Getting Facts Into Fiction

Jaye Em Edgecliff has a blog, and on that blog wrote about taboos in fiction.

I was actually participating, not just browsing, today on the NaNoWriMo forums and incest was brought up.

Should it be incorporated into a tale?

Yes. And that some media executives won't allow it under their watch means there has been an awful lot of incestuous shipping in works by fans.

Incest.  Calls to mind scenes of brother raping sister.  Of father molesting daughter.  Of mother seduced by son.  Mostly, in today’s society, it is firmly in the public consciousness as a Bad Thing, so you say it and people do lean in the direction of rape and molestation, drugging, slavery, torture.  Even in the V C Andrews book my sister likes so much (no, I haven’t read it and I know it was a series and so am uncertain which title to reference, sorry) where the incest is treated far more consensually and even slightly more romantically … it’s in the face of abuse and isolation.  It’s not so bad, next to everything else going on in the characters’ lives – or so I gather from listening to her go on and on about it.  Even if I’m mistaken, it’s a good point and one someone has probably published.  QED.

Again, we're dealing with two different things, both of which should be written about...

1) abuse/assault and
2) consensual experimentation/sex.

Two very different things, both of which do exist, and both of which need to be addressed in fiction. It is because there is such a difference between those two things that I refer to the second as consanguineous sex or consanguinamory. Young people need to know that the first one is not OK, and the second one is not necessarily a problem."item"'>

Jaye Em Edgecliff has a blog, and on that blog wrote about taboos in fiction.

I was actually participating, not just browsing, today on the NaNoWriMo forums and incest was brought up.

Should it be incorporated into a tale?

Yes. And that some media executives won't allow it under their watch means there has been an awful lot of incestuous shipping in works by fans.

Incest.  Calls to mind scenes of brother raping sister.  Of father molesting daughter.  Of mother seduced by son.  Mostly, in today’s society, it is firmly in the public consciousness as a Bad Thing, so you say it and people do lean in the direction of rape and molestation, drugging, slavery, torture.  Even in the V C Andrews book my sister likes so much (no, I haven’t read it and I know it was a series and so am uncertain which title to reference, sorry) where the incest is treated far more consensually and even slightly more romantically … it’s in the face of abuse and isolation.  It’s not so bad, next to everything else going on in the characters’ lives – or so I gather from listening to her go on and on about it.  Even if I’m mistaken, it’s a good point and one someone has probably published.  QED.

Again, we're dealing with two different things, both of which should be written about...

1) abuse/assault and
2) consensual experimentation/sex.

Two very different things, both of which do exist, and both of which need to be addressed in fiction. It is because there is such a difference between those two things that I refer to the second as consanguineous sex or consanguinamory. Young people need to know that the first one is not OK, and the second one is not necessarily a problem.

Posted in: boundaries,consanguineous,incest,media,stigma