I think the most important part of a incest story is the buildup of the relationships where "exploring their new found feelings" is the key, starting a game where the relationship is already there takes that away.
I agree. Once the relationship is set up, the only difference with any other relationship is on the eyes of the witness.
anne O'nymous one of the reasons I try to do more with less, especially on these forums, is because a lot of the time there are people like you who are smart and start to fill in the gaps. This way over the course of multiple replies I can cover what I want to say without writing an single massive essay that no one reads. Rhetorical manipulation of dialog
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It's not just rhetorical manipulation, and that's why, when I have the time, I "play this game with you". It provide two "opposed" (but not necessarily in conflict) point of view, which help the reader to build his own opinion.
In response to the points and concerns you have noted, I in summary, I am visually oriented and find that even the simplest of games can impress.
While, for myself, can't imagine one (visual) without the other (words). From my point of view, whatever how expressive the image can be, they need an effective context to give the best of what they have ; which don't mean that you necessarily need to write a lot.
To keep the Luna's past scene, when the poor girl hold Luna's hand, it's already full of feelings with the images. But those feelings suddenly go to the infinite by the addition of the small dialog that accompany them. It's this (I'll summarize it), "are you alright ?", "Yes, don't worry, everything will be good", that make you pass from the "poor girl" carried by the image, to you being in tears.
The images themselves can carry the hopes and desperation of the girls, but they can't carry what matter the more in this scene, their innocence and the strong bound they have together. And at the opposite, the words by themselves couldn't have carried their hopes and desperation as efficiently.
And, in top of that, it everything that happened before in the scene, that make our feelings goes over the top. It's because, in the course of the images and texts, we came to care about them, that when the worse happen, we can't contain our feelings anymore.
Remove one, whatever the texts, the images, or what was before this moment of the scene, and we would had felt almost nothing at this time of the scene. We wouldn't have come to the point we care about them, and therefore how could have we cared about what happen ?
In the example, I would say there are two phases. There is the two interacting (the bullet points) and then there are the characters reacting.
No. There isn't the characters reacting. I explicitly said that they shouldn't react, because there's nothing to react to. And if reaction they should have, internalization is the last of all the possibilities.
It's not always avoidable, but it should be avoided as much as possible. If, by example, you want the son to be pleased by the view of his topless mother, give him a stupid smile, it will always be better than a, "wow, mom is still beautiful despite her age" ; a comment that anyway don't have is place in the story.
Rather, I am talking about how in the above example, since each character tries to act calm, I feel like what happens through most of the beginning (the part
79flavors would say to skip) is that both characters try to "dance" around the subject as they try to deny their feelings or try not to show their feelings.
But they can only dance around it when they are aware of it. It's what make incest stories so different to other romances. You live we the person you fall in love with, therefore you don't see you falling in love.
This in the exact same way that you don't see this person age. All parents have heard the famous, "Oh my god, he've changed so much", and unless it's a really effective change (the other have seen it when he was still a baby and now he's 3 years old, or things like this), the parents are always confused. They haven't seen the change, because they can't see it. How can they, the change happened gradually for them, there were (to express it dumbly) 0.3% change each day, while the other person not having seen the child during a whole year, see a 100% change.
And the same goes for the feeling. The son slowly start to romantically love his mother, the mother start to romantically love her son, but it's a slow and gradual grow. They can't be aware of it from the start, like they can't effectively be aware of it before it effectively become romantic love.
When they discover that this feeling exist, it's already too late. They already felt in love, and at this time, yes, they start to dance around it. But generally it don't last long. Either the moral win, and they suppress it, or the feeling love, and they stop caring about the moral.
You can't pass an effectively long time knowing that you romantically love a relative, without being obligated to deal with this feeling in a way or another. It's just mentally and psychologically impossible. It can last one month, perhaps to, but it's really the maximal. Either you deal with it, or you end in an asylum ; our mind is not built to deal with such conflict in a long time.
After this point, it's not around their feeling that they dance, they've nothing to dance around. They live it like an impossible love, trying to gain small rewards (like the kiss in the lips by example) as consolation price. But that's all, a real lover wouldn't force the other, not embarrass him.
And finally, when they discover that it's a shared feeling, around what do you want to dance ? They are lovers like any other. At worse, they dance around other peoples, that's all.
The main key here is the conflict between what they feel and what they should feel. Each incest game understood it and express it. But what their author feel to understand is that it's not a conflict you can live with.
This exactly in the same way that couples who stop to love each other can't live long with the conflict between the faked love and the real absence of feeling. If they quickly deal with it, they can stay friends, but if they try to ignore it, repelling forever the moment to deal with it, they become one of those couple who fight every time and/or pass through a divorce full of hate.
It's how our mind protect itself. If you can't deal with the internal conflict, then it will spread in every single one of your actions, because it can't stay silent forever.
This is just me, but I feel that too often stories get stuck on the part where the characters dance around the issue. I feel people get stuck on this because they are trying to write realistically, and realistically people do dance around problems and issues.
This while, like I said above, it's a problem that can't be treated like this.
In the end, if the story get stuck, it's mostly because the author didn't understood how much, and why, it's different to other stories.
I think the challenge is trying to make change in people something that is convincing. Most of the time we don't change if we don't want to.
Which is one of the difference. It's not a question of wanting to change or not, you need to change, in a way or another.
Can you imagine how it can be to live constantly with the person you romantically love, knowing that you shouldn't romantically love this person, having to act like you don't romantically love this person. All this with this person being someone who love you, but not the way you want it, express this love all day long, and being someone you don't want to stop loving, because it would be horrible coming from you to stop loving your mother/son.
