Multifandom cartoon blog. Main fandoms: Steven universe,Amphibia and Danny Phantom. Any pronouns is fine. Likes watching and analyzing cartoons. About me
Before you all jump the gun with the words used in the post title, please let me clarify what i mean:
Emotional incest is ¨when parents (or other adult relatives) try to get their emotional needs and satisfaction from their child when they should turn to another adult.¨
It doesn't have to involve anything sexual nor romantic, but it involves certain weird closeness between a caregiver and a child that usually crosses certain boundaries with the child, like coming to them about personal issues that are too much for the kid to handle or expecting them to fill the emotional space of a partner that died or left the caregiver in question.
It is similar in some ways to parentification, but is also different. I made a post about it here if you want to read it.
Again, this doesn't mean there is anything sexual or romantic involving Rick and Morty. It means that the Rick crosses certain boundaries with Morty that he shouldn't and he often comes off as treating Morty more as an adult than someone who is a teenager.
In this post i'm going to cite some signs of emotional incest and how that applies to the relationship between the two mentioned characters.
Analysis down below:
-Feeling as if you’re responsible for your parent’s emotional support
I have already discussed this in my parentification post, but to repeat myself- Moty often feels like he has to be responsible for some of the messes that Rick causes, specially when he gets drunk.
Season 9 explores this pretty well like when Beth tells Morty to take care of Rick/Ted near the end of ¨Rick Days Seven Nights¨ and Morty feels forced to cheer him up. Other examples is when he and Summer have to deal with Rick getting beheaded by the dimension portal as result of Rick being drunk in ¨Erickerhead¨ . Or when Rick calls for Morty when he gets super drunk and forgets the password in ¨A Ricker Runs Through It¨
Rick in general depends on Morty a lot emotionally and he is the first that he calls for when he has a real problem. While he didn't want to expose his whole issues that had to do with his past in the season 6 finale and he built a robot to replace him in meantime, in same episode it ends with him telling Morty that he is ¨dragging him down with him¨. In ¨Unmortricken¨ Morty is seen helping Rick with tracking down Rick Prime and in ¨Rickfending Your Mort¨ he feels responsible for trying to cheer Rick up after the defeat of Prime.
-Struggling with enforcing boundaries within your relationship with your parent
This one is easy to see: Rick is constatly exposing Morty to things that are very inappropiate for someone of his age, which usually involves very violent things like the Purge Planet in "Look Who's Purging Now" or things that are too complex for Morty to be able to understand them.
In earlier seasons Rick would constantly drag Morty around without considering if he wanted to come to said adventures with him. He takes Morty to these adventures without caring about how Morty tells him that he needs to go to school or has other things to do.
Rick seems to have gotten better in some ways with this but there are instances he does what he wants like injecting Morty with a bug that induces him in a drug like state. (Rickuiem Mort a Dream)
-Experiencing feelings of guilt, shame, or anxiety when it comes to the relationship you have with your parent, even as an adult
We have seen that Morty in general has huge fear of being replaced by Rick as it explored in depth in the episode ¨Fear No Mort¨. He also asked Rick if he was bait for Rick Prime in the episode ¨Solarricks¨ to which Rick denied it was the case.
Morty shows to be jealous of Evil Morty when he sees that he and Rick make a good team together in ¨There's Something About Morty¨. Evil Morty seems to be aware of this insecurity Morty has and uses this to tease and annoy Morty. At some point in the episode Morty even asks Rick if he wishes that he was ¨smarter¨.
-Feeling resentment towards your parent for unhealthy pressures they may have put on you when you were a child
Morty has expressed resentment towards Rick in multiple episodes, even bringing up his dead wife Diane in ¨Rickuiem Mort a Dream¨ to insult him. In several occasions, he and Rick fight over how questionable Rick can be and it often ends with Morty trying to do things his own way.
It goes to the point that Morty shoot Rick with a gun without much hestitation in "The Rickshank Rickdemption¨, wishing him to seeing him dead.
-A parent becomes jealous when their spends time with other people, especially a romantic partner / A parent isolating their child from other people
It has happened in a few episodes that Rick feels either jealous or devastated when he sees Morty hanging out with someone else, more if said person is a potential romantic partner for Morty. Some good examples of this are when Morty is seen hanging out with Planetina in episode "A Rickconvenient Mort" and Rick is seen wasting himself in different planets because Morty isn't paying attention to him personally.
