Top 5 fictional siblings!
oh boy oh man. I feel like I've probably answered this one previously but I don't feel like going digging for it right now so you get to read me talking about at least some of the same relationships again
1. Yunmeng Siblings. God! What a mess! Truly a deeply codependent trio with intertwining and sometimes clashing issues and communication problems! I love them. Like...god, no joke, I'm pretty sure it was the Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian relationship specifically that actively hooked me emotionally and that kinda continued to be true (and is definitely true now as one of my major points of emotional connection), but then Jiang Yanli in there and the dynamic with her added? The role she plays in mediating, her self-effacing-ness, the way she is, I think, trying to make herself small in part to offset the drama swirling around the other two and also just generally to avoid conflict? The "older sister taking on vaguely parental role" vibes? I just...love them. And all their fucked up mess.
2. Shi Wudu & Shi QIngxuan. I feel like I was less attached to this as a dynamic on my first read and got more into it on reread because again - say it with me - it's a mess. Shi Wudu's overprotective, somewhat controlling relationship to Shi Qingxuan born clearly out early fear and anxiety about her doomed status but now manifesting in disapproval and judgment, and the tension between Shi Qingxuan's freewheeling, carefree nature and her desire to please her brother...and maybe most of all the way that the fact that they love each other too much ultimately condemns both of them. Shi Wudu refuses to make a decision that will hurt Shi Qingxuan. Shi Qingxuan again and again refuses to turn away from her brother even after she knows what he's done. I'm suffering about it.
3. Felix & Mildmay. Remember when I was 13 and read Melusine and possibly was a little young for it but latched onto it so hard and got really, really invested in the relationship between Felix and Mildmay in all its fucked up codependent messy glory? Yeah, that was a thing and it hasn't changed. Beautiful disasters. and like...I feel like in some ways Mildmay's love and devotion to Felix goes without saying (it's not always good for him!) but I was just looking back through my blog and found the part where Felix answers someone judging his relationship with Mildmay at the end of the first book by saying that he is "down in the gutter. With him." and boy!!! for a character who so ruthlessly distances himself from his gutter history in every possible way...that's a lot.
4. Richard & Lymond. Feel like this whole post could be titled "what a mess! they love each other very much but what a mess! and that's definitely also true here. Like from The Game of Kings classic "I will bring him to you on his knees, weeping, and begging to be killed" through...everything in Checkmate tbh...augh. It's almost always Lymond making things harder, also, but Richard just...can never quite walk away from him.
5. As usual I waffled on my fifth but I ended up going with the Sons of Feanor as a whole. A little bit of a different dysfunction because I think their dysfunction is less with each other (though increasingly the 'us against the world' thing probably...isn't super healthy) but more with. the extended family and also the world. But boy do I love a borderline pathologically loyal group of siblings dedicated to a hopeless cause that they kinda know is hopeless but it's happening anyway! and they all die miserably except one who lives miserably! That is, as the kids say, the good shit.
Honorable mention does have to go to Thor and Loki, who do own the tag "tragic siblings" on this blog.
