Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA's Incest

This is a long, rambling diatribe that has no structure and goes basically nowhere.  It's just a case of me wanting to get a bunch of crap out of my head to try to make sense of my reaction to 1 particular part of a game.  Not the first time I've done 1 of these, probably won't be the last, make of it all what you will.



Why, exactly, does the romantic and sexual interest that Simone has for her Aunt Raye, and the fact that Raye harbors similar feelings for her niece Simone, bother me?

Okay, sure, that seems like a silly question with an obvious answer: it’s incest, and incest is an idea that puts most people off.  Duh.  And I guess that’s correct enough.  I’m not a big fan of the general concept of incest, for pretty justifiable reasons, and given the choice between having it or not having it present in a piece of media I consume, I would generally prefer not having it, if it’s not genuinely an inseparably essential part of the work.

But that doesn’t really answer the question when it comes to Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA.  Because even if it’s not my general preference, I typically don’t allow the presence of incest in art to truly affect my ability to view the work.  I crack wise all the time about how Fire Emblem just staunchly refuses to not include some form of incestuous feelings in their games, and while it’s probably my most overused joke at this point, it’s not like Nintendo ever seems to be in a hurry to disprove the allegation.  But no matter how often I take Fire Emblem to task for it, my opinions on its titles are pretty much always formed independent of this quirk--it doesn’t keep me from liking FE4 and FE14, and it isn’t any significant factor into the reasons why I don’t like FE15 and am at best neutral on FE16.  I have, in fact, placed a few examples of in-family pairings in FE14 and FE16 on my lists of the top romances for each game.  Hell, Corrin and Camilla are sisters (albeit not biologically), and they’re my favorite couple in Fire Emblem 14, to such a strong degree that I actually wrote the F/F version of their S Support conversation in the esteemed and highly recommended Gay Fates add-on mod.  Relatedly (pun intended), I’ve expressed my general exasperation at RPGs as a whole for being so overeager to hook up the protagonist with someone who is by all rational counts their adopted sibling, but 450 games in, I think it’s safe to say I’m not letting this strange habit keep me away from the genre.

I like the original Star Wars trilogy and Back to the Future quite a bit, and even if it’s (thankfully) unconsummated, there’s definitely little teases of incest in both.  I think Kill la Kill is a fine enough anime, and the villainess of that piece is outright fucking her daughter.  Futurama is 1 of my favorite cartoons of all time,* and there's a point at which its protagonist goes back in time, porks his grandmother, and becomes his own grandpappy!  Revolutionary Girl Utena is among the greatest animes ever created, and it’s got no less than 3 examples of brothers and/or sisters displaying incestuous feelings for each other, each at varying stages--and 1 of those is at the point that they are boinking, and have been for literal ages.  And goodness knows there’s no shortage of other examples of incest to be found in movies, cartoons, and especially animes that I’ve seen, and whose worth I've judged independent of it.

And all of this is to say nothing of the amount of incest in classic literature as a whole.  Dear Draefendi the Huntress, the great literary minds of history can’t get enough of the stuff!  And I’ve certainly read and appreciated my share of classic stories and plays without letting this predilection with banging blood (and non-blood) relatives turn me away from reading.

Hell, in the Large Battleship Studios game that preceded this, A Dragon’s ReQuest, 3 of the 5 or 6 (depending on where you rate Chelisera) women involved in the game’s main polyamory are distantly related, and another one is, SPOILER ALERT, the result of an incestuous coupling!  And given that I’ve not only heartily endorsed ADRQ, but also charted this polyamory on my list of the greatest RPG romances ever, certainly none of the game’s incestuous aspects fatally bothered me.

So, why is it in THIS case, with Simone and Raye, that I don’t just roll my eyes and move on?  I’ve surely seen and accepted, even endorsed, stronger examples of relations wanting to have relations.  It hardly seems fair to hold Simone and Raye having and expressing romantic love and sexual interest for each other against AAAVXA, particularly since canonically it’s never actually acted upon, when I don’t allow my judgment of so many other works to be damaged by such things.

