As for the age difference - here's the inconsistency. Let's suppose, instead of being 26, he's 226, and looks 20, and she's still 18 and looks it. Now, I suspect people wouldn't have a problem with that. Hey, actually, maybe that's an idea...
Is it incest?
- Thread starter Naomasa298
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I think it was this: https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/pdf/HB03225I.pdf
Anyway, glad to know I remembered correctly.
So here's the revised idea. Parents are some kind of long lived inhumans (NOT vampires because vampires suck) charged with sacrificing this baby girl for whatever reason. Instead of doing so, they adopt her, and live amongst humans, pretending to be humans so she can live a normal life.
Natural (inhuman) son goes to visit parents after no contact for a century or so, meets new adopted sister, falls in love, goes on the run with her to escape the kin who want their sacrifice back. Although just for fun, I might make him 76 and have been away for fifty years, just to say FU to anyone who still finds the idea icky.
Ick factor removed, problem solved.
Natural (inhuman) son goes to visit parents after no contact for a century or so, meets new adopted sister, falls in love, goes on the run with her to escape the kin who want their sacrifice back. Although just for fun, I might make him 76 and have been away for fifty years, just to say FU to anyone who still finds the idea icky.
Ick factor removed, problem solved.
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@Naomasa298 reminds me of my own work. There I have people in love with each other across different genders and long age gaps.
Like I said previously, one can still be mature and experienced, even if young.
I've got an immortal woman demi-god whose age spans eons falling in love with a mortal man aged eighteen. She still looks to be in her twenties, but the experience gap is monumental. But I also have good plot reasons for why she falls in love with him. And it's also an important part of the message and story.
As long as everyone is an adult, experimenting with age gaps can be fun.
Like I said previously, one can still be mature and experienced, even if young.
I've got an immortal woman demi-god whose age spans eons falling in love with a mortal man aged eighteen. She still looks to be in her twenties, but the experience gap is monumental. But I also have good plot reasons for why she falls in love with him. And it's also an important part of the message and story.
As long as everyone is an adult, experimenting with age gaps can be fun.
Child erotica porn is a genre, not a subject. Yeah, if you are going to write child porn for the creepy old guy audience, you're gonna get busted, but writing about the exploitation of children is not in itself a taboo subject. Lolita involves child rape and exploitation without glorifying it. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison contains one of the most disturbing rape scenes in literature, but the scene was written to provide visceral understanding of the character's experience and not to arouse prurient interest. Big difference. That scene gave me nightmares, but was it effective and in keeping with heart of the book? Oh, yeah. Intent and handling make all the difference to whether a topic is taboo, which is a different issue than personal ick factor.
It's my story, so I can care if I want to.It's actually something I'm not all that compelled to write, so if the ick puts people off, I won't bother with it, and I'll do something else, which I care about more. It's just an interesting premise, to me.
Inclusion of incest in a story is obviously going to put some people off. Intellectual discussion aside, if one isn't compelled to include incest (or any other potentially ick subject) to make a specific, salient point, why bother?
Thanks for starting an interesting discussion.
I think that's an interesting opinion. I think this is where we differ, because I could make several 'devil's advocate' arguments. But I won't, because I do not intend to begin a moral vs legal debate. It comes down to: this is your story after all and as the writer, you should feel comfortable writing it.
I think the key is that YOU the writer cares. I have stories with the Greek Gods doing whatever they want and Roman Emperors acting just as debauched. I write these things because they are mythologically and historically accurate and that matters to me. The story you're talking about is not based in history, so do whatever you wish. Even if it was and you changed it, fine. But I wouldn't be interested in the changes.
Exactly! This is your story. You can write it however you see fit. I think that goes for all writers. It's your story.It's my story, so I can care if I want to.
I got tired of posting what made me happy today. I run out of things to talk about there.
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Yeah, it's definitely icky. It would be a tough sell to justify it as being anything other than step-daughter fantasy, regardless of how you write it.
