I don’t mind chatting about siblings who do indeed have a healthy relationship in another thread later. I just wanted to focus on siblings who are rivals, resentful, and jealous of each other, but also pit against each other in minor to major ways. I am talking about this in our own stories.
This is an engaging chat where we all talk and ask questions about our sibling characters and how they interact with each other in unhealthy ways.
My Turn:
Mephisto is the eldest child in the Thornwood Dynasty, but he has ALWAYS been envious of his younger brother Faust who is so skilled at necromancy and alchemy in ways he could never be. Faust is the golden child of his family because he is just naturally talented. Mephisto lacks the skills that his younger brother has which bothers him because he is the eldest and firstborn. But when Mephisto learns to truth about the family, he wants to use Faust who also knows the truth to help him reach a certain goal. When Faust died, that broke Mephisto because Faust would’ve been useful in obtaining a clear goal.
Stephanie is Mephisto’s younger sister, who not only envies her siblings, but she hates them in a way. She definitely hates Mephisto for the shit she has gone through, yet hates Fausts and Hyde because Faust up and left her at a crucial point in her life, while she had a disagreement with Hyde where she believe things were her fault, but Hyde was too scared to face her, to tell her she was wrong. Stephanie is the black sheep and boring sibling of the family, just a follower and uninteresting princess. Her siblings are more interesting and talented, while she was not. Though the truth is all of the siblings are unique along with Stephanie.
Hyde is resentful towards Mephisto for ruining the family and how Faust died, Lilith had a mental breakdown and Matilda left the family for good. He is also jealous of Stephanie who was stronger than he thought, but could never realize that. Hyde sees himself as a coward and terrible older sibling for not doing enough as an older brother, second born. He, like Mephisto is jealous of Faust, but also a bit of Mephisto before he became a horrid asshole.
What about you guys?
Thoughts and feelings?
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If you never had any of this in your stories and don’t want to do that, then ask me and others questions and more.
In the earliest of days when Temulkar looked towards his distain of that which was his ordained destiny, his brothers did indeed try to reason with him. They chose to be all they could for the benefit of Mankind, and further the glory of Arillion. They endeavoured to turn Temulkar from his wish to turn aside his thought of leaving the kindred of Arillion to their own devices, and to take up his mantle to guide the world into prosperous futures beyond what the Gods had envisioned…
But they failed… For behind the closed mind of Temulkar, darker deeds were in devised planning, and they could not be undone… His hatred for his ordained birth-right, and the expectations of the peoples and the Gods repulsed his heart, and into darkness it fell…
Yet his brothers did not rest, they believed that there was good in him. And during a time of wrested troubles of mind and power, they fell into his bindings. For many years they fought and changed opinions of each other, but hope was always in Temulkar’s brothers hearts. All of their endeavours failed, for his power of darkness was greater than that of the light. Shackled to his existence, and tortured in the deep halls of Astiol, he thus corrupted their minds with Blood Magic and torture for many a millennia…
Once broken of soul they were easily bound to his mind… Slaves to the one mind, a hivemind under which rule they could not escape eternally…
SD
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Dov has three younger siblings, a middle brother and twin little sisters, so there’s bound to be conflict in his family’s household, especially when puberty and hormones get involved. However, I’ve only plotted Dov’s (childhood and teenage) relationship with his youngest sister, Ivy, who was also the runt of their pack. Anyway, my concepts for Dov’s confrontational relationships with his siblings are below.
This is all background filler / character lore / wall of random thoughts.
Dov and Ivy were the closest among the Shaul family’s litter. Dov was always willing to help Ivy or hang out with her (more so than his other siblings), and Ivy idolised her gentle giant of a brother. There was one incident involving Ivy’s best friend, Julie, that risked ruining Dov and Ivy’s close bond, but Dov was the only one fretting about the incident. Ivy and Julie both knew it was an accident, Dov was not to blame, and at least everyone learnt something from the event (more to be discussed later).
Anyway, most of the siblings’ rivalry stemmed from Dov and Ivy’s relationship.
Their middle brother, Liam, was the brainiac of their pack, and he held his (relatively) dimwitted siblings in mild disdain. Liam also secretly despised Dov’s substantial physical abilities and his, perhaps related, popularity with the pretty girls at their high-school. Liam once attempted to mock Dov’s lack of academic achievements, gloating about his enrollment into an honors degree straight out of high-school. But Dov reminded Liam about how his ‘fancy pieces of paper’ were useless when an eight-foot King Brown had him bailed-up, squealing like a girl, in the cattle shed…Oh, and the twins were still quite fond of their matching snake-leather belts (resulting Christmas gifts from Dov)…
The ‘eldest’ sister, Beth, always mocked Dov and Ivy about their close bond, but this was a means to hide her own sense of inadequacy. Beth didn’t think much about Liam. The self-righteous bookworm stayed out of her way for most of their childhood.
