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

[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.

[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.

[mabus101.livejournal.com]

In all honesty, I find the power relationship squick...strange. (Which is not to say I advocate it...just that I find it unsquicky.) To make a probably unhelpful analogy--Xander/Faith is physically a power imbalance; we know for a fact that she's capable of holding him down and having her way with him, if she wants. But as far as I know, most people are unsquicked by the earlier scene between the two in "The Zeppo". Likewise, legal status aside for the moment, the mere existence of a social power differential between two lovers leaves me unbothered; there would have to be something like orders given before I would be disturbed by it.

Can I see the difficulty from a legal standpoint? I suppose. But it's something that would never have occurred to me on my own.

[deird1]

I think Connor/Justine is potentially incest-squicky, given that Justine was planning on adopting him...

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

It's more to do with power relationships and manipulation than fear of inbreeding

This is definitely it for me. Squickiness remains even when the parties aren't related when the power balance is too uneven. Therefore, Xander/Dawn when she's in high school is Not Good At All, but when she's a confident young woman, Do Whatchoo Wanna Do. I struggled with the Giles/Faith combo, because it really depends on when. brutti_ma_buoni has made me a believer in post-Chosen Faith/Giles, but if he had hit on her when she first showed up (or vice versa, more likely), that would have been Not Good.

[deird1]

Agreed - but I'd still describe Buffy/Giles and Dawn/Tara as "pretty much incest". There's a definite parent/child thing there, not just cross-generational.