What is "Sibling Coding?" Is it even a thing?
One thing I have encountered in the Ark Siblings and other fandom spheres that like to assert two characters are related is the idea of “sibling-coding.” The terminology of “coding” generally traces back to the 1930’s with the Hays Code, which was a series of regulations in the United States that extremely restricted what was allowed to be portrayed on TV and film. This famously excluded any references to or depictions of homosexuality, thus leading attempts to get around these barriers to be known as “queer-coding.”
So, the -coding terminology originated as a specific phenomenon that worked in response to censorship. It was about the erasure of “problematic” content. -coding still functions that way today, and is not limited to queer-coding. With that said, the “-coding” suffix is not a shorthand to describe things like “subtext,” “implications,” “inferences,” “body language,” “plot,” “backstory,” “character design,” “context clues,” and other ways people use to describe it today. (“That’s so ‘me-coded.’” Believe me, I think this is funny and I’ve said it too, but for the purposes of this essay we cannot be using it that way.)
There is a critical inclusion there: the -coding terminology originated in response to the censorship of problematic or controversial content. -coding is a way to avoid censorship via plausible deniability: “Well, I didn’t SAY they were gay…” With that said, I hope you can begin to see how it might be a little silly to say something is “sibling-coded,” because unless the intention is incest, depicting two characters as siblings has never been scandalous or controversial. There is no reason for writers to avoid outright telling us two characters are siblings unless they don’t actually want us to view it that way.
The behaviors and circumstances that people use to point to two characters “being coded as siblings” can almost always equally qualify them as nonspecific friends. Because there is an extremely wide range of what people would consider “friend” behavior versus “sibling” behavior, and there is a wide set of circumstances that would lead characters to inhabiting a family-type living situation without strictly being familial, it is impossible to tell a friends dynamic and sibling dynamic apart without writers/characters/game developers explicitly telling us. A sibling dynamic is not something that needs to be “-coded” or “implied” because there is nothing controversial about being siblings with someone. If writers/characters/game developers believe that a relationship is strictly familial and sibling in nature, there is no reason for them to withhold this information.
Additionally, because “sibling” is a more specific relationship qualifier than “friend,” and while siblings can be friends but not all friends are siblings, it is imperative that writers use unambiguous familial language when writing characters who are directly related to avoid audience confusion. Due to the specificity of the term “sibling” and the universality of the term “friend,” the vast majority of people who engage with media probably are not going to assume two characters are siblings, even if they “act like it,” unless told so by the writers, developers, or characters themselves by direct statements of familial address. “Acting like it” will mean one million different things to one million different people, and cannot be definitively parsed from behaviors of friendship.
Therefore, writers MUST call two characters siblings in order for the audience to know with 100% certainty this is the intended dynamic. “Sibling coding” does not exist in a meaningful way that would definitively set two characters apart from being interpreted as close friends by a casual audience. Thus, we must examine instances where Shadow and Maria’s dynamic is named in direct, unambiguous familial terms in order to determine if the writers’ intention is truly sibling/familial.
For the purposes of this investigation, we will define the writers telling us in “unambiguous familial terms” that the characters are siblings as an instance of any of the following:
directly stating the characters are siblings in dialogue, narration, reference guides, or other official communication without ambiguous terms such as “like.” For example, “Maria is Shadow’s sister” would count. “Maria is like Shadow’s sister” would not count.
Characters referring to themselves or each other in unambiguous familial terms that link them as members of the same family. For example, “my sister,” “my brother,” “our father,” “our mother” would count. “Like my sister,” “like my brother” would NOT count.
Another character referring to two characters in unambiguous familial terms: “Maria is Shadow’s sister, Shadow is Maria’s brother.” (Or uncle)
A statement of two characters’ living situation that would unambiguously define them as familial. For example, the statement “Shadow and Maria were raised on the ARK together as siblings” would count. The statement “Shadow and Maria were raised on the ARK together” would not count. There is no specific familial qualifier to this relationship, and so we cannot know if they were raised together as friends, roommates, or siblings. Fictional living arrangements are often much more complicated than strictly nuclear families, and so we cannot definitively qualify it one way or the other without a familial modifier.
