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Round 1, Match 23
Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire) vs Torak (The Belgariad)
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Propaganda under break
Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion Lannister
Cersei HATES Tyrion. Hes not a big fan of her either on account of her absolutely hating him. Cersei (and her twin Jaime, who is actually a good brother to Tyrion) were born a few years earlier than Tyrion, and blames him for "killing their mother," because she died in childbirth. Everyone in their family (except Jaime) hates Tyrion because he has dwarfism, but Cersei hates him more than anyone else and has wanted him dead since childhood. (spoilers beyond this point for the books and show both) When Cersei's son is killed, her immediate instinct is to blame Tyrion and throw him in jail. She does everything in her power to have him killed.
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The incest for starters. The fact that Cersei doesn’t see Tyrion as human. All the backstabbing. And that they made their own family problems everyone else’s tragic backstory and present out of their own lust for power
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here's a quote from one of tyrion's chapters: "When your sister cries, you were supposed to comfort her... but this was Cersei."
Torak
They stole an orb from their eldest brother and caused a centuries long war between his people and the people of his brothers. (They are all gods).
He's also just kind of a dick
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Round 1, Match 20
King Richard and Prince John (Robin Hood/English history) vs Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII (Egyptian history)
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Propaganda and history lesson under break.
King Richard and Prince John
Richard goes off to fight in the Crusades and John plots behind his back to steal and exploit the kingdom!
Poll Runner's Note: That's the Robin Hood legend, and there is some truth to it: While Richard was off on the crusade, John locked up Richard's chancellor Bishop Longchamp, set up his own royal court, and declared himself Richard's heir, over Richard's choice of their nephew Arthur (age 4). He even tried to have Richard declared legally dead so he could claim the throne (he had in fact been taken captive by the Duke of Austria and was then held for ransom by the Holy Roman Emperor). John left his wife to marry the King of France's sister so he'd support his claim, and basically started a civil war which lasted until Richard finally returned home. And that meant paying 100,000 pounds of silver in ransom. Everyone had to pay 25% of their property, on top of additional taxes.
Richard "forgave" John, in that he didn't have him killed and just confiscated most of his land, but he still officially declared his "hate and malevolence" towards John for over a year.
After Richard died five years later, John introduced yet more taxes, including England's first income tax. Why? To pay for a war with France to get back all the land that was lost when John asked the King of France to help him defeat Richard's supporters. A problem he himself caused by fighting with his brother!
Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII
You know
Poll Runner's Note: I sure do, and now I'm going to tell everyone about it! Ptolemy XII, their father, had five children: Berenice, Cleopatra, Arsinoë, Ptolemy XIII, and Ptolemy XIV. Berenice had usurped Ptolemy XII's rule and was executed when he regained power, making Cleopatra his eldest living child. In his will, he declared that when he died Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII should get married and reign as co-rulers of Egypt.
Ptolemy XII died when Cleopatra was about 18 and Ptolemy XIII was 11, and right from the start she was not interested in this co-ruler business. She started leaving his name off documents, leaving his face off the coins, and generally acting like she's the only ruler in Egypt. Unfortunately for her, Ptolemy's guardians weren't keen on being demoted from "power behind the throne" to "glorified babysitter", and they deposed Cleopatra and forced her to flee to Syria, where she raised an army and started a war against her brother. It didn't go well for her, and things were looking bad for her until Julius Caesar showed up with his army.
Caesar was 1) Already mad at Ptolemy's advisors for killing Pompey who he'd wanted to spare and 2) famously a huge slut so Cleopatra was pretty easily able to convince him to restore her to power.
It's at this point Arsinoë shows up with her army. She joins forces with Ptolemy XIII, declares herself Queen Arsinoë IV, and beseiges Cleopatra and Caesar in the palace complex. For five brutal months, they battled through the city. The fires are said to by how the Library of Alexandria was lost, which is probably a legend but it was still devastating. Ceasar himself almost drowned while fleeing Arsinoë's forces at the Battle of Pharos Island.