Actually, I'm going to put this one on ice for a while. I've had a much better idea that I want to try, an Jane Austen style weird (as in the genre) story. Now I just need to read some Austen. I'll start with Emma, because it ties into my idea nicely.
I don’t have any issues with your proposal, @Naomasa298 either with the incest aspect or the age gaps. Two of my great-grandfathers married 19 or 20 year olds when they were 45 or 38, respectively. Granted, that was about 1900, but age gaps even larger are not that wierd. Tony Randall married a 20 year old when he was 70 and fathered a child. And wasn’t the first nor last.
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This is going to vary greatly from reader to reader. It also depends how specific or explicit you get with it, and at higher levels may put people off for different reasons.
As far as the age gap 18 to 26, I don't find that to be an issue, but maybe I'm more liberal in that regard. I actually know a couple who got married at that age, and are still happy now with 2 daughters. Of course the age difference lessens as they get older.
If you went for the 50 year gap, that would be more uncomfortable.
Step-daughter? I thought it was step-sister? Either way, I think there are ways it could be presented that would work. plenty of literature has illustrated questionable relationships, some of which I have read, not the least of which is GRR Martin. Sometimes creating a little discomfort is the point.
Whoops, meant step sister. Hey, I would totally write something like that without qualms. But I can't see myself doing it without the intent of creeping people out. Sure, I would justify it somehow, but end of the day, I'd still be intentionally icking people on some level.
If I went for a 50 year gap (regardless of the fact that he looks 22), I would totally be doing it to creep people out.
But right now, I have been bitten by a Regency period drama bug, and that has my focus. I will return to this at a later date.
I think this bears clarification.
Maybe a good example is something like the movie Manhattan, where a middle-aged man is dating a high schooler, and iirc there isn't much attention drawn to it. Like it's just a normal thing to be doing. Nowadays audiences would lose their minds and cancel everyone involved. Times change. Not looking for a debate or anything.
What I wondered was whether you were musing on differences in early adults between then and now. (I see now that it was differences in readers you had in mind.)
What I've read in editing my wife's dissertation on something else is that sociologists say that although today's early adults were exposed to much more while growing up than early adults of the 1970s — more sex, more porn (usually by age 12), more lifestyle diversity (though more homogenous street culture), more diversity of thought (except in strongly right-wing families), more bizarreness, more real-life violence, much more vitriol, mostly online — they've nonetheless been noticeably slower to hit basic developmental milestones and to individuate from their birth families. Many still tolerate or even expect helicopter parents' participation or intervention in workplace or university life. (There's a now notorious anecdote about the young office worker who called up her mother to intervene when her "mean" boss insisted she spell "hamster" without a "p" in a company document.)
I don't have enough contact with that age group today for me to react to prevailing sociological characterizations, but I do recall that from blue collar up to very well-to-do, early adults in the 1970s were normally eager to leave home and prove they could manage life on their own (whether or not they actually could) and did so at 18 or 22, ready or not.
The "Manhattan" scenario was creepy even then, but I wondered if you were saying that early adults in the 1970s were more relationship-ready, relationship-experienced, and sexually experienced than they are today. That sounds plausible.
Sociologists also tell us that early adults are more ambivalent nowadays about close sexual-emotional relationships, often preferring to keep those two things separate.
Lots of fodder for deep writing, in any case.
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The step sister is a legal adult, 18 years of age and there's no blood relationship between them.
The ONE icky part might be the emotional/family connection but he wasn't there while she was growing into the family in person so the big issue is, what relationship did he have? They wrote letters? They Skyped? Or he came home and there was this strange woman who was now his step sister? If there's a relationship there, that will influence how I would see it.
It's one thing to have your family adopt a 12 year old girl while you're working overseas and you never speak to her, hear about her, and she basically doesn't exist in your image of your family and it's quite another thing to have regular contact via e-mails, video chats, letters, gift exchanges and so on. THEN, you come home and meet the girl (now woman) in person and fall in love after having that historical relationship.
Quite a lot.
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