I grappled with this question for quite a bit as I played Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, and truthfully, I don’t know if I have arrived, or ever will arrive, at a fully satisfactory answer.  But I think the foundation of my discomfort and irritation with Raye and Simone is...well, okay, so, Fire Emblem, right?  Fire Emblem and a LOT of other games and animes that involve incestuous feelings and relationships?  For all their fixation on the subject, they generally hold incest at an arm’s distance, as this peculiar fantasy thing being applied to situations and characters that don’t have much presence in the real world.  FE4’s Lachesis having such feelings for her brother that she doesn’t want to marry any other man because he’ll never measure up to Eldigan is a silly, weird sentiment that rarely exists in any major, nor affecting, capacity outside of overly dramatic romantic fiction.  FE14’s Corrin and Azura are cousins who only met each other as adults, and the fact that they’re cousins is so under-expressed that you might easily just miss it altogether; it seems like it was only thrown in there specifically as an afterthought to make them more Fire Emblem-y.  All of the siblings that Corrin can marry aren’t actually related to her, but she only finds that out for 4 of them during the conversation in which you’re having them commit to a romantic relationship anyway--that comes off as someone on the writing team just goofing around with this idea more than taking any significant pro-incest stance.

Sure, in FE16 Byleth can woo and marry her grandmother Rhea...but while Rhea created Byleth’s mother and treated her as her daughter, the implication is that it was the result of some kind of magic and/or science, so it’s not technically incest, and Rhea is emotionally much more akin to a mother to Byleth during the game’s course but didn’t actually raise Byleth, and also, Byleth has Sothis’s soul crystal thing within her, which means that Rhea is, in a spiritual sense, actually sort of Byleth’s daughter (which is what she wants; she’s doing this whole thing of resurrecting her mother), but Sothis’s personality has not actually supplanted Byleth’s.  So Byleth can get together with a woman who’s simultaneously her mother, grandmother, and daughter, and also quite arguably not any of those things.

This is the kind of “incest” that Fire Emblem and a lot of other RPGs and animes and such engage in--it’s basically just a flair of exotica that they add for flavor and don’t think about or seriously commit to.  They’re dancing around the subject, wanting the benefit of the thrill of the taboo while being too cowardly to actually go in on it.  The lore says Alex and Luna from Lunar 1 were raised together in the same household, but there’s no part of their cold-as-a-dead-fish rapport that suggests they have any stronger personal ties or knowledge of each other than you’d find between people who happened to take a couple elective classes together back in high school, so their romance (such as it is) can proceed without the slightest complication of their being brother and sister.  If what you’re into is adoptive siblings getting the down-there feelings for each other, then hey, great for you, Alex and Luna will appeal to you on that level, but if it’s something you don’t want to see, no problem, the writers aren’t going to make even the slightest attempt to acknowledge the situation they created.  Same with countless other RPG adopted siblings--expect no more acknowledgement from, say, the flirtations of Lufia 1's protagonist and titular character, or Asahi's lightly implied crush on Nanashi in Shin Megami Tensei 4-2, of their having been raised together by the same parental figures.

Fixations like Lachesis’s idolization of her brother are overly romanticized, the incestuous part of Corrin hooking up with her adopted siblings or her cousin or her father figure is, contradictorily, both there for show and largely unstated, and I feel pretty damn confident that there has never been a romantic and/or sexual relationship in human history that would be accurately reflected by Byleth’s potential one with her grandmother-mom-daughter-sort-of, and most of it all can still pull the “Oops, not technically” card if backed up against the wall.

But the case of Simone and Raye is not one of this futzing around with incest as a weird fantasy thing that can be sprinkled onto situations and characters that don’t actually apply to the real world.  They flat-out ARE aunt and niece, and their shared life situation is realistic and familiar.  They understand and engage with each other with the familiarity (pun still intended) of close relations, they live in the same house and have normal-ish life schedules that intersect as one expects of family under the same roof, and outside of ones connected to Simone’s pining for Raye, their interactions are very much rooted in the familial and display a clear aunt-niece connection.  AAAVXA establishes very firmly in fact and in character that Raye and Simone are family; there’s no backdoor to this link between them that allows the audience to only approach the incest angle as much as is comfortable before ducking out with contrived and frankly ridiculous technicalities.  Raye and Simone are an aunt and a niece who are sexually attracted to each other and there will be no half-measures on the matter.  Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA doesn’t involve “incest” like Fire Emblem and its ilk do, it involves incest.

But on the other hand, doesn’t that actually make it more respectable, really?  AAAVXA actually takes the matter seriously enough not to fucking dance around it like some kid bugging his (platonic) sibling on a long car ride with “I’m not touching you!” shenanigans.**  When Simone and Aunt Raye talk about this attraction between them, they’re serious discussions, ones that Simone approaches with blunt honesty, and when Raye rebuffs her advances and pleas, it’s on real grounds with genuine emotional rationale, not just some cutesy “Oooooh, but its so forbidden tho, we just caaaaan’t, :O  ;)  :P ” nonsense.

