selenak

What are your five favourite sibling relationships?

A challenge after my own heart. Though alas, some potential choices due to their shows devolutions aren't usable any more (say, the Petrellis or Deb and Dexter Morgan) when they would have been on the list in earlier times. After much pondering, and with the caveat I have more loved siblings to offer, but had to limit myself to five, here we go:

1.) Buffy and Dawn, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One reason why season 5 is my favourite is their relationship and the central focus it gets there. I remember how after the first Dawn episode, Real Me, got broadcast you could tell who'd been a younger and who'd been an older sibling by the reactions. (For the record, I was an older sister.:) From the comedy of Real Me to the tragic drama of The Gift, there was so much I recognized and identified with, I can't tell you. Not for nothing is my sole BtVS story that's set post show written around Buffy and Dawn.

2.) Claire, David and Nate Fisher, from Six Feet Under. I list all three rather than one individual pair of siblings among the fishers, because it's the combination which does it to me, and all their relationships with each other. Claire relates to her two older brothers differently and the way she relates to each of them changes as she grows up, Nate and David who are closer in age have some degree of the traditional competitive element, but what looks like a replay of the parable of the lost son in the pilot (one wild but most beloved by dad brother, one obedient stiff stay at home brother) turns out to be something quite different as they live with each other again. And for all that their respective love lives are important for the show (with the Nate/Brenda and David/Keith pairings providing key narratives, and Claire's, err, questionable taste in boyfriends becoming a tragicomedy of its own), Claire-David-Nate is its emotional core.

3.) The Endless, from The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Speaking of sibling combinations and scenes that are golden. Whether it's Death being no-nonsense concerned older sister with Dream in Preludes and Nocturens, the messed up clusterfuck that is the Dream/Desire relationship, Delirium and any of her older siblings who can't help being protective even when being driven insane by her, Despair remembering that one moment when Destruction kissed her cheek and his variable good-natured kindness, or the everyone-but-Destruction-bickers family gatherings: Neil Gaiman portraying various anthrophomorphic personifications as dysfunctional siblings is one of my absolutely favourite things about the entire Sandman saga.

4.) Rom and Quark from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I've said it before, I'll say it again; my favourite scene in the s5 finale is when Quark realises Rom hasn't left the station with Leeta, tells him to do so at once, and Rom objects Quark is staying, too. Quark says he's looking after the bar, Rom says he's looking after Quark, Quark says "you're an idiot" and kisses Rom on the head. It sums up their relationship, and why I love it, in two minutes.

5.) Lywelyn and Dafydd ap Gruffyd, both as portrayed by Sharon Penman and as portrayed by Edith Pargeter (aka Ellis Peters), with me slightly favouring the Penman incarnations. Sharon Penman is great with sibling relationships, good and bad, in general (my favourite thing about her first novel, The Sunne in Splendour, is the one between Edward IV. and Richard III.), so it's tricky to single one out, but this one still wins for the mixture of closeness/rivalry/betrayal/reconciliation. Also they make me cry. That's history for you.