Unlike all the other situation where you have to change, the starting position is not a stable one. You don't have the possibility to stay like you actually are. It's not, "fuck it, I'll stay single all my live, I really don't want to socialize", nor, "fuck it, I'll not stop smoking. If I die younger, then I'll die younger". The actual position is unbearable, you have no other choice than to change, whatever how you'll do it.
Sure one could become more sexually bolder,
Which wouldn't works for an incest story.
You can lead someone to the idea to "give it a try" because you've been bold enough and, "well, why not him, he's not a bad guy after all". But you can't do this with a relative. Can you really imagine a mother or a sister "giving it a try" with her son or brother ?
If the feeling isn't here from the start, either consciously or not, it will never be here. Or it's a step family case, or a long time separated one. There, it can perhaps works, but because at the start of the game they already don't see each other like an effective relative.
No, the only way being bold can works for an incest story, is if it's established that in this universe incest is something totally natural. It's, in a way, what
Sisterly Lust did, by making them goes in vacancy in a place infamous for being full of incestuous relationship everywhere. Suddenly, this kind of relationship felt totally natural, and it become possible to "give it a try".
Often to break out of the dance, you need something like to force an interaction, such as mom catching the son with a boner or something cliche like that (not too sure what all the cliches there are on this subject).
There's three of them.
The one you already named, and which obviously apply to any female character with any male character. And there's the opposite, the male character seeing the female one in the shower or changing in her room. But both aren't at all right since they base the incestuous relationship on lust, while it should be based on love.
And there's the third cliché, the sister (generally the older one) who act like a bitch hating the MC, because she's totally mad in love for him. This one being correct. Not only because it base the relationship on love, but also because, probably without knowing it, the author write a character that act accordingly to her internal conflict. She can't love him the way she want, she'll do everything to make him avoid her as much as possible, which is a way to deal with the conflict, because you remove its cause ; you can't stop loving someone (relatively speaking), but you can remove this someone from your life.
I often find it jarring that a writer tries to be careful about things, having characters dance around the problem, only to solve it by tripping them both up with this "sudden" event, and that contrast in writing I feel like gets relied on too much.
Technically they aren't wrong, it's an all or nothing situation. But it's where most of the author stop to be right, because they don't pass from "nothing" to "all" ; starting with small interactions that don't happen in real life.
They write it like the starting relation of two shy teenagers who think that they are in love, but like any teenagers aren't really sure that it's love, and are afraid to have sex. This while it's a relation between two persons who already know that they are in love, and who want to have sex ; because, like I said above, until the moment they understand that they want to have sex with the other, they don't know that they are in love. For them, their feeling is natural, because it grown slowly in the course of many years, and also because it's totally mixed with the "not romantic love" that they felt since birth.
[...] eventually the characters need to understand that the other character is reciprocating, and you either give consent, or catch them in the act, it seems like.
That's the only effective blocking point in incest stories.
None go see his mother and say (to use the cliché line), "I love you live a woman, I want you to be my lover". Therefore it need to come from something totally innocent that can change both slowly and drastically ; like the kiss I use previously. Once it's natural for them to kiss on the lips, the right mood, a kiss that is a little longer than usual, the lips that starts to open... Something that none of them control, which happen naturally and lead to a mutual consent that they haven't asked for. It's, more or less, the only possible situation, because it's, more or less, the only situation where the consent is expressed without being asked.
If you achieve to make them sleep naked in the same bed without all this looking stupid, you can also try to make it happen this way. Without wanting it, their body touch each other ; it can be a small bed in a motel because they were going far away and stopped mid-way, and for once they are naked because... because I don't know
I can make them in their underwear, the night clothes are in the bags, the bags in the car, fuck it, they are too tired, they'll sleep like that for once. But still, sharing a bed need to be something already totally natural for them, as well as seeing each other in their underwear.
Unconsciously one start to rub, it can be just because the person search a better place to sleep. Unconsciously the other respond.
The mother put her hand on her son body, to reassure him, saying something like, "I know it's not comfortable, but I'm sure that you'll be able to sleep."
The son do the same, to appease her mother, saying something like, "don't worry".
The hands stay a little longer, each of them are stealing a small piece of this intimacy they want to share, but can't have.
The hands move. It can be the mother at first, "come more closely, I don't want you to fell off the bed". The move was more sensual that she wanted it, but it's too late, and it was so pleasing.
The son also move his and, to come closely as asked. For him also, it was more a sensual move than anything.
The hands stay, they start to move slowly, the sensuality of their movement is a little more marked ; did (s)he really don't care ? Did (s)he really want it ? Those movements are a try, they start to become sexual, not by the action themselves, but by the place they try to reach, by the grip that make the bodies be more and more close, but the small rubs that are less and less innocent anymore.
Both understand it, the other want it as much as them. The one being the small spoon turn back, facing the other. They look each other in the eye for few seconds, searching the answer in the desire they can read here. This night they had another "good night" kiss... a "good night" french kiss" right from the start. This night they'll make love for the first time.
Or there's also the sudden realization, you look at the other and recognize this spark in her eyes, it make you smile like an idiot, and she recognize this smile. Then there's a "but...", a "yes...", and they start to kiss, then make love. Most of the time, it starts like this in real life, but obviously not after the first exchange. You need time to process that you weren't wrong all those time before. But in a game, it would feel like totally cheap writing
There's also another possibility, but like I intend to use it in my game (if I achieve to make it), I'll not talk about it this time
