Weekend Entertainment

[thisisnotajournal]

My sister is heading off to Marine Officer Candidate School next week! And so the theme of the Weekend Entertainment should surprise nobody.

We've talked about your pup's relationship with their parents - and its influence on their life - before. How about their relationship with their siblings and how that's influenced them? If they're an only child, how would they feel about the idea of siblings?

Comments

[inlovewithwords]

Eriond - He has brothers. He is very much the baby of the family. He is also the fix for the mistake that was his older brother Torak. This may shape things, but then again, meh.

Henry - Is lonely and while he'd love some company... I don't know if he wants siblings. Not in that house. He has odd feelings.

Evelyn - the other mages are more her siblings than her blood siblings. They are friends, parents, colleagues, fellow students, and fellow inmates at once. That underlying sense of banding together will force her through a lot.

Lois - Is the older sister and had to take over as mother figure at the tender age of six. This both made her feel responsible for how Lucy turned out and yet driven to go her own way independent of Sam's edicts. She still carries guilt about Lucy and thinks she failed her sister.

Tavi - may technically be an only child, but he grew up with cousins in the house who were functionally his baby sisters. Losing them drove him somewhat towards growing up faster, to be strong for Bernard and Isana. He misses a loud, rambunctious house. There are reasons I suspect Desiderius will not be an only child.

Anakin - has a step-brother. He is not thrilled. At all.

[never_shall_yield]

Gene - was pretty close to his brother. They used to stick together against their violent dad. But Stu got into drugs, disappeared and eventually died, which now that Gene knows the truth about his own world makes his memories of his brother even more complicated than they were. He's rather afraid Stu might have gone into a downward spiral because it was Gene that disappeared. :\

Javert - no known siblings, which he is glad about.

Valjean - ahaha. He was more or less raised by his sister, and it was for one of her seven children that he stole the bread that landed him in prison. So they were close, but nineteen years in Toulon left him with virtually no memory of his past life. When he was released he searched for her, and never found her or any of the kids. Barring a rumour that came to him when he was in Toulon that she was in Paris with her youngest son, he has no idea what happened to any of them. It's one of the biggest of his many regrets.

Courfeyrac - there's no canonical info, but I imagine him with at least two sisters and a brother. I think they all got on pretty well, and were quite rowdy and cheerful when they're together as long as they didn't talk too deeply about politics.

Bruce Wayne and Bruce Banner - both only children. I think Banner in particular would have liked a brother or sister, because he was pretty lonely even as a kid. Bruce Wayne, given what happened and the direction he eventually went, is OK with it just being him.

[death_gone_mad]

Amascut has a very severely strained relationship with her siblings. She feels betrayed by her brother Icthlarin for both abandoning her on the far side of the universe several millennia ago and for protecting her former priests and priestesses and all cats since they decided to turn against her. As for her adopted siblings, she is extremely jealous of them. To her, they are a bunch of pets her father choose to elevate to godhood to distract himself from Amascut (and her problems and the state of the Kharid). Of her adopted siblings, she probably has the least animosity toward Crondis the crocodile god because hey, fellow hunter and carnivore. But annoyingly, Crondis is also the goddess of patience and prudence (and maybe physical pleasure?) so I am still waiting on canon to clarify their relationship.

[have_no_mercy]

Good lord, how much time do we have? Tess has/had three younger half brothers, Julian Luthor, Lucas Luthor and Conner Kent, and one older half brother, Lex. Let us begin.

Julian was born after Tess was sent to the orphanage and died in infancy, so she never knew him. Obviously, she wishes he were alive because based on the clone Lex made of him later (whom Tess also never met) he seemed like a good kid.

Lucas Luthor she has also never met and only knows about him from reading Lionel's journal. He's still alive out there somewhere and if he wouldlike to meet her, she would like to meet him.

Conner is so, so complicated. Tess found him as a clone of Lex at six years old. She in effect raised him and became more like his mother than a sister/aunt. When he rapidly aged and his Kent DNA took over, he forgot about everything he and Tess had been through and she kept herself at a distance. She longs for him to remember their time together and the strong bond they formed, but believes she is best kept out of his life for the most part.

