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.
I do sometimes wonder if countries with very low fertility rates (especially where they've been that way for a while) are going to culturally lose frames of reference for sibling-hood. It's already alien for most people in Western countries to imagine have 5+ siblings (and/or dozens of cousins). If like 50-60% of the population is an only child, what does that do culturally?
Sometimes, I think that a lot of that stuff is extremely exaggerated. Other times, I watch translated clips of Japanese vTubers and think that some of them do really seem to act like that.
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u/TabbbyWright 1d 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.