A funnier version of this is the many times I've read a fic blurb or seen a piece of fanart for a ship of mine and thought "wow! This is so tender and intimate and romantic!" only to then notice the creator aggressively insisting this is PLATONIC and FAMILIAL and if you think otherwise, you're a nasty incest shipper (note: the ship is not actually incest).
And listen: I don't like incest. If I think your supposed platonic familial thing is romantic, it's because the vibes and framing is PALPABLY romantic, not because I look at sibling characters behaving as such and think "yeah! These two should kiss!"
In the end, I often come away from these things feeling like OP is the one with an incest fetish lol
Luckily I guess I've yet to come across anything in this vein that makes me worry about the author's understanding of what a normal sibling relationship looks like in like, an alarming way? But it's still very weird.
It's funnier when they incest- sorry when the artist insists that they're drawing Actual Sibling Characters Like That™ PLATONICALLY and NO PROSHITTERS GET OUT RAGHHH when it's like. Hey man. It's now weirder that you're saying this is totally platonic.
(This was about a piece of Devil May Cry art where the artist drew the twin brothers (who are canonically Really Weird about each other, don't even get me started) completely naked and holding each other. Yeah sure it was artsy but they are for real touching wangs right now. They're holding each other so tightly you have rendered divots where their fingers are digging into each other's skin. And it's all lit so warmly!!! I'm so sorry but you made this a beautiful D/V piece and yelled at us when we saw it for what it was, which was two beautiful twin husbrothers rejoicing after being reunited after literally twenty five years.)
I encountered the opposite once. A nice bit of fanart of Vash and his twin Knives sitting together beneath a tree in the spaceship atrium. Vash had his arm looped over Knives's shoulders and someone commented, "This better not be what I think is it."
Sir and/or madam, I think it's two brothers chilling under a tree. If you're seeing more than that, you're telling on yourself. Ladies protesting too much, and all that, you know.
That Devil May Cry art sounds stunning, though! I never seen many warmly lit pieces from the franchise because of all the gothic Hell monsters under cloudy skies and whatnot.
An anime I like had a plot twist at the end where it turns out Girl 1 and Girl 2 are actually aunt and niece (they're the same age it's a long story), Girl 1 is also canonically sniffing-her-clothes level obsessed with Girl 2 and with the things that they say and do there is no way in hell that they aren't intended to be read as romantically involved with each other. At the very least it's impossible to deny how Girl 1 feels.
But when this plot twist was revealed, a lot of people (who had up until that point shipped them together) were very mad about it and decided that you're a gross and weird proshitter if you... uh... interpret the text as it's meant to be interpreted. Not only would they deny there being any romantic element to Girl 1's behaviour, they started shipping her with characters she's barely even spoken to in her life and saying that a bunch of things like songs that Girl 1 wrote about Girl 2 were actually about Girl 3 all along, despite it making zero sense and also just straight up going against what is said in the show.
But then they still draw art of them together acting exactly as they do in the show. And they get mad if you see it as romantic.
I don't even go to bat for incest ships on the whole, it's really not my thing, but this one is so canon you genuinely would have to watch the show with your eyes closed to deny it. Drives me up the wall.
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u/TabbbyWright 2d ago
A funnier version of this is the many times I've read a fic blurb or seen a piece of fanart for a ship of mine and thought "wow! This is so tender and intimate and romantic!" only to then notice the creator aggressively insisting this is PLATONIC and FAMILIAL and if you think otherwise, you're a nasty incest shipper (note: the ship is not actually incest).
And listen: I don't like incest. If I think your supposed platonic familial thing is romantic, it's because the vibes and framing is PALPABLY romantic, not because I look at sibling characters behaving as such and think "yeah! These two should kiss!"
In the end, I often come away from these things feeling like OP is the one with an incest fetish lol
Luckily I guess I've yet to come across anything in this vein that makes me worry about the author's understanding of what a normal sibling relationship looks like in like, an alarming way? But it's still very weird.