Talk:Pseudo-Incest

List of edge case ships?

I've been going back and forth all afternoon on including a section about "edge case" or "are they/aren't they" ships. Earlier I included Barry Allen/Iris West in the list of examples, but it doesn't feel quite right: they were raised together from age 11, but later get married in canon - they clearly don't consider each other family. The other ships mentioned in the discussion quotes are the same: Jessica/Trish (Jessica is taken in by Trish's family as a teenager), Kara/Alex (a ship with 1200 works, of which only about 80 are tagged "peudo-incest," but also as far as a cursory google could tell me, the media keeps calling them "the Danvers sisters.") Should they go in the main list or not? Because that feels like making a judgement call about what is or isn't, which is obviously controversial in many fandoms.

Or maybe the name of the example lists could be edited to something less categorical? Idk, what do others think? --Greedy dancer (talk) 19:28, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Questions about family and blood ties are complicated. We have examples of people being raised together from childhood who are not seen as siblings, as they were never treated that way. An example is, as far as I know is Wuthering Heights and as you said yourself Barry and Iris. Thor and Loki were raised as siblings, only discovered the truth about their origin as adults, and Thor often denies the correlations with Loki, always saying he was adopted -- as if stealing a baby from your people was adoption. What Thor does seems to be a way of undermining the emotional ties that brought them together, but we all know that he suffered from the loss of Loki. So I think the right thing would be to make a separation to better explain the pseudo-incest. In Brazil, some use the term also when there are possible mentions of incest but it does not really occur, or when it is believed that a character may be related but in the future may become revealed that no. An example would be Liz and Red from The Blacklist -- maybe? -- since for a long time their relationship was speculated before the planned meeting that started the plot -- Ellakbhesse (talk) 19:42, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, it's obviously a very tricky topic! What you're saying at the end (when it seems like it might be incest but is not) is apparently called fakecest - I just learnt that today while editing this page :p For example in Veronica Mars, there was a storyline where for a couple of episodes, the heroine thinks her boyfriend might be her half-brother, but it turns out that he isn't.

My question is, should there be two lists on the page -- definitely pseudo-incest (I think there's no question Thor/Loki would fall on that side, since they were raised as siblings/believed each other to be siblings and found in adulthood they weren't, as you said) and controversially pseudo-incest (like the examples of Jessica and Trish from Jessica Jones or the witchers who are more like kids who went to abusive boarding school together, IMO), or should we keep it to one list, but change the name of the list to include ships that *are* and ships that *are sometimes called* pseudo-incest, together? --Greedy dancer (talk) 20:48, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Greedy dancer I added the info that fakecest is coined to differentiate between real pseudcest and that implied but not confirmed. So I think with that we could cite several pairings read as pseudcest but that might fit better in fakecest without any major problems. Let's leave the section for shipping and create subsections in it. What do you think? -- Ellakbhesse (talk) 20:57, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

We should create the two lists as you said -- Ellakbhesse (talk) 21:00, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Actually, the more I think about it, the less comfortable I am with the two lists idea. I don't want to be the arbiter of what is and isn't "really" pseudo-incest, and I think basically many ships on this page could be argued to go on either list depending on point of view. I think finding a less definitive section title would save us a lot of trouble, but I can't find a short enough way of saying it. I think in the meantime I'll just add a sentence that explains that these are ships which most people agree are PI and also includes ships whose inclusion under the label are more controversial. --Greedy dancer (talk) 21:24, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Greedy dancer I agree with you. I would like to add an addendum to putting the controversy section before the peers section. And introduce your line about some of them not being fully accepted as pseudcest -- Ellakbhesse (talk) 21:29, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea Greedy Dancer. Whether a ship is pseudo incest or not is rather subjective, and fandom's can change their mind over time. There were definitely pseudo incest discussions in early Flash fandom around Barry/Iris. But then the parts of fandom that were not involved in ship wars began to really like the couple - to the point that there are a lot of newish OT3 ships because writers just didn't want to break up Barry and Iris. (I know nothing about the other examples you mentioned above) --Auntags (talk) 20:08, 22 September 2021 (UTC)