Not only that, but a good chunk of the dialogue and scenes devoted to Simone’s love for her aunt is sincere, high-quality content.  For all its carefully earnest, envelope-pushing reservation, their date in Episode 6 is genuinely well-written, earnest, and I do daresay romantic. I've seen sloppier dates in RPGs, ones that had less belief and earnest wish for love in them, that were less aware of their problems and also less convincingly optimistic of a capability to overcome them.  Hell, I think the most romantic line of the entire game is a bid by Simone to her aunt to be with her: “I’m not tall or dark, but I could leave all this pretend childhood behind and be a woman, if I could be your woman.”  With the context that Simone’s college-age adolescence is a major part of her taking back what an abusive childhood stole from her and an essential part of her capacity to move forward with her life, that’s a declaration of tremendous weight from her.  It’s 1 of the top romantic lines in the game, in my opinion.  These feelings were treated as legitimate and important.

So Saint Bomber takes Simone and Raye’s feelings and situation seriously, and doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence about the matter.  Shouldn’t I count that as a positive?

Well, I mean, I do!  But it also means that I respond as an audience by looking at Simone and Raye as seriously as the game wants me to, and that’s a large part of what makes me uncomfortably dislike it.  Because the realism of their situation carries with it 1 of the most realistic obstacles to an incestuous relationship’s capacity to be healthy: there is a major power imbalance between them, and it isn’t something that can likely ever go away.

Aunt Raye is, in Simone’s eyes, the woman who swooped in and saved her from a truly horrific life that deeply traumatized her and stunted her development as a human being.  Raye’s the first person that Simone ever received love from (even if Miriam is the first person who ever verbally expresses love to Simone).  She’s the worldly adult that Simone goes to for advice and the perspective of someone at a higher personal vantage point.  In practical matters, it’s Raye’s house that Simone’s living in, and mostly Raye’s income that provides for Simone’s needs and wants.  And while Raye definitely has her own hang-ups and weaknesses, between the 2 of them, Simone is demonstrably the one who has a more dependent, turbulently traumatic, and vulnerable mental and emotional state.

Now, to some degree, this emotional and psychological inequality is lessened by the time all of the game is said and done.  Simone definitely becomes a stronger person and more capable of self-reliance.  Raye does eventually share things about herself, opens her vulnerabilities up to Simone.  There are revelations made which diminish some of the things that Simone most owes her for--in fact, in many ways it’s Raye who owes a karmic debt to Simone, one so massive that it can never be paid off.  In practical matters, Mille would undoubtedly allow Simone to live with her, Miriam would definitely do the same for her if she needed it, and both would make sure she had a livable situation overall, so Simone is not necessarily beholden entirely to Raye for her welfare.  And of course, Raye herself says that she doesn’t want Simone to feel an imbalance between them.

But the thing is, no matter how even the playing field may be made by all these factors, it doesn’t actually amount to anything.  The emotional power imbalance remains the same.  Because even after Raye confesses the worst parts of herself and fully lays her cards on the table, Simone makes it pretty clear that her love for Raye is no less and no different than ever--which means that regardless of anything and everything, her perception of Raye as the hero of her life that she adores is unchanged.  Perhaps ironically, the wonderful lesson about love that we got from Mille in this game, about how losing her initial and unhealthily intense infatuation with Simone gave her a chance to develop a deeper, more real and healthy love for her, provides a compelling argument for why Simone’s feelings for Raye remain disquieting to me: there’s been no such opportunity for refinement and maturity for this infatuation; it remains in its initial problematic state because Simone can’t stop perceiving Raye as she always has.

And not for nothing, but it turns out that the predominance of why Raye insists on their maintaining romantic distance is not so much born from a general sense of responsibility or recognition of the real problems inherent to their situation, but rather from a guilt-based perception of where Simone's feelings come from and the authenticity of their creation.  Frankly, the fact that Raye's reticence about allowing anything to happen between her and Simone isn't based on the actual ethical problem that should be restraining her, but just on self-revolving reasoning that Simone could make (fairly rational) arguments against, doesn't make me any more comfortable with the situation as a whole.

