The 12 Days of 2010 | Day 7
My day went something like:
• get up at 10
• bathe
• eat Cocoa Krispies
• Internet
• Internet
• realize hair has dried before I could comb it, cuss
• comb hair out while dry, cuss some more
• Internet
• Watch a Christmas Carol ("how do you keep going like that? Do you breathe out your ears?") omg, Doctor Who, you keep getting better
• eat chips
• say to self: you do realize you're very, very far behind on your 12 Days of 2010 thing, right?
• say to self: yeah, but nobody cares, not really, 144 recs in 12 days, pssh, whatever, keep scrolling.
• say to self: you've already invested this much time into it
• sigh
❄ | THE 12 DAYS OF 2010
☀ | a multi-fandom rec extravaganza
Day 7 | December 25
Note: saturninepen and mauvais_pli have both asked me before: wtf, why incest? (paraphrasing, of course, they were very nice about it.) And I had to stop and think, because for me, it's become so par for the course that I tend to forget that it's not something most people are inclined to ship.
First and foremost, let me disclaim that incest in real life is NOT OKAY. Even in fiction, I tend to veer away from cross-generational (i.e., father/children, aunt/nieces/nephews, or otherwise very, very large age differences, etc) for the same reason people tend to veer away from incest in general: it is ew, gross, DNW. Furthermore, there's really no way to prove it's consensual -- because they're your family, that line's always going to be blurred, hence why it's so damn illegal. There's a down-on-her-luck lady named Evelyn who comes to our house every Tuesday: when she was at work, her son used to sneak into the other son's bedroom. Not even talking about how that one son's now a registered sex offender and the other's been completely separated from her, it destroyed her, knowing her children could do that to each other. So, no, incest in real life is very not okay.
How, then, do I justify liking it in fiction? Isn't that a very, very flimsy line?
No. It's really not. Think about it: what do you look for in a good story? Love triangles? A man or woman on the verge of committing adultery? Stories of temptation and heartbreak? Or do you like the fantasy: the kind with aliens from outer space, the dragons, the elves, the vampires?
Would you like it if they stepped off the page into your real world? Would you like it as much if you were the one who, in order to save your sister's life, volunteered to be part of a horrific game involving gladiator children fighting to kill you before you killed them? Would you like it if you learned that your dead school headmaster had raised you just so you could go and die? Would you like it if you had to stand on a roof in Mission City with a life-altering Cube in your hands while giant fighting robots knocked buildings over and smashed cars with people in them?
No. But you like them in stories: they make you think things you've never thought before, take you places you've never been, make you feel things for fictional people.
And that's exactly what fiction is: not the real world.
So, yeah, I like incest in fiction. Partly because of the taboo: that low, swoop in the gut feeling of shouldn't-be-doing-this. Partly because the story can end and I can walk away.
I first got into incest when I followed suzukiblu from the Naruto fandom onto her LJ, where she wrote Like Mother, a Violet/Klaus piece done for the movie!verse version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is incredibly tame and doesn't even include kissing. But it hit me like a slap in the face, because I had gone to see the movie with my mother that very same day, and it had struck me as a little odd, the way the two actors portrayed their sibling relationship.
So I said, wait, people ship this?
And then I said, wait, is it okay to ship this?
And it was literally like a door being opened. I know it's a funny metaphor, but it was. I was fourteen at the time, and beginning to be a bit unenamored with canon pairings because they tend to attract the amateurish writers, and I didn't like slash at all until I was eighteen, so that basically limited me to reading rarepairs. And having the option of brother/sister, cousin/cousin did widen my options, because I could at least be guaranteed a good, quality read: the kinds of authors who attempted to write incest were the ones who were confident enough in their own writing to try it. (Things have changed since then, of course. /waves cane)
So let's see. It went from Violet/Klaus (ASOUE) to Neji/Hinata (Naruto,) and then on to Peter/Susan (Narnia) which I think was the pioneering incest ship for a lot of people, mainly because of that line in Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe about them kissing and no one in Narnia caring.
