Snowflake Challenge - Day 8 - The Incest Poll

[flo_nelja]

Hello! This is a post about fictional incest, please don't open it if it squicks you!
Mostly I'm curious about which "borderline" incest situations count as incest ships to you.

By taking this poll, you consent that it is about fictional situations and that "it is incest" absolutely not implies that it's wrong writing about it.

Poll #28245 Does this count as incest?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

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First Cousins

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Yes
6 (37.5%)

No
6 (37.5%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
4 (25.0%)

Second cousins or more (from the same important, close-knit family)

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Yes
4 (25.0%)

No
10 (62.5%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
2 (12.5%)

Sworn siblings

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Yes
2 (12.5%)

No
11 (68.8%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
3 (18.8%)

Not blood related, their respective parents married when they were tiny

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Yes
8 (50.0%)

No
3 (18.8%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
5 (31.2%)

Not blood related, their respective parents married when they were teens

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
10 (66.7%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
5 (33.3%)

Not blood related, their respective parents married when they were adult

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
15 (93.8%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
1 (6.2%)

Legally adopted siblings, raised together

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Yes
10 (62.5%)

No
3 (18.8%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
3 (18.8%)

Legally adopted siblings, not raised together (adult adoption or estrangement)

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
12 (75.0%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
4 (25.0%)

Parent figure/child figure, no legal adoption

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Yes
7 (43.8%)

No
3 (18.8%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
6 (37.5%)

Raised together with clear acknowledgement one person is the child of the family and the other a ward

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Yes
5 (31.2%)

No
5 (31.2%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
6 (37.5%)

In-laws - Dating sibling's spouse / spouse's sibling

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
16 (100.0%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
0 (0.0%)

In-laws - Dating kid's spouse / spouse's parent

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
16 (100.0%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
0 (0.0%)

In-laws - Dating parent's spouse / spouse's child

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Yes
1 (6.2%)

No
13 (81.2%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
2 (12.5%)

Selfcest (time travel)

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Yes
3 (18.8%)

No
10 (62.5%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
3 (18.8%)

Selfcest (alternate universe)

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Yes
3 (18.8%)

No
11 (68.8%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
2 (12.5%)

Selfcest (cloning)

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Yes
4 (25.0%)

No
8 (50.0%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
4 (25.0%)

Alternate universe version of a family member

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Yes
5 (31.2%)

No
1 (6.2%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
10 (62.5%)

Clone of a family member

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Yes
6 (37.5%)

No
1 (6.2%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
9 (56.2%)

Very close childhood friends (could be labelled "like siblings")

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
15 (93.8%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
1 (6.2%)

Immortal ancestor/mostly human many generations descendant

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Yes
1 (6.2%)

No
13 (81.2%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
2 (12.5%)

Creator/Artificial creation

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Yes
2 (12.5%)

No
9 (56.2%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
5 (31.2%)

Two artificial creations from the same creator

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Yes
1 (6.2%)

No
12 (75.0%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
3 (18.8%)

Anyone/shapeless entity who takes the shape of a family member

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Yes
1 (6.2%)

No
9 (56.2%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
6 (37.5%)

Mentor/Student since childhood

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Yes
1 (6.2%)

No
14 (87.5%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
1 (6.2%)

Poly V where two siblings are dating the same person at the same time

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Yes
1 (6.2%)

No
12 (75.0%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
3 (18.8%)

One blood family and one adopted family of the same person, never met before

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
15 (93.8%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
1 (6.2%)

Schrödinger's siblings (one of them might be an illegitimate member of the family, but no one actually knows)

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Yes
2 (12.5%)

No
4 (25.0%)

It depends (you can elaborate in a comment)
10 (62.5%)

Comments

[kindkit]

Here were my lines:

Blood relationship: yes if it's closer than cousins

Generational: If there's a generational difference it feels more incesty to me. For example, uncle/nephew, even if they're not blood related, is incest in my mind.

Raised together: If the people aren't blood relations but were raised together, it feels like incest to me.

Parental relationships: have to be literally parental, as in one character raised the other. So something like creator/artificial creation could be incest depending on whether the creation was brought up by the creator or was somehow created with a fully adult consciousness. But mentor/student isn't usually incest.


This is making me think of Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram in Mansfield Park. It's not incest (to me) because they're cousins, it's incest because they were raised together and behaved like brother and sister until adulthood.

[flo_nelja]

"Generational: If there's a generational difference it feels more incesty to me. For example, uncle/nephew, even if they're not blood related, is incest in my mind." : Does it change if they're the same age, like it is closest to the cousins situation, or not? Of course genetitally it's still closer than cousins...

"If the people aren't blood relations but were raised together, it feels like incest to me.": Oh I forgot to ask this one. If the characters were raised together, but in an orphanage, not a family, is it incest?

And yeah, it really is a matter of opinion.
I'm thinking of Victor and Elizabeth in Frankenstein, and to me it's incest, but only because they were raised like brother and sister. If the parents were a bit more assholes and had insisted "THIS is our real son and THIS is our charity case", it would be less incesty to me ^^

[kindkit]

Of course genetitally it's still closer than cousins...

I was thinking specifically of uncle/nephew (or uncle/niece, aunt/nephew etc.) who aren't blood related. E.g., someone's mother's sister's husband is their uncle, but he's not their blood relative. If they are blood relatives (e.g. mother's brother) then it's definitely incest regardless of age.

raised together, but in an orphanage, not a family, is it incest?

Hmm, I'd say it depends. If they were raised together from early childhood, then yes. If it's later--say, they meet when they're 10 and are raised together after that, in a non-family situation--then probably not. From what I've read, there is to some extent an innate human aversion to incest, and it kicks in most strongly when people have lived together since the infancy of at least one of them. (I suspect--but this is based on nothing but guesswork--that a family dynamic has more of an inhibiting effect than an orphanage one, which is why I think that stepsiblings raised in one household from the age of say, twelve would be incest, but it wouldn't necessarily be if they were raised in the same orphanage from an equivalent age. If the dynamic of a family isn't there, it doesn't read to me as necessarily incestuous.)