#I like making batcest ships actually incest. it's fun to me.

[necrotic-nephilim]

t4t timcass leaning into the physical similarities and incest angle

YEAH YOU GET IT-

TimCass looking physically similar my beloved. i just love when they're so similar it's *creepy*. mannerisms, looks, how they wear their hair, how they fight, all of it. esp if other heroes actually assume they *are* related. and Tim and Cass never correct them bc ppl nonchalantly call Dick his brother so sure, Cass is his sister too in that sort of way. and Cass doesn't really care what people assume about her family. (could be fun too if this was during the time Cass didn't know her mom anyway so like. she didn't know either way)

and being t4t. your brain. trans!Cass is so fun. bc her trans identity would likely be the first personal identity she develops and femininity would be so important to her for her understanding who she is. it gives her freedom and the room to be perceived in a way that she has control of. would be so fun for Tim to help her with makeup and shaving. i like the thought they're just so used to each other bodies that nakedness isn't something they question even before getting together. they shower together anyway, so why wouldn't Tim help Cass learn how to shave her legs. why wouldn't Cass wash Tim's hair for him.

i think it's fun if Tim going on T increases his sex drive *immensely*, to the point it makes him borderline frustrated how horny he is all the time. (as is common for a lot of transmasc folks) and so they're in the shower together and Tim is annoyed, shifting around and Cass just wraps her arms around him and slip a hand between his legs to help him out before he can even ask what she's doing. on the flip side, Tim massages Cass chest while she's struggling with the tenderness of breast growth on E and she ends up jerking off as he does it bc it's the first time that pain hasn't been a bad thing for her. mutual jerking off becomes so common until it leads to sex in all sorts of creative ways as they explore their gender expressions. Cass finds one of Tim's old dresses in his closet and puts it on so she can wear it while she rides a strap she puts on him. they lean into the incest in bed too, Cass very pleased to call Tim her brother when she's tugging on his bottom growth.

also fun if as they both transition, it makes them harder and harder to tell apart. they trade clothes and their voices and bodies go through changes that both Dick and Bruce have gone "Tim can you- wait shit you're Cass sorry-" more than once. and neither of them mind. bc there's something pleasing about looking so much like the person they love so deeply. it connects them and makes them virtually twins that no one will ever seperate.

[antimony-medusa]

this is mars creatchure i just don't want this tied to my main because the batman fandom Scares Me

found family is SUCH a way to condition yourself into kinks. it's not exclusive to mcyt. i jumped right from dsmp and sbi (even though you know, was always more of an emduo guy, i got to see the sbi fics as well) to dc and batfam and the shit people will write and slap on "they're brothers" to. it makes me a tad insane.

i'm not gonna talk about the obvious issues in the fandom, and like. i guess at least some people are honest about it, writing slash ships of the batboys and all (whole other separate issue) but like. some of the people with 'batcest dni' in their ao3 tag write the most borderline shit i've ever read.

i don't have concrete thoughts on it or like. a commentary abt what it means or whatever, just that the phenomenon seems to be present in found family fandoms as a whole, not just mcyt

Oh yeah I've seen hints of the batfandom in action, that seems FAIR. I do not want you to get swarmed.

Honestly the found family space being very similar in batfam to what it is in dsmp doesn't surprise me, especially when I know that a lot of people transitioned from DSMP/SBI to the batfam. (I also saw signs of people going to stranger things, and a bunch of other fandoms, and the part where I went Oh Good Luck was seeing some people trying to do kpop band boys as a found family. Go with god.)

You have people who really like the strong bonds between people in fiction, but they aren't quite mentally comfortable with writing or consuming sex or romance. And while some of them are doing this because they're sex-repulsed or really like platonic relationships, a bunch of them are just young or they've unwittingly bought into some cultural messages about how Sex Is Bad Actually. So in their fandom, they end up either picking up or creating a family dynamic for them to work with. And then if anything was to happen romantically with their new blorbos, it would be both underage and incest, so absolutely they've made sure nothing can happen because it would be horrible, so they're safe to continue with family dynamic, celebrating the strong bonds that brought them there. But then you have this little community of people, and I'd say while they know that they SHOULDN"T do anything romantic with the characters, the coding for romance and sex is in the head of a good like 99% of humanity, so when a romance or kink trope gets floated in this fictional context, falling through the mindscape in the shape of a hypothetical story, about half or more of these people don't go "ugh" (because they're romance-repulsed), they go "oh I can use that, that's a fun way to celebrate the bonds between people, I just have to clean it up a bit" (because most of humanity is fine with romance actually), and then they strip the blatant romance or sex out of it to make it Okay To Use, and then they write a story using, like romeo and juliet crimeboys (platonic), or cuddle pollen batfam. To grab an example of a glaringly romantic trope and a blatant kink trope that I've seen repurposed into platonic spaces.