Lex. Hoo boy. To say Tess is the woman she is today because of Lex is no mere understatement. It is unknown how long Lex knew about Tess and her whereabouts - Lex would have been six when she was sent to the orphanage so there is a possibility he remembered all along - but he is the one who found her nd had her hired as a researcher for Luthorcorp in South America. When Tess' camp was bombed, Lex flew her back to the US and helped get her back to health and started confiding in her. Tess still had no idea they were brother and sister and she fell in love with him, becoming his most devoted minion. Oh yeah. That happened. When Lex ultimately betrayed her, she cut him out of her life actually leaving him for dead.

When Tess discovered she was a Luthor and therefore Lex's sister, she had a hard time coming to terms with it and it seemed like her opinion of Lex somewhat softened. The first and only time they met in the flesh, Lex hugged her, told her he loved her and then he killed her. Afterward, in the comics, Tess had another chance to kill Lex from afar and decided not to do it.

I think at this point with Tess in bar her feelings and opinions about Lex are incredibly complicated, part of her still wanting family, but part of her knowing what he's already done to her and wanting him dead. Yay, Luthors.

[aberration]

Either due to my own inclinations or Only Child Syndrome (or both), the only one of my characters who has any siblings is Katara. Katara is very close to her older brother, Sokka, even when they don't always get along. But their lives have been shaped by burdens that would have been very hard for either of them to carry alone, from the loss of their mother and their father leaving to acting as guides and essentially soldiers to the Avatar. Their dynamic is also sort of complicated, as while Sokka acts in many ways as a protective older brother, Katara is more often really the one taking care of him and anyone else they're with, to the point where Sokka even identifies her as more of a maternal figure than his little sister. Having someone who definitely needed her in the absence of their parents likely very much influenced Katara into taking on the caring and compassionate, if at points mothering role she tends to have, while also perhaps giving her the ground to stand up for herself and not back down when she thinks what she's doing is right.


Asami, on the other hand, is an only child. I think she might have had siblings had her mother lived, and I think she would have liked to have had a younger brother or sister. She probably would have been a good older sister, and her life outside of school was so dominated by adults that she's not always totally comfortable interacting with children, so having a younger sibling to help take care of might have helped her with that. On the other hand, she also greatly valued the relationship she had with her father, which in many was shaped both by her being an only child, and by her mother's death. Obviously she wishes her mother hadn't died, but she has also come to appreciate what she has.


Will's mother left him and his father shortly after his birth, and his father never had any other children. He could have half-siblings somewhere through his mother, but he really didn't know his mother at all and so has no way of knowing that, nor really any desire to pursue it. His father really hadn't wanted children in the first place, and while Will has some attraction to the idea of fatherhood, he's also resistant to having biological children. They managed to make their relationship be… as functional as it could be, under the circumstances, and adding anyone else to that equation is likely to have aggravated it to the point of collapse. So he wouldn't have wanted a sibling.

That being said, though Will-Abigail is often thematically depicted as along the lines of father-daughter, I've tended to think of them as closer to siblings. "Born" in some ways by the same moment, and their relationship orchestrated, so to speak, by the same person. (ETA: Oh and yes obviously when it's sibling-like relationship, there's also a Mischa parallel to it.)


Elle was an only child, as her parents weren't together by the time she was born, and neither had any other children. While she might have liked a little more company when she was younger, she didn't really want siblings in particular. Now, she can definitely see that having siblings would have been pretty terrible for everyone involved, and is grateful that she doesn't have them.


Leslie's parents I'd imagine might have wanted more children, so I'd probably chalk her being an only child up to something preventing that, perhaps a combination of Leslie probably being a little high-maintenance, and possible health issues. Her father died when she was ten, and I've sort of headcanon'ed that he probably had a long-term illness leading up to his death, in which case they likely would have decided not to have any other children. Leslie would have been very happy to have had siblings, though. Being an only child can get really lonely, especially for someone who just generally loves people as much as she does, and not having siblings may have been a reason why she became so actively involved in public programs. But that still wasn't the same as having someone to grow up with, not to mention that Leslie's really someone who needs near-constant stimulation, which her mother just couldn't provide. (I tend to think she got her ambition and drive from her mother – her compassion, heart, and silliness are from her father.) Hence when she started living alone her house turned into a hoarder nest (a lot more stimulation than a nice, clean, neat place), and when she had triplets she tried to convince Ben that they should have three more children just so each would "have a buddy." She definitely wishes she'd had more brothers and sisters.