And what got funny was after awhile, it started appearing in every new fandom I touched: Harry Potter (Ron/Ginny, and practically all the Blacks,) Avatar: the Last Airbender (Zuko/Azula, Sokka/Katara,) the Mortal Instruments (Jace/Clary,) and finally, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, which I was dragging my feet on finishing, because I didn't want it to be over, but mccarthyism and remiele, who finished it before me, were like NO NO FINISH IT YOU'LL LOVE IT WE CAN'T TELL YOU WHY JUST FINISH IT.
And sure enough, at the end of the game, it gets revealed that Apollo and his assistant Trucy are brother and sister, only they don't know it and their parents don't see fit to tell them. Two things about that floored me: one, that they would make such a perfect set-up IN CANON for accidental incest, and two, that my friends knew better than I did what my favorites ships were.
After that, though, it became a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because now my friends rec me fandoms by going, THEY ARE SIBLINGS IN IT YOU'LL LOVE IT.
And once, while explaining the concept of slash goggles and why she doesn't like slash at all, lady_amaunet asked me: okay, what's the first person you'll ship a character with?
And my brain said: THEIR SIBLING.
And my mouth said: the first person they talk to.
And then I said to my brain: wait, really?
And my brain said: yes.
So you can say that the way some people will always see slash in things, I will always see incest, regardless of whether or not it's there. I HAVE INCEST GOGGLES, GUYS.
I know that not everyone shares the same tastes I do. I apologize if it creeps you out, honest, I don't think it reflects poorly on me as a person, but I can see why you'd look at me funny. Some people like Snape/Harry, some people like genderswap, some people like kinky PWPs, some people like hooker!AUs -- I don't think of any of them less for their tastes, even if I, personally, don't like it.
Me? I like it when siblings love each other just a little too much.
And without further ado, here's my collection of my favorite incest pieces:
12.
Ash and Bone by olivia j.h.
Supernatural, Sam/Dean, NC-17, 2000 words
I'd known for awhile that I was at least going to try Supernatural, if only because my friend once told me that the two brothers were the biggest ship in the whole fandom (this was before Castiel came along like a gift from God to slashers, which gives you an idea of how long ago that was) but it wasn't until last December, when I was curious enough to enter Sam/Dean into a Google Image search (which, for future reference, never ever do) and, strangely enough, it led me to esorlehcar's giant, giant rec list, which has since been deleted, but I Google Cached it once and have it saved to my computer, if anyone wants it. It has something like four hundred Sam/Dean recs, I am not even kidding.
And since it was Christmas break and I was immensely depressed, I said to myself, well, might as well.
There's no point in trying to pick my favorite Sam/Dean fics, considering I already did that a couple days ago.
But this one deserves a mention. I actually kind of hate this fic, just as Olivia's style in general both attracts me and repulses me: she doesn't pull a single punch when it comes to just how creepy incest can be sometimes. I recced this one because it's her longest: usually she packs these punches in 500 words or less.
11.
in certain towns by bantha-fodder
Dune, Farad'n, Leto/Ghamina, G
Leto and Ghamina! Incestuous canon ship of my childhood I didn't even realize until I came across it in bantha_fodder's tags. This one isn't Leto/Ghamina directly, as it's all told from Farad'n's POV, but neither can it be anything else. I picked it because of the outsider POV, but you should definitely check out her tags: she has a couple really good Leto/Ghamina ones.
10.
Death Eater by Ishafel
Harry Potter, AU, Ron/Ginny, R, 200 words
Dark! Dark, dark, dark, the very short drabble in which Ron and Ginny have grown up and are living in powerful positions in Voldemort's world, their friends and family all slaughtered, able to do everything they couldn't as children.
And yet, with the two of them, it's not sorry, no regrets, no doubt, without guilt.