But oh my God, Arpy, SO FUCKING WHAT!?  What does that matter, when Raye and Simone don’t ever actually get together!?  Regardless of the validity of the denial's origins, if Raye is responsible enough to keep refusing to let them act on their attraction, then what’s my problem with this?  So what if Simone has the hots for her aunt, if nothing’s going to come of it?  The woman showed Simone what it was like to have joy for the first time in her nearly 20 years of life, got her help, and gave her a life that wasn’t founded on abuse and neglect.  It is pretty damn understandable that Simone would attach just about every positive feeling she could have to Aunt Raye as a result, including hero-worship-based love and desire.  Particularly when you factor in Simone’s established difficulty in not letting any positive and affectionate relationship she forms slide quickly into love.  Heck, she appears to possess no capacity for discrimination on this point; getting hot and bothered for your own aunt is downright relatable (lol again) compared to falling for Anastasia.  Hell, romancing the damn cat would have been less emotionally puzzling than Simone getting butterflies in her stomach for that acidic contrarian egomaniac.

Well, I do have to say, even if Raye and Simone don’t get together, and Saint Bomber firmly proclaims there’s none of that hoo-ha in the game, it feels like we’re meant to want them to.  Like I said, some significant effort goes into scenes and dialogue that convey their love and attraction, and the general feeling I get is that we’re supposed to not only view Simone’s adoration of Raye as legitimate--it feels like it’s meant to be seen as legitimate and viable.  Like the game’s narrative itself would have liked it to have happened, and would have seen it as a good relationship if it had.  As I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of scenes and elements of Simone and Raye's interactions that make for genuinely romantic material.  Heck, I really think a good argument could be made that the narrative favors Simone and Raye's unfulfilled romance with noticeably more care and belief than Simone and Mille's love receives, in spite of the fact that Simone's relationship with Mille is 1 of the 2 main love stories of the game.  AAAVXA is sitting down and having a frank discussion about incest, and I respect that, but it does feel like that discussion’s happening because it’s got an angle it wants to push.

But still, yes, there's definitely an argument to be made that I need to suck it up and fucking get over this, because regardless of how its potential is portrayed and whether it would be healthy and so on and so forth, the fact is that Raye and Simone don't hook up in the game's canon,*** and when asked, Saint Bomber will even confirm that they continue to live separate romantic lives past the confines of the game and into the future--a fact that was, it seems, going to be confirmed in another, separate game project that never fully materialized, but still holds established weight in his works' lore.  My consternation over this matter may very well not be proportionate.  Nonetheless, the nature and potential (even if unrealized) of unhealthy dynamics in this scenario that has some weight of realism to it does discomfort me, reasonably or not, and the casual encouraging atmosphere that the game has about it doesn't help.

The fact that I'm uncomfortable with the emphatic attraction that Simone has for Raye isn't where my dislike for this aspect of AAAVXA ends, though.  Frankly, this angle of incest in their characters and relationship also annoys me somewhat, too.  Because, well, honestly, how much is it needed?

Look, I think I would object substantially less to this incest if there were some discernible purpose to it.  Some benefit or necessity it provided to the story that wasn't going to be accomplished as well or better by an easy alternative.  Let's return to Saint Bomber's previous game, A Dragon's ReQuest.  As I mentioned earlier, of the mutual polycule that constitutes the game's main romance, 3 of the women involved share a common semi-recent ancestor--the woman who was the grandmother of 1 of them was also the great-grandmother of the other 2.  Realizing this made my eyebrow raise so fast it might have been mistaken for a SpaceX rocket taking off--but also like a SpaceX rocket, it came crashing back down immediately after.  Because, you see, ADRQ is meant to be an homage to Dragon Quest's earlier titles, the second game in particular, and in DQ2, the party consists of the 3 descendants of the original Dragon Quest's protagonist, so having 3 of the main characters of ADRQ all be slightly distantly related in the same way is playing into ADRQ's cause of paying tribute to DQ2.  Granted, DQ2's party members weren't all fucking (at least not to my knowledge), and it's a pretty silly minor detail to insist on adhering to, and of course Dragon Quest is generally garbage that doesn't deserve to be paid respect anyway, but, ultimately, there IS an actual, recognizable reason for Hinoki, Garnet, and Aurellia to be mildly related, even as they fall in, and reinforce their, love with one another.

