[branwinged]

Do you think George will show the “negative side” to dany and Jon’s relationship since it’s still incest or he just won’t count it as incest bc they don’t know each other and haven’t grown up together?

cw csa; i see where you're getting this from because i have read a fair few of those jon & dany must break The Cycle posts and i dislike this particular take because it kind of reveals that much of the fandom's objection to incest is about disgust, not because of any coherent politics. incest, sociologically speaking, is understood as a violent abuse of power inherent in the family structure. so you will see that you can't treat all configurations and instances of incestuous relations as interchangeable. there is a difference in experience between jon & dany's hypothetical future relationship and dany/viserys, which is a case of viserys sexually assaulting dany as a child. the abuse here is informed by their family's practice of incestuous marriage - that dany was made for viserys to be used for the goal of dynastic reproduction - but this is once again a different experience than simply an arranged marriage between two targaryen siblings, say jaehaerys/alysanne, which involves no incestuous csa. alysanne is still exploited for feudal dynastic reproduction (although their marriage in the beginning is on almost egalitarian terms with jaehaerys choosing to involve her in all aspects of governance, but the key being that jaehaerys chose to do it, that she is ultimately subordinate to the desires of her brotherhusband and later in life those desires will shift) but it should be obvious that alysanne's is a different experience than dany's with viserys.

the other thing is that this is literature, so the incest is also doing narrative work beyond just being a realistic depiction of abuse. incest in asoiaf is concerned with that sociological framework in the way various cases of incestuous csa are about the patriarchal domination of women - shae and her father, craster and his daughters. but also aerion and euron, egg and aerion, joffrey and tommen - aerion's abuse of egg is once again informed by their family's practice of incestuous marriages, see the language he uses: "He had too many brothers, he’d say, maybe one night he’d make me his sister, then he could marry me." but these are all cases of an older brother abusing a younger one because of the way the family hierarchy of power is structured by patrilineal primogeniture - since only the eldest will inherit titles, there's a strict demand of subservience from the younger sons. and incest in asoiaf doing other things, cersei & jaime is obviously doing something else in terms of character. cersei's declaration of "We were so much alike, I could never understand why they treated us so differently" makes this one about sibling incest as a potential for equality between brother & sister - cersei is saying that there was no innate difference of character or ability between the two, when she calls jaime her second self that is what she means - but it's a potential for equality that can never truly be achieved because of patriarchal structures - once out of childhood, jaime becomes a mirror for the life cersei is not allowed to have, going into asos and affc their relationship is now less a source of identification and more a cause for resentment.

so circling back to jon & dany, i do think we'll get a romantic bond of some kind here because jon is meant to be a viserys substitute for dany. jondany fits the framework of sibling incest best because he's her other half at the end of the world who's deprived by male primogeniture in many of the same ways as dany is, young griff basically exists to prove this - that even after she wakes dragons out of stone, dany's claim as a princess is subordinate to that a trueborn son of rhaegar's, as is jon's as a bastard. and to me this isn't even about the claim to the iron throne, it's about the prophecy of the prince that was promised - house targaryen's most consequential legacy - ruling out both dany & jon, the two most likely candidates for the 'prince' at present. jon is also a rhaegar substitute because one of the first things about dany we're made aware of is that she would've married rhaegar had she been born earlier, so right away she is cast into a subordinate role to a character who is more of a traditional hero. she would've been happier with rhaegar as her choice of brotherhusband over viserys, that much is obvious, but her role in their family's legacy would've been confined that of feudal dynastic reproduction. then over the course of agot she transcends that assigned gender role by instead occupying rhaegar's vacated narrative role in asoiaf. martin subverts that gendered fate of having to perform reproductive labour - instead of providing a husband with sons, dany becomes the mother of dragons. dany becomes rhaegar but he still represents that ideal of romantic love for her. jon as his son and someone who shares much of her temperament and beliefs presents another opportunity for that life with her brother, but on a lot more egalitarian terms because dany is not going to be subservient to jon. i don't feel it'll be an inversion of power either, like daemon & rhaenrya in hotd, maybe closer to cersei & jaime's fantasy of a perfect union with a second self which can be actualised.

so implicit in this take of jon & dany breaking the incestuous cycle is that the targaryens' practice of incestuous marriage is a unique form of 'horror' that can only end on a note of degenerative failure - the doomrot posting - and for me this cannot come from a place of coherent political analysis because it should be obvious that this is a regressive trope. i do agree with one element of this objection, that the series must not end in a targaryen restoration because that is a return to the old order of things. but jondany as of now is perhaps the most ideal romantic bond in all of asoiaf because it threatens patriarchal power structures and suggests a possibility for wider change. because dany and jon's story is the culmination of three hundred years of targaryen history and what the targaryens have always been capable of is status quo defining change simply by virtue of being dragonriders. because the dragons signify a transcendence of earthly, human constructs. and because no two targaryens embody that truth better than dany (because of what she's doing in essos) and jon (because of what he's done for the free folk). you can criticise that choice, that genre fantasy trope of a chosen hero, or that this one family IS the most special family in the whole wide world and will be instrumental in saving humanity during the long night. but this is the text and it does not really help to pretend otherwise.