It is important to note that occasionally, in English, characters will use familial language without meaning it in a literal way. For example, one character running up to another and saying “Hey brother!” as a greeting without being factually related. This is a clear example of metaphorical speaking that draws no familial relation between the two characters because the audience understands via other context they are not literally brothers. However, in order to give myself the best shot possible in understanding where people are getting proof of this Ark Siblings thing from, as counterintuitive as it sounds, I will be counting such instances as examples of unambiguous familial relation. Someone without the proper context could be left with the impression that these two characters are factually related, and so I will count it for our purposes.
Instances of a familial modifier that contain the word “like,” however, will not be counted. This is because in the English language, “like” is an ambiguous term. “A raven is like a writing desk” is not a statement that means the speaker truly believes a raven is a writing desk. Rather, the speaker is drawing a comparison to something else the audience is familiar with in order to provide more context.
Please note my emphasis on the English language.As I am not fluent in Japanese and will not pretend to be even after cursory searches into some of the phrasing that is used in Japanese, decoding what Sega is saying about Shadow and Maria’s relationship in Japanese or other languages is out of the scope of this essay. I was not raised on the Japanese media, and it is only because we have instant access to global information due to the internet that the West is even aware of the Japanese versions at all. I’ve seen many people who speak no Japanese make confident claims about what certain phrases mean, and without actual fluency, this is simply impossible. A five minute Google search and someone else telling you the meaning of a phrase on Reddit or Quora is not going to give you all the years of cultural context you need to truly understand a language. You can get close, but I believe for the purposes of this essay it would be extremely disingenuous of me to pull in examples from Japanese, and so I will not be doing it. Additionally, any responses to this essay that are made in reference to the Japanese should be fully disregarded, as this is, again, directly stated as out of the scope of what I am able to confidently conclude.
Gestures, facial expressions, vocalizations, and other non-verbal cues from characters or their circumstances cannot be counted. This is because there are an infinite number of ways these actions can be interpreted, especially by folks who struggle with reading body language and social cues. If a writer needs to make something clear, for the purposes of this essay, they must make the character or other official communication state it in some fashion as listed above. Because as stated previously, it is impossible to parse a familial relationship from a friendship one without direct familial qualifiers.
Writers have characters respond out loud for certain reasons. Writers also have characters not respond out loud for equally valid reasons, usually because they want a character’s response to be left up to interpretation. This means a moment of “interpretation” can never be taken as a statement of fact, because every single audience member will interpret that moment differently. By a character’s “circumstances,” I mean the situation they currently find themselves in and past history the audience is able to infer. For example, two characters living together or “growing up together.” If this kind of circumstance is not explicitly qualified as familial by the writers, (for example, “were raised together as siblings”) we also cannot count it as a definitive statement on the way two characters view one another. There are simply too many ways for that to be interpreted. “Circumstances” can also mean their environment and other things around them, including things like sound design, lighting, and other environmental conditions. These are all other things that can invoke ambiguous meaning.
Statements that are in the “action” of a script (any stuff that is not the dialogue), game files, or other text that would not be easily accessible to the wider audience cannot be counted. Most audience members are only going to go off what is on screen and will not do further digging into the game's code to understand more. Things like file names and script actions are for internal usage only, and so while they can provide context on what the writers think about the characters, they cannot be counted as instances of the writers telling the audience something for our purposes.
Because there are a million different ways an interaction between two characters can be interpreted between a million different people, the burden of proof is on the writers, not the audience, to tell us if a relationship is truly, strictly familial. This is why I have set out the parameters in the bullet points above - they are examples that would be used by writers to be as unambiguous as possible when seeking to define a character dynamic. Otherwise, we can assume that the writers would like it to be left up to interpretation, which means that the audience is allowed to disagree on what the dynamic is, and that there is not one definitive answer to what the two characters are.
⭐ This is a section from an essay on AO3 that examines Shadow and Maria’s entire history over 20+ years. Do not engage until you read the entire post. This blog is anti-harassment and will not tolerate hateful comments from all sides. ⭐