Finally Caesar's allies show up with their armies, and Ptolemy drowned trying to flee across the Nile while Arsinoë was taken prisoner. She was brought back to Rome as part of Caesar's triumph, but her life was spared and she lived out the rest of her days at the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. This was about five years because Cleopatra later persuaded Mark Antony to have her murdered right there in the temple.
Cleopatra married her youngest brother Ptolemy XIV, before finally poisoning him so she could make her son Caesarion the new Pharaoh.
Cleopatra was at least partially responsible for the deaths of all her siblings except the one her father killed, and the struggles between them were devastating for Egypt and caused a lot of suffering. These are some legitimately awful siblings.
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ok so propaganda for sam & dean: they try to kill each other SO many times. well maybe not that often but more often that is emotionally healthy for both of them. dean tries to kill sam (4.14, 8.06, 10.03, 10.23) and sam tries to kill dean (4.14).
in s10 dean has this really shitty curse that basically makes him really violent and want to kill people. however he also wants to just try to deal with it instead of trying to remove the curse because they know removing the curse would cause something really bad to happen. they don't know WHAT the bad thing is but they do know it would be devastating. anyways sam goes behind dean's back and gathers a bunch of other people to try and remove this curse even though dean doesn't want him to AND even though he knows it would cause terrible consequences. eventually sam does get the curse removed and surprise! the bad thing that happens is THE FUCKING APOCALYPSE. basically.
in s9 dean lets an angel possess sam - something he knows sam would never consent to under normal circumstances - in order to save his life and then, when sam finds out and gets mad about it, dean basically refuses to apologize. and then he just never gets around to apologizing about it or even showing regret about doing it.
in s4 sam lies to dean continuously and works with a demon behind dean's back, and he's also doing the supernatural equivalent of drugs that give him powers. when dean finds out about this he locks sam up in a panic room to suffer through his (very painful) withdrawal completely alone. also sam is having hallucinations of dean calling him a monster. and when another character says that he thinks they should let sam out because sam is at risk of dying, dean says "at least he dies human." later sam gets out of the panic room, dean catches up to him, and they have this huge fight where sam just beats dean up.
honorable mention: in between s7-s8 dean dies and goes to purgatory. the concept of purgatory is previously mostly unexplored on supernatural so sam doesn't really know that dean is in purgatory in the first place but also he just straight up does not bother looking for dean at all and just goes back to living a normal suburban life for a couple months. and then when dean gets back he is SO upset about this and resents sam for it for basically the whole season. (this is also one of the reasons he tries to kill sam.)
also they continually try to save each other, at the expense of themselves + each other + everyone around them. they also treat cas (cas!! my best girl cas!!) really shittily on multiple occasions just because he's in the way of their goals.
ALSO. very important. sam & dean are, respectively, the vessels of lucifer & michael (like the archangels) and essentially they are destined to each get possessed by lucifer/michael and kill each other in the apocalypse (the 1st apocalypse, not the 2nd).
all this propaganda might be a little bit biased in favor of sam because i'm a samgirl but you get the point. they think they're so normal but they are SO fucked up. they hurt themselves AND each other in the pursuit of trying to do what they each think is best and they never ever learn from it. i don't even ship wincest i just think they are so interestingly fucked up AND that's not even going into all the stuff about their childhoods / pre-canon
You did just say Sam was a drug addicted liar who's possessed by the devil and causes the apocalypse, I hate to see what propaganda biased against Sam would look like!
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additional propganda for the lannister siblings, here's a quote from one of tyrion's chapters: "When your sister cries, you were supposed to comfort her... but this was Cersei."
I'd bet you could probably find good propaganda in any Tyrion or Cersei chapter
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Round 1, Match 17
Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian (MDZS/The Untamed) vs Rei Asaka and Fukiko Ichinomiya (Oniisama E)
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Poll Runner's Note: Sorry for the late post everyone, somehow it didn't show up. I don't know if Tumblr ate it or I accidentally deleted it from the queue or what.
