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alt title(s): Sibling Incest
I can vouch that [those games] are a result of fantasies by people who don't actually have a younger sister. — Sasahara (setting the record straight), Genshiken
Son of God or son of man, you can't fuck your sister and expect much good to come of it.
Nothing adds that certain je ne sais quoi to a storyline like a romantic or sexual attraction between siblings. Most of the time it may be merely implied, but sometimes it's laid out right in the open for the viewer to see. Its presence in a story usually adds a great deal of emotional intensity.
Frequently actual incest is avoided through the device of siblings who aren't really — they're fostered, or step-sibs, or adopted. Thus, while in arbitrary terms of relationship they may be brother or sister, in "true" terms of blood they are not, and may pursue their chosen target with relative impunity. Often it's just an extreme version of the Unlucky Childhood Friend setup; male and female characters who normally couldn't cohabitate or possibly even interact normally with each other are 'forced' to but meet with an arbitrary contrivance preventing them from developing past it. The only difference being the audience is more likely to accept the latter contrivance as believable.
Many sociologists believe that the instinctual aversion to incest is caused by familiarity and growing up in proximity rather than some sort of recognition of heritage (the Westermarck effect ). Many close tribal and small village communities marry outside of the tribe or village because of this. This would also explain why brother-sister incest was possible among Egyptian royals (where the girls were raised separately from the boys and didn't even meet until after puberty), while some European royal families such as the Valois faced extinction because the king and queen couldn't bear to touch each other - not because they were that closely related, but because they'd been brought up together since early childhood and thought of each other as siblings.
Although the Japanese have just as much of an incest taboo as any other culture, there does not seem to be any automatic assumption of tragedy surrounding incestuous relationships in anime, as there would be in most Western productions. It may be shown as sad, improper, and/or perhaps even reprehensible, but participants are no more likely to come out to a bad end than any other characters in the story. A supposed Japanese legend which states that star-crossed lovers are reborn as siblings probably has something to do with it as well.
It is also very common in Japanese works, at least, to see a girl address a boy she's interested in as onii-sama, the ultra-respectful form of... 'big brother'. For example, in Mai-HiME, Munakata Shiho addresses Tate Yuuichi in exactly this way, and harbors an obsessive desire for him that leads to some fairly serious jealousy of her rival (Tokiha Mai). This is also a common trope of bishoujo games. Of course, this is more a Japanese language trope; onii-sama or onee-sama ("big sister") is a fairly standard thing to call someone older than you that you respect.
Compare Incest Is Relative, Only Child Syndrome. See also Creepy Twins, Twincest, Not Blood Siblings, Kissing Cousins, Big Brother Complex.
Contrast with Parental Incest, where the parent/child power dynamics can make it even Squicker.
Needless to say, doesn't help the Like Brother And Sister argument at all.
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Examples
Comics
- Pietro/Quicksilver, of the Marvel Universe, is extremely protective of his sister, Wanda/the Scarlet Witch, and their unusual relationship is a little more suggestive in the revamped Ultimate Marvel.
- Forget "little more suggestive". In the first issue of Ultimates 3, it's stated outright:
Wasp: You don't get it, Mister Rogers, do you? They love each other. Captain America: Of course they do. They're brother and sister. Wasp: No. It's more than that. They're in love. Captain America: But... they are brother and sister. Hawkeye: Yep. And if you think we've got problems with that Tony Stark sex video, just wait until somebody in the media figures them out.
- Given the horribly abusive and manipulative childhood their father put them through, it's not actually too psychologically unrealistic that they'd turn to each other for "comfort and joy". Amazing as it seems, the mainstream Marvel Universe versions (orphaned twice, victims of prejudice, the emotional mindfuck of Multiple Choice Past, finding out your real dad is your old Bad Boss, losing your first and second families, and finally being driven insane) had the better lives...
- Of note are the characters Wiccan (a magic-user) and Speed (a speedster) from the Young Avengers. They're supposed to be the result of Wanda making herself pregnant with demon magic when she was with the Vision, but the fact that the boys are unsure of who their father is and that Speed somehow takes after his uncle could be seen to have implications of this.
- Preacher has two families that indulge in incest, both of whom end up with deformed children: Jesse's childhood friend, Billy-Bob, only has one eye, while the inbred children of Jesus Christ are mentally retarded. The latter was intentional, as they were trying to keep the bloodline of Christ "pure". Since it's been two thousand years, that's a lot of inbred Jesus generations. Herr Starr comments on this by saying "Son of God or son of man...you can't fuck your sister and expect much good to come of it."
