I think the issue stems from the description saying that subtext can appear even if it’s unintentional/accidental on part of creators, leading to a lot more subjectiveness and overlap with Platonic Life-Partners and Incest Yay Shipping.
It might be having the same problems that required Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading's clean up. A lot of entries (including the Frozen one) do read as "this character is more focused on a family member than their friends or love interest" or "this character’s relationship to their relative is given the same weight as a romantic love interest would have". Does that count for incest subtext or is it just "well only romantic-(and)-sexual partners are socially allowed to be the most important in someone's life, therefore there must be something romantic/sexual here too"?
I guess the question is does the subtext have to be intentional/possible considering the audience, and is it required to be sexual incest? Is it enough just for the characters to be emotionally "too" close for family?
Maybe this could use a cleanup or a trip to TRS.
I do think the Finding Nemo entry is misuse though and wouldn’t mind it being deleted.
I think someone needs to go through these and remove the entries that don't properly fit. A lot of these are truly incest subtext, but then there's also a lot where the only subtext is what the person who submitted the entry CHOSE to see, and is not actually there. Some people can't seem to tell the difference between incest subtext and genuine familial closeness (such as with the Tams in Firefly, or the sisters in Charmed).
Also, at least one of the entries (possibly more, I didn't read them all), Bates Motel, isn't subtext, it's just plain text. The relationship between Norman and his mother is the driving force behind the whole franchise. But I'm not sure if there's another page where it properly belongs. Maybe there should be a page, or a subheading on this one, called "Not So Subtext"?
Hide / Show Replies
About the second thing Parental Incest is a trope i think when the incest is actually there.
Is there a particular reason why Firefly's Tam siblings are nowhere to be found? Because it seems like a pretty clear case, seeing as they're REALLY close, River watched him have sex with Kaylee and she once joked that they should get married, as well as pretended to be pregnant with his baby, in a deleted scene. I ask this because TV Tropes is about 20% Joss Whedon fansite (which is a good proportion IMO), so I can't see how this fairly obvious example wasn't mentioned unless this happened due to deletions and controversy.
Hide / Show Replies
The main thing here is the writers don't see it as such. Only real support for this is that pregnancy/marriage -deleted scene, but Simon is is thoroughly disgusted at the thought and was meant to underline that River is a complete Cloud Cuckoo Lander when she's not lucid. So yes they are extremely close, but the incestious subtext never truly materializes as mutual.
in The Originals Klaus and Rebekah have such a chemistry and subtext is so heavy that it's basically, a text. A thousand years of intense love-hate relationship and counting. Klaus killed almost all of his sister's suitors, he's extremely territorial and possessive of her, always acts like a jealous lover. They often get mistaken for lovers, and actually consider themselves a pair. There's been many confessions of love, and they engage in sexually charged sadistic activities together, such as torture and feeding on humans, and it's been stated on the show that such activities are erotic for vampires. So they're basically canon.
But I'm a fucking raspberry!
GTA San Andreas also has one. Carl's sister, Kendl, is dating Cesar, a guy from a rival street gang. When Kendl hugs Cesar, Carl pushes him away, at which Cesar replies "Chill out, holmes, you're acting like she's your woman, eh!"
Edited by 70.33.253.42 Romanian student with leukemia. Casual troper prone to long Wiki Walks.
Wasn't there an subtext of incest in "Lemon Incest"...or maybe that was just outright? (For the record, it's a song by Sergei Gainsbourg and his daughter...You Be The Judge.
Edited by Jbadder
MagBas
- Ben and Gwen from Ben 10 have infamous amounts of subtext applied to them in Canon, despite their being cousins.
- In the original pitch, Gwen was an unrelated classmate of Ben's. The romantic subtext apparently just never got removed after she was retooled into being his cousin instead.
- Word of God states the reason they were giving love interests in the new series was to dismiss all the Cousin Couple fandom.
"The writers teasing with incestuous subtext in a story. " the 'writers' not the fans seeing incestous subtext
I have issues with some of these pages examples. There's examples here which are absolutely a part of the text (such as the Inappropriate Sister episode of Friends or the occasional moments between Dennis & Dee in IASIP) but there's other stuff in here which is 100% fan-readings and fall under different tropes, examples off the top of my head: - While Anna and Elsa in Frozen have an intense bond there's no way Disney actually intended to imply Lesbian Incest. Not saying accidental subtext doesn't happen but it's worth questioning if fans are just looking through their relationship through shipping goggles and how unusual most of their interactions would be among real-life siblings. - the trivia about Clownfish biology isn't *subtext* in Finding Nemo. It's an interesting real world phenomenon that has disturbing implications when applied to a children's film but that's not the same thing as subtext within a work.
Hide / Show Replies