Wait do we ship Holt brothers here Iâm just asking because Iâve seen people do it
maybe people do? i wouldnât know, seeing as the shipping scene of adf is very slim and is an overall rarity given the fandomâs small size. back when i was super active ( like, running three blogs active ) i didnât see much of holt brother shipping ⊠i think thereâs one jay/dale fic in the wild on ao3 and thatâs it. thereâs also a tyler/dale work i heavily enjoyed too but there wasnât any real incest in it, so i wonder if the tagging on said fic was a mistake ; you know, when people believe the âslashâ means a dynamic of any sort rather than a specific romantic bond? besides that, iâve seen nothing.
i guess i wouldnât be surprised if people do though. to be shallow minded : the holt brothers are hot, and theyâre men, and people find incest hot. prime ground for shipping already i suppose. it isnât like many people are eager to ship things that involve vince, or paul, or becky ⊠they arenât conveniently attractive or violent, and people flock to those traits. love the holts, i really do! but itâs like â have we seen them? theyâre 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 itâs shocking more people arenât obsessed with them, when theyâre queer menâs and womenâs wet dream. theyâre attractive in a physical sense and in draw, so that also means theyâre prime shipping material together, because it heightens those desirable factors. or something! iâm 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 ⊠iâve 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 isnât 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 âtogetherâ i do think their relationships were inappropriate to a degree ⊠tyler and dale, for instance, are too close and sometimes act in ways that make even me uncomfortable. the scene where dale easily dimisses vinceâs 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 itâs all really reminiscent of like. a humble servant feeding a god grapes while they drape on their sofa.
tyler and jayâs relationship is equally inappropriate mainly because tyler is not jayâs brother ; he is jayâs keeper, his âdadâ almost, he is his authoritative figure in life that scolds, demands, and punishes him and this isnât how their relationship should be. tyler admits to changing jayâs 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 ⊠jayâs and tylerâs dynamic is peculiar because itâs so distant yet tyler hovers over jayâs life intensely, watches everything he does, etc. theyâre close in a way they shouldnât be and you get moments during the violence where they do things like ⊠hold hands??? jay could pin tylerâs wrist here but he doesnât. it should be a platonic gesture, and it is to an extent, yet thereâs also this whole âthis is weirdâ feeling.
and dale and jay ⊠well, honestly, theyâre probably the most normal of the bunch. tylerâs relationships all inherently carry a wrongness to them because sharon has made him a victim of covert incest, and he, in turn, canât view dale or jay normally because of this. and they canât see him as âjust a brotherâ 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 canât be with anyone else much less have other relationships ⊠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 donât care if people ship them or not. i wouldnât 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 ⊠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 âbest friendsâ 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 ⊠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, âdescribed 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.â though this can occur within sibling relationships too, just in a different way that iâve tried to explain above. the description provided is more fitting for tyler and sharon overall and, unsurprisingly, is a relationship iâve discussed many times before due to itâs 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. sharonâs treatment of tyler and bearâs views on the world are exactly why the holt brothers and their relationships with one another are so weird. itâs as simple as that.
but i digress haha. sorry for the long speech i just care deeply for this topic ⊠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 canât blame them necessarily? but if itâs uncomfortable to people then thatâs totally understandable and iâd recommend avoiding it in the future -- though i really donât think youâll run into much romantic incest in this fandom anyway. itâs quite literally just me and my friend, @fire-in-my-woods, and weâre more inclined towards vince/tyler and very little else.
tldr : if people ship the holt brothers i am not shocked because thatâs just how shipping operates in fandom and also the media is what it is. i donât care either way!
vaporwave
andulkaphoto
gracieabrams
yousharknotpass
origamiaround
ellievsbear