And then in this community of people, every time someone does that, the temperature of the water in the pot they are all in ticks a little higher, because these tropes that someone grabbed from a romance novel or a kink page are now circulating in this platonic space as normal tropes that we all use, and other people use the tropes without really thinking about their origins, and that's how, like, hypnokink gets normalized. Or non-consentual cuddling (extended edition). Or smelling each other on each other's skin. Or fated mates platonic soulmates. All these things that if you're not in the fandom and enviroment, you read out of context and go "this CANNOT be platonic"— but they mean it to be!

And as you say, this is a perfect enviroment for conditioning yourself into certain kinks, because on the one hand you're moving in this space where there's a lot of non-sexual kink around touch and consent and restraints altered states and dehumanization (and sometimes more) happening ALL THE TIME, and you start to get the warm and tinglies at the climax of the story even if the climax of the story is someone getting tied up, and at the same time knowing that you shouldn't think about the blorbos kissing doesn't mean it's not gonna happen. It just means that it's super ilicit and illegal in your brain when it happens. But boy is it happening now, and these characters are so important to you and their bond matters so much to you, and—

Cause you are here cause you like thinking about the bonds between blorbos, and romance and sex and associated tropes are really compelling because as a society we've had about 11,000 years to refine our storytellling about them, so you just keep sinking further and further into the bonds between the characters, using all these tropes, and as it turns out, you're doing it in a space that means you're gonna come out of it with some kinks.

So. Yeah.

Saluting you over in the batfam mines. I hope the babies come out of it okay.

[someoneimsure]

Is shipping cass cain x Tim Drake considered incest you think? I ship it but idk how the wider public would react to it :x

The fanon batfam community would probably say "Yes." The only person they exclude from batcest shipping is Stephanie Brown because she is the only one who has yet to be officially adopted by Bruce Wayne.

Y'know what, I don't know if Cass' has been officially adopted by Bruce Wayne.

...so I did some research and it turns out, Yes she was adopted by Bruce Wayne--but only because she was already involved in the "family business" of being a vigilante. Despite, y'know, Cass being 20+ at the time of adoption.

Batgirl (2008) #6

Is TimCass or CassTim actual incest? Fuck no, lmao. It's fictional, first off.

Secondly, even in universe, there's no blood relation at all. Thirdly, Cassandra can consider Bruce a father and still not consider all of Bruce's other adopted children as brother/sister. Real life adoption relationships are complex and often don't fit the Nuclear Family mold.

Btw, Timmy was there when it all went down, and he heavily implies Nightwing be Not Happy about the adoption news.

But I don't blame Nightwing, really. In canon, getting adopted by Bruce means getting stuck with his mission, whether you want it or not, and Nightwing doesn't want that for anyone.

He also did not trust Cass throughout this mini-series so... make of that what you will.

Also this comic heavily implies Batman thinks that vigilanteism should be a family business. And one prerequisite is not killing your enemy no matter what. So if you do kill, you'd be kicked out of the family forever... *stares at Jason*

In conclusion, unfortunately, the insecure half of the shipping populace would perceive it as Batcest.

But regardless, I want you to know that your ship is perfectly valid and people will support you no matter what (like me!), but if you want to keep your ship a secret that is also perfectly valid! <3 And there is no shame in blocking anyone!

Just have fun, my dudes!

Also, I only read like Issue #6 just to respond to this comment, but then I turned around and read the rest of it and it's... it's an adventure. They had to fix a lot of background by retconning a whole bunch of shit so Tim Drake is just info dumping Cass' life for the past year for like a solid minute in Issue #1, lmao. Check it out for some very minor canon Tim & Cass interaction. <3

[someone-writes-dc]

So here’s my stance on Batcest:

Fiction has one rule:

If you want a more detailed and nuanced take on what I consider Batcest, which includes my personal tastes, just click on the readmore (and beware the serious conversation about to take place because I do not hold back at all). Otherwise, just have fun!