Propaganda under break
Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian
People like to look at them as tragic bittersweet siblings, personally I believe it stops being any kind of sweet when one leads a siege to kill the other, blames him for their sisters death, tortures and attacks people for reminding him too much of the other and takes advantage of his greatest fear. I think that all kind of overshadows the sacrifice Jiang Cheng made for Wei Wuxian when they were on good terms. The way Wei Wuxian defends Jiang Cheng early in, and the way fans write him defending Jiang Cheng sounds eerily like someone describing an abuser, "That's just how he is" " he cares for me really" type stuff. Their biggest issues seem to stem from Wei Wuxian not choosing to be Jiang Cheng’s servant, like his bio father was for Jiang Cheng’s, because he wanted to help people, and because Jiang Cheng’s father treated them very differently while his mother used that to cause conflict.
Also Jiang Cheng is homophobic and Wei Wuxian is queer.
Rei Asaka and Fukiko Ichinomiya
I don’t even know where to begin. the suicide pact? everything fukiko does to rei throughout the series? the obsession and hate they both have towards each other? most normal sisters ever
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The Hargreeves siblings win Match 16, and will go on to face Cain and Abel in Round 2.
Round 1, Match 16
The Hargreeves siblings (Umbrella Academy) vs Ledroptha Curtain (The Mysterious Benedict Society)
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Propaganda under break.
The Hargreeves Siblings - Viktor Hargreeves, Luther Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves, Number Five
they love each other but they don’t like each other. they’ve ended the world like three times. two of them had an incestuous relationship. they don’t notice when one of them gets kidnapped. they have cool superpowers tho. i love them dearly
Ledroptha Curtain (Brother of Nicholas Benedict)
He tried to take over the world and erase freewill because when he was a child his twin got adopted but he didn't
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Round 1, Match 23
Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire) vs Torak (The Belgariad)
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Propaganda under break
Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion Lannister
Cersei HATES Tyrion. Hes not a big fan of her either on account of her absolutely hating him. Cersei (and her twin Jaime, who is actually a good brother to Tyrion) were born a few years earlier than Tyrion, and blames him for "killing their mother," because she died in childbirth. Everyone in their family (except Jaime) hates Tyrion because he has dwarfism, but Cersei hates him more than anyone else and has wanted him dead since childhood. (spoilers beyond this point for the books and show both) When Cersei's son is killed, her immediate instinct is to blame Tyrion and throw him in jail. She does everything in her power to have him killed.
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The incest for starters. The fact that Cersei doesn’t see Tyrion as human. All the backstabbing. And that they made their own family problems everyone else’s tragic backstory and present out of their own lust for power
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here's a quote from one of tyrion's chapters: "When your sister cries, you were supposed to comfort her... but this was Cersei."
Torak
They stole an orb from their eldest brother and caused a centuries long war between his people and the people of his brothers. (They are all gods).
He's also just kind of a dick
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Round 1, Match 22
Andrew and Ashley Graves (The Coffin of Andy and Leyley) vs Belzedar (The Belgariad)
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Propaganda under break
Andrew and Ashley Graves
Both ate their parents after breaking into their new home. Also there's some demon summoning they did, literally selling their victim's souls to the demon they made a deal with. Notable quote from Ashley: "We offer you that guy's soul!"
Ashley - overall a horrible person, implied undiagnosed sociopath who threatened her brother's girlfriend, emotionally manipulates and actively provokes her brother, recently began murdering people she doesn't like, cannibalizes people she murders.
Andrew - enables his sister's worse habits (when he thinks it doesn't involve him), uses plausible deniability by blaming his sister for his actions (despite the fact that he had the freedom to ignore her ideas in many cases), also a cannibal.
Belzedar
They turned traitor against their adopted brothers in a war of gods and magic.
