I don’t agree with what’s going on with the Menendez Bros so this current infantilisation and romanticisation of them is bizarre to me. I don’t agree with the Monsters series being made by the guy behind the American Horror Story franchise, if at all. I’m not a fan of that series, even the one series I did watch, it was needlessly tacky and exploitative, I didn’t need to see Zachary Quinto doing stuff to Clea DuVall’s frozen corpse. I do like Sarah Pulsen, I’ve loved her since American Gothic, I wish her rise led to more people seeing that show and reviving it online. That show deserves more recognition for being a Sam Raimi thing.
The level of ego the creator of these shows exhibits is astounding. Telling a whatever, incest/sexualised depiction to “raise awareness” to the Menendez Bros case years after the fact is the lowest this guy’s gone to get attention. I did like the OJ Simpson series but that was also exploitative and made Rob Kardashian look more sympathetic than I refuse to believe and I’m tired of people erasing that from the Kardashian history. Don’t get me drunk and started on that.
I’d rather talk about this odd fascination with fandoms shipping family members in their fanfic or general obsessions. Pandering to that need by way of implying two real life brothers were sexually involved by way of assault and abuse is disgusting and silly. I try to let people off for fictional characters, the brothers from Supernatural have been shipped by fanfic writers and I don’t get why. Wasn’t it enough to ship one of them with a guy then get mad at the queerbaiting? There were characters in Degrassi people got annoyed about, specifically a couple who became step-siblings who’d continued their relationship in secret, that doesn’t make me sick. I don’t understand why people get so put off by it, PornHub’s famous for providing that scenario, I felt sorry for people who this happened to in real life, it’s not really fair to put two people in a situation they didn’t choose and be mad if they developed or had existing romantic feelings towards each other. And the entire romance in Clueless is founded on them being ex step-siblings that the father is still supporting as his kids. So that didn’t gross people out that much??? Make it make sense. Degrassi also had two twins kiss for five seconds, (well one kissed the other because she was a trainwreck character and they were cashing in on the Gossip Girl scandal based storylines). That was the end of it. It was kinda icky and silly and attention grabby but it didn’t bother me that much.
When it’s a storyline where two characters who are related are tricked into a relationship by omission or manipulation, then I can’t stomach it. If I know it happens in a movie, I won’t watch it. There was a weird indie game that included to half-siblings accidentally procreating and that made me uncomfortable, it seemed like a cheap twist to an already messy story. Or Jeremy Irons insisting male relations being sexual isn’t incest because he’s using the literal term of two related people having offspring and anything outside of that isn’t that, sorry brah, it’s still gross.
Maybe the Menendez Bros were victims of sexual assault, I’m pretty sure they were still guilty of murder and probably deserved to do time regardless. These cases were around when I was younger and without the internet you couldn’t verify or speculate beyond what the media presented so I thought they killed their parents for money and not revenge. I didn’t hear the court denied men could be sexually assaulted. I didn’t know they were even abused at all. And with OJ, I didn’t have much context until I heard Bill Hicks speak on it. I hate he got away with it. I couldn’t argue with American Crime Story. I can argue against people getting hot and bothered over criminals and the possibility of them being inappropriately involved. We didn’t need another piece on Jeffrey Dahmer, I didn’t know people were posthumously calling him a thirst trap. I liked My Friend Dahmer for the fact it didn’t feature the victims and focused on the incidents prior to the murders, but it was kind of lacking. I think depicting killers killing is horrible. We don’t need to see it. The Ted Bundy Netflix movie was okay. But I don’t love true crime the way other people do. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t have a morbid fascination with it. I don’t like crime dramas, I don’t like the tension involved. I hated the way a particular one ended, it was so cringy. I just don’t care enough to get that invested. I was a Serial junkie but I’m not anymore. I hate that didn’t lead to an acquittal and it stirred up the pot for nothing despite knowing NPR had no intention of doing this, it was accidental.
I lost my point, I was going to do something about twincest in relation to something else, the Menendez Bros triggered this post. I’m only harping on about people having issues with the step sibling thing compared to actively supporting actual incest. I understand the law in most places considers marriage and adoption/fostering as being familial relationships and prevents incestuous relationships, but I feel like, surely, if you had a foster family of unrelated kids, stuff’s bound to happen and being grossed out by that is kinda weird. I don’t even find the idea of distant cousins hooking up as funny, the royals are guilty of this. I don’t know what else to say I just think if PornHub can only limit incest porn to step-relations they’re never going to go as taboo as some people seem to want, and if you are into it, yeah, that’s pretty weird. Shipping two brothers for the sake of making a scandalous show you know people will talk about then hiding behind the “raising awareness” excuse is beyond the pale. Are we done now? I’ll stop excusing the step-sibling shit if we agree to stop sexualising actual siblings.