Hell, we don't even have to go as far as a different game for an example of incestuous feelings that I don't have as big an issue with because they serve a purpose.  Simone isn't the first family member with whom Raye's wanted to go deep-diving in the gene pool--Simone's mother, Raye's sister, was her first great love, and the history of those doomed feelings, the ways that Raye acted on them, forms the vast majority of Raye's character, motivations, and the gut-punching backstory of her villainy, as well as the secret foundations of Simone's own history.  Whether or not the idea of it is something I'm comfortable with, I don't begrudge Raye's lost love for her sister its place in AAAVXA, because it's an essential part of the story and characters that wouldn't accomplish what it does without being exactly what it is.  Raye's catastrophic love for Sadie forms the basis for several of AAAVXA's most important actors, functions as a load-bearing drama knot that's tied many of the game's most important plot threads into itself, and is frankly an outright impressive and even overpowering tragedy that makes Raye a great character and opens new dimensions of pain and sadness in the story.  No argument from me that this bit of incest earns its place in the game.

But Simone's adoration for Raye?  To be quite frank, I just don't see its necessity.  Given that Raye saved her from an utterly horrific and traumatic life situation, which occurred after Raye already having been the only genuinely positive recurring figure in Simone's life to show her affection, Simone's love for her would be just as believable in its strength, devotion, and utter adoration if there had been no angle of sexual attraction involved.  The talks they have as Simone seeks guidance from her knowledgeable adult figure, the way that Simone is affected by the revelations and twists related to Raye, her embarrassment at the ways she has to cover for Eva's secret and messy existence as it inconveniences Raye's home, their general shared demeanor...it'd all work just as well and remain more or less unchanged and intact if it were all based on platonically familial affection.  I might even argue that, the game being filled as it is with Simone's predilection for falling in love with any woman she forms a strong bond with, establishing a love as strong as the one she has for Aunt Raye without the attachment of Simone's knee-jerk thirst for romance might actually have added more narrative legitimacy and weight to it, made it stand out all the more.

And from Raye's side, just about all the interactions with and affection shown for Simone seem pretty straightforward and non-pining, at least on the surface.  She rarely mentions or displays any of her latent attraction for Simone if not pushed into having to acknowledge it by Simone herself.  Little to nothing significant would have to change by excising the incest angle on her side, either, as far as I can tell.

Mind you, I don't mean that you could just scoop all of the incestuous material out and just leave it as is; you'd at least need some character-building scenes and conversations to replace it.  This isn't 1 of those scenarios where you could literally just remove some aspect of the story without it making the slightest significant difference, like Raven's betrayal in Tales of Vesperia or 75% of Chrono Cross's cast.  There'd have to at least be some character-building content, this time of a platonic nature, put in there instead.  But the ultimate matter of who and what Simone and Raye are to each other, the authenticity and magnitude of their love and bond, the personality of their interactions, the soul and truth of their relationship, exist, I think, independently of their attraction to one another.  The substance of their relationship and all the important ways it shapes them and the story of AAAVXA does not need the gimmick of romantic and sexual tension to function.

But then again, who the hell am I to say what's "necessary" or true to Simone and Raye as characters?  They aren't my creations, and maybe they're real and valid enough to their creator that their narrative function isn't all that defines them.  I've said before that I suspect at least some of Saint Bomber's creations, from how relentlessly characterized and rounded they are as personalities, exist in his mind and develop into entities of their own beyond his conscious effort.  For all I know, Raye and Simone having the forbidden hots for each other might be less a choice on their creator's part than a simple instinctive calling on theirs.

For that matter, griping about whether something is "necessary" can be a very shaky complaint to begin with--it's the unnecessary flourish that lends personality and memorable detail to our creations, after all, and certainly some of the signatures of LBS games that I most appreciate and respect, such as the astonishing amount of reactive banter and monologue tied to investigating the games' settings, are wholly "unnecessary" embellishments.  Maybe I'm just being a colorless, arrogant twit in having this frustration.