- Top Ten has Smax and Rexa, which attempts to justify it by saying they're probably the only two half-ogres in existence, thanks to their unlikely conception. Smax is squicked by the idea, Rexa isn't. He gets over it. It's implied that because their home universe is governed by the laws of fairy tales and myth, the taboo doesn't really exist, and Smax is just being a Woobie.
- In a later issue of Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil that Men Do, it was revealed that Francis Klum who later becomes Mysterio had been repeatedly raped over the course of his life by his older brother.
- Averted in Y The Last Man where Yorick describes his relationship with his sister Hero as being "Like Luke and Leia...but without the French kissing."
- Though everyone in the series lie about everything else. . .
- Ragdoll of the Secret Six occasionally mentions his relationship with his sister- among other activities, French kissing and prom night.
- Sister/sister incest occurs in the XXXenophile story "The Monster Under the Bed".
- X-men villains the Strucker Twins were always...er...oddly close. Close enough that when Andrea died, brother Andreas kind of went insane, wrapped the hilt of his sword in her flesh (their powers required physical contact between each other), and spent about a year running around like a maniac, demanding of everyone in sight that they revive her.
- In Grendel, Orion Assante had a lifelong consensual BSI relationship with his two sisters, who were twins. It's implied that in this series' alternate future, fear of HIV infection had so curtailed sexual relations with strangers that getting it on with one's relatives — whom, at least, one could trust not to be infected — had become grudgingly tolerated by society, provided no pregnancies resulted.
- When an alternate version of Heroes Reborn universe's Rikki Barnes is stranded in the mainline Marvel Universe, she meets John Barnes, an alternate version of her brother. Unlike her real brother, who was a criminal and a rather unpleasant person in general, MU!John was kind and helpful. Seeing this a chance to have the kind of caring brother-sister relationship she never had with her real brother, Rikki befriended John. Unfortunately, this John never had a sister, and he misinterpreted Rikki's intentions. He eventually tried to kiss her. When the shocked Rikki tries to tell him that she couldn't love him that way, John doesn't take it well. At all.
- Tomboy, a short-lived heroine from the tail end of the Golden Age, winds up skirting this trope when her younger brother develops a crush on her costumed persona. Thankfully, nothing really came of it.
- Sometimes used as a substitute for Parental Incest in fairy tales, such as Penta of the Chopped-Off Hands.
Fan Works
Music
- The Kate Bush song "The Kick Inside".
- Not uncommon as a theme in folk songs either; "Sheath & Knife" probably being one most easily listened to at the moment. Example modern lyrics.
- Rammstein's song "Spiel Mit Mir" is written from the point of view of a girl who is trying to get her brother to have sex with her. With increasingly shouty, intense singing from Till Lindemann. So Yeah.
Mythology
- In many versions of the Arthurian mythos, Morgause is Arthur's half-sister. Their son and nephew, Mordred, eventually destroys Arthur's kingdom.
- In Norse Mythology, marriage and breeding between brother and sister were common amongst the Vanir before their alliance with the Æsir. Freyja and Freyr being a prominent example.
- In fact, almost by necessity most creation myths involve this, particularly among gods and titans like Zeus and Hera, and their grandparents Earth and Sky — who were mother and son too, technically.
- The whole pantheon is filled with incest of just about every conceivable combination. Brother-Sister Incest is probably the least strange of it.
- Averted in the Rigveda. Twins Yami and Yama are the first created mortals, and Yami attempts to seduce Yama so they may continue the human race. Yama refuses on the grounds that she's his sister so that's just wrong.
- In ancient Hawaiian myth, the divine couple who gave birth to the Hawaiian islands were either siblings or half-siblings. They also had a daughter who grew up to be so beautiful that her father begun a relationship with her and fathered two more kids. This became the basis for a practice known as pi'o, intentional incestuous mating amongst the ruling class. Extensive genealogies were kept in order to produce the most inbred (and thus, godly) chiefs possible. The commoners were forbidden to do this out of fears that they would start producing children with chieflike levels of mana.
- In Greek mythology, Byblis falls in love with her brother Caunus, and defends their relationship by pointing out how many immortals have had incestous relationships. Their story was later retold by Ovid.
- Said incestuous relations between immortals include, but are not limited to: Cronus, the leader of the Titans, marrying his sister Rhea; and their son and daughter, Zeus and Hera, who married each other after Zeus offed and succeeded Cronus.
- Alchemy has many incest symbols, especially the hierosgamos or coniunctio ("sacred marriage" or "union"), a chemical wedding of male and female, brother and sister. The rebis is often shown as an incestuous brother and sister, portrayed as a union of Sol and Luna, sun and moon.
- Egyptian mythology: Isis and Osiris, Nephthys and Set. In some versions of the mythos, Isis gives birth to reincarnations of herself and her husband who mate even before birth - may sound icky at first, but this is in all probability a fertility myth inspired by the constant rebirth of plants and harvest.