It's suspected in universe that before their betrayal was know, they convinced one of their brothers to commit suicide.
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Round 1, Match 19
Percy Jackson and Polyphemus (Percy Jackson) vs Mercer and Gage (The Silt Verses)
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(Mercer and Gage art by @thedoublepp)
Propaganda under break
Percy Jackson and Polyphemus
Points to the part in Sea of Monsters where Polyphemus threatens to snitch to Poseidon like he did with Odysseus and Percy’s like good luck buddy I’m dad’s favorite
Mercer and Gage
Mercer and Gage are two fairly young people who have been failed by the systems in place. They’re a pair of orphans who have been working to birth a god and are attempting that through their hunting. They get hired by a politician to kill a few other gods, which results in them spending several months traveling up and down the countryside, razing entire towns and killing worshipers of whatever god they are hunting at the time, going so far that the politician who hired them asks them to chill out a bit because now they’re just killing voters. Over time, Gage grows to hate the hunt and longs to do something more with their life, while Mercer grows angry that their sibling is drawing away from her. She tries to push Gage to keep going, and reluctantly they do. When the politician instructs them to stop hunting the god they’re currently after, Gage tries to tell Mercer to stop, but Mercer refuses because she believes that after they finish hunting this god, their goal will be accomplished. Seeing that Mercer will never stop and Gage will never be free of her, Gage decides to kill her.
Poll Runner's Note: I also really liked this drawing by @caimitos. The detail of Gage having the dog's jaw at the bottom of their hood is really cool!
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Round 1, Match 22
Andrew and Ashley Graves (The Coffin of Andy and Leyley) vs Belzedar (The Belgariad)
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Propaganda under break
Andrew and Ashley Graves
Both ate their parents after breaking into their new home. Also there's some demon summoning they did, literally selling their victim's souls to the demon they made a deal with. Notable quote from Ashley: "We offer you that guy's soul!"
Ashley - overall a horrible person, implied undiagnosed sociopath who threatened her brother's girlfriend, emotionally manipulates and actively provokes her brother, recently began murdering people she doesn't like, cannibalizes people she murders.
Andrew - enables his sister's worse habits (when he thinks it doesn't involve him), uses plausible deniability by blaming his sister for his actions (despite the fact that he had the freedom to ignore her ideas in many cases), also a cannibal.
Belzedar
They turned traitor against their adopted brothers in a war of gods and magic.
It's suspected in universe that before their betrayal was know, they convinced one of their brothers to commit suicide.
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Round 1, Match 16
The Hargreeves siblings (Umbrella Academy) vs Ledroptha Curtain (The Mysterious Benedict Society)
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Propaganda under break.
The Hargreeves Siblings - Viktor Hargreeves, Luther Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves, Number Five
they love each other but they don’t like each other. they’ve ended the world like three times. two of them had an incestuous relationship. they don’t notice when one of them gets kidnapped. they have cool superpowers tho. i love them dearly
Ledroptha Curtain (Brother of Nicholas Benedict)
He tried to take over the world and erase freewill because when he was a child his twin got adopted but he didn't
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Round 1, Match 21
Uru Somezuki and Saito Sejima (AI: The Somnium Files) vs Illumi, Killua and Alluka Zoldyck (Hunter x Hunter)
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Poll Runner's note: I've decided to put the Somnium Files character portraits under the readmore, along with their propaganda, to avoid spoilers.
Propaganda under break. Spoilers for AI: The Somnium Files, AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative, and Hunter x Hunter
Illumi, Killua, and Alluka
They're from a family of assassins, and Illumi is EXTREMELY abusive. He tells Killua that he's incapable of having friends because he and their father raised Killua to be an assassin and only judge whether people were able to be killed. He even threatens to kill Killua's new friend unless Killua gives up on their friendship and stops trying to become a Hunter (since this is happening at the Hunter Exam). Even after Killua leaves his family, Illumi's voice rings in his head telling him to run away from situations, something that weighs EXTREMELY heavily on Killua.
