Incesty Pairings

[deird_lj]

So, I come bearing pollage.

I've seen a lot of conversations about fanfic recently, in which people have discussed different pairings and said "That pairing squicks me out. It's... almost incestuous."

And I was wondering which pairings are most likely to strike people that way.


So, under the cut is a poll, full of pairings!
Rate each pairing from 1 (not incestuous in the slightest) to 10 (really really incestuous and squicky).




[Poll #1524132]


Questions? Comments?

Comments

[mabus101.livejournal.com]

You have two identical Buffy/Wesley questions.

I have to admit that I have never seen anything particularly incestuous about pairing Connor with Fred or Cordelia. I understand intellectually why it strikes people that way, but I don't have the same feelings.

I note that, to me, vamp!Willow/Willow is very nearly masturbatory; Fred/Illyria, while it probably shouldn't be, is similar. Therefore I am utterly unsquicked.

Finally, I'm a little surprised that you don't seem to have noticed my latest fic about Illyria, especially since it's at Still Grr. Apologies if you have just been too busy to read or comment; I mention it because I thought you would find it interesting.

[shapinglight]

Mr Gordo/Mr Pointy is disgusting! They share a drawer and everything.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Hmm - interesting. Some of them squick me but for reasons that have nothing to do with the incestuous. I tried to consider only the 'incestuous' as a reason for the squick when answering.

I realise that I am a bit hazy, sometimes, about incest when applied to single sex relationships - after all the taboo is to prevent in-breeding, and this is not going to happen in single sex relationships - and so my response to the Buffy/Dawn thing and the Joyce/Buffy or Joyce/Dawn thing interested me.

I realise that I am not squicked at all by Buffy/Dawn - and only chose a mid-point answer because it is by definition incest (and it wouldn't have mattered to me whether they were real or mystical siblings) - but on a pure 'squick level' poll I would have rated it a 1. However the parent child thing is all wrong to me even if single sex - presumably to do with the level of 'control' the parent would surely exert in such a relationship.

I have concluded that, from a reading fic point, I would be much more likely to read Buffy/Dawn than Giles/Buffy or Giles/Dawn - the relationship is much too parental in G/B, and G/D would also feel as if he was, in some way, taking advantage of her, even if she was,say, 18 to his 50.

Fascinating.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

What about the most overtly canon incest pairing of them all, Angel(us)/Drusilla?

I remember I once had a very long discussion with an idiot who was adamant that Buffy/Joyce, Buffy/Dawn and Dawn/Joyce wasn't incest because it was all women and therefore beautiful whereas incest was just for sickos who want to read about men raping their daughters.

So far I'm the only one who sees anything even remotely incestual about Faith/Robin. Huh. Quoting my own fic:

"Man, for a high school teacher, you sure seem to think you know a lot about Sla..." Her face fell as an idea seemed to hit her. "Oh no. No. Please don't tell me I just fucked a Watcher."

And so he told her how he had come to know about Slayers, how it had shaped his entire life, and why he was here in Sunnydale right now.

At first, she just stared at him. Then she flopped back on the bed with a hollow laugh. "Your mother? Oh yeah, that's what every girl wants to hear right afterwards. Jesus CHRIST, dude, you got issues."

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the duplicate Buffy/Wesley was meant to be Angel/Drusilla? It's the pairing that is conspicuous by its absence.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Hm, found it hard to sort out where incestiness squicks me and where it's other stuff. I don't find Xander/Buffy particuarly incesty but I still find it squicky for a lot of other reasons.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

So far I'm the only one who sees anything even remotely incestual about Faith/Robin.

Robin never told Faith "you remind me of my mother"... though he did say that to Buffy. :-)

But just because someone reminds you of their mother doesn't mean you're committing incest if you sleep with them, unless they really are your mother.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Which is why I said "remote." Maybe it was just so I could get a pun out of Faith calling him "motherfucker" later on. :-)

ETA: but seriously... the guy's entire life has been hung up on the fact that his mother was a Slayer. So what does he do when he meets two Slayers for real? He dates one (and gives her his mother's weapons) and beds the other.

[debris4spike]

Truly brilliant - Especially the last one!!!

btw did you realsie you have Buffy/Wesley in twice?

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

I think cross-generational age squick is a different thing to incest squick. It's more to do with power relationships and manipulation than fear of inbreeding... though I'd argue that the reason most people regard parent/child incest with such particular horror is because it combines the two in a way that sibling incest doesn't.

[debris4spike]

Snap!

I thought that about a few of the pairings - so it was good to re-think in this poll.

[elisi]

Hmmm. Interesting.

Thing is that something like Angel/Connor is very obviously straight up incest - and yet it's a pairing I have read, despite the obvious squick, because their relationship is messed up enough to go there. Joyce/Buffy on the other hand is just *wrong*.

Spike/Dawn is fairly incestuous, yet it's a pairing I like very much, but *only* when it is wrong, if that makes sense. Straight Spike/Dawn does nothing for me. Broken, disturbing Spike/Dawn I'm all over.

So I can't really do the poll, because incest does not necessarily equal squick. (As flake_sake also pointed out...)

[peroxidepirate.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly! To me there's an element of cross-gen squick in Dawn/Giles (whoooo is there), Dawn/Spike, Connor/Justine.... which is there because we last saw Dawn and Connor as teenagers. So it's wrong and disturbing aplenty. But it's not incest.

