dude-watching with the brontes

[ang]

Holy fuck. I remembered HOT GIMMICK as being basically a series about how ~~~romantic~~~ an intensely abusive relationship is, but I completely forgot exactly how abusive Ryoki is. I am just like WHAT every third chapter. At least. WHAT. WHAT.

Which is sad, because there are certain aspects that are kind of endearing/interesting to me (by which I mean "Incredibly spoiled boy is bad at feelings. Attempts to have relationship. Continues to be terrible at feelings and also at interacting with other human beings in any sort of meaningful way"). So I'm like, wow, this would be awesome if it weren't for all the coercion, and controlling behavior. I'm sure "faily dickbag in love" is possible to write without it turning into, well, this nonsense.

(Although weirdly, I am more pissed off about the fact that Azusa and Hatsumi end up being friendly again after that fucked up crap he pulled on her early in the series. WHO EVEN DOES THAT.)

Also, also, I remain immensely irritated by that tendency of stories to be like "Oh, well, this one sibling is conveniently adopted so it's not like it's ~really~ incest if he's in love with his sister." Dude. He grew up thinking of her as a sibling. I don't care if they're not actually blood relatives, that's some incest right there is what that is.

(On the plus side, Akane and Subaru are kind of great?)

Comments

[lilacsigil]

"Oh, well, this one sibling is conveniently adopted so it's not like it's ~really~ incest if he's in love with his sister."

Well...maybe. There's more than one kind of adoption in Japan which could certainly be influencing the storytelling. You can adopt a kid in the Western sense, you can adopt an orphaned kid through duty (he's a relative's child, he's the child of someone to whom you feel obligated or someone who was in your protection) and that child may or may not be treated as part of the family. There's also adult adoption where the older gay person adopts their younger partner so they can be a family, or adult adoption when a family with no sons adopts their eldest daughter's husband as their son, but he's still married to the daughter despite technically being her brother. So I think there's probably some different concepts about adoption influencing that. No excuse for fucked up crap that women keep having to forgive, though.

[ang]

That's a good point. It's a bit unclear in some ways. I know that Hatsumi and Akane grew up believing that Shinogu was their biological brother. (They are surprised to discover that he was adopted!) But I believe he knew he was adopted the whole time (or from a fairly early age). I'm not to the full explanation of the adoption, but it does seem like situationally it was a bit more of an obligation type adoption, but on the other hand, he seems to have been raised largely as one of the family, or closely enough that no one really knew he was adopted until the course of events in the manga?

Anyway, it's more that I see this sort of "cop out" in all sorts of stories, many of them Western in origin, and it confuses me a bit.

[lilacsigil]

Yeah, it's a weird cop-out because with the Westermarck effect this kind of quasi-incest should be just as rare and just as uncomfortable as actual incest! I haven't read anything with this particular cop-out myself, though, except for some odd readings of The Mill on the Floss and Emma!

[ang]

Yeah, that was pretty much my thinking. I do agree that there could definitely be situations where "adopted" wouldn't do that. (Sort of like why I am for stories about blended families happening when the children are older, and the step-siblings turning out to be into each other, or a situation like the Cohens and Ryan Atwood in The OC, where he's part of the family but not, so there would be room there for Seth/Ryan if that's a route they wanted to go.)

[cereta]

"Oh, well, this one sibling is conveniently adopted so it's not like it's ~really~ incest if he's in love with his sister."

Oh, God, I haaaaaaaaaaate that trope. Soaps and VC Andrews, man. One soap went so far as to have a man date a girl (I use that word deliberately, because she was like 19 at the time) whom he first thought was his daughter then his half-sister. Eeewwww.

[ang]

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