A Question About Standards (Warning: Sensitive)

All,

Relax. I put the warning in the title as an afterthought, because however vaguely treated this subject is very difficult for certain people and the last thing I want to do is hurt anyone. Which is part of the point of this thread.

I have checked the FAQ and it only briefly addresses the question. I thought about simply PMing a mod, but I'm not quite to the point of having any test scenes to offer, and I'm also interested in how it's received by readers. So I'd like to know, first, if this is acceptable under the board rules and, second, if the payoff in characterization and cultural flavor is worth causing upset (if it is, in fact, upsetting).

Incidentally, if it is outside the board rules, by all means lock this thread ASAP. That settles it, and I don't want to debate them.

My question concerns incest. Specifically, dynastic intermarriage. Or, I should say, just dynastic intermarriage, which had tended to be between cousins of the first degree, siblings and, extraordinarily, uncles and nieces. I can't recall any example in human history where a union of a parent and child was arranged and recognized by civil and religious authorities, and even if one were I personally think that's too far under the board rules. So I'm not interested in a discussion on those other subjects. To me, the ultimate purpose of one of these stories is to entertain, and if there's anybody who can read the depiction of a sexual relationship between parents and their children and still be entertained I don't want to meet him. That goes for uncles and nieces as well, and any other relationship where authority is overwhelmingly vested in one party. Or where one or both is below the age of consent.

What I'm thinking, in this particular case, is a marriage between siblings, as a custom of the royalty of one particular culture, with an eye toward preserving the bloodline. This was fairly common among the Egyptians and Assyrians, and was the unsanctioned (but not unusual) practice of the Roman Emperors. And what it represents is the most obscene extreme of arrogance and impunity on the part of royals-that they are of such august stature they won't even sleep with anybody else anymore. And, here, it's a reflection of the decayed and degraded moral state of a planet and its rulers, and will also play a strong role in the characterization of a ruling Prince and, in particular, his sister.

The context is certainly not one of approval, glorification or salaciousness. I have no intention of explicitly portraying their sexual relationship. And they are certainly not in love. However, they do (and will clearly) have a sexual relationship, which has produced young children, and the concurrence of their relationships, husband and wife and brother and sister, will be obvious.

So. First of all, in the guidelines it calls for context. Is this enough to make a judgment? In general. And secondly, judged from an historical perspective and with absolutely no intention of making a serious foray into the unabashedly evil dimensions of incest, is this too offensive, or too sensitive, to be worth its role in the story?

I appreciate any and all comments. And again, I don't wish to question or debate the rules, so if this is clearly out of bounds problem solved.

 

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with your question nor it's phrazing - no need to worry.

Secondly, as it does have historical precidance (indeed Cleopatra was married to her brother) so I don't see how it could be deemed 'offensive'.

Meh, unless you're writing a PWP like "the Pornship of Luke and Liea! 25 pages of gratuitious sex!11!!" (and don't PM me for a link - there's no story called that that I know of!)

Someone might come along screaming 'ew ew ew', but in which case I would suggest they go consult a history book.

 

This is probably what you found in the FAQ:

2) Mentioning incest is questionable, and would depend on context however, depictions of characters engaging in incestual practices or having incest as an ongoing theme in a story are not allowed.

Based on that, I would say that if you had a character whose parents were brother and sister and this was a cultural thing that was explained as a factoid of the character's life, it would be okay, but if you had an ongoing story line in which main characters were engaged in incestuous practices it would be out, even with the cultural context. Even if the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians did it, there won't be many (if any) cultures that practice it now.

 

I haven't contributed any fic to the JC and oftentimes I'm pretty busy so my presence here is spotty at best, but I am an experienced fic writer at other forums and have had my work in zines, so if it's okay I'll speak generally about the issue. I couldn't resist because it's an intriguing one.

As previously established in this thread, different cultures place different values on things. While we are mortified by the idea of incest, another culture might see something we do that we think is okay and be absolutely disgusted. We put taboos on incest for--admit it--biological reasons because a lack of genetic diversity weakens our offspring, as well as our species. But, what if another race came along, and their genetics didn't work that way, and nothing bad happened as a result of such a union? This race wouldn't have this reason to place this kind of taboo on a pairing, so unless there was something else they could point to that made it a bad idea, they probably wouldn't see anything wrong with it. Most of us, on the other hand, would probably be completely freaked out by it, because oftentimes it's human nature to want to measure others by our own standards. But this doesn't sound like the kind of society you're constructing. The society you describe simply sounds like it just doesn't care.