[peroxidepirate.livejournal.com]

Hm. Apparently it has to be actual technical incest for me to get the incest-squick reaction; everything else is either just fine with me, or squicks for another reason.

Three exceptions:

Connor/Cordelia seems incestuous enough, even though it's not, that it squicks me a lot.

Connor/Jasmine squicks me but Angel/Jasmine doesn't. *shrugs* I know Jasmine is, technically, Connor's daughter -- except insomuch as she's God, so it doesn't work that way -- but their relationship is almost more like mother and son. So Connor/Jasmine is cross-gen incest squick going both directions, like. Angel and Jasmine don't have any kind of relationship, really, and with Jasmine not being human, it doesn't bother me.

Joyce/Spike seems incestuous in retrospect, now that I've seen the entire series and am a Spuffy fan. It's like Spike's her son-in-law. Had I happened across fic for this pairing before I'd seen S6-S7, it probably wouldn't have bothered me.

[me-llamo-nic.livejournal.com]

Buffy/Dawn - Nine. It's incestuous and squicksome, but I'm able to remove that lens and read it anyway.

Connor/Jasmine - Seven. It should be incestuous, but I have trouble categorizing it as such. Jasmine's just 'the big bad' in my head, not really anyone's daughter even though she is...

vamp!Willow/Willow - One. It probably should be, but it's not at all squicksome to me.

Mr. Gordo/Mr. Pointy - Poor Mr. Gordo. =/

ETA: I love the icon you used for this. But...uh...where's the Buffy/Faith question. (Was that maybe what the second Buffy/Wesley was supposed to be?)

[neutralalienist.livejournal.com]

Buffy/Giles is weird to me, because I don't think they quite fit the father/daughter kind of mold, yet at the same time I see something familial. I'd probably read it, though, once Buffy was a truly independent adult.

When it comes to Connor/Cordy I was always more "...er" on her part than his, because she's the one who remembers changing his diapers, not Connor. (I thought his crush was kind of sweet, actually.) If he'd never been taken I think she'd have become a mother figure for him.

Personally, I'm far less squicked out by sibling incest than pairing incest - except for Buffy/Dawn, maybe because Buffy was forced to become a parental figure. Tara/Dawn I'm conflicted on - maybe a few years down the road, if Tara hadn't died.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm so easily squicked.

For Spike/Dawn, that pairing squicks me, but it's not because I see it as incestuous. It's Dawn's young age and then the huge age gap that bother me. I have read one fic with an older Dawn and Spike that I thought worked very well.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

I remember I once had a very long discussion with an idiot who was adamant that Buffy/Joyce, Buffy/Dawn and Dawn/Joyce wasn't incest because it was all women and therefore beautiful whereas incest was just for sickos who want to read about men raping their daughters.

...dude needs to put the porn DOWN.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

I dunno. Lots of guys in real life are hung up on their mother and expect their romantic partners to "be like Mom". Doesn't strike me as incestuous so much as immature.

And, to be fair, a lot of women seek out men who remind them of their father, unconsciously or not.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

His main argument was that since Queen Victoria never bothered making female homosexuality illegal, anything not involving men was officially Not Incest and perfectly socially acceptable since let's face it, most female family members have sex with each other anyway. ...No, I didn't get that connection either.

He also had the annoying habit of writing happy endings for darkfic he didn't like. And he wrote a 20-chapter meta on how sick people are who write character death or Dawn/Xander instead of underage lesbian incest mother-daughter lurrrrv. Fandom is... special. Your icon was pretty much my reaction too.

[neutralalienist.livejournal.com]

The vampires have their very own special sort of incest, I think, though Dru takes it a step further - with both Angelus and Darla, I think.

...Did you ask him his thoughts on male/male incest?

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

True, true. If there were a value between 0 and 1, I'd probably go with that for Robin - I'd say it's more than absolutely nothing, but not enough to be measurable. As in "there's no cannibalism in the Royal Navy, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount." :-)

...I don't know why I'm arguing this so hard.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. I always take my beliefs about sex from Queen Victoria. She was the Dr. Ruth of her day, after all.

perfectly socially acceptable since let's face it, most female family members have sex with each other anyway.

This is where I think he must have been warped by porn. Threesomes involving a guy with a mother/daughter or sister/sister pairing are frightfully common, even in the mainstream stuff. Of course, normal people know porn =/= reality. But some people are stupid.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Dru takes it a step further - with both Angelus and Darla, I think.

Yup. Referring to your lover as "Daddy" is creepy enough even if we didn't know what Angelus did to the woman Drusilla was before he turned her...

Did you ask him his thoughts on male/male incest?

I honestly don't remember, I was busy backing slowly away. :-)

[snickfic]

Like others have said - only a few of these hit my actual hardcore incest squick, and they were pretty much limited to people who were actually related (Buffy/Dawn, Buffy/Joyce, Dawn/Joyce, Angel/Connor).

Whereas Cordelia/Connor squicks me just as bad, but mostly because of the age difference (and partly because I just can't ship Connor with any of the adults, period). Same with Dawn and any of the adults, especially Dawn/Giles. And Spike/Dawn doesn't squick me, I just can't buy it. At all.