#disclaimer that just because I'm writing an incest story doesn't mean I think incest is okay irl

[felixwriting]

Space Pirates (name still undecided) WIP Intro

What Is It?

Title: TBD

Genre: Dark romance, horror, sci-fi, fantasy (a whole mess of things)

Status: 150k into a first draft and I'm not even halfway through the plot

Summary: 10 years ago the Monroe family home was burned to the ground when the pirate Zephyr and his crew raided it and stole their eldest children, 16-year-old Sirena Monroe and 18-year-old Tobias Monroe and the teenagers were assumed dead when no ransom was asked. Today, Felicity and Rosalia Monroe, the twins who were left behind, find their family home cursed and those within it trapped in time, doomed to fade into shadows if the curse isn't undone. With the advice and help of a witch, they disguise themselves and find a crew willing to take them to Pluto, a place no one goes. The Captian and first mate of this ship are faces that the twins had thought they would never see again and, as they soon realize, a lot can change in 10 years.

How It's Written: I'm weaving together Felicity and Rosalia's quest and Tobias and Sirena's 10 years in alternating POV chapters. So there would be a Sirena chapter taking place at the start of 10 years ago, then a Felicity chapter in the now, then Tobias in 10 years ago, then Rosalia in the now, then the cycle starts again. I'm hoping this will create a sharp contrast between the Sirena and Tobias that we first meet at the start of their story and the Sirena and Tobias that we meet at the start of Felicity and Rosalia's story and as the story progresses you'll see how these characters came to be as they are. That said, I prefer to write chronologically so I've only written from Sirena and Tobias's POV so far.

What The Fuck: Yes, Sirena and Tobias are siblings, yes they fall in love. This is an incest dark romance story about a pair of siblings who are wildly codependent. Their relationship is not healthy and it's portrayed in a romantic light, but if they were real people they would need therapy and I would be horrified by them. Luckily, they are fictional. I will slap some warnings on the story so no one will go in without knowing what it's about, but. Yeah. Also, both Sirena and Tobias kill people and Sirena eats people, if the ONLY thing you're objecting to is the incest idk what to tell ya.

Main Characters

Sirena De Ville (prev Monroe): Pirate Captain of the Kraken Rose, known as the Siren of the Void, reputation for being cannibalistic and unhinged. Her moral compass is inscrutable to anyone but her and Tobias (and Holly on most days). Beneath it all, Sirena is kind of awkward, having had very little social interaction and even less normal social interaction since she was 9 and her parents all but abandoned her and Tobias. She tends to feel her emotions at a blinding intensity or not at all with little in between. She has been doing witchcraft in secret with Tobias since she was 13. She views Holly as her truest and closest friend (besides Tobias) and Tamzin as a mother. She does NOT view Zephyr as a father no matter how often he tries to be her dad and does, in fact, hate his guts and want him dead.

Tobias De Ville (prev Monroe): First mate of the Kraken Rose, known as Sirena's right arm and the only one able to control her. He doesn't actually control her at all and enjoys how batshit she is. He is seen as the more reasonable of the pair mainly because he is a generally quiet person. Has been doing witchcraft with Sirena since he was 15. The list of people he truly trusts is very small, though he doesn't treat people with any sign of distrust. He views Holly as a close and true friend, second only to Sirena, and he views Tamzin as a mother. He hates Zephyr about as much as Sirena does. Lets Sirena do the talking because he somehow has less social skills than she does, and that's not a very high bar.

Felicity Monroe: Angry, openly distrustful of most, not a fan of her parents no matter how much they started trying to be better after Sirena and Tobias were taken. She has a perfect memory, having never forgotten a single moment in her life, and this has given her a lot of depression, frustration, and anger at the world and the people around her. She is, on the surface, a deeply bitter person who hides how much she can care about others for fear of being hurt. She is afraid all of the time, though you would never guess that by interacting with her.

Rosalia Monroe: Cheerful, considered naive by most because of her optimistic outlook on most things. He is genderless, though they don't mind presenting as a lady because he likes dresses. She is a bit silly and wildly charismatic, though they have no friends to show for it because, like his twin, she is terrified of making deeper connections with people. They also have a keen interest in engineering and the construction of starships, much to her parents' delight.