Getting into more spoilery things: It's later revealed that Illumi placed a magic needle inside Killua's head which is where the voice came from, trying to convince Killua to abandon his friend to die and save himself in the process, which is somewhat implied to be in preparation for him to ultimately come back and be an assassin for the family
AND ALSO the two of them have a little sister Alluka, who Killua desperately wants to protect but who Illumi wants to kill because he sees her power as dangerous. I'm not going to go into the details of the power, but Illumi also misgenders Alluka constantly and barely sees her as a human being. Ultimately Killua even says that if Illumi keeps treating Alluka like that he won't consider Illumi his brother anymore, with the undercurrent that family members aren't allowed to kill each other, which means Killua is threatening that he can and will try to kill Illumi if he keeps mistreating their sister!!!
As for their other siblings, Milluki is shown whipping Killua as punishment after Killua stabbed Milluki. Kalluto and Killua have never interacted onscreen but Kalluto is trying to get his brother back, which may or may not be Killua? Meanwhile Killua doesn't seem to care about Kalluto at all… ouch.
SPOILER WARNING
Somnium file spoilers under Alluka
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Uru Somezuki and Saito Sejima
SPOILER WARNING
Two sons of a corrupt politician who both ended up being serial killers despite being raised entirely separately from the other. Their little sister, raised in yet a third environment, grew up to become a Twitch streamer. The two genders: serial killer and gamer girl.
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Round 1, Match 18
Adam and Eve (NieR: Automata) vs Dys and Tangent (I Was A Teenage Exocolonist)
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Propaganda under break. Spoilers for I Was A Teenage Exocolonist
Adam and Eve
important context: they are both machines. eve was cloned…ish? from adam (after he got stabbed to death (not permanently) ~10 minutes after being born) to protect him. also, they were born/created in the tail end of the android/machine war.
SO! eve is incredibly codepedent with adam, to the point where after adam dies (permanantly, after eve was created) he tries to destroy the entire world, iirc? of course he fails and ends up being killed. adam, however, doesn't even see eve as his own person— ie, he sees him and eve as pretty much the same person.
there's also a neat thing in the anime adaptation, where eve dies (permanently) to protect adam, he grieves a lot, and ends up trying to destroy the world like eve did in the original game.
tl;dr: robot sibling codependency 🎊
Dys and Tangent
Dys weakens the human colony's walls and lets aliens in to destroy all humanity on planet Vertumna unless player character stops him. His twin sister Tangent massacres the whole (alien) Vertumnan ecosystem unless player character stops her.
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Round 1, Match 21
Uru Somezuki and Saito Sejima (AI: The Somnium Files) vs Illumi, Killua and Alluka Zoldyck (Hunter x Hunter)
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Poll Runner's note: I've decided to put the Somnium Files character portraits under the readmore, along with their propaganda, to avoid spoilers.
Propaganda under break. Spoilers for AI: The Somnium Files, AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative, and Hunter x Hunter
Illumi, Killua, and Alluka
They're from a family of assassins, and Illumi is EXTREMELY abusive. He tells Killua that he's incapable of having friends because he and their father raised Killua to be an assassin and only judge whether people were able to be killed. He even threatens to kill Killua's new friend unless Killua gives up on their friendship and stops trying to become a Hunter (since this is happening at the Hunter Exam). Even after Killua leaves his family, Illumi's voice rings in his head telling him to run away from situations, something that weighs EXTREMELY heavily on Killua.
Getting into more spoilery things: It's later revealed that Illumi placed a magic needle inside Killua's head which is where the voice came from, trying to convince Killua to abandon his friend to die and save himself in the process, which is somewhat implied to be in preparation for him to ultimately come back and be an assassin for the family
AND ALSO the two of them have a little sister Alluka, who Killua desperately wants to protect but who Illumi wants to kill because he sees her power as dangerous. I'm not going to go into the details of the power, but Illumi also misgenders Alluka constantly and barely sees her as a human being. Ultimately Killua even says that if Illumi keeps treating Alluka like that he won't consider Illumi his brother anymore, with the undercurrent that family members aren't allowed to kill each other, which means Killua is threatening that he can and will try to kill Illumi if he keeps mistreating their sister!!!
