caught up in your trap again

[musesfool]

You know, I had totally forgotten until it came up at dinner the other night, but Arthurian legend = SEKRIT INCEST BABY STORY.

I'm just sayin'.

And yet, even that is not enough to get me over my issues with the way everything plays out. I'm pretty sure my adultery squick got started with The Once and Future King (and also my "but a threesome

Comments

[ignipes]

and also my "but a threesome would solve everything!" response to love triangles

It is the sensible response. Threesomes really would resolve so much unnecessary fictional drama. Less angsting, more creative sex. Everybody wins!

[musesfool]

Exactly! Admittedly, as a kid, I wasn't sure exactly how it would work, but it seemed a lot better than what actually happens at the end of that book!

[serrico]

"but a threesome would solve everything!" response to love triangles

Arthurian legend is the *definitive* example of this. It is not possible for me to believe it any more strongly than I do for various permutations of Arthurian characters.

[musesfool]

Seriously! There'd be a lot less bloodshed and unhappy endings, is what I'm saying.

[nevacaruso]

It's been some years since I read The Mists of Avalon, but I think that in that version of events, Arthur, Gwenwhyfar, and Lancelot do at least TRY to solve their problems with a threesome.

[musesfool]

Yeah, sanj mentioned that over in the DW comments. I never read Mists of Avalon, though. I was well and truly put off Arthurian stuff by the ending of TOaFK, which I read at a formative age (it's funny how I can totally trace this stuff back to things I read at 8 or 9 or 10).

I enjoyed the Clive Owen movie mostly - well, okay, mostly because of Clive Owen and Ioan Gryffudd and Kiera Knightley, but also because they literally cut the knees out from under the love triangle by killing Lancelot off. Which on the on hand, Lancelot! But on the other, it hurt me less than Lancelot and Guinevere betraying Arthur later on. Especially considering how ridiculously slashy Arthur and Lancelot are in the movie! I actually wrote fic for it.

[mhari]

This is why I ignore the entire adultery arc as much as possible and focus on the Sekrit Incest Baby. >____>

Well, that and Lancelot bores the shit out of me.

[musesfool]

Hee! That sounds like a good plan.

[gwendolyngrace]

I actually once put that in a song lyric: "If Arthur'd allowed a triangle, would Camelot be lost?"

Trouble is, it's not that simple, of course. If you can truly establish a functioning triad, you're good. Too often in my experience, two of the three don't actually want the third wheel around, even if they pretend they do.

Open relationships are so hard. Too many people really don't know how to lose their monogamist tendencies.

But yes - incest is definitely integral to Arthurian legend. The thing is, though, that the legends use incest's taboo nature to explain why it's all so damning and horrible.

I dunno, I keep returning to the concept that people with siblings are squicked by incest and people without sibs don't care or mind so much....

[musesfool]

Yeah, it's a simplistic answer, but still. We can do it in fiction!

I keep returning to the concept that people with siblings are squicked by incest and people without sibs don't care or mind so much....

I have an older brother and an older sister, so I'd say it's not that. I'm still squicked by incest in real life. I'm also always aware of its wrongness when I write it, but I still like to read and write about it. I blame the fact that I read "Flowers in the Attic" at an impressionable age. About the same time I was reading "The Once and Future King," and LotR.