Other Important Characters

Holly Graves: Habitual thief and former rich kid who was abducted by Zephyr a few years before Tobias and Sirena. She quickly forms a close friendship with the pair, realizing quickly that they probably come from a similar background.

Zephyr Crescent: All around terrible person and Captain of the Serpant's Revenge before Sirena and Tobias took the ship from him and renamed it. There is a curse on him and he has learned how to manipulate it to keep others under his control. When he sees Sirena bite a man's ear off he decides that he wants her to be his heir. Sirena, quite frankly, does not want to be anyone's heir, but Zephyr doesn't care what anyone else wants.

[starrbar]

The word "proship" is about as descriptive as "mutt" nowadays.

Lil disclaimer: This is only about me and my personal experiences. Call yourself whatever you like. It's your actions I will judge, not your label.

There are two reasons why I try to avoid directly labeling myself as "proship" or even "profiction" despite sharing many, if not all, of the views those terms are supposed to stand for.

I wrote about the first reason here.

This is the second reason:

I have seen the terms proship/proshipper/profiction used by real people in the following ways, NOT counting the things antis claim it means:

"Ship and let ship" / "Your kink is not my kink (and that's okay)"

"Not caring what other people like"

"Minding your own business"

"Curating your experience"

"Scrolling when your see something you dislike instead of making a fuss over it"

"Being into taboo subjects"

"Supporting all ships, including pedophilic or incestuous ones"

"Being against thought crimes"

"Anti-harassment over fiction"

"Anti-censorship"

"Fiction doesn't equal reality" / "Fiction isn't reality"

"Fiction doesn't affect reality at all"

"Being able to tell the difference between fiction and reality"

And then on top of that, a lot of neutral people are lead to believe it just means "pedophile / incest supporter", or someone who genuinely thinks minor/adult 'relationships' are healthy and fine.

➛ It's worth a brief note that it didn't originally mean literally any of these things (as documented on the Anti-shipper and Anti-anti Fanlore pages), but you didn't come here for a history lesson.

I've also seen the following behaviors from people who used being "proship" as a shield or justification for them:

Defending MAPs

Defending or participating in invasive RPF

Defending bigotry

Supporting real life incest

Doing "problematic shipping" with child characters played by actual minors

Making lust posts about characters played by child actors

Creating, consuming, or supporting uncomfortably realistic "lolicon"

Getting way too defensive against ANY criticism of a story, even when it's not framed in an aggressive, moralizing way.

And my favorite: Fucking harassing people for perceived "anti" views. -_-

I'm certainly not writing this with the intention of making all proshippers as a whole look bad, but I've had to come to terms with what that word has evolved into and what it means to people. It's gone out of my control despite how desperately I had wanted it to just mean what I think it should mean—what it did mean originally.

When one of my core identity labels can conjure up the image of any one of these things, especially when many of them are god awful, I feel a lot less comfortable using it for myself.

I use "anti-anti" comfortably enough because it doesn't refer to my potential stance on paraphilias, what ships I'm into, censorship or ""censorship"" (the bullshit right-wing boogie man version), or even simply the way fiction affects reality. It instead only refers to my stance against what antis stand for and what they do.

And we all know what they do.

I used to have this explained on my Carrd as a mere supplement to a long, long list of my specific beliefs regarding fiction vs. reality, kinks, and all that jazz. Then I realized how futile and silly it is to preemptively explain my entire moral compass on my literal central hub of Me-ness, because who am I really convincing of anything by having a BYF page that huge? It had a bunch of claims about what I believe, but no further essays linked that might back up how thoroughly I do believe those things. So it would end up just... kind of hollow.

So whenever I'm feeling spicy, I might just write more essays about various aspects of the discourse and keep those in a totally optional directory of sorts, probably still linked on my Carrd. I have a burning need to share my thoughts and writing with the world, but I certainly don't think someone needs to know all of that just to click Like on my art.

(Also some day I might make dedicated posts to each of the links I shared, but for now I just want some level of backup to my words in this post.)

[jonsaslove]

Not sure if you want to expand, but how is Braime misunderstanding either of the characters? I think the beauty x beast retelling is right there... If you just don't ship it, I get that too cause I don't care for it myself but I thought it was, not canon exactly but it's THERE

Hey anon! Sure I'll expand.

