Edwin doesn't look upon Victoria as an object of desire, but as the reminder of his desired objective.
Love this line, it's a great sum up of your post.
I am rearranging it a bit for my replies and i hope i don't distort the essence of it by doing this.
He holds his mother up as an example of someone who has sacrificed everything for the good of her family, so it would be his greatest betrayal to her if he became a slave to his most base sociopathic tendencies... not incest, but apathy. And he feels a sense of self-worth and fidelity towards his mother because of everything she's given to him.
(...)
That being said... incest makes absolutely no sense in the context of this story. Pale Carnations simply hasn't been written in a way that defends a character turn like that. In his own fucked-up way, Edwin viewing her films has desexualized her in his eyes. If he hadn't, he wouldn't be jerking off to elf porn and what have you. He'd be using her films.
Absolutely agree with this.
No, Mrs. Pullman's path does not "point towards Victoria becoming involved"... that's just projection. She's using Freud to play a cruel joke on him using Rose. She has made no effort to do more than use Rose as an analogue. Even at her most heinously manipulative, she's constantly rebuked by her misgivings about his true personality.
Kathleen is still trying to figure out Edwin, trying to find ways to push his buttons, which is a semi-random process based on her educated guesses about him. She loves to play cruelly with people, like a cat plays with it's prey, that's one part of her motivation, but the other, perhaps bigger part is, that she senses a kindred spirit in him.
Her attraction, the reason why she is drawn to Edwin, consists of the rare possibility to finally find a partner-in-crime / ally / friend / lover, someone who understands her on an emotional level, which is something she sorely lacked her whole life. Everyone she met so far, to whom she showed her sadistic side may have understood this rationally, but noone was able to really comprehend that and connect with her desire.
If and how this plays out is still to be seen, however i believe Kathleen is aware and/or afraid of her advances towards Edwin could fail. Victoria is the main obstacle on this path for her, but her influence on Edwin is still way stronger than than Kathleens, so she can't oppose Victoria openly and instead tries to reaffirm Edwin that by following her path he will not alienate his mother and loose her love.
Kathleen and Victoria are opponents in an undeclared war over Edwins soul, so to speak, and i won't rule out, on the contrary i am pretty sure, that Kathleen will target Victoria out of spite if she is about to loose or has lost the war. And if she will win Edwin over to her side she will probably also target his mother in an attempt to damage their bond beyond repair.
So imho, if we try to keep Victoria out of harms way it's probably best not to raise Kathleens interest in Edwin too much, but instead keep a professional and friendly distance.
I have also outlined my reasoning in my post
"Why Victoria will have sex-scenes" so take a look there if you are interested.
In my playthrough i went full into this mess, with among all of the NPCs having only Kathleens affection maxed out, despite i (and MyEdwin) resent her the most. MyEdwin oscillates heavily between those two poles, with on the one side trying to get on Kathleens good side and gain her trust, and on the other side always calling Victoria after the exhibitions and even spending the night at home. I am looking forward to how this drama will play out:
(...) the general idea my playthrough is based on, would be to try some kind of 'undercover- /double-agent' thing in which i'll try to destroy the club from within, with the very real risk of failing completely and pathetically.
And end up as Kathleens plaything and watchdog, overseeing the shared gangbang of Hana, Mina and Victoria between the club members, while Rosie is milked in an industrial grade mechanical milker and Feli tries to stretch her asshole with a horsedick dildo. Veronica can play the human toilet for all he cares then.
Very bleak, i try to avoid that.
He's not truly an unredeemable sociopath... his mother's crying at the table and feeling at a complete loss of options on how to raise him... her guilt at feeling her failure as a mother... her fear of losing the house she vowed to keep... and at that point she most likely already was making adult films so she probably felt worthless- as if she shattered her mores and motherhood for nothing. He understood her emotion and empathized. He made a pact with himself. (...) Sometimes, we keep mementos or delve into memories as reminders of why we've set our goals for ourselves.
Once we see his behavior and how he doesn't view her as a sex object, we could conclude it would be utterly ridiculous and juvenile to now ruin years of character development in order to project an incestual fantasy into this brilliant storyline. It doesn't play here. (...)
(...) Kathleen's obsession with playing with an assumed Freudian complex of Edwin's is much, much juicier. Especially when we know she's wrong about Edwin's intentions. (...)
Just brilliant.
Again some really great paragraphs, especially the first one.
However, and i try
not to advocate for incest here, because this is by now totally and irrefutably put to rest, i am wondering about a possible revenge scenario and i want to preface it with a thought about what is incest and for whom.
Consider a predatory father, and in real life i would assume this is the most prevalent one, who is sexually attracted to his daughter. Let's not burden this with pedophilia, so let's say she is already post-puberty, and his craving is
not reciprocated by his daughter, however he coerces her by blackmail, violence, drugs or even gets her 'consent' by manipulation, money or any other measure a sexual predator would use, into performing a sort of sexual activity.
I would argue the incest in this scenario is very one sided, opposed to let's say a brother-sister couple who enter a sexual relationship based on their attraction to each other. In reality, whereas this sexual activity may satisfy the incest kink of the father, it's plain rape for the unwilling and sexual abuse of a daughter who had 'consented'.
So if we apply above methods to a coupling in which
both participants are neither sexually attracted nor really consenting, can we still call it incest? Like a sadistic soldier forcing a mother to perform (lapdance, HJ, BJ, you name it) with her son at gunpoint? For
his pleasure only?
I would say no.