9.
In Fire, In Ice by moirariordan
Wizards of Waverly Place, Alex/Justin, PG-13
Having never paid much attention to the Disney channel since the third grade, I was completely disinterested in Wizards of Waverly Place up until, one evening when nothing else was on, my mom sat and watched the entire movie (whatever it was called.)
And I'm sitting there too, on the Internet, looking up occasionally: Disney movies, right? I thought I had the grasp of it -- family goes on vacation, girl meets hot local dude, they fall in summer love, family goes home, girl learns something.
And then the movie drops the hot boy complete and sends the girl and her brother out into the woods to hunt down some magical artifact or another (I forget) and the movie is all about how they NEED each other, fall asleep curled together, and MUST TRUST EACH OTHER THE FATE OF THE WORLD DEPENDS ON IT. When they accidentally stop their parents from meeting and therefore (momentarily) erase their own existences, the sister turns to the brother and says, "don't forget me," and he answers, "I could never forget you."
My face:
CAN DISNEY DO THAT?
Anyway, enough about me. This fic! It links to the epilogue, because that's the only way to get to the whole story. This one is the SRS BSNS fic in which magic is outed to the whole world, so the Russos are forced to go into hiding. Alex and Justin are forcibly separated from the rest of their family and set out on a cross-country journey, pretending to be all sorts of different people while looking for somewhere to live in peace. It's clever and very well written, and if I think the ending's too easy, I also think it doesn't matter compared to the rest of the fic.
8.
Fifty Sentences by jessieheart
Avatar: the Last Airbender, Sokka/Katara, R
jessieheart, back in the day, was THE number one name in A:tLA incest, mostly for her Sokka/Katara (although I think she did Zuko/Azula once? Maybe? I could be thinking of somebody else.) This is a collection of fifty unrelated sentences for the 1sentence challenge: the hardest part of 1sentence was to get a whole story into as few words as possible, and jessieheart masters.
These sentences are, by turns, funny, dark, sad, and delightful.
7.
Normal (The Quintessential Question Remix) by magistera
A Series of Unfortunate Events, Violet/Klaus, R, ~1000 words
This fic is not my favorite. That fic was written by surfinaked and disappeared when violetklaus went strike-through in the Great Strikeout of 07 (/waves cane!) And the most I can say about any Violet/Klaus fic since is that it's not as good as that one.
But this one is brilliantly tongue-in-cheek, with a perfect Lemony Snicket voice (insomuch as Lemony Snicket would ever write about his characters having sex with each other.)
Line: If you have ever been a teenager (and many people have), then you will surely remember that being a teenager is fraught with many earth-shaking concerns. For example, you may worry about the condition of your skin, or your standing within your peer group (a phrase which here means, 'people who are frequently unkind to you about the condition of your skin, but whom you inexplicably want to please anyway')
6.
Bad Form by surfinaked
Narnia, Peter/Susan, R, ~2000 words
Speaking of surfinaked! This one of hers survived, mainly because she posted it to her own journal. Hence, it stays my favorite Peter/Susan fic, because surfinaked is just that good.
I couldn't quite point out to you what, exactly, strikes me so hard about this fic, besides everything. A lot of it, I think, probably has to do with reading it at an impressionable age -- surfinaked was the first person I knew who was unabashed at shipping incest before any other ship, so a lot of the themes that show up in this story I had never seen before, and they struck me mute.
5.
You Are the Earth on Which I Travel by th_esaurus
Jonas RPF, AU, Joe/Nick/Kevin, NC-17
Waking up one day and realizing how knee-deep I was in the Jonas Brothers and how ridiculously they act in public and how much I liked fic about them kissing each other, it really made me question that fiction/real life line. If I like seeing pictures of them kissing in public, and like fic about them kissing in private, does that mean I'd like it if they actually were in an incestuous relationship?