Pro Wrestling
- Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment has been trying to do an incest storyline going all the way back to 1999, when Ken Shamrock was supposed to be in love with his Kayfabe sister (Shamrock refused). Then Vince tried to have an incest storyline between himself and Stephanie (she refused); he countered by replacing himself with his son Shane (she refused again). He finally got his incest storyline between Paul Burchill and his Kayfabe sister Katie Lea. Note that his inability to get an incest story actually going didn't prevent him from alluding to such things.
- In an unlikely turn of events, they accepted, but the audience refused. You just can't win.
- Which is as it should be.
Religion
- In the book of Genesis, Eve was made from Adam's rib, so unless God worked some additional magic, they were brother/sister in a cloning sense. The book doesn't tell us where Cain and Seth's wives come from, but Adam and Eve are the only established source, so it's probably supposed to be a common sense conclusion. Since humanity is still young and vital, it's a case of Incest Is Relative until more careful selection is possible or even necessary. But fifteen hundred (and change) years later, the punitive Great Flood leaves only four married couples alive — three of the men are brothers, and the fourth couple are their parents. The following children would have no one to marry but their cousins or siblings. As Genesis also claims that people lived an average of 400 years back in those days, the much shorter lifespans following the Flood can be taken as a result of that tragically narrowed gene pool. This is all consistent with the Bible's theme of Gotterdammerung as a consequence of man's pride leading to repeated falls.
- Later, Abram and Sarai, who would still later be called Abraham and Sarah. Abram asked Sarai to use this fact so he wouldn't be killed over her. She agreed, and they went down to Egypt. The Pharaoh at the time had this lovely 65-year-old taken to his house, and the Pharaoh and his house were subsequently stricken with great plagues. Upon learning that Abram had not told him the important fact that she was his wife, he told Avram off and sent them away. Fast forward twenty-five years, and they went down to Gerar, still planning the same omission. Abimelech took her, and learned from a vision that she was Abraham's wife, and that Abimelech would die if he didn't give her back. He did, but asked Abraham what could have possessed him to omit such an important detail. He explained his reasoning, but also that she was, in fact, his sister from another mother, but from the same father. He let them live there and gave them stuff, and Abraham prayed and the wombs of Abimelech's house were reopened from being stopped up. (Bet that experience made him wary when second cousins Isaac and Rebekah came into town with the same story...)
- In Samuel I, Amnon son of David, falls for his half-sister Tamar. He eventually rapes her.
- Actually, Tamar was a convert, so according to Jewish law they were not technically related (when someone converts to Judiasm, all family ties are dissolved). This is not to say that there is no Squick.
Tabletop Games
- In Deadlands, the Whateley family tree seems to drop nothing but bad apples. Part of the reason for this is the "selective breeding" instituted by the clan's otherworldly patron. Most of the residents of Gomorra, California can't figure out exactly what the relationship is between Nicodemus and Delores Whateley. Some think they're siblings. Some think they're married. Both are right. Squick. (Bonus prize: reading the Whateley Family Bible, complete with a family tree in the front, has driven some folks insane.)
- In the Ravenloft supplement Dark Tales & Disturbing Legends, a highborn woman magically transforms herself into the guise of her brother's bride so he won't "pollute" their bloodline with a commoner wife. This being Ravenloft, the brother has his own twisted plans, so her deceit comes back to bite her.
- In the Dungeons And Dragons 3.5 manual Exemplars Of Evil, among the featured villains are the Tolstoff siblings, Edgar (an insane cancer mage) and Katharin (a seductrive enchantress), who serve an Eldritch Abomination known as Kyuss and, more concretely, their Sealed Evil In A Can grandfather who promised them to protect their forbidden love if they could help him out of his confinement. Their desperate love for each other would make them pitiable and somewhat sympathetic, if the extremes they are willing to sink to didn't send them straight to Complete Monster territory.
Theater
- Pre-television example: Wagner's opera Die Walküre ("The Valkyrie", premiered in 1870), second of four operas in his Ring Cycle, involving siblings Siegmund and Sieglinde. Siegfried, the hero of the third and fourth operas in the cycle, is their child. This case is perhaps different from both the anime versions as well as most western versions. Though their love does end in tragedy, the tragedy is due to the fact that Sieglinde is already married to someone else, and not particularly associated with the fact that the Siegmund-Sieglinde relationship is incestuous.
- Of course, as the immortal Anna Russell pointed out, Wotan's enthusiastic and widespread adultery means that nearly every relationship in the Ring cycle is to some degree incestuous: Siegfried only ever meets one woman who's not his aunt. But that's the beauty of Grand Opera: you can do anything, so long as you sing it!
