Long-time readers of my blog know what inspired me to try my hand at writing incest stories: Yui's excellent series of standalone stories featuring the same sister and brother. Although she has not submitted any new stories in quite some time, her tales still serve as a source of inspiration for me, and I personally hope that she will return with some new stories soon.

Of course, one cannot simply mimic another person's work. Eventually, one must find a unique voice and ideally a unique perspective. I believe I have done that over time, writing incest stories featuring brother and sister and parent and child and uncle and niece, writing from both the male and female perspective across the various tales. To some extent, I suppose that one could consider the incest genre to now be my core genre of writing, just because I have written so many incest stories over the past few years, including some rather lengthy series and most recently the NaNoWriMo-length "Standing Strong Forever."

What interests me most in writing about incestuous pairings is the "us versus the world" nature inherent to such relationships. Whether the participants are truly in love or are just infatuated or are simply turning to each other as an easily-accessible outlet for satisfying sexual needs, no one else can really know about the relationship. I can envision some exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, if others find out about the relationship, or even if an incestuous relationship is simply a rumor, it can adversely affect the (alleged) couple.

I witnessed the latter point in high school. A brother and sister were both in band with me, and the sister was also in one of my science classes. Supposedly, one of their friends dropped by their house one afternoon to see the sister and overheard the sounds of sex, and in peering through a window saw the brother and the sister having sex with each other. I do not know if this was indeed a true situation or if this was simply a (hateful?) rumor which began circulating through the school. All I know is that they were both really quiet and withdrawn for the next few months until the school year came to an end, and they did not return to school at the end of summer vacation. We lived in a relatively small town where everyone knew everyone else at least by sight and it was rare to go more than a few weeks without seeing someone, even during summer vacation, yet I never saw or heard from either of them again, which causes me to believe that the situation or rumor actually forced their entire family to move away.

That is not a situation I deal with in my incest stories, but that threat - that negative public reaction - is always tangible as a potential consequence of the relationship. What I tend to deal with when I write incest stories is the mindset of the main characters. What are their thoughts on the expectations of society? What steps will they be forced to take to ensure that their relationship remains unknown to the general public? How do they act and react toward each other when they are not in private? How can the main characters be in love and demonstrate their love without causing others to wonder if there is something more than just regular familial love between them?

Of course, when the relationship is between parent/uncle/aunt/grandparent and child/niece/nephew/grandchild, the wide age gap comes into play and can further complicate the matter. If the relationship is between a parent and a child, the difference in age is further stressed as the parent attempts to juggle the roles of caregiver/provider and (potential) lover. If things start to get rather kinky as well, especially with the older partner actively dominating the younger partner, the boundary between biology-based love and romance-based love is even more prone to be frayed.

To clarify, I personally have no experience with incest - and also absolutely no interest whatsoever in being part of such a relationship. However, I do find the continual balancing act quite intriguing, trying to create or maintain a relationship which society as a whole deems to be inappropriate and immoral. How does that struggle take place within the main characters?

That is also in part why I primarily use first-person viewpoint in my writings now. First-person makes it so much easier for the writer and the reader to truly get inside a character's head. Issues and topics which typically could not be discussed through dialogue or written down for others to see can be very easily handled through a character's own thought process. I find that quite enlightening in terms of incestuous relationships - and other, more "mundane" interactions as well.

Perhaps I will eventually move away from incest as a genre of focus. But for now, the pressures on an incestuous relationship are quite fascinating, and I hope that those who read my incest tales will at least somewhat sympathize with the main characters as they "fight the world" and try to remain together.