Slashcast Metachat: Incest

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Slashcast Metachat: Incest
Interviewer:	charlottschaos (Char)
Interviewee:	phaballa and katho
Date(s):	July 15, 2006
Medium:	online transcript, podcast
Fandom(s):
External Links:	online transcript, Archived version
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Slashcast Metachat: Incest is a chat with phaballa and katho. charlotteschaos is the interviewer.

It is a podcast at Slashcast and includes an online transcript.

For more in this series, see Slashcast Interview Series.

Excerpts

Phaballa: Yea, I kind of think that, in my mind, incest really is kind of any close blood relation, not- a lot of people tend to think of it as just like mother, you know, mother-, father/children or brothers and sisters. But to me, first cousins, I mean, aunt or uncles and nieces or whatever. I mean, I kind of go with the V.C. Andrews version of incest.

Char: Yea, well, you know, there is that creepy uncle syndrome, at least in the US. Kath, do you define it a little differently?

Kath: Well, I think, mostly I care about sibling incest, so even though I would consider parent/child fic incest fic and grandparent/grandchild fic incest fic, and I'd probably go as far as to say that aunt and niece/nephew would be incest fic, but I don't consider first cousin incest fic just 'cause, I dunno, there just doesn't seem to be the same...

Kath: Well, for me it's kind of how they deal with it being dirty, wrong, bad. I don't really want to read a fic where they just don't mention that they're siblings, or they're related. The fact is, why would I even bother reading when I could go read some non-incest pairing. I want to read fic where there's some inherent problem in the relationship, but I don't want that problem to be they secretly really hate each other or Romeo and Juliet. I just take that to the extreme where their families don't hate each other, nobody really hates anybody, they're just technically not allowed to be together and everybody’s gonna think that they're insane and crazy for doing it and they're both like, "Oh noes, this is so wrong!" Because Romeo and Juliet, you can say, "Oh, this is our family being stupid," but when you fall in love with your sister, it's a little hard to say...

Phaballa: It's almost like- it almost sounds like when people first get into slash, actually. Three or four years ago when I started reading slash, it was like, "Oh my gosh, you know. Gay people. Ooo." I wanted it to be like- I wanted them to address it. It was more like a coming of age thing, I wanted to read that. And now I don't really care. If they're going to be gay that's fine and I'll just accept it, that they never talk about it.

Char: Well in my view, that's really what I would want from an incest fic. If I'm going to read it, if I'm going to deal with the taboos, I want to really take the gravity of the situation in hand, but I know there is a lot of shippyness, particularly like with Malfoycest, where, you know, you can read it and it seems perfectly fine between the characters that, "This is what my father did to me and I do to you," and on down the line.

Phaballa: At least when I've talked about this with people before, they're okay with it, or they even prefer things like that in fic because it's fic and these people are fictional and- So it doesn't matter if you are writing a fic about, you know, Malfoycest or whatever, because they're not real and no one's getting hurt when you write it. Although, to that I would say, if you're writing a fic where it's like, this is okay and it's enjoyable on all parts and there's no, like, there's none of that inevitable psychological issue or whatever, to me that's kind of, I don't know, do we, like, have a duty as writers to, I don't know, try to say something about morality or abuse, you know...

Char: What draws me to writing it, more than reading it because I don't read it a whole lot, and I don't write it a whole lot either, actually, is usually- for me, a lot of my writing is very therapeutic, you know. Some of my writing- a lot of my writing's very cracky and just sort of me venting out, feeling goofy or whatever. And then other times, there's just been situations in life where a lot of- a lot of things that are sort of power play come into effect. And while I don't want to write specifically about what has happened in my particular life, sometimes there are things that you can identify with in the form of a power play whether it's- whether you're dealing with chan or incest or the after effects. The latest one that I did, which is mostly Snape/Draco, actually deals more with the after effects of Malfoycest, because I didn't really want to necessarily get into that, but more into what it does later, as a child, when you realize that your life was irrevocably screwed up by what happened because you accepted it because you didn't understand what you were accepting when you accepted it, and sort of who you are at that point and what choices you can make to try to take your life back in some aspects, because he needs Snape to help him with this and there's going to be- it's not a sweet romance, we'll just say.

Phaballa: And on the other hand, like, a lot people who I've talked to who do read a lot of incest, especially because I'm very involved in Supernatural right now, which is two brothers, and it's, I mean, the whole fandom is RPS and incest, and that's it. A lot of people who I've talked to who are really into the incest are like, well, part of it is the idea of siblings, really. It's more- siblings and that they're- there's like this sense of them being so close and like, just, like, closer than you can ever be with anyone else and this is the only person who knows you that well, or whatever. And someone I think told me, compared it actually to popslash, which I really didn't get, but you spend so much time with one person, you know, or like, and you're just- I don't know. It's something about them being the only one who can ever know you that well.