One of them has amazing, complex psionic powers and the other has superspeed or strength or something that can be summed up in a very short sentence.
Quicksilver and Wanda
Dash and Violet
DCEU Enchantress and Incubus
Shark Girl and Lava Boy (you know what I mean)
Countless fantasy media
It's basically a superpowered variation of the athletic brother and nerd sister trope.
The brother is the support trooper, wherein sister plays a pivotal role in the plot, which takes away from the others' importance.
If 11 from ST had a speedster “brother” called 12, I guarantee you that he would have played second fiddle in every season.
I prefer it when, for example, one has fire abilities and the other has electric powers of roughly comparable strength and scope. Again roughly, not exactly.
I really don’t mind couples or friends having a power difference or gross power variance at all. After all, Scott Free + Big Barda and Superman and Batman wouldn’t exist otherwise, but I prefer it when siblings, who got their powers from the same source have some semblance of power parity.
I mean Dash and Violet seem to work, especially since their parents have completely different powers and Dash’s powers are pretty top notch.
You also have the fantastic 4 which (used to) work really well.
Also, Colossus is one of my favorite X-men and the tragic lengths he’ll go for his sister is part of why I love him. It wouldn’t work if they didn’t have a large power imbalance.
Feels like this is a variation of the ‘Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards’ trope.
Meaning that the sibling with more “mystical” powers will eventually overshadow the one with more “physical” powers, since more supernatural powers have higher power ceiling in general.
Unless the physical power is speed.
Because people just can't help themselves when it comes to superspeed, they need to make them so fast that everyone else is in slow-motion and that the only thing that could possibly ever threaten them is another speedster.
Just making your character fast isn't enough, they need to be so fast that any logic just completely breaks and the writing becomes stupid.
Good thing apparently every character who has seen any kind of combat ever has massively ftl reflexes and combat speed. The internet has assured me this is the case.
Dash and Violet don’t seem to actually fit this. Their dynamic isn’t unequal at all. Sure, Violet has the longer list of and more complex powers, but in terms of actual effectiveness in combat the two are basically equal.
I don't see a problem with this very niche trope.
That’s an interesting trope you have picked up on. What do you think of separating the siblings so they both can excel independently without being in a constant dynamic of weaker and stronger one.
I thought the mcu was smart to split up Billy and Tommy. In wandavision they traveled as a unit with their colours schemes and powers being their main differences. By splitting them into separate projects, their individual characters can actually grow without constantly being measured up to the other one.
Tommy isn’t less than for not being magic but at the same time he would have stuck out as having not much of value to contribute while Billy is learning magic with his witchy mentor and walking the witches road. In visionquest Tommy can find his own value honing his speed with people who have more in common with someone with a physical ability.
I don't want to sound cynical, but I fully expect Wiccan (Billy) to be trained to the Nth degree by Agatha and Wanda, be told that he ihas the potential to be the most powerful wizard of all time and have his own little Scarlet Wizard jr, arc, while his brother Speed (Tommy) to just exist in the sub Mach 1 zone for the rest of his MCU existance. No training, just velocity puns and "running late" jokes, while his brother gets all the attention.
Telekinesis, telepathy and magic users are often written as unstable and interesting characters, while almost all speedsters are these cocky guys who have to be taught lessons in humility. I don't expect this to change for the Maximoff twins.
Props for bringing up Wanda's kids though, I almost forgot about them.
Yeah. That’s a possibility. Maybe to combat that a good idea is to split them up permanently. Agatha takes Billy and Wanda can have Tommy. Wanda has always been unstable and dangerous on the magical front so she isn’t really a competent teacher for Billy. She could actually do better with Tommy who is the embodiment of her dead brother who she loved opposed to Billy who is a reflection of her potential if she hadn’t made so many mistakes and bad choices. There has to be some irony that she lost her own mentor from the comics to Billy because Agatha was disgusted by her but impressed by Billy.
Sorry, rewatched all of Wanda Vision real quick, had to confirm something.
True. Billy is supposed to be one of the most competent sorcerers in 616. The Agatha mentorship makes sense.
Your theory isn't bad, I just prefer... You know what, I will make another post, check back in like, 20 minutes or so.
This is a balancing issue. It's entirely feasible to make a simple power and a complex power well balanced with one another.
Like in JJK. Heavenly restrictions users be like "Nice complex cursed technique you got there, now check this dhit out" and then beat the shit out of the sorcerers with pure hands.
MLP sorta had this dynamic with Luna and Celestia. Luna crashed out because she felt inferior to Celestia. Was punished with immense cruelty imo and then came back, and they never actually address Luna's feelings of inferiority in the show. And I really wish they had because feeling inferior to someone is a real thing a lot of kids and adults alike suffer from. It would have been a good lesson for the show to comment on.
Adventure time also has this dynamic between Finn and Jake. Jake is objectively way stronger than Finn. But Jake is also so immensely incompetent that finn never feels outclassed. Fionna and cake go the other route, with Fionna actually dealing (poorly) with her feelings of inferiority toward cake.