As for their other siblings, Milluki is shown whipping Killua as punishment after Killua stabbed Milluki. Kalluto and Killua have never interacted onscreen but Kalluto is trying to get his brother back, which may or may not be Killua? Meanwhile Killua doesn't seem to care about Kalluto at all… ouch.
SPOILER WARNING
Somnium file spoilers under Alluka
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Uru Somezuki and Saito Sejima
SPOILER WARNING
Two sons of a corrupt politician who both ended up being serial killers despite being raised entirely separately from the other. Their little sister, raised in yet a third environment, grew up to become a Twitch streamer. The two genders: serial killer and gamer girl.
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Round 1, Match 15
Akio Ohtori and Anthy Himemiya (Revolutionary Girl Utena) vs Tom and Jake Berenson (Animorphs)
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Poll Runner's Note: Tom and Jake are a tricky entry. Most of what we see of "Tom" is actually Temrash 114, the Yeerk controlling him. I decided to include them anyway, an evil alien that's controlling your brother feels close enough to me.
Propaganda under break. Spoilers for Revolutionary Girl Utena and Animorphs.
Akio Ohtori and Anthy Himemiya
TW for incest
WHERE TO BEGIN. Major Utnea spoilers, but take a brother and sister who have been alive for god knows how many centuries, one keeps the other enslaved as the Rose Bride so she can be living bait for "Princes", meanwhile he does an incest on her at least once a week. She mostly goes along with things for complex story reasons and aids him in this vast conspiracy to lure in people with the potential to be "a True Prince" to help them bring about a vague conceptual Revolution. Anthy will disguise herself to manipulate the ghost of a dead genius, but get pissed when Akio makes moves on her future gf, but she can't do anything to him so she takes out her anger on a different character by turning said character into a cow. Like seriously this isn't a shallow victim blaming thing the series is all about deconstructing that idea. She does try to get satisfaction in petty ways because that's the only power she has and ultimately she finally walks out on him to go find her gf in the Real World. There's also their movie versions where he drugs her so he can assault her, but when he realizes she's awake and was willing to let him do whatever, he has a tantrum because that makes her not a pure woman and he stumbles off the balcony to his death. Then his ghost(?) tries to crush her and her gf in a giant mobile car wash, so her gf turns into a car and they eventually lounge naked and kissing down the road to the future.
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Akio is a groomer and a rapist and he does not make an exception for family.
Tom and Jake Berenson
Tom is controlled by a yeerk. He is working to enslave humanity against his will. Jake is a child soldier, and at the end of the series makes his (also a child soldier) cousin Rachel go on a suicide mission to kill Tom, which she succeeds in.
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Round 1, Match 17
Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian (MDZS/The Untamed) vs Rei Asaka and Fukiko Ichinomiya (Oniisama E)
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Poll Runner's Note: Sorry for the late post everyone, somehow it didn't show up. I don't know if Tumblr ate it or I accidentally deleted it from the queue or what.
Propaganda under break
Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian
People like to look at them as tragic bittersweet siblings, personally I believe it stops being any kind of sweet when one leads a siege to kill the other, blames him for their sisters death, tortures and attacks people for reminding him too much of the other and takes advantage of his greatest fear. I think that all kind of overshadows the sacrifice Jiang Cheng made for Wei Wuxian when they were on good terms. The way Wei Wuxian defends Jiang Cheng early in, and the way fans write him defending Jiang Cheng sounds eerily like someone describing an abuser, "That's just how he is" " he cares for me really" type stuff. Their biggest issues seem to stem from Wei Wuxian not choosing to be Jiang Cheng’s servant, like his bio father was for Jiang Cheng’s, because he wanted to help people, and because Jiang Cheng’s father treated them very differently while his mother used that to cause conflict.