Marceline's parentage is complicated. She actually could have some half-siblings somewhere. Given her weird childhood, I don't think having had siblings she really knows was ever much of a priority for her. Kind of selfishly, she might feel like her father already doesn't pay much attention to her or her feelings, and that this would be even more the case if she had a brother or sister. She'd probably just feel competitive and jealous of them, so there's not really much point in it. And her parental abandonment sort of ironically left her free to go find other friends on her own, thus she wasn't really as lonely as she could have been. At least, not for lack of siblings, anyway.

[neverbelievedintheend]

Gordon's brother was a few years older than him and very athletic and competitive, the kind of kid who didn't understand that constantly prodding his little brother into races or contests to see who was Better wasn't something the little brother wanted. Gordon knocked out two of his teeth one year in an effort to get him to stop; this was the first thing that caused Gordon's mom to realize she wasn't paying enough attention to her own kids, and it led her to get them all into a bit of family therapy and to encourage Gordon to take up solitary athletic pursuits that could be quantified with numbers, just to get him away from his brother and able to keep up if they had to compete in some regard. It eventually paid off.

Shephard is the third child of five living siblings and the middle boy. He got on well with all his brothers and sisters and now it's kind of weird because his little brother didn't spend twenty years in suspended animation thanks to the sheepfucking greyfaced dog bastard shit in the suit, so his little brother is now his older brother.

Ellen has no known siblings but given her father's track record of hiding things from her, she's half convinced there's another Park kid out there somewhere that she's never known about.

Fawkes does not remember being human, and supermutants/metahumans are created rather than born. The vast majority of the other mutants were abusive to him and he deliberately assisted in the Brotherhood of Steel's effort to prevent them from ever making any more of his kind as a result. He'd get along with Uncle Leo the philosophical Zen mutant, though.

Santo has no known siblings, but he encourages children and adults alike to make an effort to get along with theirs, because family is a lasting thing.

Stacker Pentecost had a younger sister, Luna, who was more idealistic and less angry than him. She, alas, died fighting Trespasser, the first kaiju. He keeps her in mind, always.

Varric has an older brother. Bartrand is a Problem and I am going to have to write some canon ooms to fully explain how he's influenced him.

Edward Kenway has no known siblings, and that's the way he likes it, thank you very much.

And Wee Mad Arthur was adopted and would like to know where/who his biological siblings are.

[merryeccentricities]

Joly's the youngest of his brothers and sisters; it saved him from being expected to join the family business, for which he's grateful. But there's no great pool of common interests between him and his more mercantile brothers, and his sisters are...sisters, and proper ladies, in a *very* gender-divided culture. So while he's fond of them all, there's always been a distance there, that got worse as he became more radical in politics and personal life. As for lasting influence--maybe it left him with a general feeling that he's always the smallest and weakest in a group, but that's turned out to be often true, so it's hard to say. It *did* leave him with a certain acceptance of the idea that people will, despite his best efforts, treat him like he's a little ridiculous and occasionally ruffle his hair and that...has also turned out to be true, especially in the case of one of his friends. So it was good preparation for life, really.

Bahorel-- So many siblings. He was always somewhere in a happy swarm of brothers and sisters and cousins-who-might-as-well-be-siblings, at least when he wasn't at school. They all loved and guarded and cheerfully tormented each other with glee, and were about as responsible for their mutual upbringing as the various family parents. He is --or was, pre-death-- still very close to them, and even the ones whose politics went a different way (and the ones whose politics stayed close to his were his first allies and constant contacts and coordinators with efforts back around Lyon).

Beyond that, oh geez. Bahorel's so extremely Older Brother. Anyone who pings as Younger Sibling will be advised, hidden from the authorities, and cheerfully harassed until they throw something at him. Which won't stop him, it's just part of the pattern.