So I think it all comes back to the question of context. First, I'd say you'd be alright as long as you weren't being trashy or sensationalistic about it like an episode of Jerry Springer. As long as you establish that culturally, it is what it is, you're cool. Second, from your post it seems that this aspect of your story is going to be presented with the same value judgement against incest that most people in today's Western civilization would share, so I should think that would smooth over most feathers that happen to get ruffled by the subject matter. Like it or not, art imitates life, even in fanfic, and incest is one of those issues we encouter from time to time in this life. Then again, if someone told me they didn't like what they were reading and were offended by it, I am one of those radicals whou would simply tell them to stop reading it.

I say go ahead and write it and run it past a mod. The worst they could do is say no, but hopefully they'd offer up a solution that would let it fly. If it's categorically denied, there are other forums out there where it would be alright to post such a story as long as it didn't glorify what our society considers to be an illegal act. In other words, I wouldn't let the JC's rules stop you from writing what could turn out to be a great story. You'll find your audience, even if it isn't here. I, for one, already want to read this because I'm curious about the society you're constructing, how it got that way, and your characters' reaction to that.

 

Okay, I'm going to put my two cents in... please don't get mad at me for mentioning what i'm going to mention.

In the first book of the Bible there is only one man and one women. When they had children there really was no other way to reproduce unless brother and sister married.

So yes, a borther and sister getting married is not totally taboo. Even marriage between counsins is not a bad thing. What is bad is if a father marries his daughter or his daughter's cousin and so on. In today's society, there is really no need for us to marry close relatives plus, because of the problem with genetics it is best if we didn't marry a close relative.

I have no qualms over a brother and sister getting married as long as it is carried out decently.

 

Neither do I, but we're not mods.

I 'ship Jacen Solo with a Yuuzhan Vong shaper that he never meets in canon, so my opinion doesn't count

 

The closest canon relationship I know of is between first cousins once removed, in the X-wing comics - Princess Plour Ilo of Ettiau and Count Rial Pernon, whose father was her paternal grandfather's brother...

Just FYI. If I'd known about Hobbie and Janson's fling with the Bothan girls the next issue, there'd never have been an interspecies mess...

As a further thought - in the real world, I'd distinguish three phenomena:
1.) Culturally, first-cousin marriages are encouraged in some societies due to social and inheritance patterns, and are legal in, for instance, the UK...
2.) There are princely families concerned with bloodline purity, and the nineteenth-century Spanish Bourbons give you a good idea of what sort of a tangled family tree this can lead to - successive generations of marriages between cousins, and Ferdinand VII married two of his nieces in turn, one of whom was, if I recall, also the niece of the other by the other side of her family (which was in turn a set of close cousins anyway)...
3.) Sibling marriage, as practiced most famously in Ptolemaic Egypt, is an extreme case of bloodline purity: a combination Egyptian and Macedonian ideas of kingship interacting among a narrow colonial élite in a frame of (initially) serious dynastic insecurity... whereas cousin-marriage is simply about favouring close relatives on an "open" marriage market, under this system royal sons and daughters are expected to get married from infancy, often betrothed in childhood, and such mariages become a specific part of royal life and succession... they become standard, and mistresses and spouses outside the family are only resorted to when these fail...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

I personally have no problem with people writing incestuous pairings. Some I like to read, some I don't, and I'll read the ones that I'm cool with and skip the others. However... I have serious doubts about it passing for these boards. A mod would be able to tell you for sure whether you could post the fic or not, but I wouldn't bet on it being postable.

Fanfiction.net would allow it, provided that the fic met other standards (they don't allow songfic, 2nd person POV, or script format), so if you can't post here, you could probably find a home for your story there.

 

All:

Thank you for the responses, although Healer_Leona and Lady_Padme do put the matter to rest on these boards. It is clear that the storyline I'd envisioned, at least as I envisioned, would fall outside the boundaries established by the moderators and board owners.

Nonetheless...

EDIT: I went a little overboard rambling. Feel free to ignore me, since the issue is more or less closed. Also, I'm not a biologist or geneticist, so bear in mind that my comments are shrouded in the mists of college biology classes that may or may not have been undermined by various psychoactive drugs.

Darthbreezy:

Yes, but an awful lot of things have historical precedent. Some quite a bit worse than the dynastic intermarriage of siblings.

