Okay, so... you know when you’re deep in worldbuilding and accidentally notice a really uncomfortable and awkward implication of a piece of your lore you thought was innocuous? I’ve been having trouble with that. Right now I find myself trying to figure out whether or not I need to BS a reason why my “fantasy races through shapeshifting” idea wouldn’t result in one of my characters being uncomfortably and unwillingly attracted to his sister. So as I understand it, the reason most people have no sexual or romantic feelings for close family members is because of something called the Westermarck effect, which causes us to be sexually desensitized to people who spend a lot of time together in childhood. (Apparently without this, closely related people are highly inclined to be attracted to each other if they first meet later in life). Here’s the thing: I don’t know whether that sexual desensitization, that thing that keeps you from seeing your family members as attractive no matter how good they look or what they’re wearing, is tied to the person... or to the body. And the issue is that in my story a lot of people are going to be getting new bodies. See, I decided I wanted to put my own original fantasy races into my modern urban fantasy story by making them out of former humans, after seeing what Shadowrun did with that concept and being intrigued by the opportunities. So my mechanism for this involves using my magic system to give everyone on Earth a half dozen or so opportunities to test drive a genetically randomized body of a new fantasy race for a week before deciding if they want to stick with their current body or keep the new one. What this means is that most of the motivation to change race is in the appeal of getting a reroll on the genetic lottery. You could have been given any sort of body of that race to try out. Tall. Short. Male. Female. Ugly. Beautiful. Disabled. Healthy. But that’s the issue: if one of my characters decides she wants to keep that new body she was given, she now looks absolutely nothing like her old self. And now I find myself wondering what that would mean for the Westermarck effect with regards to family members. Would the simple knowledge that that’s your sister/daughter be enough to keep family members sexually desensitized, or would a physical sexual attraction suddenly be there, just totally unwanted and unbidden and completely at odds with the brain? Because frankly if the logical implication of my setup is that sort of extreme awkwardness around family members, I’m gonna have to come up with some way to hand-wave it, which I’m drawing a blank on aside from just flat-out ignoring it. So if anyone can shed any light on what would logically happen in this scenario so I know if I have a problem that needs fixing, I’d appreciate it.
Could you do something with pheromones or something? Like, even in the new bodies the characters still smell the same at a subconscious level? Or... hang a lampshade on it? Like, play with the excessive familiarity we sometimes have around family members? Jesus. Anna's new body was fucking gorgeous, and absolutely my type. Well, honestly, pretty much everyone's type. Perfect curves, skin that damn-near glowed, long hair hanging down over her shoulders, just brushing the tops of her-- She reached around and ran a hand over the swell of her tight ass, then dug her fingers in between her cheeks and tugged. "Fucking wedgie," she complained. "My old undies don't fit me right." Job done, she pulled her fingers back out and grinned as she extended them toward me. "Here, let me fix your hair. Are you growing a little mustache? Let me touch it..." Right. Anna. Anna the boner-killer. Thank god for small mercies. Or whatever.
Personal story, but I once dated a girl for three months before finding out she was my cousin (insert joke about The Deep North here). Literally at the moment we figured it out we lost all sexual attraction for each other and even though we're still pretty close today, neither one of us have ever been remotely tempted to revisit any of our earlier mistakes. And yes, I realize that a couple of hundred years ago or in different cultures, being cousins isn't a problem and people still get married and raise children or whatever, so I'm going to assume there's some sociological training there somewhere.