I sat on the thought for awhile, but the thing is, if I ever heard about them like that, then that means they whole world would know, and what do you think that would do to their family, to all the fans who like them for them? I wouldn't wish that kind of horror and pain on anyone, so, no, I wouldn't like RP-incest.
This fic! It's AU, which I always found easier to stomach in RPF because it feels more like an original story than it does a story about the kids whose poster is on my best friend's little sister's wall. In it, the three brothers are ranchers in a western setting, and I picked the Joe/Nick/Kevin one because it's actually the only one I've read. It's so much rarer than I thought -- usually Joe/Nick is where all the fanfiction lies, because they're the ones that are most outwardly affectionate (and also the ones that confess in interviews to sharing a bed.)
So it was excellent to find a Joe/Nick/Kevin that's as brilliantly written as this.
4.
Retroactive Continuity by nostalgia_lj
Doctor Who, AU, Doctor/Rose, PG-13
And now we're getting into the fics that create incest where there actually is none, which is a whole other level of awesome. I can't tell you how this is incest, because that would spoil the whole thing, but it is my only exception to its rule.
3.
at least it would seem that we don't by derryere
Merlin, AU, Arthur/Merlin, NC-17, 15000 words
Another AU! This fic combines three of my favorite things:
1) massively long remixes of tiny drabbles
2) derryere, whom I love possibly even more than candle_beck (this is saying something!)
3) incest.
In this, Arthur and Merlin are twins who look nothing alike except for the same blue eyes. It is brilliant, so brilliant, from start to finish, from the way she formats to the way she keeps them as Merlin and Arthur even when they're brothers, to the way she includes Gwen and Morgana and Sophie, to Uther and Hunith and the cold, nuclear way they hate each other. It's one of my all-time favorite pieces.
2.
Tending to Grace by musesfool
Firefly, Simon/River, PG-13, 2700 words
If the above is one of my all-time favorites, then this is the most believable one I've ever read, hence why it's #2 on this countdown. When it comes to incest, the highest compliment you can give is to call it believable.
Tending to Grace is my head!canon happy ending for River and Simon. Run to ground in a tiny farming town, still being hunted by the Alliance, they decide to pose as husband and wife.
Every time I reread this, I always put my chin on my hands and go, "that was SO good." Every time.
1.
Mortal Instruments by cassandraclare
Harry Potter, Ron/Ginny, NC-17
THIS FIC AND I HAVE HAD A TUMULTUOUS RELATIONSHIP, BUT IT WILL ALWAYS BE MY NUMBER ONE FAVORITE.
But antistar_e, you say to me, why is there no link?
That's because the author, Cassandra Clare, deleted Mortal Instruments when she published her own series (one that shared the same title and the same incestuous themes.) To preserve it, ccfangurl copy/pasted it to her own journal, which is where I first read it, the summer of 2006 with Backdrifts (Honeymoon is Over) playing low on my desktop speakers. Cassie Clare got the journal deleted, but the fic resurfaced on a save site, where it remained for a couple years before it, too, was found and purged.
I despaired of ever finding it again, especially once I knew that I was going to do a day for incest for this 12 Days of 2010 project, because Mortal Instruments deserved a spot. Finally, a chance LJ search led me to amanuensis1's journal, and after a very, very shy e-mail, she happily send me the saved file: the original LJ post that cassandraclare made oh-so-many years ago.
I uploaded it to Box.net, where I'm sharing it with you now.
As for the fic itself, it's THE Ron/Ginny fic, with a heartbreaking, punch-in-the-gut ending.
Line: Harry’s fame, Harry’s money, Harry’s Firebolt, Harry’s easy flying grace; wanting what was Harry’s had been the currency of Ron’s daydreams since he was eleven years old.
Okay, that was enough meta and gut-spilling for one day.