I mention the practices of ancient Egypt (in the Hellenistic and pre-Hellenestic dynasties both, incidentally) to provide specific context to what I have in mind. As a cultural phenomena rather than for anyone's gratification (and certainly not mine). I don't expect, nor would I like to see, the board moderators to accept any content with a human analog.

I do appreciate your reasoning, though. Personally, I also expected this very specific form of incest, in very specific historical context, to be acceptable.

Aquarius:

Whether the foundation of human taboos against incest is biological or not, and we've certainly proven capable of inventing sexual taboos that are contraryto our biological interests, they have plentiful and very real justification in modern times well beyond biology. So much so that biology is really beside the point. Heritability research suggests that birth defects, while several times more common in first degree in-breeding, are still rare even in children who result from sibling and parent-child relationships. Only among twins (obviously) is the risk severe. So in the short run, the notion of even human incest, much less incest among genetically purer species, causing intense malformation in the second or third generation is overblown.

However, in the long run, in-breeding throughout a population is devastating. In order to practice it in complete safety, a species would have to be both genetically and evolutionarily perfect, and there are very few examples of this in higher life forms. Even among concentrated and isolated species on earth, there are often enough genetic strains to be sustainable over dozens and hundreds of generations, but even then the outcome can be (although is not always) extinction. It certainly reduces the viability of lower mammals and most reptiles.

It's difficult to imagine a sentient species with a genome both capable of producing sentience and viable in highly non-selective reproduction. And even if they were, for a species, through evolution, to grossly undermine the principles of evolution would be insensible. The trend has been the opposite-the more complex a life form, the more variation it seeks because variation is at the base of natural selection.

Of course, in a fictional universe we're free to say, simply, "yes, yes, that's true of humans, but not Ewoks." (and that is a canon species that must be in-bred if I've ever seen one) But to me that seems a cop out.

Beyond biology, I think the social revulsion over incest, particularly between parents and children and older and younger siblings, is completely justified. It's not a question of genetics and evolutionary competitiveness or any of that. It's a question of power. A parent, or an older sibling, is in a position of authority, whether or not the child or younger sibling is below the age of consent. To pervert that position, which is supposed to be protective and even selfless, into one of sexual self-gratification is not only a taboo, it is among the worst things that one can possibly do. And a society that tolerates or condones, much less encourages, such practices is corrupt in its soul.

As far as this story, though, I appreciate the encouragement. It won't be told here, so I'm not entirely sur

 

Cantador--

I do hope that you'll go forward with writing your story even if it can't be posted here. And ff.n isn't your only option, either. There are other sites out there that have good literary standards and value quality, but are less restrictive in some ways in the name of art. If you do write it and post it somewhere, by all means, please let me know by way of email or PM, because I am very interested to see it.

I did briefly want to address this:

Admittedly I latched on to this example because your topic brought to mind a novel in another fandom I had read a number of years ago that presented this very thing: a relationship between brother and sister in an alien race. The human character had fallen in love with the alien woman, was mortified to discover the relationship she'd had with her brother, and it came out that this society had no such taboos because genetically it didn't alter their evolution. The human character had learned a lesson in measuring other people against his own values, in a society where his values don't apply.

Now granted, with what we know about natural selection, this author was thinking outside the box. In an oddly timely way, though, the Discovery Channel had showed a rerun of Carl Sagan's Cosmos show the other night, and he was talking about this very thing, about what life might be like on other planets. He said that while it is highly likely that there is life elsewhere (it's just about arrogant of us to think otherwise), the chances of them being anything like us is astronomical, because we are the result of a chain of events that is unique to us and only us. So it's okay to think outside of the box when constructing alien races and societies, because very little of what's in our box will apply anywhere else.

 

If someone wants to write about an incestual marriage, then so be it. I'm not one to put guidelines on artistic visions and frankly no one else should. Incest is a part of our worlds history no doubt, but its also been portrayed in various literary works throughout time.

I do remember a scene in Hamlet where Hamlet sexually attacks and gropes his mother. Not full blown incest granted, but extreme soft porn for its times and an action not considered taboo. We had to read this our Junior year in high school. There are plenty of other literary works that incorperate incest, and a good many of them are thought to be quality reads.

My concern is this, If this is deemed to be in the wrong, something that cannot be written about here, than where will it stop? What if someone wants to invision a tale where Hobby turns out to be gay? Are same sex relationships taboo also? Once again, historically, this could be backed. What about racial relationships? Or sentient/Alien?