[genarti]

Enjolras is (canonically) an only child. I think he'd've liked to have a brother or two, and that he thought that as a kid too. (Though per Millicanon his mother died when he was fairly young, so... not all that many years of nagging his parents for a sibling.) I don't know how different he'd be if he'd grown up with any brothers; it depends on their personalities, I suspect. Having a sister might possibly have changed some of his attitudes towards women, but not necessarily -- again, it depends on personalities. As it is, he had a happy but probably somewhat lonely childhood, and then in his twenties gradually acquired a noisy batch of friends-close-as-brothers, which is not exactly the same thing but still feels worth mentioning.

Cosette, oh man, it's complicated. Okay, well, for starters: she's an only child! If she'd had a birth sibling, I don't even know how that would have changed things.

If the Thénardiers had been less abusive and horrible, it's possible that Éponine and Azelma could have been quasi-sisters for her, which is what Cosette's mother thought was likely to happen -- the Thénardiers took Cosette in as a toddler, and they're all pretty close in age. Buuuut they were abusive and horrible, so that one was scuttled fast.

Now -- I don't think she's spent a lot of time thinking about it, to be honest. She has her father, and they were always super close, and she had playmates at the convent school; I don't think she really wanted another kid competing for Valjean's attention. And even after she'd buried the memories of her early childhood, there were probably faint shadows of them that made the idea of a sister less appealing, too.

Thor... AHAHAHAHA. Where do I begin?

Uh. Yes. Thor has a sibling! He has a brother! Loki and Thor probably have very different ideas of how close they were, and also how their parents viewed them, but I think it's safe to say that they love each other. It's just that that love is also tangled up in a HELL OF A LOT OF OTHER STUFF including resentment, envy, viciousness, etc. on Loki's side, a mixture of mistrust and manipulability on Thor's side, and daddy issues coming out both their ears. Right now Thor thinks Loki is dead, but that'll change as soon as I manage to put him through Avengers, and then it'll just be MORE complicated.

Kazul: Well, canon says nothing on the subject, and in fact canon doesn't make it clear whether siblings are even a relationship dragons consider relevant. Uhhhh. I'm going to go with "either an only child, or there's a big age gap between her and any siblings," and reserve the right to change my mind later!

River: I think it's safe to say that her relationship with her brother has influenced her! River and Simon have a moderate age gap but were always really, really close as kids. And then when she was in the Academy he was the only one who believed her that they were being experimented on, and he sacrificed his career to rescue her, and was her primary caretaker for a good long while too. So. Yeah.

Trowa: As a child, he was a foundling, and as far as he knew an only child. (He actually did have a sister, but they were separated when he was a toddler, so.) His sister adopted him when they were both teenagers, when he had Anime Plot-Induced Amnesia and she went "Who are you? You're MY LITTLE BROTHER, SO YOU SHOULD COME HOME NOW AND I'LL FEED YOU SOUP." (...They had met before.) Anyway, even after he got his memory back, they both continued to preserve that adoptive sibling relationship. Cathy was the one who really taught him how to be a person who wasn't a soldier, and how to have a home. She's affected him a lot.

...She's also the same person as that sister he had as a toddler -- yes, they're genetically siblings! No, neither of them has any idea about this. Gundam franchise plots, yo.

[havetubawilltravel]

Juliet and Clementine come from families filled with supportive older brothers. Juliet idolized her brother Ewan until it turned out he was slightly crooked, oops.

Dixie has no blood siblings, but her adopted sister Dolly she used to mother - until Dolly got jealous of her and started copying more than Dixie's moves during their act. After some work the two of them will (eventually) come to a good understanding.

Eponine has her brother, Gavroche, who she generally raised when he was a child and still feels mightily protective toward, though she does tease him sometimes. She actually followed HIM into this whole help-the-students-revolt business.

Pinkie has multiple siblings, but she's closest to her dull-demeanored sister Maud, who collects rocks and has little enthusiasm for anything. They are fiercely close and protective of each other, no matter their differences.