Plan for the rest of the day:
• make tea
• cuss at GPX for lagging
• think about doing the next day of recs
• don't
• read Lost Hero
• read Lost Hero
• read Lost Hero
• get up at 10
• bathe
• eat Cocoa Krispies
• Internet
• Internet
• realize hair has dried before I could comb it, cuss
• comb hair out while dry, cuss some more
• Internet
• Watch a Christmas Carol ("how do you keep going like that? Do you breathe out your ears?") omg, Doctor Who, you keep getting better
• eat chips
• say to self: you do realize you're very, very far behind on your 12 Days of 2010 thing, right?
• say to self: yeah, but nobody cares, not really, 144 recs in 12 days, pssh, whatever, keep scrolling.
• say to self: you've already invested this much time into it
• sigh
❄ | THE 12 DAYS OF 2010
☀ | a multi-fandom rec extravaganza
Day 7 | December 25
Note: saturninepen and mauvais_pli have both asked me before: wtf, why incest? (paraphrasing, of course, they were very nice about it.) And I had to stop and think, because for me, it's become so par for the course that I tend to forget that it's not something most people are inclined to ship.
First and foremost, let me disclaim that incest in real life is NOT OKAY. Even in fiction, I tend to veer away from cross-generational (i.e., father/children, aunt/nieces/nephews, or otherwise very, very large age differences, etc) for the same reason people tend to veer away from incest in general: it is ew, gross, DNW. Furthermore, there's really no way to prove it's consensual -- because they're your family, that line's always going to be blurred, hence why it's so damn illegal. There's a down-on-her-luck lady named Evelyn who comes to our house every Tuesday: when she was at work, her son used to sneak into the other son's bedroom. Not even talking about how that one son's now a registered sex offender and the other's been completely separated from her, it destroyed her, knowing her children could do that to each other. So, no, incest in real life is very not okay.
How, then, do I justify liking it in fiction? Isn't that a very, very flimsy line?
No. It's really not. Think about it: what do you look for in a good story? Love triangles? A man or woman on the verge of committing adultery? Stories of temptation and heartbreak? Or do you like the fantasy: the kind with aliens from outer space, the dragons, the elves, the vampires?
Would you like it if they stepped off the page into your real world? Would you like it as much if you were the one who, in order to save your sister's life, volunteered to be part of a horrific game involving gladiator children fighting to kill you before you killed them? Would you like it if you learned that your dead school headmaster had raised you just so you could go and die? Would you like it if you had to stand on a roof in Mission City with a life-altering Cube in your hands while giant fighting robots knocked buildings over and smashed cars with people in them?
No. But you like them in stories: they make you think things you've never thought before, take you places you've never been, make you feel things for fictional people.
And that's exactly what fiction is: not the real world.
So, yeah, I like incest in fiction. Partly because of the taboo: that low, swoop in the gut feeling of shouldn't-be-doing-this. Partly because the story can end and I can walk away.
I first got into incest when I followed suzukiblu from the Naruto fandom onto her LJ, where she wrote Like Mother, a Violet/Klaus piece done for the movie!verse version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is incredibly tame and doesn't even include kissing. But it hit me like a slap in the face, because I had gone to see the movie with my mother that very same day, and it had struck me as a little odd, the way the two actors portrayed their sibling relationship.
So I said, wait, people ship this?
And then I said, wait, is it okay to ship this?
And it was literally like a door being opened. I know it's a funny metaphor, but it was. I was fourteen at the time, and beginning to be a bit unenamored with canon pairings because they tend to attract the amateurish writers, and I didn't like slash at all until I was eighteen, so that basically limited me to reading rarepairs. And having the option of brother/sister, cousin/cousin did widen my options, because I could at least be guaranteed a good, quality read: the kinds of authors who attempted to write incest were the ones who were confident enough in their own writing to try it. (Things have changed since then, of course. /waves cane)
So let's see. It went from Violet/Klaus (ASOUE) to Neji/Hinata (Naruto,) and then on to Peter/Susan (Narnia) which I think was the pioneering incest ship for a lot of people, mainly because of that line in Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe about them kissing and no one in Narnia caring.