Bottom line, you handcuff the writer and his artistic freedom. This should not be done. If you worry that what you write may offend someone, do not worry, those who are offended will not return. And those readers have this beautiful thing called "Choice". You see that can choose if they want to continue to read and choose what they do not want to read. Now if the readers have this lovely gift I believe that the writer should too.

You can't mess with artistic freedoms. If they did, what a boring world we would live in..... I wouldn't want to read about it.

 

Well, we can't forget that they have the "their board, their rules" thing to fall back on. It's all about choices: TPTB here have chosen to set the rules up in such a way as to avoid offending as many people as possible, and to avoid having to make the occasional determination between what is "art" and what is just "eeewwwwwww." I've had to make a couple of these types of value judgements at my own place, and believe me, it's neither fun nor easy, but I view it as the price I pay for reaching for something a little better. I, for one, tend to believe that sometimes art IS offensive. That's just the way it is. One man's garbage is another man's treasure and all that. But just because someone might actually like a work in question, that doesn't bind the JC to house it here.

What one has to remember is that we also have choices. I, too, disagree with a couple of the standards for posting fics based on their restrictive nature. I cringe at anything that remotely resembles censorship. Given this, though, even I feel a need to set standards at my own place, it's just that mine are less restrictive. (My place, my rules.) So, with this in mind, I just do not post my work here. I'm sure most of my pieces are innocuous enought that they'd have no problems meeting the JC's criteria for decency, but for now I've made a choice to not have to worry about it and confine my stories to venues where I'm more comfortable with the posting rules. Everyone else here has the same choice.

 

Boady:

Homosexuality is in fact already banned. As are humanoid-nonhumanoid relationships (with a few exceptions). The arguments and counterarguments on this subject have been made a thousand times, something you probably know better than I, judging by your registration date.

The basic premise is that this is a family friendly board. While I take strong exception to the idea that homosexuality is at all contrary to family values, or something that ought to be hidden away from children, it comes down to a more central idea that Star Wars is not about sex. Any sex there is has an incidental character, and while heterosexuality can be presented in a mild form without becoming the focus these other practices can't.

Not every forum is, or can be, unrestrained in the name of art. There are many-particularly on the internet-but the founders of TheForce.net established a conservative set of guidelines to keep this forum not simply PG rated but free of certain controversies and complications. When we signed up, we agreed to abide by them.

This has been hashed out a'plenty and long before my time. It's not the reason I started the thread. The way I see it, if you're on somebody else's playground you play by their rules.


Aquarius:

I will let you know. At the moment, I'm working on a rewrite and completion of the story in my sig, which I expect to take quite a long time. But after I have my legs into it, I hope to write the Hapes story in one form or another.

As far as Dr. Sagan's program, I didn't see it so I can't comment specifically. But given that he is a scientist, I would imagine he's speaking of the narrow details of life and not its underlying principles. To some degree, I'm not even certain I would concur that far, given that mammals have very peculiar biological adaptations that have afforded them highly advanced nervous systems and large brains almost unheard of otherwise. But we do see, now, certain birds and marine animals (squid and octopi in particular) that could potentially develop intelligence comparable to the higher mammals and even the Great Apes. And about non-Carbon lifeforms (probably Sagan's central argument-I think I've heard him discuss carbon chauvinism before), there's only speculation.

However, whatever the organism, mammal or reptile, man or fungi, oxygen-breathing or sulphur-based, carbon or amonia, life evolves. Its very foundation is the evolution of organized and self-replicating systems of amino acids from carbon compounds. Whether life ever stops evolving, while still being sustainable, is unknown, but that it must evolve somewhere along the line is one of its six defining characteristics.

The only method of evolution found in the animal kingdom, as far as I know, is natural selection. Lower life forms, particularly protazoa and bacteria, have a demonstrated capacity to evolve in single generations by altering their chemical structure, but these chemical alterations in all higher lifeforms cause cancer and imminent death. So while I think a broad spectrum of life not observed on earth is not only possible but highly probable, sentient life that does not evolve through variation and natural selection seems highly improbable.

That said, fiction has the advantage of being unconstrained by probabilities. I would be interested in any story that's interesting, whatever its premise. Biology and genetics and such aside. What's more troubling is this notion that we ought to ignore our own moral sensibilities in judging fictional cultures, which seems to me as misguided as ignoring them in real human cultures. We don't condemn the male lion for killing his rivals, but if the male lion were like us, and had our imaginative powers, and chose to kill his rivals, and culture is choice, he's crossed the line between biology and morality.