Disclaimer, this is just my opinion and not something I even talk about very often as I try to not spend a lot of time focusing on things that I don't like. If anyone reading this likes Braime then that's awesome but it is not my cup of tea and I'd recommend skipping this post.

Breaking it down further, there are a few things I'll touch on. I'll talk about my thoughts on Braime's narrative, Jaime's arc, Brienne's arc, and then a bit more about the Braime fandom.

Braime's Narrative: I do think that Braime has an interesting story narratively and actually I do see the reason why people ship them, there is a lot compelling factors to their relationship. My hang up is the shippers who think they are an epic love story or they are "obviously endgame" and that the show "ruined them". IMO Brienne and Jaime are not going to end up with each other and that has never been the direction GRRM was going with them despite the obvious romantic aspect to their overall arc. I don't see it with them ending together. So again, my issue is less with people shipping them but more with people who truly believe they will end up together and will listen to no argument to the contrary. In contrast, I believe Jonsa should end up together and think it would be narratively satisfying but I'm more than willing to recognize that there's arguments against it.

Jaime's Arc: From the first time I started reading ASOIAF and then watched GOT it was very obvious to me that Jaime's arc was a tragic one. His relationship with Cersei has many toxic aspects but I don't believe that he is going to "break free" from it. In my experience a lot (obviously not all) of Braime shippers view Cersei as this abusive villain who has tricked Jaime into being with her and that she doesn't love him at all. Jaime and Cersei both do awful things to each other and the power balance in that relationship is endlessly fascinating but I don't think one of them is the clearcut victim to the other. If anything over his life Jaime feels more resentful to his father and the expectations Tywin has of him and how he is unable to live up to them.

Another key factor is that I believe Jaime WANTS to be a "better" man. He doesn't want to be known as the Kingslayer, he doesn't want to continue committing incest with his twin, but his arc to me is about his attempt to be a better man and his failure to do so because he is always eventually going to return to Cersei. This may not be narratively satisfying to those who hope for a "redemption arc" but to me it is what's most realistic. I don't believe any of the Lannisters are getting a "happy" ending.

Also, Jaime views Brienne as a possible means to being that better man but in the show we see that as soon as he tries with Brienne he realizes that "good man" is not who he actually is and he falls back into the same patterns. I don't see this as D&D's bad writing, I see it as the natural conclusion of Jaime's story.

Brienne's Arc: Brienne's story...this is something I admit I feel less confident about but I'll give my thoughts on her arc. I think Jaime's presence in her storyline has a lot to do with Brienne's rather rigid thinking about good and bad or right and wrong. She initially thinks that Jaime is nothing more than a Kingslayer but comes to see that people have more complexity than that. Her ideas about the world are challenged through her encounters with him and she grows as a character because of it.

I do believe that she has genuine feelings for Jaime but again I think Jaime's arc is meant to end with Cersei. I have less strong opinions on how Brienne's arc ends, but I think she will have a roll in Arya and Sansa's ending and be with the Starks at the end of the story. I also think one day she will find the love she is looking for from someone who isn't using her to try and prove something about himself. In other words Jaime trying to be in love with Brienne to prove he is a good man.

The Shippers: As for Braime shippers, I've already mentioned this but I think at large they have convinced themselves that this is a fairytale romance with a happy ending and I will simply never see it that way. I also will not forget the way many of them were frothing at the mouth at the idea of Jaime going to KL in S8 to kill Cersei and their unborn baby. Some of the posts from that time were genuinely nauseating.

Now there's a whole conversation to be had about me shipping Jonsa and Jon killing Dany, of course. There are obvious similarities and I could go further into depth with my thoughts on it but ultimately it's my opinion that the situations are different enough for it not to bother me. I also feel that the two fandoms approach Jon killing Dany and Jaime killing Cersei in vastly different ways.

All of that to say that the Braime fandom left a bad taste in my mouth from their treatment of Cersei, I don't believe it makes sense narratively for Braime to have a happy ending, and I don't believe a happy ending would actually "work" for either of them in the long run. I don't think they are well suited to each other on a basic level and I really believe Brienne deserves miles better than Jaime.