And what got funny was after awhile, it started appearing in every new fandom I touched: Harry Potter (Ron/Ginny, and practically all the Blacks,) Avatar: the Last Airbender (Zuko/Azula, Sokka/Katara,) the Mortal Instruments (Jace/Clary,) and finally, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, which I was dragging my feet on finishing, because I didn't want it to be over, but mccarthyism and remiele, who finished it before me, were like NO NO FINISH IT YOU'LL LOVE IT WE CAN'T TELL YOU WHY JUST FINISH IT.
And sure enough, at the end of the game, it gets revealed that Apollo and his assistant Trucy are brother and sister, only they don't know it and their parents don't see fit to tell them. Two things about that floored me: one, that they would make such a perfect set-up IN CANON for accidental incest, and two, that my friends knew better than I did what my favorites ships were.
After that, though, it became a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because now my friends rec me fandoms by going, THEY ARE SIBLINGS IN IT YOU'LL LOVE IT.
And once, while explaining the concept of slash goggles and why she doesn't like slash at all, lady_amaunet asked me: okay, what's the first person you'll ship a character with?
And my brain said: THEIR SIBLING.
And my mouth said: the first person they talk to.
And then I said to my brain: wait, really?
And my brain said: yes.
So you can say that the way some people will always see slash in things, I will always see incest, regardless of whether or not it's there. I HAVE INCEST GOGGLES, GUYS.
I know that not everyone shares the same tastes I do. I apologize if it creeps you out, honest, I don't think it reflects poorly on me as a person, but I can see why you'd look at me funny. Some people like Snape/Harry, some people like genderswap, some people like kinky PWPs, some people like hooker!AUs -- I don't think of any of them less for their tastes, even if I, personally, don't like it.
Me? I like it when siblings love each other just a little too much.
And without further ado, here's my collection of my favorite incest pieces:
12.
Ash and Bone by olivia j.h.
Supernatural, Sam/Dean, NC-17, 2000 words
I'd known for awhile that I was at least going to try Supernatural, if only because my friend once told me that the two brothers were the biggest ship in the whole fandom (this was before Castiel came along like a gift from God to slashers, which gives you an idea of how long ago that was) but it wasn't until last December, when I was curious enough to enter Sam/Dean into a Google Image search (which, for future reference, never ever do) and, strangely enough, it led me to esorlehcar's giant, giant rec list, which has since been deleted, but I Google Cached it once and have it saved to my computer, if anyone wants it. It has something like four hundred Sam/Dean recs, I am not even kidding.
And since it was Christmas break and I was immensely depressed, I said to myself, well, might as well.
There's no point in trying to pick my favorite Sam/Dean fics, considering I already did that a couple days ago.
But this one deserves a mention. I actually kind of hate this fic, just as Olivia's style in general both attracts me and repulses me: she doesn't pull a single punch when it comes to just how creepy incest can be sometimes. I recced this one because it's her longest: usually she packs these punches in 500 words or less.
11.
in certain towns by bantha-fodder
Dune, Farad'n, Leto/Ghamina, G
Leto and Ghamina! Incestuous canon ship of my childhood I didn't even realize until I came across it in bantha_fodder's tags. This one isn't Leto/Ghamina directly, as it's all told from Farad'n's POV, but neither can it be anything else. I picked it because of the outsider POV, but you should definitely check out her tags: she has a couple really good Leto/Ghamina ones.
10.
Death Eater by Ishafel
Harry Potter, AU, Ron/Ginny, R, 200 words
Dark! Dark, dark, dark, the very short drabble in which Ron and Ginny have grown up and are living in powerful positions in Voldemort's world, their friends and family all slaughtered, able to do everything they couldn't as children.
And yet, with the two of them, it's not sorry, no regrets, no doubt, without guilt.
9.