Beth often rebuked Dov for letting a diminutive little girl wrap him around her finger, and for Dov doting on her to (in Beth’s stated opinion) a sickening degree. In eighth-grade Beth accused Ivy of being a closet-madam, pimping out Dov to her best friends, perhaps as a way to voraciously live out her fantasies. Beth suggested Ivy was more attached to Dov than she let on. Hence why Ivy never grew out of sharing Dov’s saddle during their horse rides, even for their cross country musters.
Dov soon got tired of his sisters’ bickering, and he dragged them to a distant field for a camping and discussion night. Beth reluctantly admitted she was jealous of Ivy’s desire for a close bond with Dov, and not of their bond itself. Beth never felt a need or a want for any such affection from her family, and so she must somehow be broken or defective. Dov assured Beth he didn’t have a favourite sister, he loved them equally and anything Beth wanted from him was already hers. When their conversation moved to Ivy using Dov for extra pocket money, Dov relayed his past incident with Julie, and his request to keep the event a secret from everyone. At the tale’s conclusion Beth fell out of her chair, doubled-up in a fit of laughter. Both bemused by Dov’s typical needless embarrassment and his innocent (in-experienced) clumsiness, and entertained if not relieved by Ivy and Julie’s creative methods for amending Dov’s related timid bashful nature (again, more to follow later). For her part, Ivy admitted there was a fragment of truth to Beth’s theory about why she always rode with Dov (the abundant padding of Dov’s lap was quite pleasant), but the main reason was Dov made Ivy safe. The horses and livestock terrified Ivy, and she felt guilty for Dov always doing her share of the field work. Ivy was only brave enough to be near the farm’s beasties when Dov was close…and no horse was dumb enough to throw Ivy when Dov held the reigns…So the easiest way for Ivy to work around the farm was for her to ride with Dov.
From then on, Beth continued to verbally joust with her siblings (old habits), but her barbs lacked their usual venom. When Dov left the farm to join the Army’s Commandos, his sisters had an inseparable bond and Beth rode with Ivy in his place.
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Technically could be seen as siblings, as they are part of the same prototype batch, and Alma definitely sees them as siblings. As you can probably guess by his obvious name, Abel and Alma don’t get along. Abel lacks emotions and autonomy, and only cares about his objectives and orders. This leads to all kinds of conflict and resentment from Alma, who is a synthetic with a soul. They definitely don’t see eye to eye, and eventually, in Alma’s corruption arc, he’s going to end up killing Abel so… Yeah, you could say they have a rivalry.
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I’m not sure if Amneris and Nakia would count for this tbh 
Yes, there’s definitely a rivalry there and sometimes they hate each other and it’s not uncommon for them to fight (physically and verbally) and yes they are also jealous of each other, but it’s not really as extreme as it sounds for your characters 
It wouldn’t count for Hathor and Horus because technically they just met, and it DEFINTELY doesn’t count for Amneris, Nakia and Xix.
I do have secondary characters who I think would fit, but they’re secondary characters so I don’t really go into that much detail, especially since the narrator comes from a relatively stable home and is sometimes obvious
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Rivalry, huh? (this word stumps me with its spelling all the time. I want it to be rivlary, but it’s not)
Tip and Karma (Karma is jealous of Tip)
Jasper and Mitchell (Mitchell is jealous of Jasper)
Both cases above, the older sibling is jealous of the younger sibling for some magick or political power that the older sibling wasn’t given or wasn’t born with.
Fernando and Aulen
Aulen was jealous of older brother Fernando because of how good he was with business. Fernando was jealous of Aulen because he was engaged to a wealthy girl. There was a sense of sibling rivalry between them with who gets the girl and who gets the money, and therefore, who gets the family company in the end.
(I realized I wrote this in past tense because the duology I’m working on now takes place 30 years after the things that go down in the first standalone 
Fernando and Aulen are in the story, but in the background.)
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I managed to find an example in my writing of a sibling rivalry 
So, I use a LOT of mythology from all over the place in my writing, but Egyptian has always been my fav. Because I use the characters (a version of them, anyway), there are some very, uh, let’s be nice and say “interesting” backstory things that get brought up every now and then 
In this specific story I’m working on, we have the following:
- Isis and Set fight because Set thinks she has this mysterious new power that’s appeared (yes, it does get violent. they don’t get along)
- Osiris and Set get into another verbal argument where the whole “Set chopped him into pieces and Isis had to rebuild him” thing came up (they REALLY don’t get along)
- Meanwhile, their other sister Nephthys is off living her best life and has no idea what’s going on
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