I would guess that season 3 if we get it of fionna and cake will explore her feelings of inferiority more.
I mean, Percy Jackson and his brother Tyson have very different powersets, with Percy being a cool swordfighter with lots of water-based powers, while Tyson can smash things hard with a big stick. But it works, because Tyson is more than just brute force: he's also a designer and tinkerer who made (and has to keep fixing) Percy's wristwatch-shield.
I don't think there's anything wrong with this dynamic: Tyson always plays second fiddle to Percy, but that's because he's got his own life in the depths of the ocean with his blacksmith buddies, his own bird woman girlfriend, etc. He can't be there for all of Percy's problems, and he doesn't really need to be.
There's nothing wrong with a power imbalance, or even an imbalance in focus. What matters is both characters are interesting, and fit the story that's being told.
Y'all ever read Fablehaven? It happens there too
Final Fantasy 14 does this in a pretty funny way.
Alisaie and Alphinaud are both brilliant, prodigal students. They were introduced into the story as basically just identical (but different gender) twins, being the same on everything but their philosophy.
But then over time, the writers wanted to differentiate them more. And since Alphinaud’s whole character to that point was being a really smart, studious, scholar guy, they made Alisaie into a hot-headed action girl meathead
Except its a really funny fit, because she's still a prodigal once in a generation student lol.
In the end, they split the difference by just making Alphinaud even smarter. Like, Alisaie is really smart but she's only normal smart, while Alphinaud was a borderline genius prodigy student.
And that's funnier because in Sharlayan being smart made him a celebrity, so while Alisaie was a dorky loser with no-friends, Alphinaud was one of the most popular kids in the Studium. Ah, big fish in small ponds or something.
It mostly works, it only gets funny when you see the fanworks, or sometimes even official works acting like Alisaie's meant to be a meathead, noo! She graduated at 16 from Sharlayan, she's really goddamn smart!
I just really like that it's canon that Alisaie was an awkward social outcast though, it's so strange and yet so fitting for her.
While Alphinaud was indulging his delusions of grandeur playing at being Eorzea’s philosopher-king and subsequently getting manipulated into almost causing the death of all his friends by a capitalist potato, Alisae was figuring out how to stop the world from getting its shit wrecked by Bahamut again.
Also Alisae found the cure for tempering and it’s made pretty clear that without her efforts nobody would have even fully connected that was something that would be possible.
Meanwhile what’s the last big problem Alphinaud solved with his intelligence? His intelligent solution is asking WoL to punch things away for him. Even when there are times intellect is called for he barely ever even gets the opportunity because Y’shtola beats him to it.
IMO Alisae has always been the smarter one as far as problem solving goes, Alphinaud was just the more charismatic one and people have a habit of mistaking charisma for intelligence.
I don't completely disagree, but a lot of this is the same way the community ascribes all the success for ARR to themselves and all the blame for problems to Alphinaud lol.
When the Scions were attacked, Alphinaud was the one who put them back together. Without him, Cid would have still been doofing around without memory and the Warrior of Light would have had nobody to work with him. Could the WoL have found the Enterprise, identified the way to reach the remaining Primals and defeated them without Alphinaud? Very iffy, and even if so, it's hard to imagine him being able to do so before Minfilia and co were executed, which causes a huge amount of problems down the line.
The Crystal Braves always gets thrown at Alphinaud’s feet, but it's worth pointing out that not only did every city leader agree that it was a good idea, but your character was fully onboard with it too, IIRC you were the one that recruited the guys who eventually caused the biggest problems.
Alisaie wasn't really doing a whole lot through any of that, after her split from Alphinaud she was unable to prove her philosophy against his at all. His was pragmatic but slightly cynical while hers was far more optimistic but affronted, and... well, Alphinaud’s philosophy was what reformed the Grand Companies and rallied everyone together to attack the Praetorium.
Even with Bahamut, Alisaie couldn't stand by herself and needed Alphinaud to come support her. It was their combined efforts that supported the WoL to finish things off, Alisaie even gets a kinda lame "I'm still trying to find my path" ending. Which I've always felt was pretty unfair and seemed like the writers just didn't know what to do with her.
So yeah, I'm a huge Alisaie fan but I'm forever wary of how much gets dumped at Alphinaud’s feet. Even if he does take the blame himself, he's not solely responsible and he was instrumental in saving Eorzea.
This is why I'm so salty about the twins being written out after DT.
The problem wasn't that the Scions were in DT, the problem was that they were there but the story didn't do anything with any of them. Removing them from the plot like Lyse, and Yugiri and Hien, and Sphene, and Zero, and Lyra, and Ryne, and, and, and... etc is just adding them to the endless list of characters we care about that never get to do anything ever again, except the occasional cameo.
But you can bet G'raha will still show up to boggart whole scenes to himself that nobody else gets.
Tsuguri and yuka seems to work pretty fine