~***~

Assuming you want to apply real world morals and laws to fanfiction, let’s start with actually explaining what’s really wrong with all of these ships: implied incest, grooming, and pedophilia. Implied, of course, is the real important word here because a lot of the writers aren’t even thinking of this shit when they actually write (most are probably kids, some are adults who have different takes on ages or adopted families, and literally anyone else who agrees with the whole ‘fiction has one rule’ aspect as mentioned above). Just because something may seem implied does not actually make it true.

How do you know if someone isn’t implying and straight up pushing the whole ‘incest, grooming, and pedophilia’ is okay shit? Well, it’s actually very simple -- when the characters in the story are pointing out how “they only see me as a brother but I will force my romance on them because i can” or “they’re young and cute but that makes them all the more appealing even though I know children are easy to manipulate” or “they’ve been with me since they were babies so they know exactly what i like and we’re adults now so its okay.”

The glorification of these three things is what we should be trying actively to avoid - especially in fiction being given freely to kids. In my experience, however, most of the time writer isn't thinking about fetishizing. Most ship pairings in Batcest are based purely on personality and the potential interactions they could have. That’s the truth.

(Note: Adopted siblings have the unique power to choose what kind of relationship they want with their adopted/non-blood related siblings, whether familial or romantic or other, while blood siblings can only choose to be either best friends or worst enemies. For adopted sibs, it’s only incest when the two adopted kids consider each other brothers.)

Now, it is up to the writer to make sure the reader understands the ages and rules of the universe for whatever alternate universe this ship takes place in, preferably up front -- and up to the reader to be open to those kind of interpretations as well. And if you are a reader or writer open to those kinds of interpretations and open to writing those kinds of ships, that’s great! Don’t let the haters get you down just because they can’t figure out the difference between romantic ships and straight up fetishizing (or worse, can’t tell what’s reality versus what’s fiction).

If you are interested in reading more nuances, here’s a link to the original post I reblogged which has inspired me to take a stance on the subject. See my tags there for more historical and educational info.

I draw a hard line in a lot of cases when it comes to my personal preferences, though, mostly because I have had bad experiences in real life that I don't want to talk about or relive. Note: This doesn’t mean you’re a bad person for shipping batcest or inhuman or whatever or that I don’t want you to interact with me. Just respect my preferences <3

Anyway, here’s where I believe which relationships fall under (Aka, what I assume when I read stuff without appropriate warnings or tags or intros):

ALL THE “ACTUALLY” BAD SHIPS:

GROOMING

Grooming: Anyone who has had a mentor or father position, or any other position of power for a long period of time, over another person who is usually of a younger age, potentially a decade or more.

Bruce x Batbros, Bruce x Batgirls, Dick (26) x Tim (17), Dick (26) x Damian (10)

PEDOPHILIA

Pedophilia: Anyone who is 16+ paired with anyone under 16 years of age. As a general rule, if they are not an adult, they need to be within roughly 1-2 years older or younger, and I generally do not like reading romances between anyone under 16 because it gives me the same vibes.

Damian (10-15) x all Batbros, Damian x Bruce, Damian x Batgirls

INCEST

Incest: Any relationship where two people share DNA. A lot of people argue that adopted siblings fall under this category, and I am not one of them. The truth is adopted siblings can choose to have real sibling relationships or not. Blood siblings do not get that choice. And if you feel that invalidates the relationship you have with your sibling, that tells me you’re insecure about your relationships and really need to have a talk with your sibling to figure things out.

Bruce x Damian, Bruce x Kate

ALL MY “OKAY” SHIPS:

Comics: Jason x Tim x Cass x Steph, Dick x Jason x Cass, Dick x Pre-New52!Roy, Dick x Kory

Animated Movies: Damian x Raven 

New52: Jason x New52!Roy

Young Justice 2010: Dick x Will Harper, Jason x Roy Harper, Dick x Artemis x Wally

MY OTPS/NOTPS:

FAVES: Batman x Justice, Superbat, Jason Todd x Justice, Dick x Kory, Tim x Conner (YJTV), Dick x Justice,

WORST: BatJoker, Supermartian (YJTV), Bruce x Batbros, Damian x Anyone