In Fire, In Ice by moirariordan
Wizards of Waverly Place, Alex/Justin, PG-13
Having never paid much attention to the Disney channel since the third grade, I was completely disinterested in Wizards of Waverly Place up until, one evening when nothing else was on, my mom sat and watched the entire movie (whatever it was called.)
And I'm sitting there too, on the Internet, looking up occasionally: Disney movies, right? I thought I had the grasp of it -- family goes on vacation, girl meets hot local dude, they fall in summer love, family goes home, girl learns something.
And then the movie drops the hot boy complete and sends the girl and her brother out into the woods to hunt down some magical artifact or another (I forget) and the movie is all about how they NEED each other, fall asleep curled together, and MUST TRUST EACH OTHER THE FATE OF THE WORLD DEPENDS ON IT. When they accidentally stop their parents from meeting and therefore (momentarily) erase their own existences, the sister turns to the brother and says, "don't forget me," and he answers, "I could never forget you."
My face:
CAN DISNEY DO THAT?
Anyway, enough about me. This fic! It links to the epilogue, because that's the only way to get to the whole story. This one is the SRS BSNS fic in which magic is outed to the whole world, so the Russos are forced to go into hiding. Alex and Justin are forcibly separated from the rest of their family and set out on a cross-country journey, pretending to be all sorts of different people while looking for somewhere to live in peace. It's clever and very well written, and if I think the ending's too easy, I also think it doesn't matter compared to the rest of the fic.
8.
Fifty Sentences by jessieheart
Avatar: the Last Airbender, Sokka/Katara, R
jessieheart, back in the day, was THE number one name in A:tLA incest, mostly for her Sokka/Katara (although I think she did Zuko/Azula once? Maybe? I could be thinking of somebody else.) This is a collection of fifty unrelated sentences for the 1sentence challenge: the hardest part of 1sentence was to get a whole story into as few words as possible, and jessieheart masters.
These sentences are, by turns, funny, dark, sad, and delightful.
7.
Normal (The Quintessential Question Remix) by magistera
A Series of Unfortunate Events, Violet/Klaus, R, ~1000 words
This fic is not my favorite. That fic was written by surfinaked and disappeared when violetklaus went strike-through in the Great Strikeout of 07 (/waves cane!) And the most I can say about any Violet/Klaus fic since is that it's not as good as that one.
But this one is brilliantly tongue-in-cheek, with a perfect Lemony Snicket voice (insomuch as Lemony Snicket would ever write about his characters having sex with each other.)
Line: If you have ever been a teenager (and many people have), then you will surely remember that being a teenager is fraught with many earth-shaking concerns. For example, you may worry about the condition of your skin, or your standing within your peer group (a phrase which here means, 'people who are frequently unkind to you about the condition of your skin, but whom you inexplicably want to please anyway')
6.
Bad Form by surfinaked
Narnia, Peter/Susan, R, ~2000 words
Speaking of surfinaked! This one of hers survived, mainly because she posted it to her own journal. Hence, it stays my favorite Peter/Susan fic, because surfinaked is just that good.
I couldn't quite point out to you what, exactly, strikes me so hard about this fic, besides everything. A lot of it, I think, probably has to do with reading it at an impressionable age -- surfinaked was the first person I knew who was unabashed at shipping incest before any other ship, so a lot of the themes that show up in this story I had never seen before, and they struck me mute.
5.
You Are the Earth on Which I Travel by th_esaurus
Jonas RPF, AU, Joe/Nick/Kevin, NC-17
Waking up one day and realizing how knee-deep I was in the Jonas Brothers and how ridiculously they act in public and how much I liked fic about them kissing each other, it really made me question that fiction/real life line. If I like seeing pictures of them kissing in public, and like fic about them kissing in private, does that mean I'd like it if they actually were in an incestuous relationship?