Another example could be when Morty is living away from him with a romantic partner in the episode "Rest and Ricklaxation", as it gets mentioned Rick crying to Jessica on the phone over him missing Morty.
Rick has tried to ruin relationships or possibilities of Morty going on his own like it is the case of the episode "One Crew over the Crewcoo's Morty". In this episode he manipulates Morty into believing that heist movies suck and indirectly making him give up on his dreams on writing a heist movie.
-The child may struggle with developing their own identity or figured out how they view themselves.
Morty gives off the impression that he doesn't know who to be outside of ¨Rick's little helper¨. He doesn't appear to have a clear sense of identity of his own outside Rick and when he tries, he eventually finds himself coming back to Rick.
There has been occasions that Morty tries to be independent of Rick but over time he returns to his original status with him. At the start of "Rickmurai Jack" he begs for Rick to come back with him after Rick decided to leave in the previous episode. In "Rest and Ricklaxation" he accepts getting injected with his ¨toxic parts¨ again, probably because he missed being around Rick.
Rick appears to be one of the few people that pays attention to Morty- and that makes Morty be very attached to Rick in general since he doesn't know who else go to as it seen in the ending of ¨Field of Dreams¨.
-The child struggles with emotional neglect despite the seeming “closeness” of their bond with their parent.
In spite of Morty being ¨very close¨ to Rick, Rick usually neglects Morty or doesn't give place for Morty to express how he feels about certain things. Morty's needs are often ignored when it comes to the dynamic he has with Rick. He usually gets insulted or dismissed by Rick when he gets angry at him
Morty's feelings in a lot of situations are not taken into account and Rick can tell Morty to ¨suck it up¨ or just deal with it. In earlier seasons Rick would even ¨punish¨ Morty for going against what he thought or trying to do things his own way. A infamous example is the "The Vat of Acid Episode" in which Rick tries teaching Morty a ¨lesson¨ after Morty insults his idea of using a vat of acid to hide.
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These are some signs of emotional incest that could applied to or read into Rick and Morty's dynamic. There are more examples but i would like to leave the post in here to not make it too long.
If you think i missed more examples or want to add more signs that could be applied, feel free to comment or add it in a reblog.
i think the craziest part to me is that morty returned to his family after likely being missing for days or weeks, clearly traumatized and splattered with blood, and no one says anything. rick finds him in the wreckage of a dead family, and he passes him by in favor for the loot. he looks at his mother and says, "i love you" and she scolds him and refuses to say it back. his sister yells at him. his father ignore him.
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So in case anyone needs it:
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Regarding the questions around when Diane was omegaed based on Field of Dreams, I think there are two main considerations.
Different dimensions don’t seem to necessarily be ‘in sync’ with each other timewise. In Rick’s crybaby backstory, he still seems to be fairly young when he spies on a Rick with a Summer and Morticia who appear to be around 17 and 14. My headcanon is that all dimensions were synced when the Central Finite Curve/Citadel was built. Therefore, if Diane was omegaed when our Beth was around 17, it could be possible that other Beths were older or younger and so experienced this at a different age - hence why sober Rick says Beth ‘was so little’.
Morty is making assumptions about sober Rick’s Diane. While she also would’ve been affected by the Omega Device, it’s possible that she did genuinely leave him and Beth years before she was erased.
I think what one of my favourite things about modern rnm is that it's kinda stopped spelling things out for the viewers. In the past, we've had clean-cut episodes with clear plots and morals that are nearly impossible to misinterpret, but recently (ESPECIALLY in s9), things have gotten a lot more open ended!
I've really appreciated it since it allows a lot more input from the audience end, but my favourite thing about this is just how many interpretations can be drawn from one scene. A lot of scenes kind of leave you with this slow, creeping sense of doom that stays with you after the episode ends, and I think I far prefer that (especially regarding more earnest episodes such as s9e2/s9e10) to simpler ones more heavily based on shock value or action. It also allows for more heartfelt storytelling, like... there's no offhand comment about what you should feel. They're not scared to be taken seriously anymore. You're allowed to come to your own conclusions. Just feels so much more fresh to me