But then again again, Raye and Simone's thing is far from the only reference or other content involving incest in AAAVXA, and even if I could make myself comfortable with their situation, I still think I'd at least find it tiresome that the game's so determined to include it so frequently.  I mean, besides Raye and Simone, you have Raye's backstory involving her sister, which I fully admit to being a legit and strong piece of lore and character depth, but you've also got a whole episode's adventure dedicated to confronting a vampire who's in love with her sister--a quest whose purpose seems mostly to be communicating the message "Look, look, incestuous love CAN be pure!  I have Proof: The Author says so!"  Also, it's never stated, but Hat Diviyan Keliya's lines during the game's true ending make me pretty sure that she's down bad for her mother.  AND there's that weird, genuinely unwelcome joke that Miriam's first mother, Gene, makes about testing out the bed with Miriam if Miriam's other mother, Bern, isn't there--the backtracking from it is awkward and uncomfortable, which it certainly should be, and I guess there are times when people make weird jokes and regret it, but it absolutely did NOT have to be there at all, it accomplishes nothing, and is frankly by all other observable personality metrics pretty out of character for Gene, and Bern not letting it go but kind of implying an agreement with the sentiment by using the same "cute" adjective with Miriam as she did about Simone a moment ago when implying an attraction for the latter...yeeeeeeaaaaahhhhhh that moment was weird and, frankly, just pretty stupid.

It's a lot, honestly.  There's a lot of teasings of, references to, and feelings of incest in Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA.  This isn't just a major character relationship story between Simone and Raye, and it's not just a startling and well-written origin story for Raye's role in the game's story.  It's also just a thing that keeps showing up, again and again, and not in the inescapably well-written capacity that Simone x Raye and Raye's history enjoy.  Hell, that stupid joke scene with Miriam's moms is just outright a negative, a small but annoying mark that counts against AAAVXA as a whole.  Even when allowing for my discomfort being an overreaction since it isn't consummated, even when dismissing my criticism of its lack of necessity as philistine, it's still hard at times to truly regard Raye and Simone's mutual attraction as much better than fetishy indulgence when the topic of incest keeps making its inapposite presence known for little to no other discernible reason again and again throughout the game like a pop-up for a service whose free trial period is soon to expire.

...Buuuut, I have to wonder if this still is a failure on my part.  There very well may be quite a fair point to be made that my consternation is my fault for simply not going at Large Battleship Studios games with the right frame of mind.  I mean, you know me: I take the media I consume pretty seriously as a whole.  I latch onto the highest level I can grasp of any storytelling art I encounter, and I instinctively look upon the whole from that vantage point, and sometimes that's not accurate or fair.  The fact that Saint Bomber's works contain fascinating material, heavy themes, and substantial emotional turmoil doesn't mean that that's all they are, that they're wholly a dramatic offering.  I never quite remember (or perhaps believe?) that these are, in significant regard, also simply indulgent romance simulators, and aren't especially pretending not to be.  And if I were playing a mildly gratuitous indie dating sim, it wouldn't shock me that an Aunt Romance path was there.  I'd, I dunno, probably just roll my eyes and move along; it's some people's fantasy and I'm not really here to kink shame.  But because AAAVXA is also a great and thought-provoking RPG, I just instinctively slide my headspace into treating it exclusively as such, and not a multi-path explicit romance fantasy game, when I should be treating it as both.

It's frustrating.  All these years later, all the growth that I had in my role as an audience thanks to Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle, and I'm still finding ways to trip over a creator who wants to be both insightfully brilliant and unabashedly indulgent.  I'm disappointed that maybe I'm just not able to keep my perspective as open as I think I do.

Anyway, I think that's all the nonsense I have to spew on this matter.  Ultimately, the focus that AAAVXA directs to the romantic feelings that Simone has for her aunt and that Raye has for her niece makes me uncomfortable, and I find them to be a stumbling block in my otherwise smooth stride of appreciation for this game.  Maybe there are legitimate reasons for that, maybe I need to get the fuck over it.  Maybe it wasn't necessary, maybe it doesn't matter if it was or wasn't.  Maybe there's too much fetishy incest-baiting in the game to begin with, maybe that's just a pretentious perspective born of not engaging with the material in a reasonable way.  In all likelihood, 1 way or another, it probably all comes down to something in me that I think Accresciator Lasca puts best: "The fact that her world view doesn't line up with that makes me uncomfortable in ways I don't entirely understand."

Whatever the case, I've now regurgitated pretty much all the thoughts, reactions, and feelings that were warring in me over this matter as I played the game, and if anyone's still reading this far into this semi-stream-of-consciousness mishmash, hopefully you can make better sense of it than I've been able to.












* The first 6-ish seasons, anyway.  It definitely went past its expiration date.


** Actually, I guess that would still be bugging the sibling if they weren't platonic, too.  Probably even more so, in fact.


*** There IS a what-if scenario that shows an alternate route that destiny could have taken where they run away to be together, but as it's explicitly non-canon and forcibly undone by fate, one can't [i]really count that.