I sat on the thought for awhile, but the thing is, if I ever heard about them like that, then that means they whole world would know, and what do you think that would do to their family, to all the fans who like them for them? I wouldn't wish that kind of horror and pain on anyone, so, no, I wouldn't like RP-incest.
This fic! It's AU, which I always found easier to stomach in RPF because it feels more like an original story than it does a story about the kids whose poster is on my best friend's little sister's wall. In it, the three brothers are ranchers in a western setting, and I picked the Joe/Nick/Kevin one because it's actually the only one I've read. It's so much rarer than I thought -- usually Joe/Nick is where all the fanfiction lies, because they're the ones that are most outwardly affectionate (and also the ones that confess in interviews to sharing a bed.)
So it was excellent to find a Joe/Nick/Kevin that's as brilliantly written as this.
4.
Retroactive Continuity by nostalgia_lj
Doctor Who, AU, Doctor/Rose, PG-13
And now we're getting into the fics that create incest where there actually is none, which is a whole other level of awesome. I can't tell you how this is incest, because that would spoil the whole thing, but it is my only exception to its rule.
3.
at least it would seem that we don't by derryere
Merlin, AU, Arthur/Merlin, NC-17, 15000 words
Another AU! This fic combines three of my favorite things:
1) massively long remixes of tiny drabbles
2) derryere, whom I love possibly even more than candle_beck (this is saying something!)
3) incest.
In this, Arthur and Merlin are twins who look nothing alike except for the same blue eyes. It is brilliant, so brilliant, from start to finish, from the way she formats to the way she keeps them as Merlin and Arthur even when they're brothers, to the way she includes Gwen and Morgana and Sophie, to Uther and Hunith and the cold, nuclear way they hate each other. It's one of my all-time favorite pieces.
2.
Tending to Grace by musesfool
Firefly, Simon/River, PG-13, 2700 words
If the above is one of my all-time favorites, then this is the most believable one I've ever read, hence why it's #2 on this countdown. When it comes to incest, the highest compliment you can give is to call it believable.
Tending to Grace is my head!canon happy ending for River and Simon. Run to ground in a tiny farming town, still being hunted by the Alliance, they decide to pose as husband and wife.
Every time I reread this, I always put my chin on my hands and go, "that was SO good." Every time.
1.
Mortal Instruments by cassandraclare
Harry Potter, Ron/Ginny, NC-17
THIS FIC AND I HAVE HAD A TUMULTUOUS RELATIONSHIP, BUT IT WILL ALWAYS BE MY NUMBER ONE FAVORITE.
But antistar_e, you say to me, why is there no link?
That's because the author, Cassandra Clare, deleted Mortal Instruments when she published her own series (one that shared the same title and the same incestuous themes.) To preserve it, ccfangurl copy/pasted it to her own journal, which is where I first read it, the summer of 2006 with Backdrifts (Honeymoon is Over) playing low on my desktop speakers. Cassie Clare got the journal deleted, but the fic resurfaced on a save site, where it remained for a couple years before it, too, was found and purged.
I despaired of ever finding it again, especially once I knew that I was going to do a day for incest for this 12 Days of 2010 project, because Mortal Instruments deserved a spot. Finally, a chance LJ search led me to amanuensis1's journal, and after a very, very shy e-mail, she happily send me the saved file: the original LJ post that cassandraclare made oh-so-many years ago.
I uploaded it to Box.net, where I'm sharing it with you now.
As for the fic itself, it's THE Ron/Ginny fic, with a heartbreaking, punch-in-the-gut ending.
Line: Harry’s fame, Harry’s money, Harry’s Firebolt, Harry’s easy flying grace; wanting what was Harry’s had been the currency of Ron’s daydreams since he was eleven years old.
Okay, that was enough meta and gut-spilling for one day.
Plan for the rest of the day:
• make tea
• cuss at GPX for lagging
• think about doing the next day of recs
• don't
• read Lost Hero
• read Lost Hero
• read Lost Hero