Wait do we ship Holt brothers here Iām just asking because Iāve seen people do it
maybe people do? i wouldnāt know, seeing as the shipping scene of adf is very slim and is an overall rarity given the fandomās small size. back when i was super active ( like, running three blogs active ) i didnāt see much of holt brother shipping ā¦ i think thereās one jay/dale fic in the wild on ao3 and thatās it. thereās also a tyler/dale work i heavily enjoyed too but there wasnāt any real incest in it, so i wonder if the tagging on said fic was a mistake ; you know, when people believe the āslashā means a dynamic of any sort rather than a specific romantic bond? besides that, iāve seen nothing.
i guess i wouldnāt be surprised if people do though. to be shallow minded : the holt brothers are hot, and theyāre men, and people find incest hot. prime ground for shipping already i suppose. it isnāt like many people are eager to ship things that involve vince, or paul, or becky ā¦ they arenāt conveniently attractive or violent, and people flock to those traits. love the holts, i really do! but itās like ā have we seen them? theyāre basically male models with blue eyes to match and a real grungy southern aesthetic ; red blooded american boys who border on hillbillies, obsessed with romanticized hobbies like labor, smoking, drinking, hunting, fixing, huffing paint. they have a capacity for anger and violence and possessive streaks and itās shocking more people arenāt obsessed with them, when theyāre queer menās and womenās wet dream. theyāre attractive in a physical sense and in draw, so that also means theyāre prime shipping material together, because it heightens those desirable factors. or something! iām no expert but this is usually how fandom shipping goes.
that or people just like the dynamic and view it in a certain light. i do not necessarily blame them for this lol ā¦ iāve talked about it before but i would very fairly say covert incest is a heavy theme in the holt brothers lives. they do not have a traditional family structure and certain boundaries have long since been crossed. incest isnāt necessarily a dirty word ; it is merely a label that describes inappropriateness between blood relatives, in any possible way, and that should always be remembered. while i do not think any of the holt brothers were ātogetherā i do think their relationships were inappropriate to a degree ā¦ tyler and dale, for instance, are too close and sometimes act in ways that make even me uncomfortable. the scene where dale easily dimisses vinceās incest joke about getting with his cousin ( a joke he actually finds funny and takes no offense to ) and then goes on to hand feed tyler pizza is. weird! it is odd because there is a heavy reverence to it. it is odd because tyler and dale are very hostile to people outside of their family and thus, to bare witness to a moment as tender as dale feeding tyler pizza, is so beyond what we expect from them that it teeters into an intimacy that goes down a little funny. siblings do not act like that normally, and itās all really reminiscent of like. a humble servant feeding a god grapes while they drape on their sofa.
tyler and jayās relationship is equally inappropriate mainly because tyler is not jayās brother ; he is jayās keeper, his ādadā almost, he is his authoritative figure in life that scolds, demands, and punishes him and this isnāt how their relationship should be. tyler admits to changing jayās diapers and he says this in a way that implies he did this constantly, like it was his job, all while he was seven years old ā¦ jayās and tylerās dynamic is peculiar because itās so distant yet tyler hovers over jayās life intensely, watches everything he does, etc. theyāre close in a way they shouldnāt be and you get moments during the violence where they do things like ā¦ hold hands??? jay could pin tylerās wrist here but he doesnāt. it should be a platonic gesture, and it is to an extent, yet thereās also this whole āthis is weirdā feeling.
and dale and jay ā¦ well, honestly, theyāre probably the most normal of the bunch. tylerās relationships all inherently carry a wrongness to them because sharon has made him a victim of covert incest, and he, in turn, canāt view dale or jay normally because of this. and they canāt see him as ājust a brotherā either. even the holt complex of viewing the world as cruel and uncaring and out to get them feeds into these incestous bonds that plague them. tyler is friendless. dale is friendless. jay is friendless. they canāt be with anyone else much less have other relationships ā¦ dale confessing to jess at all breaks this mold but. this lack of companionship and desire adds to these intense and inappropriate relationships. and people can pick up on that and start shipping them if they wish to. they can easily turn these bonds into romantic or sexual things, because as dusk falls made a family that could easily allow these things to occur. this interests people, excites them, makes them curious or fuels their fantasies and they go wild. if adf was more popular then i have no doubt that holt brothers shipping ( or, more aptly, holtcest? i suppose? ) would be a popular commodity in those particular corners of the internet.
personally, i donāt care if people ship them or not. i wouldnāt mind seeing it if it was handled in a psychological way and touched on some deep seated issues the holts have, especially tyler. not to tmi but i relate to tyler dearly as someone who has been in a covert incest dynamic with my mother ā¦ where i am more her equal and stand-in for my father than a daughter she needs to care for, help, and protect. due to a lifetime of trauma i had similarly intense relationships with my siblings too. they were my ābest friendsā and we would cross boundaries that other normal siblings did not. thankfully, we moved on from this and now have infinitely more healthy relationships like, seeing each other once a month or something ā¦ and, to be very upfront, none of my relationships with these people was romantic or sexual. they were just bad due to the nature of these very relationships being disregarded.
covert incest ( which i personally use synonymously with emotional incest ) is, as the wiki puts it, ādescribed as occurring when a parent is unable or unwilling to maintain a relationship with another adult and forces the emotional role of a spouse onto their child instead. the child's needs are ignored and instead the relationship exists solely to meet the needs of the parent and the adult may not be aware of the problems created by their actions.ā though this can occur within sibling relationships too, just in a different way that iāve tried to explain above. the description provided is more fitting for tyler and sharon overall and, unsurprisingly, is a relationship iāve discussed many times before due to itās horrible and unhealthy nature. how tyler feels about sharon is wrong, just, objectively. he should not worship her so utterly. he should not be her right hand man, her best friend, her husband, the father figure to her kids and his siblings, all at once. sharonās treatment of tyler and bearās views on the world are exactly why the holt brothers and their relationships with one another are so weird. itās as simple as that.
but i digress haha. sorry for the long speech i just care deeply for this topic ā¦ i researched incest for months over tyler holt and i love to talk about it and what it does to people, and how it changed the holt family. if people ship it then i canāt blame them necessarily? but if itās uncomfortable to people then thatās totally understandable and iād recommend avoiding it in the future -- though i really donāt think youāll run into much romantic incest in this fandom anyway. itās quite literally just me and my friend, @fire-in-my-woods, and weāre more inclined towards vince/tyler and very little else.
tldr : if people ship the holt brothers i am not shocked because thatās just how shipping operates in fandom and also the media is what it is. i donāt care either way!