To me, fiction provides insights and empathy we can't afford in the world-Humbert Humbert is a monster who, in the world, ought to be broken on the wheel. But in fiction, he is a tremendously h

 

Contador--

I realize that this is sort of moot because the mods have already nixed the idea of you presenting that version of the story here, but I just wanted to clarify that my original intention of presenting the example of a society that had no such taboos and their reasons why was to support your idea and to show you and the mods (and anyone else who might care) but one way the issue of incest could be addressed without offending the family-friendly sensibilities of the JC--because it had, in fact, BEEN done, in a novel based on another fandom that's generally considered just as family-friendly, which was sold by family-friendly retailers. While I realize that this was not the path your idea had taken (and I believe I acknowledged that in my initial post), I was just trying to make the point, in your favor, that the detail of incest doesn't automatically equal a story that is in any way trashy or offensive.

This has been bugging me for a couple of days and I finally realized why: although I enjoyed reading your points about evolotion and sociological development, I sort of felt like we had diverged from the main point, which was the interpretation of the rules and support for your idea. It wasn't my intention to go off-topic into some sort of debate, especially when the whole point of opening my big mouth was to try to support what sounded to me like a great story. I guess I got a little confused, because I'm wondering "why is this person arguing with me?" (???) when I'm trying to offer encouragement. Maybe it's just the dangers of printed conversation not emoting as well as verbal communication, I don't know; I just would have expected to move the debate portion to PMs or an appropriate forum if that had been about wanting to continue an interesting sideline discussion.

Any way, I just wanted to make sure you knew that I wasn't trying to "start something," especially when I came here to make friends in addition to reading some good stories.

 

Err NO NO NO.



Doesn't anyone ever read the FAQs anymore?

Slash fiction ("Fanfic featuring people of the same gender romantically involved"--definition from the TFN Archive lexicon) is not permitted for publication at the JC. This includes fiction of other genres that while not technically 'slash' contain some of the elements that make up a slash fic. As they are used in officially released material, allusions and innuendo are permissible, so long as they remain ambiguous and are in reference to original characters.



In other words Luke = No

OC's Yes, as long as they aren't tripping the rainbow all the time - in short, as long as they act like regualar people.

 

Aquarius,

No, I understood you were arguing in my favor. I believe I acknowledge that. And if I didn't, I meant to-I was trying to be careful to debate the issues, which I find quite interesting, without seeming ungrateful for the support.

The larger debate, to me, seemed an enjoyable one and, to be honest, the only purpose for this thread since the actual story falls outside the boundaries of the guidelines. I by no means meant to give any offense, or to dismiss what is a fair and logical argument for allowing an incest storyline on these forums. Broadly speaking, it's the same point I tried to make in my initial post-not that biology could create an environment in which incest is acceptable (I don't believe it could) but that culture could. There's an academic distinction, but ultimately it follows the same premise. I wasn't looking to tantalize or to provoke, but only to examine a cultural phenomena. Your comments were helpful in supporting that and I appreciated them-I should've made that clearer.

However, the premise was shot down, so the only thing left was the academic distinction. I enjoy these sorts of arguments and, by default, don't consider them personal. I also have a nasty habit of questioning my friends as much as my opponents, a consequence of belonging to an ideological slant (left) that tends to be right in its conclusions and wrong in its arguments.

I wasn't being glib when I said I could be safely ignored-if it's not your bag, I wouldn't be at all offended if you chose not to discuss it. Or if you simply said (which I understood-again, it was just a friendly debate from my perspective) you were offering an example in support of the story and that was it. As it was, I was enjoying it as a meaningless exercise and assumed (wrong-headedly) that you were too. I was disappointed when it ended.

I am sorry for it. I should've been a lot clearer in acknowledging your support and defining it as a simple discussion. I appreciated your post and wasn't picking a fight.

 

Breezy:

To me, that's a ban. As I understand it, "allusions and innuendo" are "meaningful looks" and "special friends."

Again, though, I wasn't opening up a debate. In fact, I was defending the board policy insofar as it's quite consistent and long established. Like it or not, them's the rules.

 

Contador--

*laughs...smacks forehead...blushes...laughes self-consciously again...worries about giving the wrong idea again...*

Okey-dokey.