- This was a major theme in "revenge tragedies" of the 1600s, which basically aimed to contain as much violence and as many illicit relationships as they could. In The Duchess Of Malfi for example, Duke Ferdinand has obsessive subconscious feelings for his sister, the titular character, which he never fully realises and eventually drive him insane. Cheerful stuff.
- The Courier's Tragedy, a fictional "ill, ill Jacobean revenge play" featured in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, has a fair amount of this among the villains.
- Of course we can't forget Tis Pity She's a Whore (another 1600s drama)! Annabella and Giovanni, not having seen one another since they were young, fight their attraction and seem to have a good deal of wangst over it for a while...but only for a while.
- John Ford, the author of Tis Pity seems to have been mildly fascinated with the concept: in The Broken Heart, Ithocles forcibly marries his sister Penthea to the insanely jealous Bassanes, who soon suspects her of cheating on him with everyone, including, eventually, Ithocles himself. They're not doing it, (any more than Ophelia and Laertes, jeez...) but Ithocles IS very controlling of Penthea's sexuality...
- Some interpretations of Hamlet will portray Ophelia and Laertes as either: A) lusting after one another, or B) already sleeping with one another. This is mostly common in psychoanalytic interpretations of the play, which also portray Hamlet as having an Oedipus Complex.
- Death of a Salesman. Biff and Happy seem... closer than most brothers.
- In the recent Stephen Sondheim musical Road Show, the subtext between Addison and Wilson Mizner just barely manages to remain "sub". Sharing a sleeping bag in the middle of an Alaska blizzard? Well, it's cold out there (though that doesn't explain the snuggling). Singing about "Brotherly Love" while in said sleeping bag? That's perfectly innocent and only the most dirty-minded spectator would read anything sexual into it. But when Wilson says in the middle of a fight with Addison "How about a farewell kiss from your brother?" and tries to kiss him on the mouth... and when he seems distinctly jealous of Addison's boyfriend... and when the climax of the show turns on Addison telling Wilson to get out of his life because he's ruined everything, to which Wilson nonchalantly responds "You don't want me to go. You love me." and Addison bursts out: "All right! I love you! Does that make us even?"... well, you know what they say: it's only subtext if it's subtle.
- Lawrence and Joanna Brown in Lanford Wilson's one act play Home Free. The fact that they're incestuous siblings is actually one of the less worrisome things about their relationship.
- In Bat Boy: the Musical, this trope plays a major role when it is revealed that Edgar and Shelley, who have just confessed their love for each other and had sex, are fraternal twins.
- In Sam Shepard's Fool For Love, the main characters are on-again/off-again lovers who are ultimately revealed to be half-siblings.
- In the Australian play The Club, Geoff reveals to a member of his team's committee that he slept with his double-amputee sister and then his mother, resulting in his father shooting himself immediately afterwards. The squick is slightly reduced by the reveal that this story was a complete lie, in spite of being partly shown in a fake flashback.
- Tom and Laura seem a bit too into each other in The Glass Menagerie. And then later Jim implies he sees Laura as a sister...then slow dances with and kisses her. The revival especially hinted at this, which is openly mocked here
Web Comics
Web Original
- The topic of sister/sister incest is the premise of the cynical if romantically portrayed Web Serial Novel Sisters. (Later chapters Not Safe For Work.)
- That same website also has Becka the Beast, which features a weird variant: Gia and Becka fall in love, but circumstances involving Becka's abusive father force Gia's father to adopt Becka.
- It appears however that the author converted to Christianity recently and has removed the stories.
- This has cropped up in Survival of the Fittest a couple of times (although in one case this was Twincest). Matthias Kovalenko of V2 was scarily obssessed with his sister Jodeen. (fortunately, she never made it onto the island). Nothing explicit ever occurs, but from Matthias' thoughts, most get the impression it isn't just brotherly concern.
- Fortunately averted in Broken Saints: Shandala and Gabriel look like they might be bonding romantically prior to Tui Jr's death, but it is cut mercifully short. This is especially creepy when you realize Gabriel knows Shandala is his sister.
- In the Forest Tales (Chakona Space) setting, there are a number of examples of this (as well as some Parental Incest) between members of various genetically-engineered species such as chakats and foxtaurs. Hermaphrodite chakat sisters Forestwalker and Goldfur enjoy recreational sex, and foxtaur brother and sister Garrek and Malena are also mated. (This is handwaved with the explanation that they have been genetically engineered to eliminate the sorts of diseases and conditions that inbreeding can produce in humans, and as created species do not share the exact same moral squick factors as their creators.)
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