Also Jiang Cheng is homophobic and Wei Wuxian is queer.
Rei Asaka and Fukiko Ichinomiya
I don’t even know where to begin. the suicide pact? everything fukiko does to rei throughout the series? the obsession and hate they both have towards each other? most normal sisters ever
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Round 1, Match 20
King Richard and Prince John (Robin Hood/English history) vs Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII (Egyptian history)
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Propaganda and history lesson under break.
King Richard and Prince John
Richard goes off to fight in the Crusades and John plots behind his back to steal and exploit the kingdom!
Poll Runner's Note: That's the Robin Hood legend, and there is some truth to it: While Richard was off on the crusade, John locked up Richard's chancellor Bishop Longchamp, set up his own royal court, and declared himself Richard's heir, over Richard's choice of their nephew Arthur (age 4). He even tried to have Richard declared legally dead so he could claim the throne (he had in fact been taken captive by the Duke of Austria and was then held for ransom by the Holy Roman Emperor). John left his wife to marry the King of France's sister so he'd support his claim, and basically started a civil war which lasted until Richard finally returned home. And that meant paying 100,000 pounds of silver in ransom. Everyone had to pay 25% of their property, on top of additional taxes.
Richard "forgave" John, in that he didn't have him killed and just confiscated most of his land, but he still officially declared his "hate and malevolence" towards John for over a year.
After Richard died five years later, John introduced yet more taxes, including England's first income tax. Why? To pay for a war with France to get back all the land that was lost when John asked the King of France to help him defeat Richard's supporters. A problem he himself caused by fighting with his brother!
Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII
You know
Poll Runner's Note: I sure do, and now I'm going to tell everyone about it! Ptolemy XII, their father, had five children: Berenice, Cleopatra, Arsinoë, Ptolemy XIII, and Ptolemy XIV. Berenice had usurped Ptolemy XII's rule and was executed when he regained power, making Cleopatra his eldest living child. In his will, he declared that when he died Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII should get married and reign as co-rulers of Egypt.
Ptolemy XII died when Cleopatra was about 18 and Ptolemy XIII was 11, and right from the start she was not interested in this co-ruler business. She started leaving his name off documents, leaving his face off the coins, and generally acting like she's the only ruler in Egypt. Unfortunately for her, Ptolemy's guardians weren't keen on being demoted from "power behind the throne" to "glorified babysitter", and they deposed Cleopatra and forced her to flee to Syria, where she raised an army and started a war against her brother. It didn't go well for her, and things were looking bad for her until Julius Caesar showed up with his army.
Caesar was 1) Already mad at Ptolemy's advisors for killing Pompey who he'd wanted to spare and 2) famously a huge slut so Cleopatra was pretty easily able to convince him to restore her to power.
It's at this point Arsinoë shows up with her army. She joins forces with Ptolemy XIII, declares herself Queen Arsinoë IV, and beseiges Cleopatra and Caesar in the palace complex. For five brutal months, they battled through the city. The fires are said to by how the Library of Alexandria was lost, which is probably a legend but it was still devastating. Ceasar himself almost drowned while fleeing Arsinoë's forces at the Battle of Pharos Island.
Finally Caesar's allies show up with their armies, and Ptolemy drowned trying to flee across the Nile while Arsinoë was taken prisoner. She was brought back to Rome as part of Caesar's triumph, but her life was spared and she lived out the rest of her days at the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. This was about five years because Cleopatra later persuaded Mark Antony to have her murdered right there in the temple.
Cleopatra married her youngest brother Ptolemy XIV, before finally poisoning him so she could make her son Caesarion the new Pharaoh.
Cleopatra was at least partially responsible for the deaths of all her siblings except the one her father killed, and the struggles between them were devastating for Egypt and caused a lot of suffering. These are some legitimately awful siblings.
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