestuous siblings...(there are a lot of canon incestuous siblings in Canarella)

BTW, if you haven't acquired the rest of Cantarella by A-Kon, let me know and I'll toss it in my suitcase.

[amberdulen.livejournal.com]

Petrellicest is all but Canon.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

I chose Gonou and Kanan for the first one, but Koshiro and Nanoka from Koi Kaze (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koi_kaze) probably rate a mention as well.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

I didn't take the poll because I don't know who most of the characters are, but I just need to say that Ed/Al is WRONG WRONG WRONGITY WRONG. With a side of WRONG.

[severefun.livejournal.com]

I loooooove that Utena alone accounts for almost half the anime-implied list.

[oyceter]

My favorite canonical incest pairing right now comes later in Cantarella!

AiIIIIIIEEEEE Ed/Al! It is doubly bad now that I have brother rats named after them! There is SO MUCH WRONG!

Also, I rewatched the Utena movie with rilina over the weekend, and it is amazing how many hinted incestual relationships in the show become totally explicit in the movie, like the writers were all, "Oh! This does not need to be televised! Full speed ahead!"

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I love that Lucrezia realizes her incestuous desires when she randomly spots another brother and sister having sex! (It was so random that I now forget who they were, even though I only read that one today.)

[oyceter]

Wow! I had totally forgotten about that part!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I hope you're not referring to Cesare/the demon possessing and reanimating the zombie harpy body of his step-mother, a pairing which, disturbingly, now appears to be canonical!

[oyceter]

Definitely not that one! I am fairly sure you will know what I'm talking about when you see it...

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

1. Michael and Lucifer/Lucifel from Earthian.

3. Siegmund and Sieglinde from Wagner's Ring Cycle. (Number One. With a bullet. Shame about their lard-headed offspring.)

5/6. A fascinating but DEFINITELY squicky pair for any number of reasons: Elsie Dinsmore and her dear old Dad. They definitely have a Vibe going, and it's highly unsettling.

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

A fascinating but DEFINITELY squicky pair for any number of reasons: Elsie Dinsmore and her dear old Dad.

Dear god, yes. I remember reading the first few books and thinking that even people who steadfastly cling to the 'it was written in a more innocent time!!' excuse when it comes to possible subtext would have to admit that something skeevy was going on there.

Elsie Dinsmore spoilers

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

It gets even creepier by book 3, at least that was my impression. From the time Elsie's sixteen until (and past!) her wedding to Daddy's best friend(!), Daddy Dearest clearly has Issues. Adult Elsie sitting on his lap and cooing about how he's her lord and master doesn't help.

When the happy couple had to kick Dad out of their bedroom on their wedding day, even the narrator seemed taken aback.

Re: Elsie Dinsmore spoilers

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

I just went and skimmed through book 3 on Project Gutenberg and it's even worse better more unsettling than I'd remembered. The first couple of books one could maybe let slide, given the time period's dreamy view of children as uncorrupted and totally innocent, but once it gets into her teens? Eeesh.

Re: Elsie Dinsmore spoilers

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Try, after she's a widow. *Still* sitting on Daddy's lap.

Re: Elsie Dinsmore spoilers

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

*twitch*

[shati.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to interpret "favorite couple"! Couple whose relationship I most often find myself confusedly rooting for? Couple whose relationship I find most entertaining? Couple made of the characters I like best? Couple that I think is most likely to be actually incestuous?

*overthinks*

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

However you interpret it!

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I adore you for including Ferdinand and the Duchess of Malfi.

Sou and Ai! Non-incestuous incest, which may really be incest... or possibly not?

Faye and Diana, and also Jenny and her cousin. Whose name I do not recall now.

Joaquin Phoenix had a creepy vibe with his sister in Gladiator. That's all I remember about that film to this day.

[larryhammer]

Um, Shigure, Hatori, and Ayame are cousins, not siblings. (It's not even clear whether they're first cousins.) Also, another vote for Anthy/Akio as canonical incest.

For #1, my vote is for Koshiro+Nanoka from Koi Kaze.

---L.

[free-the-goats.livejournal.com]

You totally want to pick up Melusine, the Virtu, and Mirador by Sarah Monette. The incest is one-sided, but it is a subtle uncurrent in the first book and openly discussed in the second and third.

And they're just awesome books in general with a complex fantasy world and a main character who is gay without the book being about him being gay.

The Winter Prince by Elizabeth E. Wein is awesome too-- Mordred's relationship with his mother is fucked beyond all belief, and he starts to take it out on his younger twin siblings (Arthur's legitimate children).

And Smoke and Mirrors, by Tanya Huff. An incestuous ghost pair, kind of in the background.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

River/Simon only edged out Ed/Al because a) I got so sick of people talking about it, including the creators, and b) Al may be a little kid in a metal suit, but he's not severely mentally ill.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

None of the above: I cannot deal with any kind of incest, fictional or no. I almost had to quit watching "Kokoro Library" over that one scene, and it was nothing. Clearly I'm not meant to be part of fandom. :P

[chomiji]

In Hodgell's Kencyrath series, Tori/Jame has potential but she hasn't managed to make it very hot yet.

[auragirl.livejournal.com]

I didn't take the poll because I don't know who most of the characters are, unfortunately.

Was kind of amused that you listed Ed/Al under the squick category but nowhere else, when that's one of my favorite incest pairings. Basically I pretty much agree with everything that's written in the Ship Manifesto someone wrote for them ages ago.

TL;DR, the emotions between them are incredibly intense, they're completely alone in the world, they're socially inept (Ed especially), co-dependant, living entirely for the sake of each other, etc. etc. It's a kind of devotion that could be creepy except neither character becomes a punching bag for the other - both Ed and Al will still bitchslap (sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically..) each other when they're upset enough.

I wonder why it squicks some people so bad, really - especially since Al doesn't even have a body so 99% of the time the relationship can't even be physical, only emotional...and even if it were physical, they're both boys, so one of people's number one squicks about incest (OMG screwed up incest babies!) can't happen...

In all honesty most of the time I like to imagine them living happilly and asexually ever after as crazy old hermits, studying and reading and avoiding the rest of society. Probably with about a million pet cats.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Please don't take any of this as me judging you for having an incest ship, just explaining where some of the squick/objections come from.

As far as it's been studied out in the real world, incestuous relationships generally come from relatives who have been separated, not those who've grown up as family-- Gonou and Kanan from Saiyuki are actually the perfect example of this in fiction, they were raised separately and reunited as adults. So you have to work extra-hard, IMO, to make an incest ship work when they've grown up together. (This is why I sometimes have trouble with Ed and Winry, honestly, especially in the anime.)

So some of the squicking comes from that, and some comes from the frankly horrible fics out there-- which is true of any pairing but for some reason people think of some freaky shit to do with Al's metal body-- and I think some of the squicking comes from the emotional aspects of it honestly. Physical attraction feels more irrational to us than emotional attraction, so having brothers-- on a purely emotional level-- rather fuck each other is doubly weird.

And the other thing is what makes incest so taboo; we're trained to hold those family ties as sacred, so the very strength of their bonds makes people extra-squicked when they're violated.

I can sort of see them as crazy hermits with multiple cats.