I THINK we both understand each other now, lol. If we ever meet in person, you are more than entitled to slap me around a bit before anything else happens.

I, too, generally enjoy these kinds of discussions. I think part of my problem here was feeling like I'm navigating strange waters at the JC; while I did join a year ago, I was here for a little bit, gone for most of that year, and encouraged to come back by another member. So for all intents and purposes, I'm still a little "new." Add to that, in my RL I just started a new job not too long ago, in an environment where I'm not too sure who I can trust yet, so whether I was aware of it or not, I may have become in the habit of examining things TOO closely and second-guessing meanings. I apologize if this bout of paranoia has affected any potential comraderie we'd have.

Or, as I'd jokingly say to any of my RL friends, "I'm sorry, I didn't take my medicine this morning."

Also, I think that our perspectives about the thread diverged a bit; while you felt that the sideline discussions were the only reason for it now, I was still thinking of it from the POV that the thread had begun as a discussion about policy and would continue to examine the rules and suggest alternatives. (As Breezy has done about the homosexuality question.)

Any way--and I hope I'm being perfectly clear this time and not making things any worse (again, lol)--it would be my pleasure to continue the previous discussion with you, or to participate in any others. I promise you, I'm not normally a spaz; this was just a misunderstanding brought on by the differences between what we brought with us to the thread.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...

 

Aquarius,

Don't worry about it. It was more my fault. Afterall, I posted the thread arguing for a certain storyline, you argued in support of me and suddenly I'm making page long posts arguing with you instead.

I'd be happy to continue the discussion, though, or carry that energy over to the equally vital Was Leia a Virgin? debate in the other thread. It's nice to talk to somebody in this place. I certainly understand the feelings of being overwhelmed and a little lost, despite the efforts of many, many people to be welcoming and helpful. It's just such a large forum.

 

Yes, allusions and innuendo have to be VERY ambiguous here. "Close friends" and "loved each other" are about as close to SSR you can get here, and that is a site rule that won't be getting changed anytime soon. It's also something we mods have little say in.

 

Contador--

You're on! And yes, it IS nice to talk to someone!

Yeah. I'm not new to discussion groups, but I'm used to much smaller, more personal forums. You get to know people pretty quickly there.

Actually, one other time something very similar happened to me at another forum. I got the distinct impression that this poster didn't like me when we had our first encounter, then several months later we ran into each other at yet another venue. She approached me about something, and I was a little defensive based on that earlier encounter. We ironed it out, though, and cleared up any and all misinterpretations, and now I think of her as a friend. Now that the misconceptions are gone, I see her as a very sweet gal and I think of her as a friend. Perhaps through continued discussion, you and I can have the same future.

I do beg to differ on one point, however: I have to take at least equal responsibility for this misunderstanding.

 

Aquarius,

Nor am I. And in fact, the one forum of this nature that I participated in-that wasn't a university-based listserv-was larger than the fanfiction section of the JCC, though it was certainly not as large as the JCC itself. But that was a trend I predated. It's pretty easy to find your way around when you're the one who picked at the color scheme.

Here... It's not so much volume as it is the long history. I'm not sure how to approach folks who registered in 1999.

I did just discover the Senate, though, and a death penalty debate. I suspect I won't be getting any work done over the next couple days.

 

Sounds like fun, but I think I'll hold off on the Senate until I'm more sure I can post there without ticking anyone off or looking like an idiot, lol.

 

There's historical precedence for incest, particularly in aristocratic lineages: hence the phrase 'blueblood'. This seemed to have cut across almost all cultures: from Europeans to the Egyptians. Like JK Rowling said in one of her books, all the pureblood families are related to each other in one way or the other.

The acceptable degree of relationship varied, of course, according to region and timeperiod. For example, in pre-Christian Britain, marriages between siblings were not uncommon; but afterwards, only first cousins were acceptable mates.

Personally, I could read a story about this concurrent relationship between a brother and sister who are also husband and wife. Maybe it's because I've never had a brother so the 'ick' factor doesn't register instinctively in my head. There a variety of successful stories in modern literature on that theme - from psychological studies like VC Andrews' 'Flowers in the Attic', moral lessons like the seduction of Arthur by Morgana, to stories where incest is neither evil nor unnatural but simply a way of life for some people.

I hope this was helpful to some level.

EDIT: Just realized that this thread has been effectively closed. Sorry if I've just flogged a dead horse. That'll teach me to read all the posts before I jump in.